MUSING ON CULTURE: The rules of love

Kent Nagano, Music Director of MOntreal Symphony Orchestra (Photo: Körber Foundation)

When the Vice Chairman of the Körber Foundation, Klaus Wehmeier, opened the 4th Symposium on the Art of Music Education last week in Hamburg, he quoted someone from a previous edition of this symposium who had said “I want to share what I love”. I thought that this is precisely what brings most people, professionals, of different cultural/artistic fields to this kind of meetings: their love for something and the wish to share it.

I was still thinking about this love sharing when Kent Nagano, music director of the Montreal Symphony Orchestra, took the stand. He told us about the state of the orchestra when he took up his position: a 12-million-dollar debt; an audience with an average age of 65+; an occupancy rate of 35%. Nagano told us that he promised the city to present exceptional works at the highest possible quality the musicians could achieve. “So”, he said, “we have now sold out performances, the average age of the audience is 35 and the concert hall looks like the streets of Montreal.”

The maestro didn’t convince me; in the sense that I saw much more in his word than what he was prepared to acknowledge. I don´t believe that the Montreal Symphony Orchestra enjoys sold out performances because of its exceptional repertoire and high quality – or, at least, mainly because of that. These are the characteristics of a number of other orchestras that are struggling to survive. I believe that the Montreal audience might have heard the ‘promise’ of an orchestra leader prepared to commit, to engage with them; a theory also supported by the fact that Kent Nagano was pleased to see the concert halls looking like the city streets, revealing a somehow larger vision and that he was really serious about his commitment. This fact may have played such an important role in the orchestra´s turnaround as the exceptional repertoire and the quality of the interpretation. Nagano wished to share his love with the city and has worked in doing just that.

Photo: Körber Foundation

The question of “How do we share our love” was always at the back of my mind in the following two days. When listening, for instance, to the inspiring musician and composer Kathryn Tickell saying that teaching young people to play the northumbrian pipe doesn´t mean that she wants to turn them into virtuosi; she wants to make them aware of their heritage, the music becoming a statement of who they are. Kathryn truly left a mark on the participants. Although dealing with tradition, she was precisely able to show that this is not something frozen in time. “One needs to go deep into it, use the knowledge and then move on fearlessly”, she said. And by moving on she meant to experiment, to reinterpret, to enrich, to get into a dialogue with other art forms, not for the sake of ‘innovation’, but because of one’s need for expression and for... sharing what one loves.

And I kept on thinking about what it is that we love and how we share it when seeing the genuinely puzzled expression of a participant when he heard me saying that there is quality also in other musical genres, not just in classical music; when listening to some people saying that music education is the school´s responsibility and to others stating that musicians should be obliged to get involved in education activities because they can do it best; when some of the participants were trying to remind us that we were moving away from what really matters – the music and our core audience -, while others were advocating for greater access and the willigness to listen to the people and adapt.

Photo: Körber Foundation

Most of these issues were somehow summarised in the last panel discussion, involving Nick Herrmann (senior producer at Touch Press), Martinh Hoffmann (general manager of the Berin Philharmonic) and Karsten Witt (general manager of karsten witt music management). It was beautiful listening to Karsten Witt talk about his love for classical music, about that very special experience of attending a concert, the concentration, the details, the feelings. “Listening to music via media is a separate thing; we should be concerned with the real thing”, he said.

Is it? Should we be concerned only with the real thing? How about when the closest a person can get to the real thing is a CD or a DVD or the You Tube? Shouldn´t we also be concerned in keeping these doors open and use them to make content available? Does everyone have to listen to classical music with the same degree of concentration in order to have a meaningful experience (for himself, not for the others...)?

I remembered an article I had read a few days before in the Guardian regarding digital access to performances. The journalist, Lyn Gardner, remembered the early 20^th-century conductor Thomas Beecham who believed that the radio would keep people away from concert halls and “chided the ‘wireless authorities’ for doing ‘devilish work’. In the 50s the ‘devil’ was probably the television; in the 90s the websites; in the early 2000s the You Tube, the apps, the livestreaming of performances.

So, although I share Karsten Witt’s love for the ‘real thing’, I am also concerned with what ‘real’ means for other people, what is meaningful to them, what they can have access to and how, and also what they can afford. Because I know that technology allows for different points of entry, for different ways of participation and enjoyment and that it doesn´t keep people away from the real thing. On the contrary, if they have the chance, they do want to taste the real thing.

But there is one more point to make here: even when people come to enjoy the real thing, it doesn´t mean they´ll enjoy it the way another person wants them to. They´ll enjoy it their own way. Love may have many, different rules, but there is definitely one: it cannot be imposed, can it?

With very special thanks to the Körber Foundation, for their kind invitation and hospitality.

Monday 3 February 2014

The rules of love

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