Friday, May 06, 2011
Perfect Careers
"If I were only in it for the money, I think I'd hook myself up with one of those gigs on the fast-growing and lucrative death-of-classical-music circuit, jaunting off to foundations and conservatories and sunny island conventions and well-catered, bubbly-lubricated board meetings, lecturing and consulting and prognosticating and doing the shake-down rounds in hotel bars, just me and my expense account doing our very best to help drain those rapidly-depleting coffers that otherwise be spent on, well, music."
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4 comments:
I bet this isn't about Drew McManus. :)
Gordon Mumma emailed the following comment:
It's the same old ship. Re the ruckus about the death of "classical" or choose your words re music, art, poetry, etc.
Many forces contribute to the impetus for such putdowns and predictions about the present
and future. This push and shove has always been driven by politics, philosophies, and the
predators in commerce (or their back-door paid backers, hackers and hucksters).
But creative activities, both solo and shared, as with performers of music, theatre, etc. are notably of the participatory nature. They
continue to thrive, evolve and survive the "death of --" in spite of the arts now being so
heavily weighted as toss-away commodities with recordings and related cheap reproductions.
It can get difficult when institutional and legal oppression is applied. History is full of it.
In the 1950s I was expelled from school for playing jazz, had to change my concert repertoire to not include music by "communist"
composers, and was not allowed to perform in public with people "of color" different than mine.
Local, state and national laws applied to this.
But the creative arts go on, even if it seems as though the ship is always hitting the fans.
Thanks, Gordon!
I just saw a post in the telegraph or something or the other where people were trying to declare music irrelevant. It's an old, old story.
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