This is a view from the UK: The love that dare not speak its name and is it ever dire.
We have reached a point where the pendulum has swung so far the other way that classical music is struggling to maintain a foothold at all on some university music courses. If any academic were to propose a degree course based entirely around classical music — and I imagine few would dare — they would be regarded as eccentric at best, politically dubious at worst.
This is the nub of the embarrassment. Classical music is no longer simply something that people enjoy listening to, playing, studying and writing about; rather, it has been intensely politicised. The relentless elitism barbs have already done a great deal to turn people off classical music, but in recent years these historically illiterate insults have morphed into something even worse, as the elitism stereotype has merged with wider debates about equality in ways that are making the classical music world very edgy indeed.
But you need to read the whole thing. The writer traces the path of the downfall of classical music from the 70s and 80s when it was very well-attended. But I find it hard to believe that pure classical music courses have nearly disappeared from universities in the UK. They are certainly widely present in Canada.
* * *
What changed Rick Beato's life--and mine:
I think the very first Bach recordings I owned were Switched-On Bach and Christopher Parkening's recording of the Chaconne on guitar.
More than 200 musical artists — including heavy hitters such as Billie Eilish, Katy Perry and Smokey Robinson — have penned an open letter to AI developers, tech firms and digital platforms to "cease the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to infringe upon and devalue the rights of human artists."
* * *
Here is something on a rarely-discussed topic: The Team Effort Behind One of Classical Music’s Greatest Hits. Due to time pressures and physical disability, Gustav Holst relied on a close circle of pianists and copyists in his compositional process:
“The Planets” was composed and orchestrated between 1914 and 1917, and was first performed for the public in 1920. During that six-year period, he relied heavily on a group of supportive women whom he later referred to in the dedication to his opera “At the Boar’s Head” as “my scribes.”
HOLST WAS A BUSY MUSICIAN when he began to think about “The Planets.” In addition to composing, he juggled work at three different institutions: Morley College, James Allen’s Girls’ School and St. Paul’s Girls’ School. He formed a strong attachment to those places, and his catalog reflects that, in pieces like “Brook Green Suite,” written for St. Paul’s junior orchestra while he was hospitalized toward the end of his life and titled after the school’s location in Brook Green, Hammersmith.
His activities were complicated by lifelong bad health. In particular, Holst had suffered since childhood from neuritis in his hands, first affecting his ability to play the piano — he later opted for the trombone — and later making him struggle with the more laborious aspects of composing. Those included copying, part-writing and orchestration, tasks that, in a time before digital engraving or photocopying, required “a huge amount of physical effort, and that took an awful lot of time,” the music historian Leah Broad said in an interview.
* * *
Picking up on a topic a few posts back: Puccini’s ‘Butterfly’ and ‘Turandot’: More Than Appropriation
This plain brown music box is therefore central to the ambivalence that lately surrounds Puccini, “Madama Butterfly” and “Turandot,” and the amorphous label of appropriation that has been applied to both. It reminds us that Puccini, who was always searching to endow his scores with “local color,” didn’t just compose exotic-seeming, faux-Asian tunes for his operas, but also sought out actual Asian examples. These works are tributes to the curiosity about other cultures — the desire to blend your traditions with others’ and tell stories about more than just yourself — that has animated art for as long as humans have been making it.
It’s helpful to remember that we are dealing here with Italian operas about Asia, not with Asian operas. I think audiences understand this distance even without specific directorial strategies that emphasize it. But such techniques can be effective; the Met’s sleek and lacquer-shiny current production, originally directed by Anthony Minghella, affectingly represents Cio-Cio-San’s son with a Bunraku puppet, constantly surrounded by operators draped in black.
* * *
It’s All in the (Video) Game: Composers Embrace a Growing Industry
Horowitz and Looney want to tell you about the vast game frontiers attracting a disparate array of composers, from aspiring students looking to break into the industry to established artists versed in jazz, contemporary classical music, songcraft, and electronica. It’s a dominion where composition intersects with cutting-edge technology powered by an economy that dwarfs Hollywood.
The music created to accompany and enhance the quests, missions, adventures, and world-building that unfolds in games doesn’t stay in the digital realm. “It’s weird to say, but the new American Songbook that kids want to play comes from this game music,”
Not being a gamer, I think I missed this whole trend. There is also a new book: The Theory and Practice of Writing Music for Games.
* * *
Alex Ross explains the age of the multi-tasking maestro: Conductors Had One Job. Now They Have Three or Four
"I love my three orchestras,” the twenty-eight-year-old Finnish conductor Klaus Mäkelä said the other day on WQXR, during a broadcast from Carnegie Hall. Mäkelä was leading an all-Stravinsky concert with the Orchestre de Paris, of which he has been the music director since 2021. The other orchestras in question are the Oslo Philharmonic, which he has led since 2020, and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, where he holds the title of Artistic Partner. In 2027, Mäkelä will become the chief conductor of the Concertgebouw, which would appear on any shortlist of the world’s finest ensembles. No conductor in modern history, not even the lavishly hyped Gustavo Dudamel, has ever risen so quickly to the peak of the profession.
* * *
Our first choice of envoi is obvious: The Planets by Gustav Holst.
And, of course, the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 by Bach:
And we should give a listen to Klaus Mäkelä. Here he is with a tight, disciplined and dynamic Shostakovich Symphony No. 7:
To tie together two of the items, ludomusicology modules seem to be rather common now in universities.
ReplyDeleteI think there may be a translation issue here -- what I believe North Americans call courses we usually call modules. You will of course still find many classical music modules at UK universities, but not a three-year degree course that is solely dedicated to classical music.
Thanks, Steven. What is a "ludomusicology module"? And what is a "module" anyway? Outside of Quebec, in Canada an undergraduate degree in music (and other disciplines) is a four-year course with required and optional coursed in each year. In Quebec they have a dual system. After what would be Grade 11 in the rest of Canada, students in Quebec attend a two year college equivalent to the last year of high school and the first year of university. Then the university undergraduate degree is shortened to three years. I guess this was set up to ease the transition from high school to university. Other than Quebec, the Canadian system is pretty much modeled on the US one.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a young radical, having read my first few books in history and political economy, not yet having years to consider society from many angles, I thought elitism was inherently bad, being nothing more than the materially determined position atop systems of oppression and exploitation. The world has since come to seem much more complex and nuanced, and now I see the emergence of our species out of bestiality and into accelerating cultural and technical evolution as being mostly thanks to natural elites of intellect and artistry and insight. Perhaps classical and other schooled musics really do gravitate around natural elites, and don't much appeal to beat-centric audiences seeking entertainment and external regularity upon which they can effortlessly fixate for sensual comforts. There may be a monastic solution to the problem of survival, as there will always be a small minority who seek it out and dedicate their lives to it. Popular culture strikes me as spiritually hollow so I don't expect to find much there anyway, that's not where my art and meaning reside. Of course as a mere amateur musician, my day job pay affords me such detachment.
ReplyDeleteLudomusicology=the study of video game music!
ReplyDeleteModules are like your courses. Each year a student takes compulsory and optional modules, which make up the degree. Undergraduate degrees are usually three years long. Also, Master's are usually just one year. The Quebec system sounds odd, but maybe the British system does too... We enter Sixth Form at age 16 -- usually staying in the same school, but sometimes moving to another -- then to university. Sixth form is also a kind of transitionary stage, in theory.
Using a drum machine or Auto-Tune is more like using a piano or a guitar than like using AI. If you imagine that drum machines and Auto-Tune make musical choices for you, you will be disappointed quickly. On the other hand, you might also be pleasantly surprised by how much musicality these tools require. I think every musician should try singing with Auto-Tune at least once, the same way that we should all try playing piano and drums.
ReplyDeleteWill, I have the sense that we could use a good history of popular music over the last five hundred years. I'm not sure one really exists. In the early days, evidence would be sparse, for sure. But there is some. I have an impression, which might be completely wrong, that popular music in recent times has seen a loss of quality in the specific sense of originality and individual character. The most prominent artists seem, to me, to be simply putting on a plausible persona without any real distinctive character. But if we go back a couple of decades or even more, the biggest artists do have a discernible individual voice. I suspect that the growth of technologies aiding the production and distribution of music might have an influence. It also seems to me that the music business is not terribly different from business in general as we have seen in recent decades the growth of very large companies whose influence likely contributes to the diminishing of individual differences and local variations. We all have to go through the very big pipeline where individuality is erased. Ethan, I'm sure you have thoughts on this as it is more in your area. Re Autotune, I take your point about the creative use of Autotune.
ReplyDeleteIn Canada a master's degree will take two years at least and a doctorate much, much longer--several years. I spent three years just completing the required seminars. Then you have to do the comprehensive exams before writing your dissertation.
Regarding the AI issue, Prof Hein is correct that drum machines have to be programmed and Autotune is just making incorrect notes more correct (as defined) not by having the artist re-record but artificially. Not AI. i suppose even classical artists often sing some notes inaccurately haha. Of course almost all of the so-called AI being chattered about is not AI either. If it is based on an algorithm it is what people call SOP or rote behavior, not AI.
ReplyDeleteTo provide a more specific example with chess playing, the original computer chess programs tried to emulate the way chess masters play chess - true AI. They were all miserable failures. Then as computers became more powerful, programmers began writing brute force chess playing programs. By brute force is meant running through all zillion possibilities for the next move with their probability of success. These were successful to the point that eventually computing power made it possible to do that well enough to beat grandmasters. Much of what is termed AI today is simply brute force or text /grammar algorithms.
As far as I can tell with the music industry, companies are experimenting having computer programs "write music in the style of.." for which they need pay no royalties. This artificial music also checks for too close copying of well known copyrighted melodies. Hence musicians are concerned about their streaming payouts reduced to the smallest infinitesimal. A side issue is that songwriters are thus more likely to unknowingly infringe on copyrighted music which could then be used as a club against them since the computer has brute force methods to analyze their music for potential matches.
Bryan, I seem to remember one or two threads that you had here on this general subject.
Yes, Maury, I believe we have approached this topic in a few places. But I'm not sure how to dig them out. Thanks for pointing out the different levels of computer assistance, only some or one of which really deserves the name "AI".
ReplyDeleteAll that I have seen of AI so far has left me with a real aversion to it.
Steven is not joking BTW with his video game music example. Given the steady decline of music media sales (i.e. CDs, tape and LPs) and the poor return of streaming royalties songwriters increasingly rely on merchandising their music via ads, movie inclusion and yes video games. At least until the "AI" folks provide a cheaper alternative. The only financial vehicle for musicians that is very difficult to emulate is live performance. But that is rather expensive and tiring except for the top acts.
ReplyDeleteOh no it's not a joke, ludomusicology has now arrived at some top universities in the UK.
ReplyDeleteYou quite often see composers with video game music in their portfolio. It's been a while since I played a video game, but I remember some of the music being pretty good.
Re Maury on surgical AI copyright tools: bots frequently flag up my YouTube recordings of public domain works as being owned by some record company, because (flatteringly) it finds a segment that resembles a recording by some famous player. You have to go through a non-human appeal process that usually lasts for 30 days. The bots are also amazingly good at picking up on composition copyright infringement. Even things like loosely-arranged excerpts of copyrighted works they can pick up.
Steven, use and application for copyright bots seems to vary widely. I didn't get any issues when I posted a Hindemith transcription for solo guitar at my channel.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing it depends who owns the copyright and what technologies they are willing to buy access to. Hindemith is probably neglected, as always...
ReplyDelete