My paper--catalyst for discussion?

I'm posting my paper on the blog, since most of our ideas were communal and sprouted from class discussion. Whoever wants to read it and comment/discuss is welcome. It's long, and I wrote it in a short period of time, so I apologize in advance for any grammatical inconsistencies. :P Anyway, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy Winter Solstice, and... I guess... Merry Christmas.

(Now I don't have to wake up before noon to turn this in. Yay!)

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Preservation and Innovation: The Future of Classical Music

Zoe Grabow

First Year Seminar: Understanding Music

December 10, 2012

I wanted to major in music performance because of an annual variety show our high school music department put on called Fusion. It wasn’t much, but the audience screamed for us three nights a year. It was different from all of the other concerts, the ones to which parents would come to placate their kids and whip out their cell phones when they thought nobody was looking. Fusion was different. I, my show choir, and other student musicians put copious time into it, both during school and after hours. We groused as much as we sang. Then, when show night came, those hours disappeared. The audience refueled us. It was cliché, but all the more true because of it. Because of Fusion, I came into college knowing a little about musical relationships and the energy that lashed us all together, among us and then out to the audience.

This was an idea I came to this class with, and the reaffirmation of something I’ve consciously experienced endeared me to Christopher Small’s “musicking” lecture that we read in class and opened me to more of his ideas.[1] One I found novel in particular was the use of music as a verb, not a noun.[2] This taught me a lot about the contextual value of music and what went into making it. Small elucidates by stating that music is a process more than a product, whether in the compositional or performing stages. Composers put many more hours into creating a work and performers rehearsing it than a performance really lasts, and even the resulting performance is a process—a budding bond between audience, performers, and composers. Reading Small’s lecture allowed my experiences to latch onto far bigger ideas. I have a habit of taking linguistics for granted, and before this class, I would not have considered music to be anything other than a noun because in order for “music” to be a verb without the preceding “make,” rules would have to be bent. (This is coming from a person who strives to differentiate between who and whom in all instances regardless of how it comes off, says “As am/do I” as opposed to “Me too,” and corrects herself in conversation immediately after realizing an error.)

Common statistics state that one-eighth of an iceberg visibly protrudes from a surface of water while the other seven-eighths remain submerged beneath. I liken this to a performance vs. rehearsal/composition ratio in both time and effort. The idea of “musicking” is more meaningful to me than anything else I’ve learned in this class because it denotes that music brings all of us together, and not just in the obvious way, not just in the finished product.

“Musicking” is a task that integrates people of many varying occupations.

“We might even stretch the meaning on occasion to include what the lady is doing who takes the tickets on the door, or the hefty men who shift the piano around or the cleaners who clean up afterwards, since their activities all affect the nature of the event which is a musical performance,” said Small.[3]

There are no limitations on who has an affect on music, and music thus envelops us all in a way that allows it to wash over us and allows us to shape it as well as each other in our identical, equal power of involvement. Music becomes organic. That is a beautiful idea, and it enticed me. Furthermore, it embodied for me everything we learned in this class—and also why I wanted to major in music to begin with.

Unfortunately, there are obstacles to this unity. Fewer people are showing interest in classical concerts because of age[4], venue[5], and projected stereotypes[6], among other reasons. Les Dryer addressed the first in the New York Times last month:

Now, while classic rock remains a vibrant radio format, and artists like the Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, The Who and Elton John continue to be popular, middle-agers who never migrated to classical music are content with the songs they grew up on. Too many of those listeners were never introduced to the power of Beethoven, the elegance of Mozart or the soulfulness of Mahler, and if they were, it was the aural equivalent of “eating your vegetables.”[7]

The location where a concert is held influences the ambience, and many modern audiences are uncomfortable with and/or turned off by an excessively formal environment. Some of classical music’s notoriety for stuffiness is deserved, but coupled with the reality are people who are so eager to place labels on the genre that the connotation has become cringeworthy.

“I hate ‘classical music’: not the thing but the name,” Alex Ross stated in the opening paragraph of an essay that appeared in the New Yorker. “It traps a tenaciously living art in a theme park of the past. It cancels out the possibility that music in the spirit of Beethoven could still be created today. It banishes into limbo the work of thousands of active composers who have to explain to otherwise well-informed people what it is they do for a living.”[8]

Classical music does not extend a universal bond to a majority of people who lack an interest in it. One of the leading obligations of classical musicians is to preserve and maintain interest in their craft to ensure that there will always be demand enough for it to be able to function in a capitalist economy. The question, of course, concerns how to put a series of attainable solutions in practice to produce this result. Lamenting our losses and licking our wounds won’t change or better the problem or mask the fact that some changes need to be made to integrate classical music into a modern society, no matter how much some traditionalists dread it. (I am one of those traditionalists.) How do we make classical music meaningful to a larger audience again, and once we get there, how do we retrace our steps to a universal unity?

This is not an argument for proselytizing the masses—in the first place, that’s unethical, and in the second place, it doesn’t work. Rather, we need a larger audience and revenue in order to make the music that we want. Orchestras all over the country are filing for bankruptcy, and musicians are taking pay cuts that make it virtually impossible to make a living, let alone enjoy one. In a world of constant cultural change, classical music masks its own evolution with a propriety that remains static, or at least changes more slowly than other artistic genres.

My dream is a world where we don’t have to worry about any of these problems, and may Pangloss smite me down for his notion that this is the best of all possible worlds. It’s only the best possible world for classical music if we throw in the towel—and there is still a plethora of viable solutions to try.

My favorite concerts to attend here at DePauw are reminiscent of beat culture, with musical improvisations and poetry reading. I like to close my eyes and listen just as hard: sometimes to the music, and sometimes to my thoughts. At the George Wolfe concert in particular, I remember the music taking my mind to a different place and allowing it to infiltrate all of my senses. I use music as a stimulant for other expressive arenas, writing in particular. After that concert, I went back to my room to write, and while I don’t recall the word count at this point, it was somewhere in the thousands. Many people seem to realize that music is a gateway to other areas, but they see classical music as one-dimensional, inert, and dry. Whatever gets done to bring classical music back to the forefront needs to shatter this stereotype.

Feasible solutions were brought up in this class, too, especially as extracted from the success of iDePod. (For a few unreasonable minutes at the beginning, I was unsure about the ability for audiences with different musical preferences to coalesce. After everybody clapped for everybody else, I was presently relieved.) We’ve got the right idea for bringing classical music back to the radar, and I believe a large part of that resulted from eliminating formality and allowing our audience to trust their instincts. We discussed the fact that they had found a balance between respect and casualness, which maximized everybody’s sense of comfort and enthusiasm, including the performers. (Didn’t somebody say that the Dells were nervous before going on? I bet that that didn’t last long.) This was an invaluable experience for me because it renewed my faith in audiences who could stay engaged (no more texting soccer moms), and it also gave me a place in helping to solve classical music’s plight. I still think that soirees are the way to go—they take care of the venue and formality grief, and they manage to retain class regardless. (Besides, one could always throw in some philosophical discourse a la salons!) In future, then, I plan on arranging some with friends and inviting more friends.

Works Cited

Dreyer, Les. “Sunday Dialogue: Is Classical Music Dying?” The New York Times, Opinion, November 24, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/opinion/sunday/sunday-dialogue-is-classical-music-dying.html?pagewanted=1&ref=opinion&_r=0(accessed December 10, 2012).

Alex Ross. “Onward & Upward With the Arts.” The New Yorker, February 16, 2004. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/02/16/040216fa_fact4?printable=true¤tPage=all(accessed December 10, 2012).

George Slade. Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, “Agora or Temple.” Last modified 2012. Accessed December 10, 2012. http://www.minnesotaorchestramusicians.org/?page_id=3634.

Small, Christopher. “Musicking: A Ritual in Social Science.” Lecture, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, AU, June 6, 1995. Accessed December 10, 2012. http://www.musekids.org/musicking.html

---

[1]. Christopher Small. “Musicking: A Ritual in Social Science.” Lecture, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, AU, June 6, 1995. Accessed December 10, 2012. http://www.musekids.org/musicking.html

[2]. Ibid.

[3]. Ibid.

[4]. Les Dreyer. “Sunday Dialogue: Is Classical Music Dying?” The New York Times, Opinion, November 24, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/opinion/sunday/sunday-dialogue-is-classical-music-dying.html?pagewanted=1&ref=opinion&_r=0(accessed December 10, 2012).

[5]. George Slade. Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, “Agora or Temple.” Last modified 2012. Accessed December 10, 2012. http://www.minnesotaorchestramusicians.org/?page_id=3634.

[6]. Dreyer, “Is Classical Music Dying?”

[7]. Ibid.

[8]. Alex Ross. “Onward & Upward With the Arts.” The New Yorker, February 16, 2004. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/02/16/040216fa_fact4?printable=true¤tPage=all(accessed December 10, 2012).

Your Grade for Our Time Together: Self-Evaluation and Grade Proposal

After you've completed your final essay, please write me a short assessment of your participation in our sections of this course, and tell me what grade you think is appropriate and (very briefly) why.

This is due by 5:00 PM on Tuesday Dec. 12 11 (the essay is due at noon that day), unless you have arranged for an extension.

As we've discussed more than once, I don't like grades and wish it was possible for every class I teach to be offered pass fail.  Many of us who are influenced by the principles of humanistic education agree with the assertion that "the only meaningful form of evaluation is self-evaluation."

Here are different aspects of the class to consider:

• reading the readings and listening to the listenings
• thinking about, reflecting on, and engaging with the readings/listenings on your won
• interacting with others about the reading/listenings through participating in the blog and class discussions
• attendance
• participation in class activities, including drum circle playing and leading, improvisation games, etc.
• participating in developing plans for the class musical event, including doing informal interviews of fellow students during the potential-audience research phase
• participating in producing and/or performing at the event
• writing a final, in-lieu-of-a-final-exam, essay
• and, possibly, already applying the ideas and activities of the course elsewhere

In reflecting on your participation, you could copy the bullet points above and briefly respond to each. This should only take 10-15 minutes.  

In suggesting a grade, please sum up your participation using the general DePauw rubrics:

• A, A-: Achievement of exceptionally high merit
• B+, B, B-: Achievement at a level superior to the basic level
• C+, C, C-: Basic achievement 
• D+, D, D-: Minimum achievement that warrants credit

So if you would give yourself an "A," explain how your participation in the various learning activities was "exceptionally high."  Or for a B, how your activities went beyond "basic" but weren't quite "exceptionally high."  More in one area can compensate for less in another.  If you write an exceptional final essay, that could compensate for little blogging.  If you really put yourself out there in improv or drum circle leading, but didn't write much, take that into account.  And if you just didn't do all that much, well, then there's that!

What If I Just Don't Do the Final Essay and/or Self-Evaluation?

If you don't submit the final essay, your grade will be a D-, whether you submit a self-evaluation and grade proposal or not.

If you submit the final essay but not a self-evaluation and grade proposal, your maximum grade (depending on the essay) will be a C.

Email me with any questions.

Update 12/10 11:58PM:

Q. Hey, Edberg, How Should I Submit This?

In the text of an email is fine.  Or as an attachment.  Or as a shared Google doc--just make sure your name is in the name of the document.

Final Essay Instructions

The Final Essay

Introduction

You've had a semester in the SoM FYS in which you've had a number of experiences, encountered a lot of new ideas, and participated in planning and producing a musical event.  As we've discussed, now is the time to reflect on all these ideas and experiences, identify what you've learned, and imagine what possibilities you can open up for yourself as a result of your engagement with the readings, discussions, and activities.

If you haven't fully engaged with the readings yet, then now is the time to do that.  (This would not be without precedent; it's not atypical for some students in a course with one major exam to do most of their studying in the last 72 hours or less!)

The links to the readings, websites, and listening lists have been collected here.  (Remember that to access the pdf files, you need to be logged into your DePauw Google Apps account.)

What We've Been Doing, From My Point of View

In putting the class together, my intention has been to introduce you to ideas and experiences based on these premises:

• Traditionally-presented classical music, especially in the form of formal events in concert and recital halls, is, with very few exceptions, becoming less popular.
• Part of the reason for this is that the idea that classical music is at the top of a hierarchy of types of music has lost its dominance, especially with people 50 and younger.  Therefore we live in what Joseph Horowitz named a "post-classical" era.  This doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with classical music, or that it is going to disappear.  It just means that it is going to have to find its way and make itself heard in ways appropriate to contemporary culture (which is always developing).  
• Classical musicians, and classically-trained musicians who also perform other genres of music, are faced with a market in which we need to be innovative in the way we program, present, and market music, looking at other models.
• Classical music is dominated by the idea of "musical works" which we think of as great works of art, and we tend to think of music as those works.  There are many musical cultures, and ways of making music, which do not use fully-composed works.  It's important to experience ways of making music that are not work-centric so we can look at classical music from a wider perspective.  Consequently, we have participated in drum circles and improvised music.  And we've seen that it is very clear that these ways of making music are about relating to each other with and through sound.  
• Every musical event, formal or informal, represents values--aesthetic, philosophical, social, etc.  We may not be aware of them, but they are there.
• Many young musicians are having success with alternative ways of programming and presenting music.
• While it has always been incredibly difficult to get a full-time job playing music, it is even more challenging now.  In order to have performances, whether for love, money, or both, its important to create your own (almost always working together with other people).  

Everything we've read, looked at, and done, has related to the ideas above. 

My hope is that you have begun to shift from working to fit into the existing system, which is not doing so well, to being a participant in creating what's next, the future of music in this post-classical world.  

What I Want From You

So now I want you to communicate with me about what you've learned.  What ideas have had the most impact on you?  What experiences were most valuable?  How do you see yourself participating in creating the future?

Tell me an idea.  Tell me a dream. Tell me a transformational question that you have come to embrace.  

(What do I mean by a transformational question?  One that helps you imagine new possibilities and moves you into discovering things you haven't been taking into account.  For me, two are, "How do we engage new audiences without compromising artistic standards?" and "What ways of relating do I want  to encourage and facilitate at musical events?"  That second question, as I've told you, helped me to reframe the concert series I present as "bringing the community together with friends making music for friends.")

That idea, that dream, that question--that's the main point of your essay. 

Then use quotes from our readings and website we've visited, and experiences we've had, to explain how you got there.

It seems to me that a really good essay would include:

• quotes from at least three different readings
• descriptions of at least three different experiences

and that the essay would be 1000 words or more.  If it's really well written, it could be less.

Update (12/7 1:10 PM): In class we said somewhere between 400 and 10,000 words, and briefly discussed that writing a really good short essay can take a lot more time than a long essay.  The important thing is that your piece shows genuine intellectual engagement with ideas, experiences, and your future/the future of music (or should we say "musicking"?).

Also, we discussed that:

• You may use an informal, conversational tone.  This is not an exercise in third-person, faux-objective, academic writing.  I want to read about your ideas, your imagination, and how what you have read and done has contributed to that.    
• For quotes, paraphrases, and other references, you may simply name the author/title and use a hyperlink, rather than use footnotes or another formal documentation system.  For example: "In Christopher Small's lecture Musicking: A Ritual in Social Space, he asserts that the meaning of a musical event comes not from the pieces performed, but from the relationships present."  

Please submit this electronically, as an attachment, a link to a Google document, or, if you want, as a blog post.  

Questions?

Email me or post as a comment.

• Q. (From Michael) Does it need to be double spaced? A. No.  
• Q. (From a hypothetical student): Do all the usual standards for academic honesty apply to this assignment? A. Yes. Be sure that when you discuss other people's ideas, you credit them and supply a link or other note as appropriate.  When in doubt, document.  
• Q. On the blog you said it's due Tuesday, December 12th. Tuesday is the 11th. Which day is it actually due? A. It's Tuesday.  Sorry about that!

Due? (Notice the correction)

Noon on Tuesday 12/12 12/11 (the end of the final exam period for this class).  That makes it 12/12/12 at 12.  Cool.  12/11/12 at 12, which isn't so cool.      

Really need more time?  Email me for an extension, with a good reason.  

iDePod: DePauwsome? (Comment REQUIRED)

OK, young concert shufflers, what do you think?  Love it? Hate it? Meh?

• What aspects worked well?
• What would you do differently next time?
• What was your biggest learning from this?

WRITE A COMMENT!!!

Links to readings, websites, and listening playlists

Here, in one handy collection, are the readings you (should have) read, websites visited, and listening lists.  You'll want to reference a representative sample of these in your synthesis/summary/reflection piece.

Readings

Les Dreyer (and others)

     Is Classical Music Dying? (The NY Times conversation)

Eric Edberg:

     My visit to a GALA NYC concert

Arthur Hull:

• “Change the World” (Interview with Babatunde Olatunji) http://www.drumcircle.com/articles/baba.html;
• “Arthurian Philosophy” http://www.drumcircle.com/articles/philosophy.html
• “Rythmaculture” http://www.drumcircle.com/articles/rhythmaculture.html

League of American Orchestras:

      2009 Analysis of NEA Attendance Data

Music for People:

      A Bill of Musical Rights

Alex Ross:

     Listen to This

Greg Sandow:

     Age of the Audience

     Concerts As Events

     Four Keys to the Future (I didn't assign this, but I presented the ideas in class)

     Where We Stand (the state of classical music--you need to be logged into your
     DPU Google apps to access this pdf)

George Slade:
   
     Agora or Temple?

Christopher Small:

      Musicking: A Ritual in Social Space (pdf version with paragraph numbers from me;
      you must be logged in to DPU Google apps to access)

Ensembles, Series, and a Venue

Alarm Will Sound

Ecstatic Music Festival

GALA Brooklyn

[le] poisson rouge

Metropolis Ensemble

Sybarite5

yMusic Ensemble

Individual Artists:

Mike Block

C.J. Camerieri

Bridget Kibbey


Listening Playlists at http://audio.depauw.edu (playlists for this class)

The Darling Conversations

Drums of Passion

Possible Final

Blog post

-Where is classical music?
      -Look at venues
      -League data
       Sandow "Audience"
       "Temple v. Agora"
       Alex Ross "Listen To This"
       "Is Classical Music Dying?"


Ways of making music

-"MFP Bill of Rights"
-Arthur Holl "Drumming"
-C. Musicking
-Musical activities
-Leading drum circles
-"One Quality Sound"


What is ideal future of C.M.
-How have the ideas and experiences you've had changed your outlook/ musical future?

So here is a overall summary of what needs to happen and what's been accomplished so far:

General Line-up:
-The Dells: 4-5 songs
-DePauw Capella: 4-5 songs
-Bootleg (String Quartet): 4-5 songs
-Jennifer Peacock/Stephen Shannon: 1-2 songs
-Brad Harris: 1 song

FOOD:
-Burke is in the process of getting ahold of Steve Santo.
-We need to decide how much coffee and hot cocoa we need (or punch if those don't work)
-How many donuts are we going to get, from where, and who is getting them.
-Do we want cookies as well?
-Laura, do you have any ideas for how to set up the food? Like, plates, bowls for toppings, etc.?
-If anyone has a car/time, we should go to kroger/walmart to get marshmallows, candy canes, and whipped cream!! Let me know!

Decorations:
-Laura, let us know how decoration stuff is going - I am sure you have it all under control :)

Program:
-Sarah, DePauw Capella can't get me their set list till tomorrow night but then we can finalize the order and get the "program" finished.
-We need to either figure out the projector thing or just have people MC the concert

Lighting:
-We need to decide what lighting each group will have
-I suppose we should have a schedule for how to change the lighting and have a lighting crew

Publicity:
-KEEP TALKING UP THE CONCERT
-Invite everyone on Facebook and see if there are flyers to hand out to people


This thing is gonna be so cool. You guys rock.

Mo

Set-Up

Laura and I went to the ballroom today and figured out the lighting and where each group will go, just the general layout. The projector would be cool, but it is kind of in the way in the dead center of the ballroom, what do you guys think? Should we still use it?
We now have my string quartet (Bootleg), The Dells, Jennifer Peacock, Brad Harris and DePauwcapella. Yay! Any other comments or concerns?

Steve Santo was not in his office today after class. I sent him an email and anxiously await a response.

Posters/flyers printed!!!!!

The posters as well as the mini-flyers have been printed, and some have already been distributed in the GCPA and UB, as well as my floor in Lucy. Please let me know about additional areas where you'd like to see them placed and/or if you would like to offer your help (*googly eyes*).

Eric Whitacre Virtual Choir Videos

Reading for W 11/28 and F 11/30

For Friday:

In Monday's class I mentioned the introductory essay in Alex Ross's book Listen to This. Turns out that this long (and fascinating!) chapter originally appeared as a standalone essay in The New Yorker, where Alex is the classical music critic.  It's available here (that's the link for the printable version, which I suggest you print and/or save as a PDF; if you don't have a Mac and don't have a utility to save as PDF, email me), and we will start discussing it in Friday's class (and online before then).

In the article, Alex repeatedly mentions Leonard Bernstein's recorded analysis of Beethoven's "Eroica" symphony.   We don't have it in the Music Library but it is available as a download for 99 cents from Amazon (on iTunes you have to download the entire album; on Amazon you get the entire album for $8.99, or can download the 5 tracks for $0.99 each--go figure).  You haven't had to buy any texts for this course, and you might really enjoy this.

For tomorrow (Wednesday):

Events: We've been talking about your "event" and until it takes place a lot of energy will be going into making it true event.  In a happy coincidence, our old friend Greg Sandow just wrote a blog post called Concerts as events. So let's read and discuss that some.

The Developing Future:

Some links to look through fairly quickly:

Alarm Will Sound and The Metropolis Ensemble are two groups based in New York, each playing lots new music, with young, enthusiastic followings.  I'm reminded of one of the letters in the New York Times discussion that said the way to introduce young people to classical music is with new music (coming out of the classical tradition), rather than the 18th- and 19th-century "great masters."  And I can say that the performances I've been to by both ensembles (which in my own experience have all been at [le] poisson rouge0 feel like events.  The Metropolis Ensemble has such a big following that they sometimes do the same show on two nights at LPR.

Bridget Kibbey is a young harpist with a great career going; she plays in the Metropolis Ensemble among other things.  As you look at her bio (on the "about" page), notice how many musical projects and teaching activities she's involved in.  She has what is called a project-based, portfolio career.  Which is another way to say she's a very successful freelancer.

Another successful portfolio-career person is trumpeter C.J. Camerieri, who is a member of Alarm Will Sound as well as a driving force behind yMusic.  Look CJ's bio, and the "About" page on the yMusic site--talk about how at least part of the future is no longer "classical OR pop" but "classical AND pop"!

Something's happening in music now that's not happened before, at least not to such an extent.  Previously distinct genres are cross-fertilizing and producing offspring that are neither classical not pop nor world.  They are a genuine mix, and a genre unto themselves.  It's really different than a classical pops arrangement of a rock tune, or a jazz version of a classical something or other.

To sum up:

For Wednesday:

• One short Sandow blog post.
• Three ensemble websites.
• Two musician websites.

For Friday:

• One very long but free article by Alex Ross to read and comment on.
• One 16-minute fascinating talk by Leonard Bernstein (talking with enthusiasm and intelligence about extraordinary music), highly recommended, that costs less than a dollar.

For Monday 11/26: Some Fascinating Reading

Welcome back, and I hope you had a great Thanksgiving break.

Here are recently posted items quite relevant to our conversations about the future of classical music, including how to get an audience to concerts.

The first is Agora or Temple?, an essay by George Slade posted on the website of the Musicians of the Minnesota Orchestra, who are currently locked out by management while contract negotiations are underway.  A particular sore point with them is that the board of directors has raised $52 million dollars for a new lobby for the concert hall (that must be quite a lobby), while simultaneously asking the musicians to take very substantial cuts in salary and benefits.  I'd be pissed, too.

Beyond that particular situation, I think we could call this essay "What's Wrong with Classical Music."  Depending on which point of view you hold, it's either the situation Mr. Slade is complaining about or the point of view of Mr. Slade himself.  As you read, it will be helpful to know that in Ancient Greee, an agora was a central meeting place.  A temple, of course, is a temple, and I can't think of any piece I've ever read that more perfectly articulates the concert-hall-as-temple-of-high-art view than this.

As you know by now, one thing that is happening as classical music evolves is that there are more and more agora-like performance spaces as fewer people seem to be attracted to musical temples.

Meanwhile, the New York Times has posted a raft of letters on the subject Is Classical Music Dying? Each week, the Times publishes a letter online on an important topic and invites readers to respond; selected letters are published in Sunday's paper and even more are published online.  The original letter is by a violinist who is retired from the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra.  He asserts:

The future of classical music lies with the younger generation, which must be weaned away from the cacophony of rock and the neon glitter of “American Idol”-type TV shows. Instead of dragging children to concerts, where they squirm with boredom, rent some old movies featuring soundtracks of classical music.

and as you can imagine, a number of younger writers take issue with the rock comment.

Please post your responses here, and we'll spend part of class discussing both.

The audience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqQnHETW_D0

Just an idea on audience performer participation. These guys are awesome at it.

For M 11/19: GALA Brooklyn

We've already experienced mixed-genre musicians in person this semester, with ProjectTRIO and Voces8, and we looked at Sybarite5, who play classical music as well as a lot of rock covers.  Even saying "covers" shows a blending of worlds; until recently, almost everyone in the classical world would have said "arrangements," probably with a bit of a sneer.

We've looked at [le] poisson rouge, a mixed-genre venue, which does such interesting things in blending the social and performance space, while using lighting to distinguish between listening and socializing time.

Monday we'll discuss the idea of mixed-genre programming.  My favorite experience with this as an audience member has been with the very versatile cellist Mike Block's spring series in Brooklyn, GALA Brooklyn. (In 2011, when I attended, it was called GALA NY. And I believe its motto in 2011 was "global art, local audiences; it's now "global art, local art.").  (Be sure to follow those links!  And Mike's FB page, too, if you want.)

Please read my description of the first performance I attended here.

Here's Yo-Yo Ma talking about why his Silk Road project (for which Mike is the music director) gave a start-up grant to Mike:

As I've mentioned, Mike calls these performances variety shows, and he engages the audience in part by finishing the shows (at least the ones I attended) with singalongs, which may be the only time in the performance that all the performers make music at the same time.  Here's Rebecca Black's "Friday" from that first show I went to:

As you'll read in my post, there is food and drink (including alcohol) available, and many in the audience are eating/imbibing during the show.  It worked fine, and being in a big room (about the size of the UB Ballroom, now that I think of it, although a very different look), the social space and performance space is one and the same.

And here is something completely different: projected calligraphy done in real time to music.

So take a look at all that, and perhaps check out another GALA video or two!

For Friday 11/16

A reminder of the homework for Friday's class:

Look through the Sybarite5 site and watch the promo video (see the post for Wednesday for those links) if you haven't already.

Visit and look through the [le] poisson rouge website.

Practice improvising:

• one-quality tones and expressive tones
• freely improvised melodies (one note after another)
• ostinatos  (make up grooves you like, and review the Jansa rhythms)

See you tomorrow!

Events Teams

Programming

MO
Sarah
Melanie

Set Up/ Clean up

Danny
Becca
Laura
Michael

PR

Zoe
Rachel
Matt

Food!

Marian
Burke
Stephanie

Success-in-progress stories: Sybarite5

I missed you all on Monday.  Tomorrow, we'll continue the planning process for your event (make sure you've checked for potential conflicts in the evenings of the last week of classes) and start looking at young classically-trained musicians who are making successful careers by being innovative and entrepreneurial.  We'll also be working more on improvisation and comprovisation, so please bring your instrument or a drum if you wish.

We'll start with Sybarite5, a string quintet (string quartet plus a double bass, in their case) which plays a wide variety of music from multiple genres.  Look through their site.  Notice the distinct visual style, the type of photography, and their effective videos, including the promo video below.

One of the interesting things they to is to present events they call "The Shuffle Effect," in which their repertoire is loaded on an iPod and they use its shuffle function to select the pieces in real time.  I heard them do one of these in January 2011 in NY--it worked very well.  They ended up with a Radiohead suite, as I recall.

They play in lots of different places.  This is from their About page:

Recent performance highlights include the Library of Congress, Aspen Music Festival, and in New York at Lincoln Center, Time Warner Center, Tishman Auditorium and Bohemian National Hall.  Through its Alternative Venues Initiative, the quintet has also performed at such diverse locations as Galapagos Artspace, the Apple Store, the Museum of Sex, the Core Club, and the Cutting Room, and at the Cell Theatre, where SYBARITE5 maintains a residency.  The group has also performed on the CBS Early Show and for his Holiness the Dalai Lama.

In upcoming classes, we'll also be talking more about [le] poisson rouge, the club in Greenwich Village which presents classical music along with every other genre, and which I've mentioned in class several times.

Glass Bottle Symphony

What day of the week and time works best for you?

What day of the week and time works best for you?

Our FYS is organizing a music event at the end of the semester. What would make you want to go?

Our FYS is organizing a music event at the end of the semester. What would make you want to go?

What DPU events have you attended?

What DPU events have you attended?

Do you go to classical music events? Why or why not?

Do you go to classical music events? Why or why not?

What events have you attended in the last 6 months, and what did you like or not like about them?

What events have you attended in the last 6 months, and what did you like or not like about them?

Interview Questions

What events have you attended in the last 6 months, and what did you like or not like about them?

Do you go to classical music events? Why or why not?

What DPU events have you attended?

Our FYS is organizing a music event at the end of the semester. What would make you want to go?

What day of the week and time works best for you?

Musical Relationships

There's not a reading assignment for Wednesday's class--we'll be talking about ideas for the event(s) you're putting on, and how to make out class sessions most effective.

Meanwhile, we've read enough of Christopher Small (to whom we'll return) to start looking at our musical experiences in terms of relationships.

Does the meaning, or the nature of the experience, of an event come, at least in large part, from the relationships created and experienced?

If so, when we are participating in an event, we can ask ourselves, "What is the nature and quality of the relationships here?"

When we reflect on an event we have attended, we can ask, "What was the nature and quality of the relationships?"

And, most importantly, when we are planning and organizing an event, we can ask ourselves, "What is the nature and quality of the relationships we want to create at this event?"

That seems rather dry and abstract as I write it out.  But it's really a vital question--when you are putting on an event, how do you want people to relate to each other?  What kind of relationships do you want to encourage and model, and how will you do that?

This all goes to our underlying question of audience development.  Who do you want to come to your event, and why should they come?

Feel free to comment.

Music reflecting on society

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_does_music_affect_society

I was searching articles and this came up. I really liked the first answer on how music is a reflection of the society and how suffering times created great music. I rally think that it works both ways and the author of answer 1 hits that. Music not only reflects society but society molds around the music of the time. It really works both ways.

Homework for M 10/29 (Comment Required)

For Monday:

1) Learn ALL the rhythms for Jansa, and be able to say/clap/body drum each.  You already know three of them ("bang the drum homey," "hitting the drum, and now I'm . . . ," and "the dun dun"). The last two are shown on the 2nd dun-dun line.  The part notated with Xs is the bell, and you'll see that the second measure is very easy to remember. The dun-dun part is not all that complicated, either.

2) Read, be prepared to discuss (i.e., take notes,  highlight, etc.) p 1-4 of the Small "Musicking" lecture (through paragraph 20).  And write a coment on the blog about it. 

• Add a comment about the Small reading to this post.
• Write at least two paragraphs about how Small's two main assertions, that music is an activity rather than a thing, and that the meaning of musical performances comes from relationships more than works, resonates with your experience.

Be sure to bring a hard copy of the article for easy reference during class.

Ways to Attract A New Audience

Today's class discussion was very interesting to me in the sense of 'how do we attract a different audience?'  Laura and Rachel made the comments of how shows like Tom 'n Jerry, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? or Mrs. Doubtfire were able to make classical pieces like Il barbiere di Siviglia and Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 famous.

Could making such a program/show be a possible class project? :)

M 10/22 Planning Summary (Comment highly encouraged!)

We're working out together the topics, projects, learning activities, and manner of grading for the rest of the semester, and we spent a good chunk of today's class working on that, a process we will continue on Wednesday.

A core value in this experiment: the idea that it what Alfie Kohn calls the "three Cs"

• meaningful and relative content
• choice in what you learn and how you learn it
• collaboration with others in learning

that make for the most effective learning experiences.

Learning Topics

• The future of classical music/music careers
• Challenges facing classical music, including what some people believe is a crisis facing large institutions (symphony orchestras and opera companies in particular)
• The sociological and economic aspects of this situation
• Creating opportunities 
• Classically-trained musicians doing well (success stories; this will include multi-genre ensembles such as ProjectTRIO and Voces8)
• Music therapy
• Music and brain science
• Drumming, esp. African rhythm pieces
• Improvisation on major instruments

Effective Learning Activities

• Discussion
• Group projects, including imaginative formats like a newscast
• Student-led group discussions
• Field research with smart-phone videos interviewing students about event attendance

What should we add to the list?

What topics do you see as being especially well suited to individual or group projects?

Grading

What ways can we handle grading that allow for the grade to mean something and not have the grading process be fear inducing and distracting?  We discussed learning contracts.  Other ideas?

Reading for W 10/24 (Comment Required)

Great to be with everyone today!

First, the reading for Wednesday:

• Print out and read "Where We Stand" by Greg Sandow, who is a critic, consultant, and composer.  It's in your Google Drive at https://docs.google.com/a/depauw.edu/open?id=0B43-ErQ7UuxfOW9jMGRwUGFzYUk. 
• Take notes, write in the margins, etc.
• Write at least a two-paragraph comment here on what you found most interesting in the piece.

Want more details? Greg has some of the actual studies he references in one of his blog posts, at http://www.artsjournal.com/sandow/2008/03/age_of_the_audience.html.

Another post or two about learning activities will follow shortly.

ISO Lockout

Yesterday, my horn professor, Prof Danforth, informed me that he has been locked out of his rehearsals with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.  The article below is from a local news that I follow.  Watch the news clip, very informing.  Every year I go and watch the Yule Tide Celebration... and they are saying that production, something I look forward to ever single year is in jeopardy.  It is very upsetting to Prof Danforth and other DPU Staff that is a part of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/31423486/detail.html

Bobby McFerrin

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gjreHt0tRI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6Ej_A-CzDE&playnext=1&list=PL9C1B58B5E31E520F&feature=results_main

These two videos are of Bobby McFerrin, one of my absolute favorite artists of all time. You all may recognize him as the "Don't Worry Be Happy" man. He has done a lot of work regarding a 'common tonal center', so to speak. Everybody has a tonal center and has scalar awareness. This is demonstrated in the first video. The latter is a circle song, like the one we tried in class last week - Bobby McFerrin has a bit of a leg up on me ;)

Organized Babbling

The Scatman Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cnQCk0u49w

There's a big inside joke running through our high school concerning this video because one of my band directors started singing this song and was shocked how none of us had heard it. I think it applies to class because we've been working on improvisation and babbling. Although this is more organized, scatting is usually what is used in jazz music (personally, my favorite to play sometimes) for improvisation. If you can't tell why my band director thought it was so funny listen closely to the beginning of each phrase of scatting....

Actively Listening to the Classics

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/arts/music/30tomm.html?pagewanted=all

I found this delightful article in the New York Times about how the appreciation of classical music may be coming back (slowly, but surely, of course). The author discusses how those who do listen to classical music seem to be so captivated and fascinated but what it does. My favorite line in the article is as follows: "Structure in classical music is the easiest element to describe yet the hardest to perceive." I absolutely adore this statement because it is so true. For an individual, it is easy to feel the emotions and movement that classic music presents, but the real challenge is trying to understand what exactly these feelings signify and what story the composer is trying to tell with the music. The article analyzes what the listeners probably goes through when actively listening to a piece of music so I figured it would be nice to share. Enjoy! 

Your Server Hates You :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwiXCwHQ-Kc

This is a song that these two guys made stating the complaints that most severs have. I was a server at the restaurant Applebee's and I know how annoying people can get. It makes me laugh every time because it's so true. I'm not really for sure if they wrote it before or just made it up. It is just too funny not to share. Please enjoy.

Life Improv

I'm not sure if this constitutes as a post or not but I thought these two youtube videos were very cute and had to do with improv. Although they don't have to do with making music randomly together the idea to make life into a musical was a great idea. Making others happy with these "spontaneous" bursts of music is something that can relate to our class. We spend our time making each other feel good about themselves by playing music and telling them they're wonderful. Hope these make you smile!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnY59mDJ1gg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40qHb9uFpRI

-Rachel

Art is Dead

http://youtu.be/Eo9pU1q8sy8
This is art is dead by Bo Burnham. While it is technically comedy it does bring up common problems about modern artist. Mostly the disfunction of our idols how some people really do not deserve it.

Community Support

http://www.lomusicians.org/?p=686

http://www.lomusicians.org/?page_id=2

http://www.lomusicians.org/?page_id=76

Just a few short articles from the Louisville Orchestra Musicians Association website.
Personally, I feel like the musicians settled a lot, but I'm glad that they reached some sort of an agreement- I know they really needed the jobs and stability.

The orchestra is a big part of Louisville's history and culture, and the community outreach was amazing. Thousands of people supported Keep Louisville Symphonic, the group that formed from the remnants of the orchestra in order to continue to provide music to the city. People wrote letters, gave donations, attended concerts, etc. I am sure that the Indianapolis Symphony will find this type of support throughout the community, and look forward to staying updated on the situation.

Music At A Young Age

I saw this on the news the other day.  It is amazing how music can influence people even at the age of infants.  The parents in an interview said that they had exposed these twins to all genres of music.  It just shows how music can tap into enjoyment at such an early age.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to7uIG8KYhg

Hope you enjoy!!!  I know I sure did!
Becca

Soundpainting!

Soundpainting (created by Walter Thompson 1974) is something that I learned about during one of my many summers at Western Michigan University's SEMINAR music camp. It is a cross between conducted music and improvisational music. That sounds weird, doesn't it? What we do in drum circle every Monday Wednesday Friday is a simplified version of what soundpainting can be.

Soundpainting is most often a horseshoe of people with a "soundpainter" standing in the middle. The main painter is armed with many signals that he or she can use. Examples include signals for: continuation, short notes, loud notes, long notes, solo, resting and cutoff. The more complicated and inherently more crazy signals include: laughing, just voice, stutter, polka in C, scooping, switching instruments etc.. Many times soundpainting involves elements of dance and speech as well. Soundpainting is hilarious and fun and also a great way to ease into improvisation while still having a structured environment. 

The reason I bring this up is because a soundpainting may make a good addition to the DePauw School of Music, depending on interest of course. I guess it's just on more way to experience music.

So, watch any of these sound painting videos and tell me what you think :). 

Also, I'm really curious to see if anyone thinks this is music or if this is a good use of musical talent, though I know that it is entertaining, I have not yet made up my mind about its beneficial qualities.

P.S sometimes soundpainting sounds hideous.