Emerging trends and issues in the music profession and their impact on the individual music teacher

American Music Teacher, April-May, 2004 by Douglas Lowry

Our collective angst about emerging trends in the music profession is undoubtedly rooted in our concern for the future of the music we know and love. We hear reports of its demise, fueled, perhaps, by what we are told are dwindling audiences, sales of CDs and traumas brought on by what we sense are emerging trends in our culture. Yet, I, for one, do not view emerging trends as threats. I, like many, continue to assert my faith in the future of great music, probably for the simple reason that it has a deep and abiding meaning for too many people committed to its sustenance for it to simply disappear. Speculation on my part, perhaps, but the composition, performance and study of great music is a thriving enterprise.

That said, there are concerns: for one, the extent to which great music is considered a public art; put another way, the degree to which some feel it ought to be an art reserved for only the most educated, knowledgeable connoisseur. Or, concerns about the manner in which music, as we present it, engages, not because of its content, but because of the established means and manner by which it is transmitted.

Which brings me to a more fundamental question: if we are confident about that which we do--create, study, teach and perform great music--are we equally as confident about its basic argument? That is, wiry do we do--what it is we do?

I bring up these questions to those who spend their time teaching and performing music because there are some emerging trends--cultural and musical--that dramatically affect what and how we do what we do. The very title of this presentation begins with two key words: "emerging" and "trends." Both share a common underlying theme: change. What is changing, what has and will change, and perhaps most relevantly, how will we adapt to that change? Adaptability enables cultures to endure and also is a forming agent in its evolution. Charles Darwin wrote very much to this point, suggesting natural forces will impose change even if we don't wish it to be so. Species, including art forms, that don't adapt, die off. Yet, to what are we supposed to adapt?

Perhaps to "emerging trends."

If so, what are some of these emerging trends?

Culture: The Visual

We talk a lot about shrinking audiences for classical music. Some attribute this to the very nature of what we do. First, I'm not sure that audiences for classical music are in fact shrinking. They've always been pretty small, and for some pretty good reasons. First of all, classical music is ratified music. It takes time, a little bit of appreciation and an investment of consciousness on the part of the listener. Secondly, music is a nonverbal medium. That said, serious music struggles to survive in an increasingly visually oriented world dominated by media that do not require us to invest. Although there is certainly a visual element in musical performance, for those who say we're plenty exciting just the way we are might think twice if we were to stop and consider that concert dress hasn't changed for probably a couple of hundred years. What the performing artist looks and behaves like on stage does affect how we perceive what we hear in live performance. One of the ironies of music as we know it is that we also can glean significant aesthetic satisfaction from listening to a recording in the privacy of our own home. Yet live performance of great music must live its life in a culture deeply rooted in the moving visual image; more particularly, television, videos, streamed images on the Internet and motion pictures. I do not believe the intoxicating impact of television can be minimized. You might declare that you don't watch television, but if you use e-mail, surf the Internet or use your computer in any way, shape or form, you watch television. Its seductive power for making some tasks visually stimulating and interesting is part of the reason we become addicted to, for example, e-mail. For writing letters, creating PowerPoint presentations, for sending photographs as attachments in e-mails, it is titillating because it's made to be that way. Bill Gates has made sure it's entertaining and not dull, and he has done that because he knows you and I are stimulated by colorful visual images.

The very desktop of your computer, with its colored icons floating across the screen or the different fonts you can use for your typed messages, all creates a new playground for you. The Microsoft "ding" that goes off when you receive an e-mail sends you jumping to the computer to see who or what has contacted you. Then there's e-mail itself, which can be a form of addiction because it offers you an opportunity to receive good (or bad) information and (1) react by sending a reply or (2) leave it alone. In either case, you don't have to either face or speak with your correspondent. You never have to hear, smell or see the person to whom you are writing. It's the same thing with TV. You can sit there and react in the privacy of your own home, fall asleep, get your drama, all without any human interaction at all.