Ian Pace

Doing away with the study of musical theory and notation will simply entrench elitism in the music world.

Notation is a tricky language. Credit: Timothy Swinson/Flickr: CC BY 2.0

A passionate debate is raging regarding musical education which threatens to unbalance the already critically privileged world of classical music. And, ironically, some of those who believe that music education should be made more accessible are arguing for measures that will actually exacerbate that privilege.

In a recent article in The Guardian, writer Charlotte C. Gill argued that musical education is now harder to access for many at state schools. Gill’s main contention was that music had “always been taught in a far too academic way”, singling out a focus on notation, sight-reading and theoretical understanding. Notation, she wrote, was “a cryptic, tricky language – rather like Latin – that can only be read by a small number of people, most of whom have benefited from private education”.

In response, more than 700 professional musicians, teachers and others – including many who were either educated or are now teaching in state schools – signed a letter opposing Gill’s ideas, which it said “amount to simple anti-intellectualism”. It added:

… through her romanticisation of illiteracy, Gill’s position could serve to make literate musical education even more exclusive through being marginalised yet further in state schools.

Check your privilege

The news that a core requirement of music theory was to be dropped from the curriculum at Harvard University, prompted a vigorous defence by some other faculty members.

Credit: Twitter

The response by professional musicians in the US, including American composer John Adams, was similarly impassioned, but the debate quickly became charged. One musicologist compared the defence of music theory to white supremacy, while another developed a “privilege walk for musicians” based upon a recent US tradition of such things for students. This required that those who, for example, had been taught music theory, cared about notated music, or could read more than one clef, should step forward in order to check their privilege.

You need to understand theory to be a performer. Credit: Jake Guild/Flickr: CC BY 2.0

Many of the respondents to Gill’s article challenged her claims about notation and theory being impossible other than to those from privileged backgrounds, but the Harvard decision reflects a different outlook. The general quality of state education in the US compared to many countries in Europe and East Asia was demonstrated by the country’s relatively mediocre scores in the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment survey. This indicates that many students educated in the US are facing serious educational disadvantages.

The response to such a situation in a social democratic country, at least until recently, might be to invest more heavily in state education – and specifically music provision therein – to make musical skills available to as many as possible (perhaps also raising taxes in order to do so). But the Harvard decision – and by implication other denigrations of literate or theory-rich music – instead constitutes a race to the bottom, dumbing down and deskilling a curriculum while purporting to increase diversity.

The Harvard decision was ostensibly made to meet the needs of students without a traditional musical background – but if so, what alternative musical background do they have, and can it be judged intellectually equal to that traditionally required for a Harvard music education? Harvard faculty member Anne Shreffler dismissed the idea of music “standards” as “a very amorphous and ideology-laden concept”.

But consider this: if standards in the education of surgeons or air traffic controllers were to be relaxed and not compensated for, there would be an outcry. Lives may not be at stake with music education, but surely the situation is little better?

Knowing the score

All of this follows various factors which have plagued musical study in the Anglophone world for some years now. Traditionally in the developed world, a distinction grows through the course of musical education between studying to make music and studying about music, but these boundaries have become increasingly blurred. A greater dialogue between performance and the study of music theory is always to be welcomed – but this can also lead to the devaluing of the latter in favour of the former.

Some writers on primary and secondary musical education have collapsed this distinction in ways which conveniently sideline requirements of notation and theory. It is certainly true that one can make various types of music without needing either of these things but – as was also argued by the celebrated Australian music educator Peter Tregear – independent study of music is much more difficult without some theoretical and literacy tools. Parallel systems such as “Cantometrics”, developed by the classic ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax, which involves the study of different song styles and the social backgrounds from which they emerge, are not necessarily any easier to master.

More broadly, there has been a sustained assault on Western classical music from some academic quarters. Back in 2003, educationalist Estelle R. Jorgensen noted the negative connotations of elitism and privilege, despite her passionate arguments for such music’s multicultural roots and global reach. Ideally, Anglophone education would also include equally sophisticated study of non-Western musical traditions – but the far more common outcome is an increasing dominance of contemporary Anglo-American pop.

A disproportionate number of places in UK conservatoires are already taken up by the privately educated – in 2012-13, only 38.1% of students at Britain’s Royal Academy of Music went to state school, even though about 93% of the general population go to one. The figure for the Royal College of Music was 43.9%. By 2017, the figures were 48.5% and 56.9% – alongside many who have received a traditional musical education in continental Europe and East Asia.

It might be hoped that recent changes to Music GCSEs requiring staff notation will lead to further improvement in these figures. But the opposite of this, the removal of core musical skills from state education can only reinforce the privilege that is already fostering elitism in music.

Ian Pace is the head of performance and a lecturer in music at City, University of London

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Claims that the Trump campaign uses fascist music are far-fetched and backed by slim evidence.

Trump’s use of a Puccini aria has caused some raised eyebrows. Credit: Michael Reynolds/EPA.

Certain musicians or pieces of music, for one reason or another, will always carry unsavoury associations. Wagner, whose music was co-opted by the Nazi party, is the obvious example. The overture of his opera ‘Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg’ was featured in a Nazi propaganda film. And there are many other examples of music that have been performed to great acclaim in societies that have conventionally been labelled fascist and as a result will be seen as tainted.

Some of the composers also have questionable personal histories. Luigi Dallapiccola, for example, was an explicit fascist sympathiser at least early on in Mussolini’s regime. Arthur Honegger cultivated contacts with the German occupying forces in France and was viewed by some as a collaborator. George Enescu was a sympathiser of Octavian Goga, Romania’s fascist and fundamentalist anti-semite prime minister between 1937-38 (and who had proposed Enescu for election to the Romanian Academy in 1933), and conducted special German nationalist concerts.

But to simply label these as all ‘fascist’ is too easy and certainly simplistic. Some pieces have found favour in markedly non-fascistic social contexts, some strongly resemble other work produced in other types of societies or by anti-fascist or communist composers. Other composers had explicit fascist sympathies (such as Webern, who praised Mein Kampf and wrote to a friend in 1940 of his dream of a German Empire which would stretch to the Pacific, or Stravinsky) but found their work denounced or even censored by fascist politicians.

Enter Donald Trump

The ‘fascist music’ argument reared its ugly head most recently in a Slate article in which Brian Wise argued for a fascist reading of Donald Trump’s appropriation at political rallies of Puccini’s ‘Nessun dorma‘, an aria from the opera Turandot. The article exposes all the flaws in a too-easy labelling of certain composers or musical pieces as ‘fascist’ and therefore unsavoury. It does so by conflating an enormous and disparate set of links and connotations into an ugly – and untenable – whole.

Part of Wise’s argument is biographical and there’s not much to fault here. Puccini’s expression of qualified sympathy for Mussolini soon after the 1922 March on Rome is clearly documented, as is the fact that he met the dictator at least once before the composer’s death in November 1924. He also reluctantly accepted honorary Fascist Party membership and was made a senator of the realm in September 1924, a position he had coveted since before Mussolini’s assumption of power. Turandot, incomplete at the time of Puccini’s death, had a hugely successful premiere in Milan in 1926 that was attended by Mussolini, though subsequent performances were not frequent and it would not enter the standard repertoire until a later period.

Loose associations

But Wise then quotes some very generalised statements from musicologists to back up his argument.

First there’s Arman Schwartz, who has compared the opera’s setting to Rome in the 1920s. Schwartz also identifies the relationship between virile hero and heroine to be conquered as fascistic as well as the irrational and violent crowd. The first of these points is plausible but the second and third are found in numerous earlier 19th century operas (such as Bizet’s Carmen, Wagner’s Siegfried, Halévy’s La Juive, Donizetti’s Les Martyrs or Verdi’s Don Carlos, to name just a few). Turandot hardly stands out on this front.

Wise then cites musicologist Alexandra Wilson’s argument that the opera’s combination of appeals to modernity and tradition makes it a ‘fascist emblem’. But this, too, could be said of a huge amount of music from Mozart to Brahms and well beyond.

Then there’s conductor Leon Botstein’s claim that this ‘regressive, narcotic, illusionistic music’ provided no resistance to the regime. But evidence of musical works ever providing meaningful and productive resistance to dictatorial regimes is extremely slim. Furthermore, Botstein’s musical characterisation of Puccini’s music could equally apply to the work of Debussy, Ravel, Szymanowski, Scriabin, Richard Strauss, Florent Schmitt and many, many others.

Wise then cites Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, who alludes to high decibel levels and themes of domination and colonialism. Once again, these are both frequent and generic aspects of operatic traditions and such classification would make huge swathes of popular music fascist.

Aria to opera

As the above litany of references makes clear, such all-encompassing fascistic interpretations of this opera are problematic, as the most intelligent recent commentator on music in fascist Italy, Ben Earle, has shown.

And all of this ignores the fact that Trump only appropriates one brief aria from this opera and another from the earlier Gianni Schicci. Ironically, both are actually relatively conventional compared to other examples of Puccini’s volatile music. Notwithstanding their obvious passionate and sensuous qualities, the vocal writing is generally much smoother and steadier than in other more hysterical numbers or other musical passages. To read fascist implications into these arias on the basis of the rest of the operas makes little sense when there is a high likelihood that neither Trump nor his supporters will be aware of them in any case.

Research into the relationship between a long tradition of western art, music (and for that matter, popular and non-Western musics) and fascism is vital, though far from easy. Scholars have looked in the context of fascism at musical biography, work, reception, instrumentalisation, institutions, music teaching, journalism and scholarship with subtlety and nuance. Most cogently argue that the relationship between these things and their social context is complex and multifaceted.

There may indeed be fascist dimensions to Wagner, Trump’s music preferences, or even the 1990 World Cup (where Nessun dorma also played a central role), but it requires a good deal of rigorous investigation to demonstrate this. As such, to condemn Nessun dorma on such flimsy grounds is a lazy approach to investigation of the disturbing Trump phenomenon.

Ian Pace, Head of Performance and Lecturer in Music, City University London

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Author: Ian Pace

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Doing away with the study of musical theory and notation will simply entrench elitism in the music world.

Check your privilege

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Claims that the Trump campaign uses fascist music are far-fetched and backed by slim evidence.