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

Culture: Popular

We now have popular culture accepted as an academic field. Yet, some of our finest contemporary composers are steeped in pop music, for it forms the basis of much of what they write. The titles of Michael Dougherty's Desi (yes, Desi Arnaz) or John Adams's Lollapalooza certainly do not allude to "sonata" or "chaconne," although both composers may utilize those forms in their music. Popular culture, then, furnishes our composers with their own kind of folk basis, much like Hungarian folk music did for Bartok, or folk songs for Haydn.

Culture: New Sounds, New Instruments

Now then, as a segue, to technology, taken as a tool. You all are familiar, I am sure, with notation programs like Finale and Sibelius; with sequencing programs that enable recorded sounds to be digitally routed into a hard disk. I will acknowledge that electronic keyboards are not an adequate substitute for an acoustic piano, but I will say that the state of the art in electronic keyboards--weighted, the sampled sounds--is astonishing. I bring this up because sequencing programs, simple ones at least, can serve as instant recorders for students to play back their interpretations. There are, of course, accompanying programs Finale has developed that serve as pretty reliable accompanying devices for those students who may not have access to an accompanist. Inferior to the real thing, they can nevertheless assist in instructing a soloist. I am referring to prerecorded accompaniments available on the market that can enhance the environment.

The synthesizer can replicate acoustic sounds so successfully that the public doesn't know the difference! Film composers write entire scores using nothing but computer-generated sounds. And there are prominent Hollywood film composers who are affectionately known as "hummers" because they can't read music and rely on talented transcribers and orchestrators to do the "real" work! Yet, perhaps the most powerful manifestation of computer-generated music as a sonic tool, is the invention of new sounds. Is this latter development so different than the evolutionary changes brought about by the emergence of the modern symphony orchestra? Was there a precursor to the piano? Was the flute always metal? Did the horn always have valves? And now, modern-day orchestra percussionists must learn a battery of instruments unheard of even thirty years ago, for with every new composer comes a new sound he or she wants banged out there in the back row.

Culture: Audience Fragmentation

Markets have become fragmented. Audiences have become fragmented. Some kinds of concerts have virtually disappeared from the concert-going landscape. It used to be that art song recitals were fairly regular on performing arts series. They nearly are extinct. It's the same for chamber music, or so some say.

Others claim these audiences always have been small.

Culture: Saturation of the Market

Bernard Holland, the acerbic critic of the New York Times, has said, "After fifty recordings of the Brahms 4th, Nos. 51 and 52 become irrelevant." It takes no more than a cursory glance at the inventory of available classical music recordings to realize the market for common practice may be reaching a point of critical mass. To compound the market saturation issue, it is nowadays so astonishingly easy to create a CD replete with glamour packaging that receiving such an item, as I do several times a week, perhaps does not have that special, unique allure that producing a phonograph recording of old did. Recording technology has enabled us to make a commercial quality CD from our homes, which I suppose makes us think that if anyone can do it, then it must not be so special anymore. Furthermore, you can reproduce it for eighty cents a copy and send it to all of your friends, who can, if they like it, make copies on their computer.