Language Barriers: Foreign Titles Intimidate the Uninitiated
I have written often about the various ways in which classical music has managed to distance itself from the public, including potential new audience members. Focus groups over many years now, when talking to people who go to the theater and to museums, and even opera performances, have found that those same people resist attending symphony concerts because they feel intimidated. Phrases such as "well, I don't know enough about that music to appreciate it" are repeated over and over again.
There are many ways in which the classical music business has done that, but one of the most obvious--and easiest to fix--is the language we use when giving the titles of pieces of music. This isn't as simple as it sounds--but I have noticed that some orchestras and presenters have a practice, if not an official policy, of listing all titles in their original language.
When I managed the Chicago Symphony (and I believe it is still the case there) our policy was to use English unless the piece was so well known in the original language that it necessitated using that language. Debussy's La mer would be an example of the latter. Obviously, that is a judgment call, but I would urge always erring on the side of English. For example, "A Hero's Life," rather than Ein Heldenleben. If you don't know classical music, and are reading an ad in a newspaper, or hear an ad on the radio, or have even managed to get yourself to the concert and are reading the program page, you are likely to ask "What's a Heldenleben?" I would much more welcome an all-English policy--even to the point of rendering Debussy's work as "The Sea"--than an all-original-language policy. The point of printing titles is to render information, not to show how smart we are.
Whether we want to admit it or not, this use of foreign language titles is an act of distancing: it creates a barrier, a sense that you need extra knowledge to even understand the name of the piece of music. Le nozze di Figaro, Ein Deutsches Requiem, La gazza ladra--all of these are titles known to already committed music lovers, but incomprehensible to people who feel left out of this art form. In other cases, the original language might even befuddle some experienced concertgoers: Tableaux d'une exposition is far less clear than "Pictures at an Exhibition," and the same is true of "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" vs. Noches en los jardines de España. I cannot see a single rational justification for insisting on using foreign-language titles, other than to demonstrate the line between those "in the know," and those not. We need to think about everything we do, every way in which we speak about and present music, and examine whether what we are doing is taking down barriers, or erecting them.
When I managed the Chicago Symphony (and I believe it is still the case there) our policy was to use English unless the piece was so well known in the original language that it necessitated using that language. Debussy's La mer would be an example of the latter. Obviously, that is a judgment call, but I would urge always erring on the side of English. For example, "A Hero's Life," rather than Ein Heldenleben. If you don't know classical music, and are reading an ad in a newspaper, or hear an ad on the radio, or have even managed to get yourself to the concert and are reading the program page, you are likely to ask "What's a Heldenleben?" I would much more welcome an all-English policy--even to the point of rendering Debussy's work as "The Sea"--than an all-original-language policy. The point of printing titles is to render information, not to show how smart we are.
Whether we want to admit it or not, this use of foreign language titles is an act of distancing: it creates a barrier, a sense that you need extra knowledge to even understand the name of the piece of music. Le nozze di Figaro, Ein Deutsches Requiem, La gazza ladra--all of these are titles known to already committed music lovers, but incomprehensible to people who feel left out of this art form. In other cases, the original language might even befuddle some experienced concertgoers: Tableaux d'une exposition is far less clear than "Pictures at an Exhibition," and the same is true of "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" vs. Noches en los jardines de España. I cannot see a single rational justification for insisting on using foreign-language titles, other than to demonstrate the line between those "in the know," and those not. We need to think about everything we do, every way in which we speak about and present music, and examine whether what we are doing is taking down barriers, or erecting them.
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