Opus Colorado

For most of my life, I have preferred radio over television. Part of the reason for that is that I grew up without television until I was thirteen or fourteen years of age, and there is no doubt that one is formed early on in his or her perspective. In addition, radio was primarily a source of information, and secondarily, entertainment. It is still difficult for me to adjust to the 30 second in-depth reports that comprise TV news. When I do listen to the radio, I listen mostly to NPR, CPR (Colorado Public Radio), and BBC, but for now I will address some issues that I have with NPR and CPR.

A few days ago I had occasion to go to the NPR webpage. Their page is divided into several headings: News, More News, Arts & Life, Most Popular, and Music. Under the Music heading, there were twelve articles on popular music, one article on ethnomusicology, and two articles for serious music, one of which was a cartoon.

I am perfectly aware that NPR has radio programs on serious music, and anyone who scrolls to the bottom of their website can see them listed. But my question is this: Why doesn’t NPR list their serious music programs where they are in plain sight, and place them on equal footing with popular music? NPR takes such pride in appealing to people of “sophisticated tastes” so I wonder why they don’t make more of an effort to expose serious music in an age where serious music is seldom taught in the schools, and when some college music schools are switching their main thrust to commercial music, simply because they wish to show deference (so they will pay the tuition) to the younger undergraduate students who have never known anything but popular music.

On NPR’s program, Fresh Air, the vast majority of guests are involved with pop and commercial music with precious little time given to serious music. On Colorado Public Radio, there are ads for a new division called Open Air which is dedicated to pop music. They announce that Open Air is dedicated to “new music” so they will not be aligned with anything old. It is a shame that this radio station does not have a new serious music station, which plays nothing but “new” serious music, because there are so many young people who are not even aware that serious music is still being composed. On the other hand, that does seem to be a lot to request, for this classical radio station, KVOD, which is part of CPR, seldom plays anything beyond 1940. And always at the dinner hour, they play relaxing music, just as in the morning they play Baroque. In short, someone at the station seems to be more concerned with music as a companion to mood rather than an art. They are terribly afraid that they are going to offend people, without realizing, and knowing, they are offending people by abrogating their responsibilities to culture by their omissions.

NPR and CPR do not seem to realize – and I have said this before – that they have a responsibility to culture (music, art, literature, and language) and to the young people who may listen to their station who receive absolutely nothing related to culture in the public schools. I hasten to point out, there are some public schools that have not done away with culture altogether. On the other hand, NPR and CPR do seem to be relatively immune from criticism that is communicated to them directly, for I still hear some of their announcers continue to make the most insufferable comparisons (I quote: “J. S. Bach was the Tim Tebow of the Baroque period of music.”) when discussing composers.

Many have told me that I worry about the changes in culture too much, and perhaps I do. They have emphasized that culture always changes. However, I would say that culture also depends on art, and while I am fully aware that art changes with its times just as “art” changed during the Impressionist Period, it seems that our culture may be changing without any art because any form of art is lacking on so many fronts.

I am always astounded because there seems to be no connection between critical perceptions of today and past awareness of cultural aesthetics, and the possible outcomes of such a gap in thought.

Again, I state that there have been many individuals say that I worry for nothing: that culture always changes, and there is no way to stop the change. I am sure that Hector Berlioz and Théodore Gouvy felt the same way when they were trying to have their symphonies heard in Paris, when all the Parisians wanted to hear were little operettas; however, these two composers were able to reverse the declining aesthetic environment through direct insistence of practicing their art. But, I must say that it is sometimes easy to imagine even a temporary death of culture in the same way that Heinrich von Kleist’s heroine dies in his play, Hermannsschlacht, not only because of catastrophe, but because of total inaction: “Pale, like dying lilies, she sank with wilting limbs into the arms of her wailing mother; her lovely eyes faded and closed, the charming crimson vanished from her lips; still full of grace in death, her body growing cold, breathed its last, and her soul departed its abode with quiet sighs.”

I am under no illusion that art, music, and literature are going to die away, and I am perfectly aware that times do change. I do, however, fear inaction. Even 50 years ago, the arts were an element of significance in our daily lives. Many newspapers are suffering financial hardships, and have found it necessary to reduce their staff of critics. At least those critics put before the public articles of review and preview, even though they were journalists first, and had no very extensive knowledge of the arts.

It is my hope that all will sit up and take notice that ratings, commercialism, and dilettante-ism are shoving aspects of our culture aside, in favor of pursuits which are more akin to entertainment than to art.

I have just learned that the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival has hired James Palermo to be its Executive Director. This Festival, of course, is a major concert venue in the state, and it also draws its audience from out-of-state of as well. I have always enjoyed attending this Festival, as the organization has been consistent in inviting outstanding artists and musicians to perform.

In an article that appeared on March 7, 2012, in the Vail Daily, Mr. Palermo is quoted as saying (and I will now quote from the article), “I look forward to building on the vision and achievements of John Giovando, artistic director Anne-Marie McDermott and the board, and to move the Festival to the next phase in its service to the community.”

Nowhere in the article does Mr. Palermo describe what the “next phase in its service to the community” truly is, and I must admit that his is a rather typical statement that comes from anyone who has just been appointed to a new position: pleasantly optimistic, but not specific. He does mention something about “potential for increased participation,” but again, he does not say who is going to do the “participating,” so again he is not specific. Of course this vagueness does eliminate the possibility of linguistic error and avoids the excessive use of guff.

I do hope that as he moves the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival to the “next phase in its service to the community,” that the new phase does not include loss of revenue as happened with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra here in Denver. There was a short bio statement in the press release that was on the web, and it stated that the Colorado Symphony Association under his leadership posted its largest increase in subscription single ticket and contributed revenues in recent history. There was no mention of the drastic cut in salaries that the orchestra members were required to endure due to marketing errors, the dwindling audience, the mention of bankruptcy, and there was no mention of the fact that after a two-year search, there was no replacement for Maestro Jeffrey Kahane who resigned his Music Directorship in order to devote more time to his concert career as a pianist. And I wonder if Mr. Palermo ever wondered why it took two years. As Lucy Kellaway of the Financial Times of London stated in one of her articles, a bit of failure always spices up a bio.

I sincerely hope that Mr. Palermo has the ability to look on his career with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra and learn.

I offer the family of Vincent C. LaGuardia and the Arapahoe Philharmonic my condolences, strength, and sympathy.

Maestro Vincent C. LaGuardia: may you rest in peace and music.

Recently, I have been forced, through no fault of my own (Does that expose prejudice?) to deal with method books designed to make piano teaching “exciting and easy” for the student. I decided to post my opinion on this subject, because, in some ways, it could have been included in my two recent articles on the fragility and diminution of our culture.

For those of you who are not familiar with method books, they are books (most often a series of five or more) which are designed to be used, usually in consecutive order, starting with learning to read music, and usually covering some aspect of technique, which the books define as the ability to move one’s fingers in the right place at the right time. There are many publishers of method books, and I will not name any of the publishers since my opinion of method books has never been high, and with every re-acquaintance, sinks lower. The reason for my poor opinion of them is that all of these books and their authors and their publishers make several assumptions which are contrary to what I believe about teaching piano and teaching the art of music.

1.) They make the assumption that all students are alike.

2.) They make the assumption that learning piano is an arduous task for young people who want to learn it, therefore:

3.) The music in them is quite often a famous melody from symphonies, ballets, or operas that have been simplified so that the student can play them.

4.) That automatically assumes that the student cannot possibly be interested in anything they have not heard before.

5.) This should make it fairly clear that the authors and publishers (note that I did not say composers and publishers) think that children can’t be very bright.

6.) The five items above should also make it fairly clear that the authors and publishers think that the teachers can’t be very bright, or at least have not much education to know about the music written by composers for their children or their students, which is, unfortunately, often the case.

7.) The authors and publishers of method books also advertise often that their publications make it easy for the piano teacher.

8.) All of the above destroy the art of music, particularly when one considers that:

9.) Some of the authors of the method books consider themselves to be composers, and “compose” pieces with catchy titles such as “From the Wigwam” which they think will appeal to young students.

10.) This obfuscates the necessity of the teacher to teach music as an art and piano playing as an art.

11.) There is an alarming number of piano teachers who are not seemingly concerned with teaching music as an art, and likewise, playing the piano. Many of them have the absolute best of intentions, but continually insult the intelligence of even four-year-olds when it comes to teaching piano and music.

There are those teachers who think that only students who are “born with a natural gift” will ever become good students. They fail to recognize the fact that it has been proven that no one is born with a natural gift for anything in particular. Mozart excelled because his father, while a mediocre composer, happened to be a good teacher, and he started teaching Mozart at a very early age. The same thing applies to the famous golfer, Tiger Woods. Those who proclaim him a “natural talent” don’t seem to understand that his father, like Mozart’s, was a very skilled teacher, plus, he gave Tiger his first golf club when he was 11 months old.

It is alarming to me that the reliance on method books is so strong. It certainly demonstrates, again, in my opinion, that the teacher does not have proper training on which to rely. Education is of paramount importance to any profession. Lawyers and doctors have a professional degree, which they have to have before they practice, and for the rest of their lives they are reading to keep themselves current in their profession. The same applies to accountants and architects. I have run across many piano teachers who rely on method books because they lack that education. Therefore, the easiest path for them to take is to rely on a series of books that tells them what to do. I have always been mystified by those who don’t know the literature, and yet feel comfortable teaching the inadequate material that usually appears in method books.

It seems most obvious to refute the above eleven points as follows:

1.) It should be plainly clear that no two students are alike, no matter the similarities. It is certain that their hands will not be alike.

2.) Learning to play the piano can be an arduous task if:

3.) The music is poor, or a badly arranged version for piano of some orchestral piece that the student may, or may not be, familiar with.

4.) It is up to the teacher to teach the student something new. After all, learning to play the piano is new. What a gift it is to the student to learn Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, Schumann, Kabalevsky, Prokofiev, Haydn, Clementi, and countless others, who wrote music specifically for the keyboard, rather than teach something that has been poorly arranged for the keyboard (How many of you readers have ever heard a young student pound out the theme from “Star Wars,” and shuddered every single time?). There are those who believe that because they can play the piano, not only can they teach it, but they can compose music for it. The teachers who think this way suffer from a failing to understand that composition takes as much skill and study to learn as does learning to play the piano.

5.) Comments in Number 4.) should make it obvious why I call method book authors “authors,” and not composers.

6.) It has often seemed to me that method book authors and publishers do believe that teachers can’t be very bright because they seldom write material that does not insult the teachers intelligence because of its lack of artistic taste, and its implied statement that it will help make teaching and art easy. I am constantly reminded of Pablo Picasso’s statement that, “Anyone can turn the sun into a yellow spot, but only an artist can turn a yellow spot into the sun.”

7.) Teaching is work.

8.) How could one be involved in the destruction of art, and not even recognize it? The teacher fails in his own perception of music as art.

9.) Why continue to insult the intelligence and learning ability of the students?

10.) If the teachers don’t recognize music as an art, they ought not to be teaching it. What an advantage it would be if really young students grew up to realize that music is an art.

The problem arises because as the students get older, and can form their own thoughts, they can look back and regret that they never learned an art.

Many have complained, including myself, that concert audiences today do not include many young people – the majority of the audience is fifty years old and older, however this particular concert season, I have noticed that more young people have been attending concerts. I have sometimes blamed technology for the decline of the acceptance of culture (briefly described as music, art, interest in reading, and knowledge of those fields) in individuals younger than thirty-five years of age, but sometimes I think I have been unfair. Culture has had its aesthetic Pollyannas, preaching that all that it might do would be right; it has had its abusers, pushing it to express various agendas, sometimes literally “out of the barrel of a gun”; others have urged that it be respected, warning, as Robert Bolt’s Sir Thomas More did, “This country’s planted thick with laws… and if you cut them down… Do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?” In addition, as everyone is aware, every time there is a financial crisis, artistic culture is the first thing that disappears.

Some may say that I am exaggerating when I discuss method books and compare them to the loss of culture. However, I would point out that the earlier students learn good music, the easier it is for them to understand and appreciate it, and what is learned at an early age usually stays with the student for a very long time. It also exposes them, by making them curious, to other forms of the arts such as literature and the visual arts. How many of Debussy’s friends were artists? Or Stravinsky’s? Or Webern’s? Or Cage’s?

On what path do we set our students? No matter how removed teachers think they are or wish to be, they must realize that they are navigators for these students lives, and they must not use faulty maps. I am quite sure that no teacher wants his student to suffer a loss of definition, or place, or meaning, for example, in the same manner that some of the characters in Samuel Beckett’s plays have suffered, such as Vladimir and Estragon who spend their lives together, and apart, with little to do but looking and waiting for Godot, because they have no culture in their lives to help give them meaning.

I recently wrote an article on Expressionism in Music, in which I quoted two experts in the field of Expressionism in Literature. One of these individuals had written a fairly extensive article on Expressionism, but it seemed when he compared it to music, which was the thrust of his article, that he either omitted some points, or brushed them off. In reading the article, he seemed to state some common misunderstandings of what to listen to in expressionistic music, so I opened the gates for a response to my article at its end. I will quote my last paragraph:

“In Doctor Lea’s article, he comes very close to stating outright that Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern wrote without implying any social commitment, except to say that they were concerned with the reform in the arts and in the quality of life. My question would be of Henry A. Lea: Why is it so startling that Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern considered traditional harmonies exhausted? Art to be art must always progress. And how does a new art affect the quality of life?”

No one has yet responded to, or answered, the last two questions of the above paragraph, and I point out that the study of comparative literature is certainly an art. I wish that Dr. Henry A. Lea would respond because I think that we all know how art affects the quality of life. If Lea answered it, he would, by necessity, have to concede that some of his previous statements were at least vague, if not unsuitable, because of their implied prejudice.

By not being as complete as possible, the responsibility of thinking things through is abrogated. That is an aspect of inheritance that we all pass on to the next generation.

It also has the effect on our younger generation of keeping their attention span very short. A few years ago, I was startled when one of my students and I were discussing recordings made by great pianists in the past. The student had no idea what a record was, as she was only familiar with CDs. More recently, a student seemed perplexed that in the studio where I teach privately, I had so many books, including a 31 volume encyclopedia. Not being sure of how an encyclopedia was organized, she asked why I didn’t just look up the information on my telephone. While I freely admit that all the new technology, e-books, iPods, iPhones, and iPads, are amazing to use, and while I also admit to publishing an e-book, there is something amazingly comforting about holding another portable device in your hands that has paper with words printed on the paper. But, as Jack Kessler (bibliophile and author of the newsletter FYI France) has pointed out, the new electronic marvels have possibly saved books from spills, fingerprints, banana peels, and what have you. But it also has eliminated the reverence for the printed page. Like Mr.  Kessler, I, too, have gone to university libraries which now seem to be social centers where books are used mainly for propping up the new electronic devices so that the new generation of students can tweet and text and beep to their hearts content.

There are times when I feel like taking a stand against Google, as the French did, at least for a while, because they feared that Google’s digitizing every single book in the world would destroy their culture. It does, however, have a big advantage because it does preserve all of our precious books, and protect them from students who use a strip of bacon for an impromptu bookmark.

There is also a university here in Denver that is now instructing its faculty to take “advantage” of all the new electronic technology as they lecture to their students, because the students are convinced that the faculty is comprised of old fogeys who know nothing about technology, and thus, probably don’t know anything at all. So the professors now have to (required) use PowerPoint, tweets, and YouTube in their lectures, so they can “remain current and relevant to the student body.” In some manner, the student body has convinced the administration at this university that traditional approaches to teaching, while tolerated, were not sufficient in enabling a meaningful and interactive educational environment. What this means, of course, is that the administration has succumbed to the entitlement of the students to demand how they be taught. That university faculty is more knowledgeable than the student body seems to have no bearing on the fact that students come to a university to learn. In addition, some of the students apparently complained that coming to lectures which were not recorded, or pre-recorded, using the new technologies available, has made class attendance mandatory. That is an astounding thought indeed! Why on earth should students, who pay for tuition at a university, and their education, be forced to come to class? My immediate response is to ask, “Why don’t the students take notes?” I can remember, back in the “old days” when I was a student, without today’s technologies, that there were things called pens which you held in your hand (which is connected directly to your brain) and you could write down on paper everything that the professor said, and keep it forever if you wished.

Imagine, if you will, that you are teaching a class on medieval French literature, for example, the Gospels of Lothar, which were written between 849 and 851 (they were a gift for Charles the Bald, who was Lothar’s brother). This gift represented the end of their territorial feuding, and was completed by the monks at Saint Martin’s Abbey in Tours. How would you use twitter to teach the significance of this work?

If I am teaching a class in music theory (which involves the study of chords, their structure, their sound, and their movement) how would I use PowerPoint? A chalkboard is much more flexible, and a student’s embarrassing errors can easily be erased. A chalkboard has a much more intimate environment than a laptop computer screen. It does not have to be a page. Everyone in the classroom, assuming they still attend class, can see the changes the professor is making, and there is no constraint on fitting it into a paradigm.

I worry when I learn that university professors are being told what kind of technology to use in their lectures, aside from their brains, because the students have such short attention spans. Students come to a university to learn. They do not come to university to tell faculty how to teach, what kind of technology to use, just because they pay for their education.

Our culture has always depended upon the fact that older, and therefore experienced individuals, know more than those they are teaching. Part of the process is learning how to think. In addition, part of the process in learning, is learning how to work.