When Dons Go Mad

[DavidW]

And mow he is going to, what(?), open up a poem repair shop?  Asking for a friend....

I actually used that joke on another colleague who is a published poet.  He thought it was funny!

[steve ridgway]

It'll be like any degree course; there will be bits you're interested in and bits you just have to learn to pass the exams, to be forgotten after. If there's too much of the latter though, prospective students may consider another course or institution.

[Florestan]

On the lighter side of things, I wonder if we can re-route the Voyager 1 back to earth to include some more inclusive music.  We don't want the aliens to think we are not woke. 

[Florestan]

BTW, the "slave period" never ended. Slavery was legally abolished almost everywhere, but an estimated 40 million people worldwide are still slaves. Therefore, any composer living today could be described as composing "music from the slave period."

https://www.globalslaveryindex.org/2018/findings/highlights/

+ 1.

[Florestan]

What are they planning to teach in Oxford instead of Mozart and Beethoven? Aboriginal didgeridoo-composers from Australia?

It is funny how now that even I have gotten into western music theory and notation, it is suddenly racism. Things ALWAYS go wrong for me!

[Mandryka]

Marxism, a white European philosophy from the slave period

That's not right is it?

[Mandryka]

When I first saw this thread I thought it was about Wimbledon FC

[amw]

Classical music is a form of high-class entertainment for the wealthy. Throughout most of its history, the wealthy have been white, many of them have been slaveowners or slave traders, and they generally worked to uphold European Christian values (i.e. genocide, slavery, conquest, rape, environmental destruction, the supremacy of the rich over the poor, etc). Of course there are plenty of composers and artists who were not white, but there have never been any classical composers who worked for the people. Joseph Boulogne was a knight, therefore directly a part of the exploiter class; José Maurício Nunes Garcia worked for the Portuguese royal court, even though it repeatedly tried to bar him from career opportunities; Florence Price worked for wealthy (white) Chicago audiences who were complicit in American apartheid, etc. Classical music is aristocratic in nature, and implicitly or explicitly upholds the ideals of aristocratic societies, regardless of how often it has been appropriated by socialist and communist movements that tried to make it accessible to the common people as well.

I do not say this to suggest that we should get rid of classical music altogether, even if that were possible. And I think it is very disingenuous for institutions like Oxford and Harvard and so on to attempt to distance themselves from aristocratic and bourgeois culture when they too are part of that superstructure, and benefit from its patronage much more than any classical composer ever had. The attempt to become "woke" or whatever is just an attempt to obfuscate their class position as part of a violent economic structure that literally breeds aristocrats and CEOs. But it is certainly understandable why musicians and scholars from working class or petit bourgeois backgrounds might not want to have anything to do with classical music, or have any particular respect for it.

[Dry Brett Kavanaugh]

Ron Carter had a master's degree from the Manhattan School of Music, but couldn't get any job in orchestra. And he knew that it would be like that forever. So he joined Miles Davis' group.

[Brian]

And I think it is very disingenuous for institutions like Oxford and Harvard and so on to attempt to distance themselves from aristocratic and bourgeois culture when they too are part of that superstructure, and benefit from its patronage much more than any classical composer ever had.

Amid a post full of good points well-expressed, this is the best one. Classical music must make a very easy sacrificial lamb for an institution of elitism which wants to pretend to be something else. I saw recently that something like 15% percent of incoming Harvard freshmen come from just eight private high schools in Boston, NYC, and LA. Maybe when that number changes they'll be more credible on the inclusiveness of their music curriculum.

[DaveF]

When I first saw this thread I thought it was about Wimbledon FC

I'd be going mad too if I were heading for Division 4    Actually, sad face  - 'cos we all love Wimbledon and hate that lot from Milton Keynes.

[DavidW]

Classical music is a form of high-class entertainment for the wealthy. Throughout most of its history, the wealthy have been white, many of them have been slaveowners or slave traders, and they generally worked to uphold European Christian values (i.e. genocide, slavery, conquest, rape, environmental destruction, the supremacy of the rich over the poor, etc). Of course there are plenty of composers and artists who were not white, but there have never been any classical composers who worked for the people. Joseph Boulogne was a knight, therefore directly a part of the exploiter class; José Maurício Nunes Garcia worked for the Portuguese royal court, even though it repeatedly tried to bar him from career opportunities; Florence Price worked for wealthy (white) Chicago audiences who were complicit in American apartheid, etc. Classical music is aristocratic in nature, and implicitly or explicitly upholds the ideals of aristocratic societies, regardless of how often it has been appropriated by socialist and communist movements that tried to make it accessible to the common people as well.

I do not say this to suggest that we should get rid of classical music altogether, even if that were possible. And I think it is very disingenuous for institutions like Oxford and Harvard and so on to attempt to distance themselves from aristocratic and bourgeois culture when they too are part of that superstructure, and benefit from its patronage much more than any classical composer ever had. The attempt to become "woke" or whatever is just an attempt to obfuscate their class position as part of a violent economic structure that literally breeds aristocrats and CEOs. But it is certainly understandable why musicians and scholars from working class or petit bourgeois backgrounds might not want to have anything to do with classical music, or have any particular respect for it.

Very well said.

[Florestan]

Very well said.

Indeed, indeed. Zhdanov himself couldn't have put it better.