"Classical Music" and other names for it

[Richard Barrett]

Before the topic gets completely lost...

... there is this question of what role "classical" music ("North-West Asian Court Music" as the Australian composer Warren Burt calls it) can or should play in education, given its small and maybe diminishing role in culture at large. There seems to be agreement that any education worth the name ought to include a strong musical component, for reasons that have already been touched upon. But what music? and why? Do different musics differ in how they contribute to the beneficial effects of music in education? Is there a case for defending (or dismissing) "classical" music on this basis? And, turning back to the actual topic, could whether one calls it "classical" or something else be a factor here?

Personally I have very little experience in this area. I would venture to say, however, that defining "classical" music in an educational context as something elevated and implicitly superior in relation to more popular forms is not likely to be an attention-winner. Perhaps characterising different musics in terms of their (potential) social function is a more appropriate way to categorise them than how they're supposedly made ("composed") or even what they superficially sound like.

[MrGongGong]

Personally I have very little experience in this area. I would venture to say, however, that defining "classical" music in an educational context as something elevated and implicitly superior in relation to more popular forms is not likely to be an attention-winner. Perhaps characterising different musics in terms of their (potential) social function is a more appropriate way to categorise them than how they're supposedly made ("composed") or even what they superficially sound like.

Well put.
I recently have to disabuse people who will insist that there is no "Classical Music" in GCSE or A level exams.
Whether music is taught well or not is another matter all together.
I do think that genre based approaches to music education (which doesn't mean that genres don't exist or aren't useful etc etc ) are deeply flawed and often come across as a desperate desire to "sell" a particular type of music to people who aren't interested.

One university i'm sometimes involved with teaches all it's first year undergraduates basic ethnomusicology in order that they start to understand how music happens rather than always relying on preconceptions of context and value.

[gradus]

...so that they can develop conceptions of context and value.

[verismissimo]

It's just a useful leaky bucket. We all know roughly what it means and its leakiness provides work for academics and chat for the rest of us.

[ardcarp]

Recently I have been looking (online) at schools for the next stage of my grandchildren's primary education - one is about to start school, one about to move from infants to juniors. I have been very struck by how large a part 'classical' music plays in the independent schools - especially instrumental tuition - and how rarely it is mentioned in the state schools. I find this worrying. I am talking about London.

It's not just in London, Mary. Whilst there is classical music [I'm calling it that for shorthand...we all know what it means] to be found in some state-schools, I fear that it is endangered in most. In what I suspect was 'our day' , each county had its own specialist music advisers, county orchestras and choirs, and most secondary schools had some sort of 'proper' music going on. Small primary schools with no musical teacher available would use the EXCELLENT BBC radio programmes such as Singing Together, Rhythm and Melody and Time and Tune and their associated booklets. Mrs A. went to just such a rural two-teacher primary school and claims to have had a first-rate grounding in music from programmes such as these

Nowadays it depends whether a head-teacher has a special interesrt/willingness to encourage music, and whether there is an able/charismatic teacher on hand to make it all happen.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Nowadays it depends whether a head-teacher has a special interesrt/willingness to encourage music, and whether there is an able/charismatic teacher on hand to make it all happen.

This encapsulates the situation in state schools. For independent schools, I suspect (but acknowledge I have far less insight) unless a school has a different unique selling point, it would suffer if its "offer" on music provision was notably poor in comparison with its competitors (I am aware I'm using the language of commerce).

[Stanfordian]

It's not just in London, Mary. Whilst there is classical music [I'm calling it that for shorthand...we all know what it means] to be found in some state-schools, I fear that it is endangered in most. In what I suspect was 'our day' , each county had its own specialist music advisers, county orchestras and choirs, and most secondary schools had some sort of 'proper' music going on. Small primary schools with no musical teacher available would use the EXCELLENT BBC radio programmes such as Singing Together, Rhythm and Melody and Time and Tune and their associated booklets. Mrs A. went to just such a rural two-teacher primary school and claims to have had a first-rate grounding in music from programmes such as these

Nowadays it depends whether a head-teacher has a special interesrt/willingness to encourage music, and whether there is an able/charismatic teacher on hand to make it all happen.

Hiya ardcarp,
Youare so right about music in schools. The 3 private schools and the public schools near me are the exceptions as music is one of the many other activies they provide and encourage to broaden their scope of activites they provide, such as rugby, long haul school holidays, military cadets corps, yachting, opera and theatre trips etc.

With regard to the term 'classical music'. I asked my two children now in their late twenties who didn't have music at their schools, and their friends to tell me what classical music was. They all said basically the same thing: Oh, Beethoven, Mozart and all that opera stuff.

I too never had exposure to 'classical music music' whilst at school. It was never played even at school assemblies. The only music I experienced was singing in the Pirates Chorus from The Pirates Of Penzance. The state school that I attended around ten years after I left had a teacher who encouraged drama classes in a big way and two pupils went onto careers in acting. One of them is often seen in televison usually as a police detective inspector.

[jean]

Nowadays it depends whether a head-teacher has a special interesrt/willingness to encourage music, and whether there is an able/charismatic teacher on hand to make it all happen.

I'm sure that's correct, as CS laid in his longer earlier post; it's not entirely a question of lack of resources or even time on the curriculum.

And as ff said earlier, if 'classical' music has no distinguishing name,

...it won't leave a gap when schools, for example, omit all mention, all opportunities for students to hear it. They can still claim that 'music' is a very important part of the curriculum. They can then leave it to the privileged middle classes and independent schools. At which point they're given a further reason to ignore it: it's elitist.

What isn't quite clear is why the independent sector still values it, given that so many of its products (in the present government for example) have little idea about or appeciation of it.

The other factor that hasn't been mentioned is the packaging of the Classic Brits end of the repertoire, which, if someone had told me in my youth was what 'Classical muisc' was, I'd have run a mile from! Back then there was Mantovani, but nobody called him Classical.

Paul Morley in 2012:

...As Russell Watson, with his very own brave come-back-from-personal-disaster story, heartily boomed the boom of pure Brit boom, a slow motion slurry of images played out behind him, sympathetically blending Queenly primness, emotional flag-waving and Olympic heroism. Tears were intended to be jerked, and the stacked up Albert Hall audience encouraged to swell with pride, and along the way, as a bit of a bonus for those looking to capitalise on the persuasive power of pretty melodies, middlebrow classical music was saved, or at least given a patriotic purpose very useful in uncertain times...

.

[french frank]

What isn't quite clear is why the independent sector still values it, given that so many of its products (in the present government for example) have little idea about or appeciation of it.

Even more of a mystery since they even clamour to show their democratic credentials by mentioning their attachment to popular music (and not that I'm suggesting the attachment is invented, either).

[ahinton]

I'm sure that's correct, as CS laid in his longer earlier post; it's not entirely a question of lack of resources or even time on the curriculum.

No, it isn't but, without sufficient resources, all the positive motivation in the world to allocate time on the curriculum and all the rest of what's needed will simply not materialise.

What isn't quite clear is why the independent sector still values it, given that so many of its products (in the present government for example) have little idea about or appeciation of it.

I think that this is at least in part because it is not valued evenly across the board by the independent schools sector, with some such schools valuing it far more than others. Another factor might have something to do with certain other values and standards fostered by parts of the independent schools sector which could be seen as being rather at odds with it, which might go some way to explaning why, as you suggest, "so many of its products (in the present government for example) have little idea about or appeciation of it"; one has only to look at Dave, for example (well, no, please don't do that, but you get my drift, I imagine)...

[P. G. Tipps]

It's just a useful leaky bucket. We all know roughly what it means and its leakiness provides work for academics and chat for the rest of us.

How true ...

[Stanfordian]

I'm sure that's correct, as CS laid in his longer earlier post; it's not entirely a question of lack of resources or even time on the curriculum.

And as ff said earlier, if 'classical' music has no distinguishing name,



What isn't quite clear is why the independent sector still values it, given that so many of its products (in the present government for example) have little idea about or appeciation of it.

A Private or Public schools will generally offer a wider range of activites which makes sense really to broaden the scope on what they have on offer. One independent grammar school near here sent two rugby union teams and school masters etc. on tour, long haul to New Zealand. At over 23,000 miles round trip, how's that for a large carbon footprint'; you can't go any further. I should have thought playing rugby union teams in France would have sufficed.

[doversoul1]

What isn't quite clear is why the independent sector still values it, given that so many of its products (in the present government for example) have little idea about or appeciation of it.

Leftover (or keeping the tradition alive) from the days when music education was an accomplishment of well brought up young men and women?

ff

Even more of a mystery since they even clamour to show their democratic credentials by mentioning their attachment to popular music (and not that I'm suggesting the attachment is invented, either).

At the same time, they need to show the prospective parents how up-to-date-ly creative they are (or not to scare them off)?

[P. G. Tipps]

A Private or Public schools will generally offer a wider range of activites which makes sense really to broaden the scope on what they have on offer. One independent grammar school near here sent two rugby union teams and school masters etc. on tour, long haul to New Zealand. At over 23,000 miles round trip, how's that for a large carbon footprint'; you can't go any further. I should have thought playing rugby union teams in France would have sufficed.

And RUGBY ... that frightful 'sport' for elite hooligans!

[Richard Barrett]

What isn't quite clear is why the independent sector still values it, given that so many of its products (in the present government for example) have little idea about or appreciation of it.

It's my impression that they wouldn't be seen dead coming out of an opera house through fear of being branded as elitist, preferring to drop some (usually formerly) popular name that a spin doctor has fed to them. Recall that David Cameron's "Desert Island Discs" were by Bob Dylan, Benny Hill (!), Pink Floyd, Radiohead, The Smiths, REM, The Killers and Mendelssohn ("O for the wings of a dove"). Clearly the classical-music-education part of those astronomical Eton school fees was a waste of money. Angela Merkel on the other hand is happy to be photographed making her annual pilgrimage to Bayreuth.