I read a post about the bombing of the university in Tehran a few days ago over my morning coffee. The wanton destruction of an educational institution. And it generated this stream of thought:
Classical music lovers are often considered “snobs” and “elitists," much in the way the Information Age oligarchs consider themselves “the elite” of this day. In its earliest time, formal music was confined to the cathedral and the concert hall. It served religion and the nobility, not the “common people.”
As society became more egalitarian in the Industrial Age and workers power and influence grew through unionization, formal music became more egalitarian as well, especially in the United States. Composers and conductors began incorporating American idioms into their compositions. Aaron Copland wrote "Appalachian Spring," “El Salon Mexico,” etc. These composers weren't afraid to address social issues in their works. Leonard Bernstein composed "Candide (excerpt: "Make Our Garden Grow“ ) in response to the McCathy Era hearings, and West Side Story” (excerpt: "Somewhere"-Rita Moreno, 2021) in part as a reflection of the ethnic neighborhood disruption caused by the constuction of The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. Michael Tilson-Thomas composed “From the Diary of Anne Frank" (excerpt: "I Want to Go On Living") to address the Holocaust. He also championed the next generation of composers, and often conducted the debut performances of new works such as Charles Wuorinen's "Sudden Changes."
To insure that an audience would exist for the music they treasured, these composer/conductors turned to education. Copland composed a full opera, "The Second Hurricane" (excerpt: "Gyp's Song"), designed specifically to be performed by high school students. Bernstein’s “Young People's Concerts,” conceived of, produced and broadcast 1958-1972 were designed to bring a new generation of listeners into being. Michael Tilson-Thomas often gave lecture-concerts with the London Symphony, and created a series of documentaries, “Keeping Score,” which explain where the music comes from and how it makes its way to performance. In 1987, Tilson-Thomas established The New World Symphony as a training ensemble for young musicians in preparation for professional careers in classical music. Music education in public schools has always been broadly supported by the classical community and that support formalized by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and funding through the U.S. Department of Education.
The Information Age elitists; Musk, Thiel, Altman, et. al., would do well to study the “music elites.” Rather than seeking to preserve their elite status by insuring strong societal support for that which made their position possible, the Information Age elites have decided that they will instead defend their position by eliminating any “threat” to their status. Bezos seeks to dispense with those “pesky workers” and their unionizing ideas by replacing industrial workers with robots. Musk, Thiel, Altman, Zuckerberg, et. al., want to “scrape” up the accumulated knowledge of mankind so as to hold title to it and sell it back to individuals “by the byte.”
The flaw in their approach is that their position was created by the wealth transferred to them by the working class’ purchase of goods and services. If, to defend their status, they destroy the working class so that it no longer threatens their status, who will purchase their goods and services? If I am hungry and can’t afford food, will I purchase a streaming service? If I can’t afford clothing, will I buy tchotchkes off of Amazon? If I don’t have the money to pay an ISP for access, how will I purchase information “by the byte?” Indeed, if they don’t want to pay taxes to support public education of the masses, where will they find demand for online information amongst an illiterate populace?
The lesson to be taken from the classical music "elites" is this: to maintain your position in society, you have to use your position to maintain the society in which you live, for without that society, you have no position at all. If they do not invest their time and resources in maintaining our society, they will find themselves lording over an impoverished land where even if the people might have the desire, no one will have the means to pay tribute to the Information Age elites. But if they do invest in society wisely so that it grows and strengthens, they will do more than simply maintain their position. If what they create reflects and honors the human condition, if they inspire people to join in that effort, their works will stand as living monuments long after their tme on Earth has passed. Those works will be as timeless as that of Beethoven and all of the great composers who came after him.
And the whole stream of thought led to me seeking some distance from it all. Which I discovered on the GilPiotr YouTube channel. Fascinating channel filled with classical vocal pieces I didn't know existed until now. I thought I knew most of that genre, but wow, what an eye (ear?) opener!. Great singers throughout. The channel also has instrumental works and wonderful compilations. So if you are looking for a respite from the madness, this is a good place to start your exploration of the channel—
