[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] Has the 19th-century German composer Ludwig van Beethoven become a modern symbol of "exclusion and elitism" for rich, white men?How do you describe something that's dumber than stupid?
In an article published by Vox on Tuesday that quoted New York Philharmonic clarinetist Anthony McGill, writers Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding argued that the work has been propped up by white, wealthy men, whose embrace of the musical composition stood as a symbol of "their superiority and importance."
It couldn't possibly be that it's just a great piece of music...
"For others — women, LGBTQ+ people, people of color — Beethoven’s symphony is predominantly a reminder of classical music’s history of exclusion and elitism," Sloan and Harding wrote.
Last time I went to the symphony, there were both men and women there. I didn't ask anyone's sexual orientation, figuring it was none of my business. There were Asians present in the audience, and even a few blacks. I guess they weren't colorful enough.
The writers suggested that because Beethoven was white and most other classical musicians are white, classical music has become a form of "exclusion, elitism, and gatekeeping" for black and brown people.
As far as I know, anyone is free to study for years and write music. Some don't even have to study that long or hard -- Mozart was a child prodigy. Beethoven and most other classical musicians were white because they were Germans, Italians, French, Russians, even a few Norwegians and Brits, that sort of pallorous people. Africans of the time were pounding on drums and singing. North Africans were composing their own kind of music, as were the Indians, Chinese and Japanese. Somehow each of them has come to enjoy Beethoven and his peers, which Vox writers haven't.
"As you perpetuate the idea that the giants of the music all look the same, it conveys to the other that there’s not a stake in that music for them," classical music critic James Bennett II told Vox.
No one's perpetuating such an idea. The skin color is coincidental to the fact that orchestral music (and opera and ballet) are works of art that have expressed the culture in which they grew, and iin many cases transcended it..
McGill struck a more measured tone, suggesting that an overemphasis on Beethoven's work keeps new musicians and ideas from being fully appreciated in real time.
I've seen similar opinions before. Anyone's free to compose. I think most contemporary composition goes into movie themes. I was thinking of Prokof'ev's Aleksandr Nevsky music the other night and ended up watching the movie. The fact that most of what's written today doesn't rise to the level of Beethoven just means that Beethoven was a genius. So were Mozart, Haydn, Schumann, Dvorak, Moussorgsky, and a bunch of others.
McGill said, "If you pretend like there’s no other music out there, that Beethoven is the greatest music that ever will matter," then new listeners will not feel welcome in the genre.
I think Beethoven was a genius, who wrote more than just Symphony N
Vox is not the only left-leaning outlet pushing to examine the racial makeup of classical music composers. In July, the New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize...
published a lengthy article that accused the world of classical music of failing to address racism.
The world of classical music can't really go back and change the racial background of the world's greatest composers. I'd also add that for every piece of great music played there were probably two or three that were played once and never exhumed again. For every one of those, there were probably a couple dozen that never even got played.
"With their major institutions founded on white European models and obstinately focused on the distant past, classical music and opera have been even slower than American society at large to confront racial inequity," read the New York Times's article.
Could be that's because you can't hand out genius. But Red Guards can't understand that.