Howard Posner wrote: > Of course, it's not EXACTLY the same, because in the intervening 45 years early music has become an industry, the opinion of mainstream musical > > academia in is no longer as important as it used to be. The opinion of academia may not directly effect amateurs or aficionados, but it has a large effect on who gets to be heard by the general public. Collegiate endorsement has very direct consequences on those wishing to pursue music as a profession. It is the educational institutions that determine programs of study, who will be accepted into them, who will be on the faculty, and what standards students must achieve to graduate. Just as scholarly efforts may go largely ignored by the general public, the public's musical desires are largely irrelevant to those in academia. Colleges hold significant purse strings, however, and, unlike private enterprises such as a concert series, they are completely unconcerned by lack of public interest. Some, (I'm looking at you, composition programs) would be horrified if people started liking what they did. (They needn't worry.) The classical music industry most definitely considers academic credentials. I don't know of any self-taught performers in the Harmonia Mundi catalog who gained inclusion through an unsolicited sample CD he or she recorded in the basement in the evenings after getting off his or her shift at Walmart. So the internet has democratized things? Somewhat. But while any joker can now make a recording and sell it all over the world on iTunes, people still look for that stamp of approval from the "big" labels. (On a completely unrelated note, everyone [DEL: must :DEL] may purchase my new solo album, "Graceful Degradation" as a download from iTunes and Amazon or physical copies from CDBaby.com ;-) Chris Dr. Christopher Wilke D.M.A. Lutenist, Guitarist and Composer www.christopherwilke.com ----- Original Message ----- From: howard posner <[email protected]> To: lutelist <[email protected]> Cc: Sent: Sunday, August 4, 2013 1:26 PM Subject: [LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness On Aug 3, 2013, at 3:15 PM, Dan Winheld <[1][email protected]> wrote: > The longer this thread continues, the more I feel like I've gone back 45 years in a time machine. Severe jet lag? > This is EXACTLY the situation I encountered as a young Classical guitar student at university all those years ago; and my love of the lute & early music only compounded the scorn & weirdness reaction. I had long forgotten that such cold, lifeless, unmusical souls are to be found in academe. Of course, it's not EXACTLY the same, because in the intervening 45 years early music has become an industry, and the opinion of mainstream musical academia in is no longer as important as it used to be. There was a time when leading early music groups would come to Los Angeles to play in churches in concerts arranged by the local early music society. Theyr'e now playing in Los Angeles Philharmonic subscription series. This coming season, you can hear the Venice Baroque Orchestra, Hesperion XXI, and the Akadamie fA 1/4r Alte Musik Berlin in Disney Hall on Sunday evenings a couple of hours after the LA Phil plays there. (And yes, the LA Phil itself has grasped the notion that you don't play Mozart the way you play Rachmaninoff.) These days there are early music programs in unlikely places aEUR" there was time when anyone would have giggled to imagine early music programs at USC or Indiana University (a friend who did a chemistry post-doctoral stint there in the late 1970's called Indiana a "culture-free environment"), and I'm still trying to get my mind around "Juilliard Baroque." I knew a kid who graduated in piano from Julliard in the mid-1980's who didn't know who Christopher Hogwood was; he was more ignorant of early music than anyone I'd run into at random in the Tower Records classical section. Indeed, the biggest change I see on the horizon is that early music, for so long an experimental field in which performers figured it out as they went along, is likely to become an establishment, in which aspiring performers get received wisdom from university and conservatory teachers. It's likely to change the type of people who go into early music; in the 1950's and 1960's it took an adventurous, questioning mind and a missionary zeal to do it. I won't pretend the early music literacy has filtered down much from the elite levels. My son's cello teacher has yet to betray the least sign of knowing that there have been any changes in music performance in the last half century. I'm looking around for a new teacher... -- To get on or off this list see list information at [2]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
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