Dumbing Down For The Masses

A few things over the past couple of weeks have brought something to my attention --- an article in the New York Times, New Overtures for the Symphony, my reading of the essayist Samuel Lipman's collection of essays entitled Arguing for Music, Arguing for Culture and just talk among my colleagues --- about the lengths that our artistic organizations and their government/private funding counterparts will go to in order to fill those seats. Now this problem and the treatment of this problem is not new to me but I never really considered the artistic rammifications. Institutions like the New York Philharmonic, which used to be the leader in pioneering new American music, have fallen into the trap of what I like to call "safe programming" --- pieces that everyone knows along with some old but familiar American music (Copland, Bernstein and maybe Barber) and a few new premieres, ones that don't require too much conceptualizing. And so, in order to counter that trap, ensembles put together festivals or series that make music seems more accessible to the general populus. This, in a way, is to remove the stigma of upper class, well educated savants being the only ones able to understand the music being presented.

But isn't this just an empty solution not aimed at the actual problem?

Like you could say for any other skill, appreciation or understanding of anything, it starts at the very beginning, from the ground up. Arts education has been relegated (on a secondary level) to that of pure arts appreciation and not the things that lead to a comprehensive education for a young mind. And as those children grow up and become the consuming public because the foundation is not there we have to fix things at the higher level. This is where we come across things like the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's "Beyond The Score" series or the series of lectures that are being given right now at Lincoln Center by the infamous Peter Schikele. Anything to get those who would normally stray away from the classical music scene into the great American halls.

Here is where my concern grows. I have never seen this as being the role of an orchestra, any orchestra. Because those in charge are being convinced (or already believed it to begin with) that this the direction which the group must take, they drift away from what I feel are their main roles: providing an outlet for the newly created works by the composers of the day, expanding upon and building up that repetory and playing the music that they (or in most cases, the artistic director) feels should be played, whether that be music of the classical Western art form or otherwise. These ensembles have shyed away from this task because the reality of subscription and ticket sales is being pressed upon them.

Now don't get me wrong, those running the ensembles should think about the life of the group (this is why there are artistic directors but mainly management and a board of directors) but at what cost? And even with all of these measures in place, does anyone believe that this will save the great American orchestra? At best, this a futile attempt to delay the inevitable --- that which is inevitable on this path.

So to groups like the NEA, I say, let's not throw money at the problem. Money is the problem (always has been and always will be) America is not like the Europe of old with great patrons and a monarchy that influences the repetoire of great and large performing ensembles. America is an entirely new beast that we should tame from birth and not passify and patronize. Only then can we truly hope for a resurgance in the classical music scene like that of the first half of the 20th century.