Editorial

This issue of Philosophy of Music Education Review comes at a time of national and international crises, including but not limited to a pandemic that seems out of control and a rising unrest about the plight of minorities, especially black and brown minorities. Why then, you might ask, is this issue devoted to classical music in music education? This seems seriously out of step with and even contrary to what is occupying the minds of music educators. Classical music in the Western tradition may be less available since concert venues are shuttered for the time being and many orchestras and even chamber music ensembles have closed, some maybe forever because of the pandemic. Furthermore, Western classical music is decried for its elitism, racism, colonialism, and authoritarianism, and may indeed be guilty of promoting an ongoing and systemic form of discrimination against non-Caucasian others.

In one issue of the New York Times (July 16, 2020), three pieces were published that touch on the matter of racism in classical music. Joshua Barone in "Opera Can No Longer Ignore its Race Problem," reports on the experience of "brazen racism" felt by many African American artists in opera, especially off-stage in rehearsals, management behaviors, and board room decision-making, and in the selective choice and promotion of individual artists. Anthony Tommasini in "To Make Orchestras More Diverse, End Blind Auditions" describes how auditions conducted with applicants sitting behind screens to hide their gender and race substantially increased the number of women in orchestras but has failed African American and Latinx artists; talented musicians of color are plentiful but are not being identified and therefore hired to improve an orchestra's diversity. Zachary Woolfe and Joshua Barone in "Black Artists on How to Change Classical Music," with input from current Black artists, urge the inclusion in the concert repertoire of more Black musicians and conductors and more importantly, more minority composers and performers to give audiences new voices and styles beyond the predictable Western classical tradition.

So again, the question arises: Given the current zeitgeist, why investigate the inclusion of classical music in the curriculum? It is interesting to note that this question is one that bedevils Anglo-American thinking. In many European countries, some of our contributors in this issue of PMER (for example, Alexandra Kertz-Wezel's "'Kim had the Same Idea as Haydn': International Perspectives on Classical Music and Music Education" and Øivind Varkøy and Hanne Rinholm's, "Focusing on Slowness and Resistance: A Contribution to Sustainable Development in Music Education") note that the Western classical tradition is taken for granted in the curriculum in most of Europe and it is included comfortably along with many other musical traditions.

Mark Whale's piece entitled, "Talking Bach in an Age of Social Justice," speaks most expressly in the defense of classical music in the curriculum. His point is that since classical music mirrors society it has the capacity to be self-critical; it is not condemned to re-enact and reinstitute whatever norms and prejudices characterized its makers and takers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The three New York Times pieces mentioned above illustrate this and may point to some ways current classical music can critique itself and therefore improve itself. This progressive view of classical music is also the basis of the piece by Wiebe Koopal, Joris Vlieghe, and Thomas de Baets, "Mahler Is a DJ: Reconducting Classical Music Education." They explore the role of conductors as if they were DJs in creating and recreating music classically, inspired by numerous sources, so that conducting is a kind of reconducting. Taken together, these two pieces argue that what classical music was is not what it could or will be.

One theme that emerges from the collection of writings in this issue is that whatever positive claims might be made about Western classic music, they are not limited to that tradition but can be found in many other traditions and genres. The implication is that Western art music does possess certain desirable features for those acquainted with it but as Kertz-Wezel points out, it is just one musical culture among many others...