At 10:51 PM -0400 5/26/07, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz wrote:
But my 'cultural shift' is not focused on the distant history, and I believe it has no influence today. America doesn't have much of a collective cultural memory, so it wouldn't matter if the American orchestras had appeared suddenly in 1930 from the planet Zombartumian.
A well-considered post, Dennis, and a welcome one. America is not Europe and never will be. Just ask any Kodály-trained teacher about finding "America's folk music" in such a polyglot population. And one cultural difference is the expectation, perhaps never even questioned, that in European cultures the arts are worthy of support by the government, while over here they never have been. The heritage on the other side of the pond is support of the arts--for very personal reasons of prestige, of course--by the rich and socially important class, and by the state churches that were supported by the same upper class. By those, in other words, who WERE the governments.
Yes, the U.S. does have a long legacy of individuals who, whether self-made or heirs, self-educated or university, had open minds toward the arts and culture. Endowments from them built the opera houses and the libraries, and created collections that became their own museums or were given to museums.
And those were the robber barons who amassed personal wealth through monopolies and sharp business dealings, and wanted the prestige that went along with supporting the arts. An American aristocracy, if you like, but one based only on economics and not hereditary importance.
In twenty years, there were few to play, fewer to teach, and even fewer to listen. Attributes of cultural significance were rooted about for instead in the pop world, and a veritable industry of assigning meaning has grown from the fertilizer.
Perhaps. But those noting the growth and number of school bands and orchestras and to some extent choruses over the past 50 years might disagree, as would those tracking the establishment of community, non-professional bands and orchestras and choruses to serve both the general public as audience and the musicians who want to keep performing. Sure, the numbers are probably small compared with those who think "music" is what comes out of their iPods, but the numbers are not insignificant, and the participation of the schools is a decidedly NON-European development and a positive one.
(Disagree? Show me a station or orchestra that has voluntarily shut down because it believed itself to be culturally [rather than economically] bankrupt, no matter how many artistic mediocritizations it capitulated to.)
Well, our local NPR station (operating relatively independently but under the aegis of our university foundation) underwent a revolution of sorts about 10-15 years ago when the station manager was following the dictates of some study or other with the attitude that "cultural" means "multicultural," heavy on space music and such, and the listener base revolted and put pressure on the foundation to get rid of him. In fact the straw that did it was his intention of cancelling the Met broadcasts as being too "elitist." The slogan currently is "Classical, Jazz, NPR."
And there is the cultural shift -- not from the late 19th century but rather from the late 20th.
A valuable outlook Dennis. Thank you! John -- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
