Music teaching and outcomes in schools

[MrGongGong]

In some private schools maybe not, but I'm afraid McGG that in the well-know public schools they have fantastic music departments with fine buildings and enormous numbers on the music staff. They offer music scholarships to attract talented pupils and have choirs, orchestras, jazz bands, big bands, need I go on? It's all terribly unfair. I dare say a few state schools with enlightened heads and DoMs with fire in their bellies produce the goods. Certainly none within a 50 mile radius of me.

That's why I said always
But one also has to decide what the "goods" are
and how do you know ?

Given this, few children are now exposed to classical music in any form, ever.

hummm
Is this based on experience or "received wisdom" ?
In my experience this simply isn't true .........
I won't bore you with endless examples but one example is that children are MORE aware of the soundworld of Mahler now than 20 years ago. You obviously never go to the cinema or play computer games !

I'm tempted to say it was out of favour because it was genuinely a part of 'western' culture at a time when eastern culture and other improvisatory traditions were in fashion.

Really ? So improvisation isn't part of the western art music tradition ?
Bach , Beethoven etc etc

and i'm afraid you have fallen into what I would call the "myth of spontaneity"....... pop music is very rarely improvised it's often much more rehearsed than your London orchestra playing the Eroica. It often has the performative illusion of being spontaneous which is something that has been carefully rehearsed and refined.

[Pabmusic]

hummm
Is this based on experience or "received wisdom" ?
In my experience this simply isn't true .........
I won't bore you with endless examples but one example is that children are MORE aware of the soundworld of Mahler now than 20 years ago. You obviously never go to the cinema or play computer games !

Really ? So improvisation isn't part of the western art music tradition ?
Bach , Beethoven etc etc

and i'm afraid you have fallen into what I would call the "myth of spontaneity"....... pop music is very rarely improvised it's often much more rehearsed than your London orchestra playing the Eroica. It often has the performative illusion of being spontaneous which is something that has been carefully rehearsed and refined.

Clearly I am utterly wrong, and there was no point in my post, even though I thought so at the time.

[MrGongGong]

Clearly I am utterly wrong, and there was no point in my post, even though I thought so at the time.

I didn't say that you were "utterly" wrong
though I do wonder where some of these ideas come from ?

(don't believe the brother of the famous Puccini plagiarist )

[french frank]

In my experience this simply isn't true .........
I won't bore you with endless examples but one example is that children are MORE aware of the soundworld of Mahler now than 20 years ago. You obviously never go to the cinema or play computer games !

Doesn't stop teenagers shunning 'classical music', though. Does it encourage them to buy classical CDs? Or perhaps go to school concerts if they don't have to?

Really ? So improvisation isn't part of the western art music tradition ?
Bach , Beethoven etc etc

There are surely other art forms, such as Indian classical and forms of jazz where it is fundamental, whereas it is not so in the western classical tradition.

It seems to me that there is an inbuilt hostility among 'the young' towards classical music (think HRH Wills's 'God forbid that I should listen to classical music') unless efforts have been made to introduce them to it for what it is is, rather than slipping in a bit here and there among the pop music and film tunes. This isn't about the old-fashioned forcing it upon them and instilling hatred; it's about ensuring that the opportunities are everywhere to hear what, in total ignorance, they know they don't like.

[MrGongGong]

Doesn't stop teenagers shunning 'classical music', though. Does it encourage them to buy classical CDs? Or perhaps go to school concerts if they don't have to?

I think it's more a case of "same as it ever was"
when were teenagers NOT like this ?

There are surely other art forms, such as Indian classical and forms of jazz where it is fundamental, whereas it is not so in the western classical tradition.

Indeed but to use the presence or absence of improvisation struck me as a little daft

It seems to me that there is an inbuilt hostility among 'the young' towards classical music (think HRH Wills's 'God forbid that I should listen to classical music') unless efforts have been made to introduce them to it for what it is is, rather than slipping in a bit here and there among the pop music and film tunes. This isn't about the old-fashioned forcing it upon them and instilling hatred; it's about ensuring that the opportunities are everywhere to hear what, in total ignorance, they know they don't like.

It is very important (it's the bit about scripts again !!!!) not to assume that because someone says Classical music is "boring" that they are referring to the sound it makes. In the same way that the aficionados of CE do the whole "responses" bit !
and
as you are aware some of us DO work in ways that are NOT "slipping it in under the wire" ......... going to hear a Xenakis concert live and sitting at the front or going to see/hear the Rite Of Spring LIVE is better than any well meaning "playing some Elgar in assembly" and this happens more now than it did when I was at school.