The Well-Tempered Ear
Will using first names with Beethoven and Mozart help fight racism and sexism in the concert hall?
5 Comments
PLEASE HELP THE EAR. IF YOU LIKE A CERTAIN BLOG POST, SPREAD THE WORD. FORWARD A LINK TO IT OR, SHARE IT or TAG IT (not just “Like” it) ON FACEBOOK. Performers can use the extra exposure to draw potential audience members to an event. And you might even attract new readers and subscribers to the blog.
By Jacob Stockinger
Why do concert programs read simply Beethoven for Beethoven (below top), but Florence Price for Florence Price (below bottom)?
According to a recent controversial essay by Chris White (below), a professor of music theory at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, it reflects and reinforces sexism and racism.
White is calling for universal “fullnaming” to put women composers and composers of color on an equal footing with the traditional canon of dead white male composers. All people may be equal, but all composers and their music are not.
You can certainly make a case for his interesting argument against using “mononyns,” as he calls them. But it still seems less than convincing to many, including The Ear. It many ways it seems downright silly and arbitrary. Isn’t it obvious that not all composers are equal in quality of their work?
It is the latest dustup in the classical music world, coming right on the heels of, and logically linked to, the idea that Beethoven is responsible for sexism and racism in the concert hall and the so-called “cancel culture” that is allied with the social and political protest movements of the past year, including Black Lives Matter.
That was treated here in a previous post: https://welltempered.wordpress.com/2020/09/19/did-beethoven-and-his-music-especially-the-iconic-fifth-symphony-foster-racism-exclusion-and-elitism-in-the-concert-hall-the-ear-thinks-that-is-pc-nonsense-what-do-you-think/
Here is a link to the complete article by White about the inclusion and absence of first names as it appeared on Slate: https://slate.com/culture/2020/10/fullname-famous-composers-racism-sexism.html
Funny, The Ear thinks of using only last names as little more than a function of: quality, importance and time; of fame and familiarity; and sometimes of promoting clarity and preventing confusion — not of race or gender.
It is why we say Bach (below) when we mean Johann Sebastian, and why we say Wilhelm Friedemann or Carl Philipp Emmanuel or Johann Christian when we mean one of his sons.
It is why we say Richard Strauss to distinguish him from Johann Strauss.
But it also why Haydn means Franz Joseph (below), not his less important brother Michael Haydn.
And why the American composer Henry Cowell is listed with his full name and not just Cowell.
Perhaps one day – if we hear enough of the music by the recently rediscovered Black female composer Florence Price often enough and like it enough – she will be known simply as Price. After all, the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu is not usually listed as simply Takemitsu.
Actually, the Ear prefers using full names for all composers — famous or not, male or female, white or black — especially when it is for the general public. But it seems more a matter of politeness, respect and education than of sociopolitical change and social justice.
That is not to say that those of us in classical music don’t see a need to correct the racism and sexism of the past, to foster diversity and inclusiveness. White has a point. Still, the whole idea of using both names in all cases seems more than a bit naïve, superficial and simplistic as a solution to racism and sexism.
It sounds a lot like the kind of theoretical speculation and contrarian thinking you might expect from an assistant professor trying to get noticed and make his mark on big contemporary issues so that he can get tenure and become an associate professor. A high public profile certainly helps that.
But whatever you think of White’s motives or purpose, his essay is causing a “meltdown” on Twitter: https://mybroadband.co.za/forum/threads/‘fullnaming’-mozart-and-beethoven-to-fight-sexism-and-racism-twitter-squabbles-over-slate-article.1108776/
Should you want to know more about Professor White or to leave a message of either support or disagreement, here is a link to his home website: http://www.chriswmwhite.com
What do you think about the idea of using first names for all composers as a way to combat racism and sexism in classical music?
The Ear wants to hear.
Tags: #African-AmericanComposer, #AmericanComposer, #AsianComposer, #AsianComposers, #Blackcomposers, #BlackLivesMatter, #BlogPost, #BlogPosting, #CancelCulture, #CarlPhilippEmanuelBach, #ChrisWhite, #ConcertProgram, #CoronavirusPandemic, #DeadWhiteMales, #FacebookPost, #FacebookPosting, #FirstName, #FlorencePrice, #FranzJosephHaydn, #HenryCowell, #HomeWebsite, #JacobStockinger, #JapaneseComposer, #JohannChristianBach, #JohannSebastianBach, #JohannStrauss, #LastName, #LatinoComposers, #LudwigVanBeethoven, #MassProtests, #MichaelHaydn, #MusicProfessor, #NewYorkCity, #NorthCarolina, #RichardStrauss, #SchoolofMusic, #SocialJustice, #SocialMedia, #TheEar, #TheU.S., #TheUS, #TheUSA, #ToruTakemitsu, #UniversityofMassachusetts-Amherst, #WilhelmFriedemannBach, #WolfgangAmadeusMozart, #WomenComposers, #YaleSchoolofMusic, #YaleUniversity, #YouTubevideo, absence, African American, all, America, American, Amherst, arbitrary, argument, Arts, asian, audience, Bach, Beethoven, bias, black, Black Lives Matter, BLM, blog, brother, cancel culture, Canon, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Chris White, clarity, Classical music, classicalmusic, composer, composers, Concert, concert program, confusion, contrarian, controversial, controversy, coronavirus, Cowell, criticism, culture, CUNY, dead, dead white males, disagreement, distinguish, dustup, Education, equality, essay, Facebook, faculty, fame, familiarity, fight, first name, Florence Price, footing, forward, Franz Joseph Haydn, frst, fullnaming, function, Haydn, hear, Henry Cowell, home website, importance, inclusion, inclusiveness, interesting, Jacob Stockinger, Japan, Japanese, Johann Christian Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Strauss, Johannes Brahms, last, last name, Latino, Latinx, leave, like, link, logic, Ludwig van Beethoven, male, males, Massachusetts, meltdown, message, Michael Haydn, mononym, motives, movement, Mozart, Music, music faculty, naive, New York City, North Carolina, obvious, obvious'equal, pandemic, People, Point, polite, politeness, post, posting, prefer, Prejudice, price, professor, profile, program, promote, protest, purpose, quality, Queens, Queens College, race, racism, read, recent, rediscover, reflect, reinforce, respect, Richard Strauss, School of Music, sex, Sexism, share, silly, simole, simplistic, simply, Slate, Slate.com, social justice, social media, sociopolitical, solution, speculation, Strauss, superficial, support, tag, Takemitsu, Teacher, tenure, The Ear, theoretical, theory, time, Toru Takemitsu, Twitter, U.S., United States, university, University of Massachusetts, US, USA, use, Website, white, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, women, women composers, Yale
Classical music: NPR plays musical anthropologist and goes into the field to bring back a live recording of glam pianist Yuja Wang playing Prokofiev at the Steinway Factory in New York City.
Leave a Comment
By Jacob Stockinger
The Ear has to hand it to NPR’s terrific classical music blog “Deceptive Cadence” and to NPR’s “All Songs Considered.”
For quite some time now, NPR has featured “Tiny Desk Concerts” — classical, jazz, folk, roots music — during which major performers play live in the crowded NPR studio. They are easy to link to and stream over your computer or maybe even your TV set these days. (NPR books great guests, including, below bottom, superstar cellist Yo-Yo Ma.)
You can also find NPR links to and archives of other live performances -– often through radios stations such as WQXR-FM in New York City and WGBH in Boston –- and include a recital of live music in major halls and venues, including one of Franz Joseph Haydn, Ludwig van Beethoven, Claude Debussy and Frederic Chopin by the acclaimed Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes at Carnegie Hall (below). And there are many, many others.
And now Deceptive Cadence seems to be acting like musical anthropologist. The time they went out “into the field” – that is, not in the usual venues and concert halls.
That’s not unheard of, of course. That is how the great composer Bela Bartok (below) started out as a musical anthropologist or ethnologist of Hungarian and Romanian folk music, and then used his research to morph into one of the pioneers of musical modernism. Chopin used Polish music like the mazurka to create a new Romanticism. And in American folk music, the musical anthropology of Alan Lomax is legendary.
Specifically, NPR went to the piano factory of Steinway and Sons in New York City and recorded the red-hot glam pianist Yuja Wang playing the fiercely difficult Toccata in D Minor, Op. 11, with all its hypnotic repetition of a single note, by Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev on a brand new Steinway concert grand. (You can see and hear it in a YouTube video at the bottom. Don’t forget to click on the icon that is second from the right to enlarge the video image to fill your computer screen.)
The music and the physical virtuosity or dexterity is amazing to behold.
It is also kind of cute and informal to watch the diminutive figure of the glamorous Wang playing difficult cert music in a cold, wood-strewn and equipment-strewn warehouse in fingerless wool hobo gloves that go up her forearm –- but only after she uses the reflective fallboard above the keys to put on glossy lipstick and so complete her outfit of black fur-like boa, black stiletto heels and geometrically high fashion black-and-white dress.
Ah! Those tribal ceremonies and native attire!
Anyway, here is a link to the performance by Yuja Wang at the Steinway and Sons factory in the borough of Queens, not the usual Steinway showroom in Manhattan where most pianists test and choose pianos for their performances.
The Tiny Desk Concerts archive has lots of kinds of live performances.
For example, here is the famed Kronos Quartet (below) doing a recent Tiny Desk Concert featuring its latest recordings. Many other such concerts by other artists have been archived and are readily accessible:
http://www.npr.org/event/music/246393060/kronos-quartet-tiny-desk-concert
And here is a link to the archive, with links to other older archives, of music Live in Performance housed at NPR. It includes chamber music, orchestral music (below is the Mideast peace-promoting Palestinian-Israeli West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under co-founder and director Daniel Barenboim in Carnegie Hall), operas and recitals:
http://www.npr.org/series/10210144/classics-in-concert/?ps=sa
Tags: Alan Lomax, All Songs Considered, anthropology, Arts, Béla Bartók, Beethoven, Boston, Carnegie Hall, Chamber music, Chopin, Classical music, Daniel Barenboim, Debussy, enthnography, Folk music, Haydn, Hungary, Israeli, Jacob Stockinger, Kronos Quartet, Ludwig van Beethoven, MANHATTAN, mazurka, New York City, NPR, opera, Palestinian, Piano, Poland, Queens, Romania, Sergei Prokofiev, Steinway & Sons, Tiny Desk Concert, toccata, Wang, West-Eastern Divan Orchetsra, WGBH, WQXR-FM, YouTube, Yuja Wang
Recent Comments
The Well-Tempered Ear 