Classical music, critical challenges.

Classical music, critical challenges.
October 17th, 9.30-5.30pm, Council Room, King's College London.
Panel one: Setting the scene: colonialism, power, and class.
Chair: Chloe Alaghband-Zadeh.
Imperial Surveillance: The Origins of Power Formation in Victorian Music Education
Erin Johnson-Hill, Yale University/King’s College London
By the late 1880s music examiners were increasingly sent forth, missionary-like, from Britain‖s
imperial capital. Sponsored by such institutions as the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of
Music, these agents of musical accreditation endured long sea voyages to far-flung colonies in
order to examine child candidates from across the Empire. The outcome of such ventures was
neither the publishing of new musical works nor the encouragement of potential prodigies, but
rather the production of homogenised and socially respectable graded certificates. The key factor
in the early marketing of these certificates was prestige, especially for the children of white
colonial settlers, as well as the children of the more affluent residents of Britain itself. By contrast,
the alternative system of local and imperial music education available at the time, known as the
Tonic Sol-fa Movement, actually gained greater numbers of young students who, within Britain,
were often from working-class backgrounds, and who, in the colonies, tended to be of non-white
ethnicities. The fact that the Tonic Sol-fa Movement has largely been left out of standard histories
of music in Britain is, I argue, a consequence of its working-class associations. This paper situates
the ideological roots of upper versus lower-class Victorian musical accreditation within the history
of social prestige. Drawing upon primary material ranging from the Royal College of Music
archives to the examining collections at the University of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa,
I argue that competing systems of Victorian music pedagogy carried specific socio-political
implications. These implications, furthermore, set in place the very ideologies of social status, class,
and race associated with classical music-making that still pervade musical practice in Britain and
the Commonwealth to this day.
Culture and (In)justice
Roe-Min Kok, McGill University
Each year, the London-based Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music examines over
600,000 children worldwide in Western classical music, using a system originally devised at the
heyday of the British Empire. Despite the Board‖s impressive global presence, thus far little is
known about the circumstances and conditions under which it was established in British colonies
beginning in the late nineteenth century (Wright 2013; Kok 2011). Ideally, a scholarly study
would take into account the large number of variables involved in studying the diverse cultures
and histories of South Africa, Gibraltar, Sri Lanka (then Ceylon), Canada, Hong Kong, Cyprus,
Belize, Egypt, Mauritius, Malaysia (then Malaya) and Singapore—to name just a few on the
Board‖s long list of Overseas Examination Centres. Logistical difficulties for such a study abound,
however, including the limited and uneven state of historical documentation available. In today‖s
paper, I present case studies of administrative and examinations-related incidents in several
international Centres of the Board, selected from different points in time. The entwined theme of
culture and injustice, posed from a postcolonial stance, prevails in my analyses. These case studies
evidence what Judith Shklar has termed the victim‖s perspective (The Faces of Injustice, 1990), as
local participants in the Board‖s examinations attempted to negotiate the power dynamic that
underlay their interactions with the institution, even as they simultaneously aspired to attain
certificates of cultural literacy in Western European terms.
Expedient for whom, when, and where?
Rachel Beckles Willson, Royal Holloway, University of London
Western classical music is alive within what George Yúdice has termed our ―culture of expediency‖
(2003); in other words, it is posted on the missions of ―peace-building‖, ―development‖, or
―citizenship enhancement‖ that spread globally after the Cold War. But just as other arts missions
(Bergh & Sloboda 2010, Lederach 2010), those involving western classical music are diverse in
terms of scale, ambition and impact, as well as the extent to which they impose on, or collaborate
with, local actors.
Relevant scholarship is frequently characterised by a tone of affirmation, to the extent that the role
of researcher is actually that of advocate (Sommer 2006). And yet where western classical music
is the medium for the mission, postcolonial concerns about cultural imperialism are also in
circulation (Etherington 2007, BecklesWillson 2009). The tension between affirmation and
scepticism mirrors broader debates within development (Escobar 1995) and globalization studies
(Stiglitz 2002, Jones ed. 2010).
My paper today draws on my recent work addressing the missions to Palestine‖s West Bank that
emerged following the Oslo Accords of 1993, when a framework for a Palestinian state was agreed
by Palestinian, Israeli, U.S. and Russian representatives (Beckles Willson 2013, 2014). To
complement Roe-Min Kok‖s focus on education and examining, I will discuss concert
performances, but my approach to power dynamics will be similarly shaped by theories of
colonialism. Key questions informing my paper will relate to the status and locations of
performance, and the myriad work that performance does.
Panel two: Constructing 'serious' music: legitimising music-as-art.
Chair: Lisa McCormick
Race, Consecration and the Music Outside: making the high art of British jazz 1968-73
Mark Banks, Leicester University
In 1968 the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB) the main public funding body for the arts,
formed its first ―Jazz Sub-Committee‖. Its main business was to allocate small bursaries to jazz
composers and musicians. This marked a quite significant point in the history of British jazz. The
legitimacy conferred by the Arts Council meant that it was now more difficult to dismiss jazz as a
pejoratively ―popular‖, ―immigrant‖ or ―inferior‖ form of music - as had so often been the case
hitherto. Jazz had attained value in the eyes of the ―establishment‖ - as indigenous art music. The
central concern of this paper is to explore the cultural values that underpinned this ―making‖ of jazz
as British art music at a particular historical conjuncture. I deliberately use the term ―making‖ to
indicate how British jazz was not a pre-given or self-evident entity, but partly a social construction;
a form that had to be (both consciously and unconsciously) assembled from the available
repertoire of musical and cultural styles, discourses and practices in circulation in the period. It
will be argued that the consecration of jazz, in its distinctively British ―high‖ art form, was only
significantly achieved once it became recognised as a―serious‖ music, akin to European classical
music, or, more markedly, as a vernacular expression of modern (European) experimental art
music – which, as I will discuss, came with a collateral cost; the exclusion of an already rich and
existing postcolonial British jazz, flourishing as both popular and art music.
Classical Music and Its Others: The View from Iran
Laudan Nooshin, City University
Abstract to follow.
Respondent to the first two panels:
Bev Skeggs, Goldsmiths, University of London
Lunch: 1.15-2pm.
Session three: Changing classical music education: experiments and challenges.
Chair: Christina Scharff.
A pedagogical framework for enabling creative collaboration within the undergraduate music
curriculum: the perspective of the classical music undergraduate
Christine Bates, Leeds College of Music
This paper examines an innovative pedagogical model for facilitating undergraduate learning in
creative musical collaboration, and considers the benefits for and impact on the classical music
undergraduate. The model was, in the first instance, developed to enable undergraduate students
to facilitate creative and collaborative community music workshops whilst working on placement
where they encounter a significant breadth of musical experience and taste amongst the
participants.
As undergraduate music courses develop to include a greater level of project based work and
experiential learning there is an increased demand within the undergraduate curriculum for
creative collaboration between undergraduates in achieving assignment outcomes, which demands
a new pedagogy. This research has asked whether a pedagogy primarily designed for execution in
the non-formal learning environment (the community) can be successfully applied within the
formal undergraduate music curriculum. To this end the pedagogical model has been applied to
the processes and outcomes of the Specialist Project Collaborative Composition at Leeds College of
Music, where students across all three levels (4-6) and all four pathways (Jazz, Classical, Music
Production and Popular Music) collaborate in producing new music for performance.
A case study of the process shows that, as a result of the application of the model, classical music
undergraduates‖ understandings of compositional processes and techniques become broadened
along with their approaches towards composition and their perception of musical creativity and its
value.
Familiar discourses of music in the conservatoire and the potential for institutional change
Biranda Ford, Guildhall School of Music and Drama
This paper makes two comparisons as its point of departure for discussion on dominant discourses
within the conservatoire and possibilities for institutional change. The first looks at the modern
institution in relation to its historical forebears. Secondly, current pedagogical practices in the
training of music and drama students are compared. Today's conservatoires are shown to maintain
many discourses on music founded in the nineteenth century. The formation of classical music as
high art is linked to intensive solo practice, the framing of interpretation as the realisation of the
composer's intentions, and specialised principal study tuition. These are contrasted with
professional drama school pedagogy to show how differing discourses form and maintain
performers in each discipline in relation to audience, text and format of training. Recent musicdrama projects at the Guildhall School are discussed to ask whether cross arts initiatives which
bring musicians into contact with different discourses of performance can lead to institutional
change.
‘Collectivism or Isolation? How a trade union for self employed workers addresses the
contradictions of the market place
Fran Hanley is the MU’s Music Education Official, having in the past been a performer, teacher,
manager and briefly worked at the Arts Council.
As more and more workers are cut loose from employment relationships and treated as self
employed contractors what is the impact on those individuals? The MU has supported its
members in over 50 Music Services since 2012 where over 2000 teachers have lost permanent
teaching jobs. In turn this leads to fragmentation and an increasingly isolated workforce. What
are the impacts of an isolated professional life on people? How do members of a trade union decide
whether to find alternative structures or accept the notion that they now must compete with what
were previously their colleagues? Fran will discuss these contemporary issues and give examples of
how the MU and its members are responding to these and other changes.
The MU represents over 30,000 musicians who work in all areas of the music industry. We provide
legal support and advice, industry support, networking and training across the UK and are the only
trade union to represent musicians.
Session 4: Doing things differently? How institutions marginalise or support critical practices.
Chair: Anna Bull.
Institutional and non-institutional contemporary music: Crumbs from the table(s)?
Stephen Graham, Goldsmiths, University of London
Contemporary classical music in the West enjoys relatively meagre financial subsidy and
institutional backing when compared to ―high‖ art institutions such as national opera houses.
However, the music has a strong institutional base in universities and university presses, in
culturally prestigious awards schemes and canons, and in large public arts venues, where it
invariably enjoys a steady—if fragile—presence. Whilst in some respects this base is clearly
precarious, contemporary classical music nevertheless enjoys comparatively broad institutional
support. This situation contrasts with those of parallel experimental, avant-garde and exploratory
musics that exist outside or on the fringes of institutions. This musical ―underground‖ incorporates
genres such as noise, extreme metal, and free improv, all of which cross over culturally and
aesthetically with traditional ―new‖ music in their emphasis on different kinds of innovation,
radicalism (in politics and sound) and complexity. But the underground‖s cultural position largely
outside institutions and its affiliations of various kinds with popular music means that it must be
seen in subtly different terms to (largely) institutional contemporary classical music, which
remains hidebound in some respects to traditional funding policies and privileged support.
My paper compares and contrasts the sociocultural contexts and support systems of these
traditions. I use two brief case studies, of composer Seán Clancy and noise musician Marlo
Eggplant, to illustrate the ways that hierarchized cultural policy and the political economic
makeup of each music scene have historically shaped and enabled practice. But I also discuss
recent examples of institutional innovation (to use a term from Georgina Born) in British agencies
such as Sound and Music, whose funding policy is now unprecedentedly broad. This broadness
represents a re-drawing of the very boundaries of new music in the UK, a re-drawing that
promises both to open up the institution of new music to underground and other forms of practice,
whilst also, as a result, to transform the cultural character and authority of that institution as such.
On the dialectic of discourse and practice in the presentation of ‘difficult’ music: an
examination of the function of ‘festival’ in Southbank Centre’s Rest is Noise Festival
Roddy Hawkins, University of Manchester
During 2013, when Jude Kelly, the artistic director of Southbank Centre in London, spoke about
the ethos behind the Rest is Noise Festival (RiNF) she framed the project as an attempt to reach
out to the general arts audiences who, like her, had interests in a variety of arts and cultural
offerings with one obvious exception: contemporary, or ―new‖, music. This anomaly stemmed, she
was convinced, as a result of presentation rather than content.
The primary aim of this paper, then, is to give an overview of the ethos of the RiNF based on an
analysis of discourse, as manifest in various online and print media produced by Southbank Centre
and the art world that supports it. I contextualise this information in two stages: first, by attending
to the use of the ―festival‖ idea at the Southbank Centre in the past decade (a mode of presentation
which has become the most prominent theme of Kelly‖s directorship); second, by reflecting upon
Kelly‖s distinction between presentation and content. Drawing on the wider reception of Alex
Ross‖s book, on which the festival is based, I conclude by suggesting that the RiNF demonstrates
a complex example of art world attempts to bury what Bourdieu‖s names ―the institutionalisation
of permanent revolution‖.
Hoketus: Of Hierarchy and Hiccups
Nick Williams – Huddersfield
Composer-performer relationships pose important ethical issues in contemporary music practice.
Most often these still take the traditional form of composer as authority and performer as
subordinate, despite the framing of many such relationships as collaborative enterprises. However,
at strategic points in the recent history of music these relationships have been actively questioned
by and through practice, and such models provide the possibility of analysing the ethics of power
in contemporary music relationships today. This paper will look at one such model, the Dutch
ensemble Hoketus.
Hoketus grew out of a project on minimalism run by Louis Andriessen at the Hague
Conservatoire in 1977. Their repertoire defined a sound world, a playing technique and a new
relationship between composers and performers. Drawing upon ideas of alienation, domination
and power-to/power-over formulated by Marx, Attali, Murray Bookchin and John Holloway, this
paper will show how traditional hierarchies between composers and performers were questioned;
will describe how Hoketus‖ aesthetic was shaped by the presence of composers and performers in
the ensemble equally at home in vernacular musics; and will place Hoketus in the context of the
ensemble culture that developed in Holland as a result of the social and political upheavals in the
late 1960s and early 70s. This allows for the consideration of the ethical issues between composer
and performer today in the context of an historical precedent which does not presuppose power
and authority only on behalf of the composer.
5.30pm Wine reception.
Followed by public event, 'What Lies Beneath: Exploring the hidden currents of the classical music
world' at 6.30pm in the Tutu's Macadam Building, Strand Campus, King‖s College London.