Misappropriation of Our Musical Past

I

Education and learning occur in various settings, some of which are more formally institutionalized than others. Even if it seems to have failed as a definition of art, awareness of art-world institutions has increased in the wake of George Dickie’s proposal that art enmeshes an artifact in a set of interlocking yet informally structured art-world systems, that is, “the art-world.”¹ However, relatively little of that attention has fallen on the distinctively educative roles played by art-world institutions and those who act on their behalf. This oversight is sometimes addressed when the topic is the art museum,² but very little has been said about parallel issues concerning music, the concert hall, and what Virgil Thomson dubbed the “music appreciation racket.”³ Consequently, my goal in this essay is to identify and address a significant moral problem that arises in that particular borough of the art world. I am concerned that, in the interests of securing an audience for instrumental classical music, many cultural authorities are adopting strategies that are contrary to responsibilities generated by their role as music educators.⁴ My focus is instrumental European tonal art music composed between 1750 and 1950, but I assume that the discussion has ramifications for other kinds of music. I am particularly concerned with music without an intended program or programmatic title, music that is “‘detached’ from text, program, or function” and often called pure or absolute music.⁵

My concern is an elaboration of a point made by Thomson: “The acceptance of money for professional services rendered is the criterion by which professionalism is determined. This transaction is no guarantee of quality delivered, but it is a symbol of responsibility accepted.”⁶ Today, classical music concerts and the sale of recorded classical music are almost always accompanied by an interpretive apparatus that educates the audience about the music. What are the responsibilities of those who furnish these interpretations? Perhaps we have become so cavalier about our musical heritage that we now regard all music as mere entertainment, about which every opinion is equal.⁷ Perhaps we wish to equate the program notes in the symphony hall with the “reviews” that fans post about their favorite musicians on Internet music merchandising sites. But they are not the same. The bulk of the art music repertoire is a dated tradition, written before the lifetime of its present audience. Music listeners born in the second half of the twentieth century cannot have the same cultural relationship to Haydn and Wagner that they can have with Bruce Springsteen and Lady Gaga. I do not doubt that someone born in the closing decades of the twentieth century might prefer Haydn to current pop music. But there will be cultural barriers to comprehension that are no less real than for someone who prefers reading Virgil and Cicero to recent best-selling authors. When comprehension is facilitated by someone who claims to be a guide to our cultural past (particularly in association to music performed by professional musicians), then it seems appropriate to hold that person accountable as an educator. What responsibilities therefore fall to them?

II

Consider the following case of misrepresentation. Suppose an American finds himself stranded with little money in Cancun, Mexico. Observing that American tourists readily pay for guided tours of the local Mayan ruins, he loiters in tourist bars and gives himself a false background as a PhD student in anthropology. He offers to take tourists out to the “best” examples of Mayan architecture, where he claims he conducts his field research. On site, when asked about the hieroglyphic writings carved everywhere, he offers to translate.⁸ In fact, he pretends to read while reciting, from memory, a mixture of Pawnee and Lakota Sioux creation stories that he read in a college course on Native American cultures. He mixes in a few facts about Mayan culture that he gleaned from a guide book in a gift shop. Impressed by his “knowledge,” naïve tourists recommend him to other tourists and he develops a thriving business. After a while, he can no longer remember which of his...