Music Schools like Juilliard and Curtis in this country have always proclaimed themselves to be the "best of the best" and "cream of the crop". You will get no argument from me that they indeed represent the .001% of the musicians or music students of this country and often the world. Yet, the question and argument remains as to what exactly is the purpose, meaning, and validity of a music school that serves as a giant filter for our nation's music career want-to-be's. Isn't the purpose of a school to educate the un-educated, to transform the unskilled into the skilled? Wouldn't an outstanding group of music educators be those who guide the public to a greater understanding of tonality and meter, instrumental executive skills, music literacy...
Yet, this is not what Juilliard does. Juilliard acts as a giant music agency. A giant filter. We, our nation's public, falsely hail the administration and faculty of Juilliard as the nation's best music educators, when in fact they are in most cases probably the most toxic of all our nation's music educators.
It is one thing to:
1) proclaim yourself as the greatest musician of all time
2) line up the public's future music students
3) audition them
4) reject the student's with low achievement
5) accept the student's who already learned music
6) go on sabbatical.
than to:
1) study and research how humans learn music
2) line up the public's future music students
3) audition them
4) identify high and low achievement students
5) accept all
6) apply a valid curriculum upon all of the students.
7) work hard and do more research...
Juilliard truly represents our nation's mindset. It is a fixed mindset. There is no possibility of growth- to create a music culture (public) that understands more and more about music. There are those that are gifted and those that are not gifted. No need for music education. Odd, such a fixed mindset would eventually lead to a culture where there are less and less people with the "music magic" and more and more people without that magic, then there is no one to even listen to the people with the magic because they are so without the magic they don't understand music magic, then enter the federal government (National Endowment for the Arts) with grant money to bail out those with the music magic from the masses of people without the magic. Then set up a bunch of non-profit orchestra's with board presidents who are rich enough to say there son's and daughter's must attend Juillard. And you have a music culture based upon deception.