The Problem with Band Repertoire in Music Education; or, First, Shoot All the Composers
Presented by Stephen Budiansky
Reviewed by Evan Feldman
UNC-Chapel Hill
At the beginning of his Friday morning 10:30am session, Stephen Budiansky jokingly gave his qualifications: he wasn't a band director; he wasn't teacher; and he wasn't a professional musician, all of which made him eminently qualified to be a school principal. But despite his outsider status, or perhaps because of it, Mr. Budiansky gave the rare WASBE presentation that stirred a heated controversy and had WASBE-ites discussing its ramifications on their way to lunch. Four years ago he wrote a light-footed but scathing indictment of American public school music education inThe Washington Post(http://www.budiansky.com/wpost.html). As a band and choir parent, he railed against what he called the "bombastic banality" of educational music--music "not written by any composer you have ever heard of" that "exists nowhere in the known musical universe except for the twilight zone of school musical performance." Instead of classical, folk, Sousa, American popular music, Broadway, Joplin, etc., Budiansky heard educational music written by music educators who are only composers within the insulated world of public school music education. Their stock and trade is "slick but soulless programaticism, always preceded by a very wordy description" about far-away places, exotic celebrations, historical events, and volcanoes.
In Friday's expansion of that article, he proved himself a speaker nearly as accomplished as a writer. Throughout the talk he had much of the audience laughing--both quietly and heartily. Not so much guffaws, this laughter was the type one associates with a great observational comedian, say, Jerry Seinfeld or Bill Cosby. It's funny, we think,because it's true. It's true, as Budiansky observes, that many pieces seem to have the same titles, a conglomeration of "nature" words and topographical locations: Eagle Point Overture; Yosemite Creek Saga; or plays on the word "Festival," with or without an exclamation point and Latin American twist ("Fiestival!"). It's truethat publishers often market these pieces with the same language that Cincinnati's own Procter & Gamble uses to sell soap. Instead of "great smelling soap that will give you the smooth skin you've always wanted," we get: "a playable piece that will wow your audience and make your band sound great!"It's truethat some directors are obsessed with only the newest works, possibly at the expense of the finest, most timeless works. Andit's truethat for better or worse music education is fueled and supported by music business.
Mr. Budiansky clearly thinks it's for the worse. Under the influence of music business he believes music education's goals have shifted from their original purpose of educating young musicians and preparing them to appreciate, listen to, and play great music for the rest of their lives. Under this model, music business provided the resources for good teaching.
Today Budiansky perceives a reversal: music education fuels the growth of business. Seen in this light, music education's goals have become warped. It:
* pushes the careers of second-rate composers
* supports publishing houses
* values trophies above all else
* seeks to legitimize and promote the wind band medium
None of these, Mr. Budiansky argues (and most of us would likely agree) is what music education should be about. As for counterarguments to his diagnosis, he outlines the three most common-- and seemingly contradictory-- ones he's encountered.
1) The problem isn't happening.
2) The problem is happening, but the demands of pedagogy require it.
3) The problem is happening, and it's a good thing, because it's the mechanism for developing quality literature.
Mr. Budiansky is quick to refute each one. For #1, if the problem isn't happening, why do so many music students put their instrument down after graduation and never touch them again? For #2, if pedagogy requires it of the music teacher, why does it not do so of the English teacher, too, who would never substitute comic books for Shakespeare? For #3, if it's necessary for the development of the repertoire, why do so many pieces sound like mediocre wannabe movie soundtracks, written by composers with little to no reputation outside the music education world?
Ultimately, in Mr. Budiansky's view, it is music education's inherent or self-imposed isolation that is largely to blame. Real art, he says, never happens without a critical audience willing to vocalize what they like and don't like, what they consider to be of quality and of shlock, and what is art and what is not. As an example, he points to well-documented reviews by contemporaries of Beethoven and Liszt that sound as if they are writing about the worst drivel ever performed by an orchestra.
Of course, Beethoven's music wasn't drivel, and it survived the scathing reviews to take its place at the pinnacle of Western art music. But Mr. Budiansky's point is really that great art cannot be created if its artists and art are immunized from critical discussion. During the Q&A session, one audience member agreed this was a valuable conversation to have, but suggested it should happen in private, to which Mr. Budiansky responded that is exactly the problem: an artistic and democratic society should never confine such a discussion to back-room meetings.
This audience member's question was spoken with some ire, and I suspect part of that came from the considerable energy Mr. Budiansky spent singling out the composer Robert W. Smith as embodying what he saw as the most "pernicious" example of the problem. Though he insisted afterwards his attacks were not meant to be personal, part of his speech resembled an aggressive, quasi-roast-- only the "roaster" didn't know the "roastee" was in attendance. Well, at least not until Mr. Smith raised his hand at the start of the Q&A and said, "Hello. How are you? My name is Robert W. Smith." Unlike his more angry colleague, Smith calmly admitted his agreement with many of Mr. Budiansky's points, but wondered if the problem also resided with band directors.He was eager to engage in a further discussion. Most of us in the audience were, too.
If we ever have this discussion, music education publishers and music education composers might argue: "Of course we're a business! And we operate in a democratic free-market in which we are subservient to the most powerful critic of all: the customer. Quite simply, if you don't like our product, if you don't think it's high quality music, then don't buy it."
Seen in this light, complaints about "educational music" smack of the fast food/obesity argument. Should we blame McDonald's for hawking the latest supersized hamburger, or should we blame the guy who buys it even though he knows it's no good for him? Composers and publishers are an easy target, but perhaps it's more important for our profession to look in the mirror.
Mr. Budiansky admits the solution goes beyond "Shooting the Composer" and that the problem can be traced throughout society: teachers feel pressure from administrators and parents to retain students and win trophies; administrators feel the same pressure from school boards; our entire society is under pressure from a cultural aesthetic that values trendy superficiality over thoughtful substance. In fact, holding up one mirror for ourselves isn't enough-- the root of the problem is probably obscured in a funhouse of interrelated reflections from schools, teachers, businesses, parents, society, and culture.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to make a difference. Among Mr. Budiansky's suggestions:
* Eliminate contests and other competitive musical events
* Improve teacher education to de-emphasize educational pedagogy and re-affirm musicianship and great literature
* Include only "quality" and "real" music on programs
* Teach music like an academic subject so it will be respected like an academic subject
* Criticize!
Mr. Budiansky should be commended for his eloquence and his honesty. Although many of his points have been known quantities within the profession for a long time, there has been a sense that many were taboo, or at least beyond our control. But they are within our control, and even if one doesn't agree with all his points, at the very least it seems healthy for a profession to be engaged in spirited, frank debate. I look forward to additional discussions in which these questions, and many others are tackled.