From: henning@acsu.buffalo.edu (Karl Loomis Henning)
Newsgroups: rec.music.classical
Subject: le diable, l'etat, et les beaux arts
Date: 12 Apr 92 15:33:01 GMT
Article-I.D.: acsu.1992Apr12.153301.18971
Distribution: rec
Organization: UB

Roger Lustig writes:

>After all, look at the state-funded conservatories and music departments?
>Are we to get rid of those, too? Are we to let the market drive all curricula?

Perhaps there is a very practical sense in which the market does indeed
drive the curricula.  Here at UB (the biggest and unwieldiest in the SUNY
system :-), departments such as Business, Law, &c. provide a great deal
more support for their grad students than departments such as Foreign
Languages, Music &c.  Part of this is no doubt SUNY budgetary policy,
but this also reflects (perhaps) situations in which the Private
Sector provides money for SUNY, for targeted programs.  Businesses,
&c., which view the universities (quite rightly, as it turns out)
as the nurseries where future employables are spawned, view these
educational donations through R&D-tinted glasses.  Does this affect
the curriculum, or even the way in which entire programs are
structured/oriented?  Mayyyyybe ... :-)

William Alves writes:

>>Meanwhile, works which will potentially provide more enjoyment to more
>>people are not supported because its audience may accumulate over years
>>or decades. Worse yet, many of those works are never written at all
>>because potential Mozarts are out there driving cabs.

[Roger:]

>I'm not so sure they are.  For one thing, many composers DO have jobs.
>For another, hardly any "serious" composers have EVER supported
>themselves by composing.  In the 19th century, I can think of one:
>Beethoven.  Chopin taught piano.  Mendelssohn was a conservatory
>director.  Berlioz conducted and wrote.  Brahms conducted and edited and
>performed.  Wagner got a government subsidy 8-) and conducted.  

And of course, even Beethoven was a concert pianist before
his disability overtook him.  If Beethoven hadn't gone deaf,
would he have become this remarkable exception?

Todd McComb writes:

)Well, I don't know.  It's nice that some people support the arts
)in whatever way they think is appropriate.  That'll probably keep
)happening, whether or not those people include "the government"
)per se.

)For my own part, I am so concerned that I be able to compose exactly
)what I want to compose for my own reasons that I support myself by a
)totally non-musical job.  It seems reasonable to me.

Funny;  that's what Ives thought, too:

   "Assuming a man lives by himself and with no dependents,
he might write music that no one would play prettily, listen
to, or buy.  But -- but if he has a nice wife and some nice
children, how can he let the children starve on his dissonances?
So he has to weaken (and if he is man he /should/ weaken for
his children) but his music more than weakens -- it goes
'ta-ta' for money!  Bad for him, bad for music!"

I seem somehow to reflect on Ives' words, whenever I see the
"Resist no longer -- buy Phantom [of the Opera tix] by phone"
ads on television ....


Dave Frederick writes:

>Historically, hasn't it always been the "duty" of the artist to find a
>patron, rather than the other way around? 

Roger:

=Both.  Noblesse oblige!  It wasn't *done* to have a court without art.
=Mind you, some did more than others, and some (like August the Strong)
=fired all the expensive singers and composers as soon as the party was
=over.

>Certainly, back in the days
>when monarchies were the norm, an artist could set himself up in the
>court of the powers that be, but still the monarch, and not
>"the government" per se, was the true patron and sponsor of the artist.

But historically, "l'etat, c'etait lui" -- the king, or the
constitutionally-balanced aristocracy, &c. /was/ the government.
The orientation of a government's artistic patronage will
necessarily be different in cases where the government is
a single highly cultivated individual, than where the government
is elected in a deeply murky ritual, nominally involving
the entire citizenry.

[I lost this chap's name:]

>|> The basic problem, of course, is that the U.S. has no national
>|> culture.

[Dave:]

>Of course this is true. Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, Andrew
>Wyeth and Jackson Pollock, Martha Graham, Alvin Ailey, Miles Davis,
>Charles Mingus, William Faulkner, Mark Twain, are just a few of the
>examples that demonstrate a total lack of culture in this country.

[Roger:]

=Actually, the lack of reading comprehension is a far greater problem.
=There is no *national* culture, in the sense of a central cultural
=tradition.  All of the above (*Andrew Wyeth??*) except perhaps for
=Twain, are members of American cultures, to be sure, but with one or two
=exceptions ("Fanfare forthe Common Man") none of them has an artistic
=significance to the majority of Americans, or ever has had.  Beethoven
=and Shakespeare are far closer to the center of our culture than they
=are.

These are all decent observations, but the quibble here is on
whether America has produced indigenous culture (which undeniably
it has), and whether America has established for itself any
substantially centralized culture;  as Roger points out, most
of these examples of sturdy American artists were out of the
main cultural stream (Twain's /Huckleberry Finn/ isn't the
innocent river pastoral that Broadway would have you believe,
you know :-)

America's "national (i.e., central, mainstream) culture", is
mass-produced pop;  "somewhere in the 60's," says Donald
Erb, "we confused culture with entertainment".  

=	=	=	=

Roger Lustig writes:

>... despite all his trials, Shostakovich drew his salary
>from the state for 50 years.  Prokof'ev, too, for a while.  And I do
>recall a few decent instrumentalists coming out of the SU: Richter,
>Gilels, Oistrakh, Rostropovich, Berman, etc.

Vladimir Kuznetsov writes:

=Read [Shostakovich's?] biography, may be you will reconsider your views
=about this matter. You don't know how much of junky music Shostakovich 
=was forced tov write for this salary and how mush humilation
=he had to swallow for the privilege of being court composer. 
=Prokofiev was not happy either.

I wonder if you are reading more into Roger's remarks than
he actually says ... he points out, neutrally, that quite apart
from the serious question of the politico-artistic climate,
neither Shostakovich nor Prokofiev starved for their art.
Although Shostakovich was discouraged from writing the music
he wanted to, he continued to do so (prudently keeping
such pieces to himself);  perhaps he wrote a great deal
of (possibly bad) music which he might not have done, left
to himself;  but he continued to be supported as a Soviet
composer.  Is this unique to oppressive regimes, and
could it never happen in the West?  Why does Ray Charles
do those Pepsi ads?  Is it a line of work he would have
chosen for himself, if Pepsi weren't willing to hurtle
money in his direction in exchange?

As for Prokofiev ... well, we've become historically
accustomed to the best & brightest fleeing Nazi Germany,
East Europe, and Soviet Russia, to be embraced by the golden
arms of the politically enlightened West.  But of course,
exile is not a pleasant holiday for /everybody/.  Prokofiev
tried (and damned hard) to carve a career for himself
in Paris and in America;  but he also kept up contacts
in his native Russia.  During the 30's, most of his
commissions came from Russia, through the intercession
of his friends;  in that decade, only /two/ pieces were
commissioned by the West.  So that the prospect of a
livelihood, combined with a very understandable
homesickness, drew Prokofiev back to Russia.  Was he
happy in Russia?  Probably not.  Was it much better
in Paris in the 30's?  "Read his biography, maybe you
will reconsider your views ..." :-)

kph
-- 
 The violent Russian spring that seemed []	 Karl Prescott Henning
  to begin in an hour and was like the  []  128 Hewitt/upper [] 57 Glasgow st
   whole earth cracking. -- Stravinsky  []  Bflo NY 14215    [] Roch NY 14608