Stephanie G. Mathis The threat of funding such music education at schools is something that certainly makes us think.
Should we teach music? Is the ability to read musical notation a requirement to teach music or to obtain a degree in music?
This is not a simple academic question. A specialist music teacher is a substantial investment for the state.
What’s more than just a few notes on a sheet of paper?
Musical literacy is no longer a requirement for many degree courses in music at major Western universities. This is especially true for systems that concentrate on popular music genres and musical production.
Today, music production is more concerned with technology than with notation. Anna Baburkina/www.shutterstock.com
This change is not so much a reflection of McCartney or others. The technological advancements in music production have virtually eliminated the need to transcribe popular music into musical notation to exchange it between producers, performers, and listeners.
Remember that not long ago, the most popular commercial hits were available as sheet music for piano or guitar. Although sheet music is still available, in the digital age, music creation and consumption no longer require a written score.
Wonderful World of Disney, 1970. Tom Simpson/Flickr, CC BY
This emerging lack of trust in music notation is also likely to be linked to a wider, romantic desire to rid the world of old-fashioned hegemonic values and institutional norms.
Some may see the teaching of music notation as “another brick in a wall“, or, as Pink Floyd might say, as a way to subsume individual artistic freedom within predetermined patterns.
So, we end up with an Orwellian idea of education that ignorance is strength.
Musical notation is a preordained system of communication that will inevitably be normative and could thus suppress the creativity of minorities and individuals.
According to a recent essay written by Frederick Jameson, the great postmodernist theorist, the abolition of such norms is now “a burning issue” that’s often linked with “identity and secessionist politics, and the politics marginal or oppressed culture.”
Conserving culture and preserving music
Johann Sebastian Bach, Symbolum Nicenum (BWV 232) from the Mass in B Minor (1749). Wikimedia Commons, CC BY
Musical notation is a system of reductive nature that shapes and limits the things it tries to describe.
It is still the most powerful tool available for preserving, transferring, and analyzing musical works. It allows us to connect with over two millennia of music history. It will enable us to elevate music as an object of critical reflection.
The printed word allowed us to not only preserve but also to deconstruct words and reflect on the different ways in which we construct them to give meaning to the world around us. Musical notation allows for a similar ability to reflect on the way music gives meaning to the world.
The draft of Robert Schumann for Des Abends (1837), Op. 12, Nr. 1. Sotheby’s/Wikimedia commons
A loss of confidence towards notated music culture could be a sign of the opposite, namely a decline in a certain type of creative, historical and political ability in our society.
Theodor Adorno, a German philosopher and critic of social life, suggested in 1938 that such a loss could be felt in reality. He thought that the real dichotomy facing Western musical culture was not between “light music” and “serious music”, but “between market-oriented music and music that wasn’t”.
James Scott, Don’t Jazz Me-Rag (1921). Library of Congress/Wikimedia Commons; CC-BY
The music critic should ask: To what extent does the music resist its use as a tool of social and economic dominance?
Adorno distrusted what he considered to be the pseudo-folk culture around popular music. This ethos was, according to Adorno’s analysis, a cover for a commercial imperative based on the manipulation and imposition from above.
The role of tertiary institutions in the preservation of the forms and tools of musical cultures is vital. Musicologist Ian Pace recently:
The tertiary music curriculum should provide a place where intellectual, creative, and other work can be carried out, which involves a genuinely independent critical thinking and self-critical approach, in which little is taken for granted,. Everything is questioned regularly, and with a degree of independence from external functions or commercial function.
Music and late capitalism
What would a world sound and look like without a critical culture of music? Some commentators claim we already know.
According to cultural historian Ted Gioia, music criticism has become a “lifestyle report.” As music critic Jessica Duchen suggests, even pop music is becoming “watered down tat, with scant musical contents, using only basic chords.”
Sam Smith has won numerous Grammys since 2015. Mike Blake/Reuters
Sam Smith’s Theme Song for the Latest Bond Film, which is a Good Example, can be found. Incoherent lyrics, a lack of imagination in the melodic and rhythmic design, and unimaginative lyrics cannot be saved by a high-quality music production. It shouldn’t have worked, but it did.
Why is this the case?
Our ability to make such evaluative judgments is certainly dependent on a musically educated populace. Music notationn can help you turn a mere opinion into an objective judgment.
Could a growing lack of confidence about the educational importance of music notation be just another manifestation of the cultural logic of late capitalism?
Maybe, despite what we may think, educational debates should be conducted at this level. After all, higher education in the arts is about asking questions like these. What does it mean to be a rational agent in civil society? And what kid of educational and economic investments are needed to sustain a civil society like that?
