In an earlier post, I talked about the League of American Orchestra national conference, which I was at last week, for one of its three days.
The subject of the conferernce, as I said, was diversity. I went to one panel discussion of that, in which the thoughtful panelists happily got much input from the audience. Everyone — do I need to say that these were mostly people who were white? — seemed very sincere. Searching their souls. Saying that they should change.
I honor that. And likewise I honor a theme that emerged, which was that we should “start the conversation.” Start talking. Start down the road.
Which we — meaning we in classical music — certainly should do.
But how urgent is this?
A red button with the words Act Now on it
One question not asked, though, was how urgent this journey is. I thought of posing the question, but then thought it wasn’t my role to prod these good people, or to seem to be doing that. They had their process. I was observing.
But I will pose my question here. If classical music — orchestras included — needs to be more diverse, how urgent is that?
If five years, or 10 years, go by, and we haven’t made progress, would that be — to put it in mild terms — merely sad? (As if we might say, “We wish we’d done better. Give us another 10 years.”)
Or would we have failed in some deep, moral way? Failed to be the best people we could be, failed to rise to a central social and ethical need?
Or would we have damaged our core mission? Put ourselves so out of touch with the world around us that we’d lose crucial support?
What do you think, everyone reading this? What’s your view?
I’ll pose the question on Facebook and Twitter, too.
Diversity makes for better music !
Composing: The great “dead white guys” such as Beethoven, practiced diversity in their work. (e.g. Beethoven’s use of dumb folk tunes in Op. 11o Mvt 2, but many many other examples). Diversity is part of the Great Traditions of Western Classical Music. Our *conception* of diversity changes over time. So now it includes awareness of women, minorities, world cultures. Great! Let’s get on with it.
Performers: There is such an wealth of talent additional to the pool of white males. E.g., the long list of fabulous young women violinists. Compare some Youtubes of Heifetz master classes against Patricia Kopatchinskaja , frankly Heifetz is boring compared to PatKop, and PatKop’s sheer mastery sets new standards.
Audiences: Here in Los Angeles, we have young hip audiences who love contemporary music. They want it cutting-edge, top-quality, no compromises, diverse, risky.
I support the moral imperatives. But there seems to be a connection between “diversity” and “what’s good”. So as far as I am concerned, the diversity thing is “overdetermined”, let’s accelerate !!
Nice to hear from you, Isaac! Good points. I love PatKop (never thought to call her that; do others do it, or is it just you?). All i knew is her recording of the Tchaikovsky concerto, which is bracing, fun, breathtaking, fresh, like music that’s entirely new.
Many people seem to call her PatKop.
I generally speak her full name because it’s interesting to enumerate all of those syllables.
I have heard her recording of Beethoven Violin Concerto – with her gentle edits and revisions, it’s wonderful. And her recording of Ustvolskaya is a masterpiece: Brilliant, emotional, gripping.
Hi Greg,
Diversity can mean many things. For the classical music industry, it almost seems to mean “bring in the lower-hanging fruits”; school children, hipsters, women conductors, black and Latino classical musicians, roughly in that order. I believe the word should mean “make meaningful entry points almost anyone can use”, but recognize that’s a pretty tall order. The industry and foundations need specific targets to test metrics against. So testing ideas with careful research is a proven strategy, although it takes longer.
And yet, I wonder what would happen if the industry said, “Well, let’s just try to reimagine classical music as a broad entertainment and put it in front of as many people as possible where they discover other music.” Or maybe we could say, “Let’s ask people outside the arts bubble what they’d like to see or know about classical music and try to meet them halfway with small, inexpensive experiments.” Or how ’bout, “Let’s ask the diversity representatives already within the industry what it would take to start to bring their family and friends increasingly into concerts.”
You’re right: there seems to be a process; perhaps because the funders like to trace that process and that’s all that really matters, or perhaps because it really IS rocket science and billions of dollars could be lost if we get it wrong. Professionally, I believe we can have both the rocket science approach and the just-try-it-and-adjust-on-the-fly approach.
I was delighted to be invited to the conference as a composer in one of their projects with New Music USA. (I passed by you briefly as you were going into the Future Orchestra session.) I was even happier to offer my DIY project (CutTime®) in several sessions as an example OF diversity in classical music at work (since I’m not white). Having played as a major orchestra member for 2 decades, I believe in a democratic classical that is perhaps not what the conference has in mind. But then, no one can really imagine or live far into the future… so what do we have to lose? There are many ways to be excellent!
Good question, Greg! I also wonder who will formally monitor classical music’s aspiration to become more diverse? We should also keep in mind that diversity does not mean that classical music will become more equitable and inclusive. It simply means that there is an accurate representation of the beautiful vastness of human difference. The cultural sector has much work to do.
The American orchestra sector, along with Performing Arts Center, Dance Companies, Museums, etc all share the same characteristic regarding diversity – by and large, and among symphonies and PACs almost completely, the CEO is white. Without diversity at the top, which affects recruitment of senior management and board, the long-term prospects for remaining relevant are dim. To address this, beginning tomorrow, a new program will begin, the Cultural and Ethnic Arts Leadership Certificate Program http://bit.ly/1X6dwRH at the Institute for Ethical Leadership. The program recruited 17 senior arts leaders from all sectors representing all segments of underrepresented groups, who for 10 days will be living and working together, trained by a senior arts faculty who themselves are from underrepresented populations. The cohort members were nominated by leaders in the field and all on generous scholarships thanks to funding from the university, Doris Duke Charitable Trust, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation and corporate sponsors. I will be posting more information on this program daily.
That’s a good question! How urgent is diversity? Perhaps the answer depends on who you are and what kinds of diversity matter to you.
I’d like to consider some responses that are not moral, but practical.
I suspect that it will become increasingly obvious that large, expensive classical institutions tend to represent and serve only a slice of the community, not the whole community, so their requests for funding may seem out of keeping with their impact—especially if their impact is mostly on people who are already privileged. These perceptions may create some urgency to become more diverse.
Another source of urgency is the painfully slow but noticeable increase in diversity in other sectors of society and in other arts and entertainment. If classical music lags noticeably behind the rest of the culture, it might start to look even more out of it. That could become urgent.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with one kind of people performing music for listeners of the same kind. This happens all the time, in many styles. It’s only trouble if the music claims to speak for (or to) humanity in general. Then there’s some urgency to become diverse, given our culture’s current understanding that “humanity” is diverse and inclusive.
Another kind of diversity: inclusion of composers who are not dead. How urgent is that? If you’re a living composer, it’s extremely urgent—you want to be included before you’re dead! This kind of diversity is also urgent for sectors of the field that want their classical music to connect with living people in a living, changing culture.
Of course including non=dead composers doesn’t add much to diversity if they’re all white males. This still happens in many contexts. Is diversity of composers an urgent problem? Only if you care about seeming out of step with the rest of current cultural life. (Some classical organizations don’t appear to care about that.)
Speaking of sectors of the field, classical music includes many, many kinds of music. (It’s insane to talk about it as though it’s one style.) The dominance of large organizations with astonishingly similar values obscures the diversity of work going on—so many different periods, different approaches, different attitudes, different kinds of presentation, different kinds of people. I’d like to see the variety of classical music get more notice. Is there any urgency around this? Only if we want the field to fit in with society’s huge variety of interests and orientations. Only if we want the field to succeed in many different market sectors. (The urgency, I think, has to do with giving more space and clout to a greater number of groups, instead of letting most of the oxygen get sucked up by a few major organizations.)
Do people who are not classical music fans feel much urgency about whether classical music becomes more inclusive? I doubt it. That very non-urgency might suggest that, for our field, this issue is urgent.
Here’s one more way to think about Greg’s question: our culture is going through huge changes of many kinds—economic, political, demographic, environmental. Classical music, in all its variety, offers tremendous resources for considering the turbulence of our times and the emotions getting aroused. But if our point of view is that of “mostly white people with a few other people,” our insight may be limited, and our effectiveness may be reduced. I want to see the music’s full potential brought to bear on these critical problems, but “full potential” can’t happen if we obstruct or discourage some kinds of people from participating. I think that’s extremely urgent.
How urgent is the need for diversity? Depends. Do I have a personal need for greater diversity in the Symphony Orchestra concert? Not really…after all I like what I like which tends to be music by dead white European males. My person preferences aside, will a contrived, nearly coerced change in literature to include diversity, eclecticism, and multiple genres automatically increase ticket sales and interest in what might be a dying medium–the Symphony Orchestra in live concert? I am not convinced of this.
Yet is it urgent to provide multiple means of musical expression which includes but is not limited to an emphasis on diversity? Probably so. No longer can art music ignore market trends and no longer can we nor should we decide that quality music creation only occurred in the past. It is time to embrace a wider audience and a broader base of music literature. The gap between the “cultured” audience preferring classical music from the past and the “popular or commercial” audience can only be narrowed by new generations seeking diversity and new ways of expressing music.
The hand-wringing about diversity in “classical” music is somewhat overdone. If something is considered classical, it has its roots in the past. For Western classical music, that past is almost entirely white, male, and European. Even so, that particular genre of music is recreated by musicians of both sexes and all races and religions. There is no longer any dominance of white, male, Christian or European in the performance of classical music. What makes the difference is what music is being created, and to a lesser extent, how it is being performed. People used to go to concerts as much to hear new works as known works. I recall the excitement surrounding the New York Philharmonic’s premiere of Elliot Carter’s Concerto for Orchestra in 1970. Nowadays, orchestras dare not put the contemporary work on the second half for fear of losing their audience. Programming is market driven. The new or experimental draws less financial support from conservative boards comprised of older affluent supporters who see the value in sustaining that part of our culture.
Diversity will emerge from the smaller genres such as chamber music, and will be spearheaded by young musical entrepreneurs. They will have a desire to be creative but also a need to find a niche in a saturated traditional market. This musical migration will change the face of classical music just as current immigration is changing the face of Europe. This evolution will happen in its own time and of its own accord, with or without our sense of urgency. The vastness of human creativity will fill any void or grow a new branch on the classical music tree. What survives will become the new classical.