Music, Creativity, and Education

Benji Rose

2021

'I still don't know. I have no theory but that a reed boat is seaworthy and the Atlantic is a westward conveyer. But it must have been short of a miracle if, in the course of millennia, no Mediterranean maritime expeditions followed the sun or broke their rudders outside Gibraltar, or were swept off course while trying to avoid shipwreck in the perilous current off Cape Juby. Did the crew of Ra drift to America because of unprecedented inability in avoiding breakage of steering oars, or because of unprecedented ability in staying on top of bundles of reeds? Here I do have theory: Perhaps we got across because we sailed on the ocean and not on a map.'

Thor Heyerdahl, The Ra Expeditions (1970)

The Problem

Something is broken in music education.

A lecturer in music theory was once discussing final recital marks, and commented that the students with the top marks were not usually the ones to go on to have interesting careers in music, but it was those who were getting medium level marks that were the ones to keep an eye on, because their marks reflected the time they were spending outside of the school, pursuing their own interests: they were not struggling to complete courses, but they were dedicating sufficient time and energy into other projects. 

On a different occasion, still as a student, I was told by a head of department that we (the students) needed to try and retain the passion and drive that had brought us to the conservatoire although the ‘education’ we were receiving would likely try and eradicate it.

That's when I knew we were all completely fucked.

Walk into most conservatories today and you'll find the same scene playing out in a hundred practice rooms. Students who can execute Paganini caprices flawlessly but freeze like rabbits in headlights when you ask them to improvise four bars. Musicians who know every note of the Brahms violin concerto but have never written a single piece of their own. Talented artists crippled by performance anxiety, terrified of making mistakes, disconnected from the very music they're supposed to love.

We're producing technically proficient musicians who lack artistic voices.

We're teaching students to reproduce rather than create, to copy rather than question, to fear rather than explore. The conservatory system trains musicians for a world that no longer exists: a world of stable orchestral jobs, of rigid repertoire, of audiences content to hear the same pieces performed the same way for the hundredth time.

But the world has changed. Modern musicians need to be adaptable, creative, entrepreneurial. They need to improvise, compose, collaborate across genres, and forge their own paths. Yet music education remains stuck in the nineteenth century, obsessed with perfection, competition, and conformity to a narrow canon.

The result? Hundreds of music graduates each year who cannot sustain careers. Talented students who leave conservatories disillusioned, technically accomplished but creatively stifled. A classical music culture that alienates audiences and marginalises traditions outside the Western European canon.

Harry Partch saw this coming in 1974 (or 1949 if you read the first edition):

'Traditions in the creative arts are per se suspect. For they exist on the patrimony of standardization, which means degeneration. They dominate because they are to the interest of some group that has the power to perpetuate them, and they cease to dominate when some equally powerful group undertakes to bend them to a new pattern. It is not difficult for the alert student to acquire the traditional techniques. Under the pressures of study these are unconsciously and all too easily absorbed. The extent to which an individual can resist being blindly led by tradition is a good measure of his vitality.'

What is Tradition, Anyway?

The word 'tradition' gets thrown around in music schools like it's holy writ. But let's be clear about what we're actually talking about.

'Tradition' comes from the Latin trans- (across, over) and dare (give, deliver, betray). The Old French tradicion meant delivery. Nurturing. Continuing. Not necessarily preserving like some embalmed corpse.

But 'tradition' in the modern sense? That's all about preservation.

As Anthony Giddens points out in Runaway World, the term 'tradition' as we use it today is actually a product of the past two hundred years in Europe. In medieval times there was no generic notion of tradition. There was no call for such a word, precisely because tradition and custom were everywhere. You didn't need to talk about tradition because you were swimming in it.

The moment you have to start talking about 'preserving tradition', tradition is already dead.

Since Partch wrote the second edition of Genesis of a Music in 1974, little has changed in classical music education. If anything, we've doubled down. We've seen an increase in standardisation, and this is a problematic and deeply negative trait of pedagogy in the creative arts. Standardisation attempts to thwart innovation. (Robinson, 2015)

Partch himself was profoundly annoyed by the emphasis on technical proficiency over intrinsic content:

'The reasons for my dissatisfaction, mostly inchoate at the time, are revealed hereafter in connection with specific topics. At this point I may merely mention how profoundly annoyed I became over the widespread emphasis on skills at an instrument, emphasis on the "technique" of playing and composing music, both by authors of books and by teachers. All too rarely did I find consideration of intrinsic content by either author or teacher. Various degrees of intrinsic content were simply accepted, having long ago been determined for us. If a product was "polished," either in performance or in "technique" of composition, ipso facto it was "good." If an instrumentalist could manipulate the black and white digitals or other paraphernalia more dexterously than most instrumentalists he was ipso facto an "artist." And if he could "interpret" something written several centuries ago in a way to please the cognoscenti he was ipso facto a "great artist" and became the recipient, at every turn, of expressions of homage. To any serious creative person this is a fundamentally unwholesome situation.'

As Michael Morrow noted, this leads to a culture of imitation: 'One finds performer after performer adopting the same mannerisms, mannerisms based on no known historical practice, but merely in imitation of a hero's personal idiosyncrasies.' (Morrow, 1978).

Pianist Chris Lloyd nailed it in his blog post 'Conservatoires Are Too Conservative' (8 September 2016). He wrote about the most frequent question heard in piano masterclasses: 'Which recordings of this piece have you listened to?'

'Why is this question asked so frequently? To an optimistic person, it may be to test how much inspiration the student has received whilst learning this piece. The pessimist, however, would view this as a damning indictment of the importance placed on recycling ideas and taking them as gospel; that each student must subordinate to a previous "master". To play a Chopin ballade, one must listen to twenty different recordings, and make a collage of their favourite musical ideas before presenting the finished product.'

Classical music teaches students to re-create, not to create. Lloyd continues:

'The Conservatoire is above all, a place of learning; but with the current format, it is impossible to focus on larger development, in the relatively small amount of time gifted to you. The practice of grading is degrading; it goes against the ability to develop on a large scale, as you are constantly worried about the next exam and not your overall development.'

Bingo.

How We Got Here

To understand what's broken, we need to understand how we got here.

Before the nineteenth century, improvisation was central to Western art music. Musicians didn't simply reproduce what was written on the page. They embellished, ornamented, varied, and improvised. The historical use of improvisation, particularly in the forms of divisions, diminutions, and ornamentation, was fundamental to performance practice. Bach improvised fugues. Mozart improvised cadenzas and variations. Liszt was famous for his ability to improvise on any theme.

When we look through books such as the Mel Bay publications of patterns for improvisation, we see a striking similarity to the treatises on diminutions by Renaissance writers like Bassano, Ganassi, Ortiz, and Dalla Casa. Prior to the nineteenth century, the musical score was an outline and the instrumentalists' ideas and creativity brought it to life, in a similar way to jazz improvisation.

But improvisation didn't exist in isolation. It thrived in a particular social and cultural environment: the courts of eighteenth-century Europe.

The Court Environment: Music as Living Practice

Before 1790, Western art music was predominantly performed in patronage settings at the courts and aristocratic residences of Europe. Wealthy patrons would hire musicians on extended contracts, allowing performers to live nearby and provide entertainment for the court. Significant courts in Berlin, Mannheim, Dresden, Paris, Esterháza, and Vienna were cultural centres of the late eighteenth century, setting high standards for art music excellence.

This created a unique musical environment. Court musicians like the Mozart family were immersed in art music from birth. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart grew up in an environment where music was constant: his older sister Nannerl practised the keyboard daily, and Leopold regularly hosted musical meetings with fellow musicians in their home. Leopold gave violin and keyboard lessons at home and frequently played chamber music with guests and colleagues.

The Mozart family expressed themselves naturally within the musical vocabulary of 1770s court music, just as Louis Armstrong and Ravi Shankar would later do within their respective musical cultures. Court musicians were not just passive consumers of music; they were actively involved in it, either by performing or by listening to and absorbing the musical practices of the time. These musicians were constantly surrounded by the same style of music, whether at home, in religious worship, dances, theatres, or other social occasions.

The art music of the eighteenth century existed in a living environment, similar to how genres like blues or flamenco are still practised today in their respective communities. It was a vital, living tradition, closely tied to the culture and life of the court. Music was not simply entertainment or an art form; it was functionally integrated into the broader social fabric. It was an essential part of daily court life and community gatherings.

Crucially, in this environment, music was often transmitted orally from one generation of court musicians to the next. Notation was secondary to the transmission of musical traditions. The primary inspirations for composition or performance were socially derived. The social context in which music was created and performed significantly influenced its style and character.

This is the environment in which improvisation flourished. Musicians didn't need explicit instruction in how to ornament or vary themes because they had absorbed these practices through constant exposure. The communal aural understanding between performer and audience made improvisation possible and expected.

As the Royal Academy of Music notes in their historical performance materials: 'Folk music, unlike western art music, is not conceived in terms of musical notation, but in terms of exceedingly idiosyncratic performing styles. This innocence of notation was also a feature of minstrel music before the early years of the 16th century.'

The Death of the Court System

By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, this world was disappearing. The court system ceased to be the central locus of political and financial power in many areas as power shifted to the middle classes. The patronage of art music, originally exclusive to nobility and court musicians, became more accessible to the bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie shifted from insurgents in 1789 to the ruling class by 1848. By the mid-nineteenth century, they represented the upper class in countries like France. Western art music's performance context shifted from exclusive courts to the middle-class parlour and eventually to the public auditorium.

Art music became an accessible commodity, available for anyone to consume, provided they could afford the time and cost. This democratisation meant more people could hear and perform Western art music, assuming they underwent formal education or study. Printed music editions became widely available, and the affordability of musical instruments increased, allowing more people to participate in music-making.

But there was a problem: the new audiences and performers had not grown up in the living musical culture of the courts. They had not absorbed the practices of ornamentation and improvisation through constant exposure. They needed instruction.

The Rise of Conservatories and Notation

The early nineteenth century saw the creation of conservatories, a formalised educational structure to teach aristocratic musical traditions to the middle class. The Paris Conservatoire, founded after the French Revolution, was one of the earliest, initially aimed at the middle class rather than the aristocracy. Vienna's first conservatory, established in 1817, similarly arose with the support of middle-class social organisations.

Prior to conservatories, the court environment had served as a natural institution for musical training. Within the court, musicians passed on performance expertise, including improvisational techniques, through example rather than formal education or written materials. This informal transmission of knowledge happened from one generation to the next.

Conservatories were established by those outside the court system, who had an interest in preserving and disseminating aristocratic musical practices to individuals excluded from the traditional aristocratic environment. This marked the beginning of formal, structured pedagogy for art music and improvisation.

At the Paris Conservatory, musicians originally trained with an equal focus on composition and conducting alongside their instrumental studies. However, as technical demands increased and the focus turned more to the primary instrument, some subjects had to give way to the instrumentalist: composition, conducting, counterpoint, orchestration, and improvisation. We can get a glimpse of the tradition surviving in organ departments today which still include choral conducting, counterpoint, and improvisation.

Notation became increasingly important as a pedagogical tool and performance aid, especially with the rise of the middle-class performer. Notated scores played a crucial role in spreading elite music to the middle class and beyond. Middle-class individuals could afford to purchase instruments but couldn't hire professional musicians. The availability of sheet music enabled them to learn to play music themselves, bypassing the high costs of hiring musicians.

Notated music provided detailed instructions for middle-class performers who were unfamiliar with aristocratic music. It became a tool for learning music in the absence of exposure to its original performance context.

The Problem of Amateur Performance

Professional musicians began to complain about amateur performances during the nineteenth century, particularly criticising the use of improper performance techniques by non-professionals.

Leopold Mozart's Violinschule addresses the issue of improvisatory embellishments. At the time, improvisation was still common, even when playing from sheet music. However, excessive embellishment was seen negatively. Mozart criticises musicians who over-decorate a piece, especially in slow movements, by turning single notes into numerous embellishments. This type of 'note-murdering' was considered a sign of poor judgement.

Many manuals from the early nineteenth century warned that only those who had mastered composition should attempt to embellish or improvise on existing works. These manuals stressed that common embellishments were often seen as improper unless performed by trained musicians who had a thorough understanding of the art of composition.

Eduard Hanslick, a prominent critic, criticised amateur pianists for playing what he called 'common and pernicious piano-playing nonsense.' His stance reflects the growing trend of condemnation of untrained or overly creative performances.

Domenico Corri published sheet music in the late 1780s that included complete ornamentation. This was a shift from earlier practices where performers were expected to improvise ornamentation themselves. Corri's approach was aimed at providing performers with a clearer interpretation of the score, thereby reducing reliance on improvisation and improving accessibility for those unfamiliar with ornamentation.

The Middle-Class Interpretation

The shift in musical interpretation among the middle classes should not be seen as simply a negative trend. It reflects the natural evolution of a social class trying to appropriate and perform the music of a different, higher class in a way that felt authentic to their own musical culture. The middle class, lacking exposure to court traditions, applied their own interpretations to the music they encountered, influenced by their everyday musical experiences.

The freedom these performers felt to alter and personalise the music was admirable, as it demonstrated individual expression within the framework of art music. Unfortunately, this freedom to reinterpret would begin to disappear in future generations as the formalisation of music and standardised performance practices took hold.

With the growth of conservatories and formal music education, musicians became more self-conscious in their performances, often relying on interpretative advice from music professionals rather than their own instinctual understanding of music. The emphasis shifted towards following established interpretations and emulating the practices of social elites in music performance, which diminished the space for individual expression or creativity.

Bourdieu describes the petits bourgeois as individuals who are drawn to high art but are often disconnected from it due to their lack of direct exposure to its practices. They tend to have an undifferentiated reverence for art music due to their ignorance of its deeper cultural context, resulting in a vain striving to integrate into the aristocratic culture from which they are alienated. This desire for integration leads them to adopt a more external appreciation of art music, often defined by the opinions of the cultural elites rather than developing a genuine, instinctual connection with the music.

The self-conscious reliance on professional advice among aspiring musicians is seen as a way to mimic the music practices of the aristocracy rather than develop a personal understanding or interpretation of the music. This trend reflects a detachment from individual creativity, where aspiring musicians begin to focus more on conforming to established norms than expressing their own musical thoughts.

The Educational Movement

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the idea of using art music to educate audiences began to take shape. This coincided with the decline of patronage and the gradual shift of court music from the aristocracy to the broader public sphere. An increasing number of non-professionals became interested in playing art music, creating a need for musical education.

Prominent German intellectuals played a major role in advocating for the educational value of music. Goethe, Schiller, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Forkel, and Zelter were united in their concern over the 'collapse' of aristocratic musical standards and the quality of music being performed.

Forkel and Zelter proposed that ruling authorities should financially support and promote 'proper' music for the general populace to prevent a decline in musical standards. In Mannheim during the 1790s, wealthy citizens organised a public music society with the goal of raising public taste and improving musical standards, which they saw as degraded by the popularity of inferior music.

The push to educate the public about classical music came primarily from wealthy burghers rather than the aristocracy. These burghers, whilst well-meaning, were often less informed about the nuances of classical music, leading to a reverent but limiting approach to art music. Their emphasis on education was more about maintaining control over cultural norms than fostering a diverse or creative interpretation of music.

There has been a consistent need to educate the public about classical music, especially through music appreciation classes or other educational initiatives, beginning in the early nineteenth century. In England, the 'Young People's Concerts' emerged as an initiative to encourage children to listen to classical music. Similar programmes developed in the United States and Germany around the same period.

Various types of educational concerts emerged: examination concerts in German music schools, People's Concerts designed to expose the working classes to middle-class ideals of musical propriety and taste. In the 1930s and 1940s, a Russian equivalent was established as part of adult education, where classical musicians would travel to remote towns in Russia to bring the 'best' in music to common people.

The turn-of-the-century composers saw art music as a way to educate and shake people out of complacency. Schoenberg believed that the purpose of art should be to challenge the audience and push them out of their comfort zone. This contrasts with earlier musicians who were primarily concerned with entertainment or pleasing the audience.

The concept of art music as a tool for education and moral improvement became increasingly prevalent, especially during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The move to formalise art music education resulted in less focus on individual expression or spontaneous creativity, as audiences were being shaped to view art music as a means of elevation and moral improvement rather than as a flexible, creative tradition that could accommodate improvisation.

Art Music as Social Distinction

By the late nineteenth century, art music had become more economically accessible to a broader audience, allowing it to function as a means of social distinction across various social strata. Classical arts became symbols of aristocratic refinement and prestige. The ability to perform or engage with this music became a way to distinguish oneself in society, making it a sign of elevated taste and cultural capital.

Patronage of classical arts had long been connected with the aristocracy, and this connection helped define social hierarchies in Europe. As the nineteenth century progressed, patronage of classical music became an activity in which financial elites and musical elites were able to interact on more equal footing, reinforcing the status-enhancing function of art music.

In the late nineteenth century, familiarity with aristocratic music or classical arts was increasingly seen as a way for individuals to elevate their social status, particularly among the rising middle class. This led to a focus on formal education in classical music, as learning to perform and appreciate art music was seen as a pathway to social mobility.

Low and marginal-status individuals, such as Jews and working-class families, increasingly became involved in performing and composing art music during the nineteenth century. These individuals often sought social distinction and acceptance from the elite European society, for whom art music was a symbol of refinement and prestige.

By the nineteenth century, there was a widespread middle-class perception that popular culture, including folk and popular music, was inferior or worthless when compared to art music. Many composers in this period, especially those from marginal or lower-class backgrounds, rejected popular styles in favour of creating music that would align them with elite artistic circles. By composing art music, these composers aimed to transcend their class heritage and gain recognition in a society that valued aristocratic refinement.

Composers who sought to be accepted into the ranks of the European musical elite often rejected composing for mass appeal or popular audiences, as doing so would have undermined their aspirations for higher status. Thus, art music became a vehicle for class mobility, and popular styles were often viewed as incompatible with the artistic and social goals of composers seeking distinction.

The Loss of Improvisation

As art music became a tool for status elevation, its improvised nature became less relevant. Audiences were less concerned with whether the music was improvised because they often had limited exposure to its original form and context. This signalled the decrease of communal aural understanding that once existed between performer and audience, especially in the aristocratic courts where improvisation was common.

Art music no longer served the same cultural and social functions it had in its original court contexts. Instead, it became something that could simply meet the aesthetic demands of concertgoers and society without needing the interactive and communal aspect of improvisation.

A more concerning outcome of this shift is that large segments of the middle class, in their pursuit of art music, became increasingly antagonistic towards folk and popular music. This antagonism led to a blindness to the value and meaning of the diverse musical traditions that surrounded them and reinforced the disdain for non-art music that was viewed as less cultured.

The transition from improvised to written music reflected a broader societal trend towards individual status signalling through cultural consumption rather than participation in communal artistic practices. Improvisation lost its place in music-making as formal training and performance practices based on written music became central to achieving cultural distinction.

Louis Spohr (1784-1859) rejected improvisations in music in the dying days of spontaneous elaborations on the score, and such elaborations and improvisations are almost unheard of in Bach and other baroque composers today beyond where the set standards and 'rules' allow.

The Industrial Revolution and Standardisation

The ideology and flaws in classical music date back to the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the creation of classical music as we know it. The concept of tradition in the handing down of an art for the development of the next generation has been largely lost in the education of classical music performance.

'Tradition' as we have come to understand it has become an act of preservation, it is the end product of a civilisation. The meaning of the word 'tradition' seems to have changed to the understanding we have today during the Enlightenment, and in opposition to modernisation. The Industrial Revolution did not seek to preserve customs but to modernise and standardise.

As Giddens observes:

'Disentangling ourselves from the prejudices of the Enlightenment, how should we understand "tradition"? We can make a good start by going back to invented traditions. Invented traditions and customs, Hobsbawm and Ranger suggest, aren't genuine ones. They are contrived, rather than growing up spontaneously; they are used as a means of power; and they haven't existed since time immemorial. Whatever continuity they imply with the long-term past is largely false.'

The nineteenth century is the pivotal period which led to classical music and education as we know it. The industrial revolutions were key elements that brought both urbanisation and periods of prosperity, and the problems created by this are equally numerous. Standardisation was already mentioned, and this is the prevailing problem that the nineteenth century gave us. A related issue we encounter is that of categorisation.

Education as Industrial Product

Education as we know it was also an innovation that resulted from the Industrial Revolution. With urbanisation, revolutions in transport, and transformation of making goods, came the movement of rural people to the cities. A people who had once been illiterate and learned their craft or trade from exposure to it, being passed from father to son or being apprenticed, were moving away from that tradition and into the city, and the rise of the urban working class resulted. There was an increase in demand for lawyers, doctors and bankers, and through this, a growing demand for an organised system of mass education. School was no longer only for the wealthy.

This mass education was modelled on the same principle as the manufacturing that defined the Industrial Revolution: to mould students to certain requirements, to the production of identical versions of the same thing. If something did not conform, it was discarded or reworked. Compliance with the rules and standards led to academic success. This principle is still applied to education.

This is a model based on conformity (standardisation). Mass education was designed as a series of stages from elementary school to higher education (categorisation): students are organised into separate year groups and progress based on their year of birth or year they joined the school, largely regardless of their abilities.

A first-year student in a conservatory may be placed into student ensembles with other first years, they might have obligatory choir duties, obligatory piano lessons, and access to other facilities may be denied. The issues with standardisation and of categorisation go deeper than this: they prevent the students from innovating, from exploring, from asking questions, and from being exposed to music outside of the department, methods, approaches, repertoire, and instruments other than their own. In other words, a conservatoire conserves tradition.

The problem here is that not only are students confined within the walls of their instrument, but that this constitutes a certain degree of artistic identity theft through too strong a focus on perfection and conformity.

Major Developments of the Nineteenth Century

Many major developments in music occurred during the nineteenth century:

• The rise of the piano

• The rise of the orchestra

• The rise of opera

• The rise of the virtuoso soloist

• The standardisation of form

• The standardisation of A=440

• The development of all orchestral instruments

Each of these developments came with a sacrifice. The piano introduced equal temperament, dynamics, and increased range. This affected all instruments in different ways. A generalised view for the sake of brevity would give two categories:

• Fell out of fashion: the recorder, viola da gamba, viola d'amore, harpsichord, etc.

• Reworked: all orchestral instruments.

The reworking increased the dynamic and chromatic possibilities of the instruments, as well as the compass, and usually, the volume.

The instruments that fell out of fashion were not readily re-workable in such ways, and alternatives were available: recorder became flute, da gamba became cello, harpsichord became piano.

The violin is a great example here: the baroque violin was and is a beautiful instrument, expressive, and colourful. The violin later had its neck set at an angle, placing greater tension on the bridge and thus creating more volume. The bow became heavier, the bass bar was extended. The resulting instrument can compete with a piano for volume, but it lost something along the way as all instruments became uniform in design.

Another notable development of music in the nineteenth century is that the ideology with the precept of genius and of masterpiece arose, and despite all the changes that humankind has gone through since the Enlightenment, the nineteenth century ideology of classical music persists.

The Instrument Problem

If we look back to Michael Praetorius's De Organographia (c.1620), we see a huge and colourful array of the musical instruments known in Germany at the time. Without getting into too much detail, here is the result of a brief skim through: organ (including regal and portative), harpsichord, theorbo, bagpipe, cittern, numerous guitar-like instruments, bass shawms, sackbuts in different sizes, cornetti (including mute and tenor), long (natural) horn resembling the Norwegian lur, trumpet and bugle, consorts of recorders and flutes, tabor pipes (including bass), assorted racketts and curtals, assorted shawms and bagpipes, kortholts, crumhorns, more cornetti and bagpipe, virginal, clavichord and other keyboards, different lute-type instruments, guitar and rebec, harps and dulcimer, family of viols, violin family, kit-violin, and tromba marina, hunting horns, bells, triangle, tambourine, and instruments resembling nyckelharpa and vielle à roue, timpani, big drums and fife, panpipe, various other instruments.

Since the time of Praetorius, instruments have become standardised (this is not to say that there was no standardisation prior to the Industrial Revolution, but certainly on a lesser scale and with a lot more variety in instrument type and design) and this standardisation was done at a time when instruments were developing to keep up with the needs and trends of classical music: equal temperament, volume, and range. The sacrifice for these was colour and idiosyncrasies.

Compare a classical music student with a business student. They are both expected, if not expecting, to become innovators, self-employed, and to create their careers. In business education, a student is taught the exact opposite of a classical musician: to be unorthodox, to break out of the box, to do new things.

How many of the graduating violinists this year will be leaving their institution with knowledge even of the existence of the hardanger, the gadulka, the kemence, or the rebec/vielle, or even the viola d'amore? Will the institution have allowed (or encouraged) them to study these beyond the library? Would a knowledge of these instruments and their repertoire give those graduates some key elements where they might forge a career, or allow them unique abilities to promote new classical music and work with composers?

The study of those instruments would give the students different perspectives, some of which will encompass other areas of musical knowledge. These will lead to any number of problems, questions and ideas to be analysed, researched and discussed. Not only does this allow us to ask different questions and look to different methods to investigate them, it also relates lessons to students' prior knowledge, uses multiple instructional methods and resources, and it leads the student to a practical, performance, application of those questions and gives potential variety in assessment techniques and medium, quite different than the memorisation of textbook facts.

The Modern Consequences

Modern performers face difficulty when interpreting historical art music due to the lack of clear guidance from contemporary musical practices. Modern-day musicians cannot rely on aural experience to accurately reproduce the historical performance of past repertoires, which leads to a focus on historical research.

Historical research has become a major field of study for musicians and scholars who seek to recreate music as it might have sounded in earlier centuries. This desire for authenticity and historical accuracy, especially in music written before the mid-eighteenth century, leads to an emphasis on reproducing original performance practices.

There are concerns that an over-emphasis on historical performance might hinder creativity and spontaneity in music-making. The focus on recreating past performances may suggest a lack of confidence in modern musicians' musical instincts and the ability to connect with music in the present. Reverence for historical music may restrict the capacity for improvisation, as musicians are often focused on faithfully reproducing music as it was performed centuries ago rather than making the music relevant for today's audience.

The preservation of historical music as a 'relic' for reverence rather than innovation is compared to the rise of museums as a middle-class pastime, which also emphasises the preservation of artefacts. The 'reverential attitude' toward past works, where music is viewed almost like a museum artefact, has led to a rigid interpretation of the past. This prevents spontaneous innovation in performance.

Modern musicians face challenges due to a discrepancy between their intuitive understanding of music (shaped by cultural experience) and the aesthetic expectations of music they play professionally. Classical performers feel constrained by the 'tyranny of tradition', they are bound by the written score and the pressure to interpret it in a way deemed 'correct,' which may limit creative expression and spontaneity. Composers often feel unsatisfied with existing musical vocabularies, struggling to express meaningful ideas using traditional styles, which may stifle innovative creation.

The study of historical music in conservatories often creates an aesthetic distance between modern musicians and their own lived musical experiences. Whilst conservatories focus on preserving and codifying historical music, these efforts can be artificial and may hinder the meaningful interpretation of the music in contemporary contexts. Historical focus in conservatories can separate students from the present and contemporary musical practices, as the emphasis is on old music rather than integrating music into current cultural experiences.

Thurston Dart suggests that the modern art musician is 'imprisoned by the past,' as their education is primarily based on playing, hearing, reading, and analysing old music. This historical focus warps their musical experience, taking it away from the present and making it increasingly disconnected from contemporary music.

There is a polarisation in contemporary art music, with one trend being a movement towards the past (focused on traditional, historical music) and the other a movement towards the future (experimental music). Both trends avoid the aesthetic present in terms of popular and traditional musics. Conservatory-trained musicians may feel alienated from the music they perform because it's not 'theirs' in a personal, contemporary sense. They have lost the ability to perform it in their own way due to the rigid expectations surrounding the performance of canonised works.

Early Music and Historical Performance

What was remarkable about the revivalists' work, what early music has largely lost since, was a deliberate shifting in performance style: a shifting away from the practices of contemporary classical music, seeking and developing techniques more relevant to the early repertoire that was not found in classical music at the time. Ever since, as early music has become institutionalised, the shifting away from a classical tradition has pivoted to being a part of it, in much the same way as jazz has.

The vibrant 'Early Music' has given way to 'Historical Performance', as conservatoires tend to advertise today. On their historical performance page, one major UK conservatoire does not mention 'creative' or 'innovative' or any word synonymous with them. Early music was, at the height of the revival between the 1960s and 1980s, a colourful and energetic realm of classical music, drawing in audiences and connecting them to a musical heritage that had been forgotten. This once bright and vibrant art form is largely lost, with Moeck among the many companies that have discontinued their early instrument production in recent years.

As a student in England, my experience in early music was often defined by discussions over sources, and what should have been a creative endeavour turned into a competition over who had read and understood the most treatises and research in early music. Little creative freedom was encouraged. This is an issue with the early music world, that performers will use 'historical accuracy' as a defence against originality.

Early music departments do not showcase the students who break from tradition, they do not show a new way forward for early music. This is not due to poor quality teaching, but the production of graduates based on identical standards and expectations of the institution, with little place in the market is flawed. Early music was once a vibrant genre because it was not 'historical performance', the 'historical performance' aspect was a marketing tool, much like 'world music' was, but the popularity of early music was in the energy and individuality, not in the producing of multiple musicians with the same background and knowledge and abilities and instrument, repertoire, and interests.

The World Music Problem

The issues of tradition are not limited to Western Europe: tradition as is currently understood is an out-of-date mentality based on control and order, but we need to understand that there is no pure tradition. All music traditions have drawn upon a variety of cultural resources.

European classical music is the result of influences from Byzantine, Viking, Arab, Moor, Jew, Christian, Roma, Persian, Greek, and others, as is Ottoman music. At a time of globalisation with travel, information and communication being readily available as never before, tradition and culture are taking on new meanings.

Today not many of us are born into, overtake and live our lives within an established tradition. Identity in this perspective is let free. We challenge and reconsider traditions, choose new ones and create a personal identity. For some this implies that you briskly move away from musical traditions that used to be part of the family heritage just one or two generations back.

Yet in 2017 it seemed that in the UK the approach taken in the music curriculum was segregating a growing population of people who connect with music other than the offerings of select few deceased white European men. The issues described are not confined to 'classical' orchestral instruments. The models for the pedagogy of non-orchestral instruments in higher education are the same as for orchestral instruments.

The recorder is a primary example, as it is an instrument which fell out of use at the time the orchestra was becoming the primary medium of classical music. The recorder does not have orchestral repertoire, it is not a nineteenth-century instrument, it did not develop in the same way as other instruments did. However, recorder education follows a similar path to an orchestral instrument. The recorder player does not need to train and prepare for orchestral auditions; their repertoire and interests are totally different, but their theory classes are the same, they study romantic music and analyse Mozart, they attend the same history classes as classical musicians, they have the same exams and they are marked by the same standards.

The Problem with 'World Music' Programmes

There are several rationales for incorporating musics and instruments from 'non-western' traditions in music education. The first is a social rationale based on the changing methods in which students learn and develop musically. A second rationale focuses on world-mindedness. By studying the various cultures around the world, students can develop a better understanding of international relationships. Another rationale is based in the elements of the musics themselves. Studying the musics of other cultures can broaden the students' sound base, enabling them to be more open and tolerant of new musical sounds.

The problems of 'world music' are that world music in education is not relevant to the primary interests of the student. The sitar and gamelan are not ostensibly relevant to, for example, early music, owing to these traditions having minimal contact. The traditions that are relevant to early music, such as the musics of the former Ottoman Empire, are not generally included in such 'world music' programmes.

'World musics' like Ottoman music would be relevant to the student of classical music: Liszt, Brahms, Mozart, Beethoven and Haydn were influenced by Alla Turca and Style Hongrois; the traditions from which these styles came should be incorporated into studies of classical music. Likewise, the piano traditions of Satie and Debussy were influenced by the gamelan; the study of gamelan would be relevant to the pianist. But it is not the music alone that is relevant, Indonesian culture was influential to France at the time of Satie, for example in the Wayang shadow plays which were performed at Le Chat Noir, with music performed by Satie.

We can no longer ignore cultures outside of the western canon in classical music, but this does not mean to dismiss 'world music' education as it currently stands; it means to build upon it, to not allow the present situation to continue to be the default. 'World music' was intended to encapsulate musics from non-European/American traditions, but this itself is a relic of colonial mentality which is present in music education today.

The issues of appropriation and racism in music education are not a result of a single issue of institutionalised racism, but rather the result of different traditions of education, 'world music' and cultural 'borrowings' culminating in the result we have today in music education, which is, essentially, non-existent, or too often reduced to one or two 'world music' weeks a year and otherwise ignored for the most part. During those weeks, specific 'world musics' were taught, such as gamelan, but 'world musics' which are European were ignored.

Music traditions outside of the western classical tradition are often ignored by the western music circle. Despite New Musicology incorporating influences from post-colonial studies and of ethnomusicology, little was changed:

'Yet while the new musicology did much to destabilize the canon and permit more works to be included in scholarship and teaching, it has done less to change the way that music is studied. The classical music ideology is still operative in many quarters. The dominant musicological interest in ''works'' as self-contained entities, and in their form and style—apart from the conditions of their making and hearing—continues. History and culture continue to be ignored or minimized while composers and their works are still privileged, as is, increasingly, the critic-musicologist. In part, I think, because of the cultural studies boom, such approaches have become so hegemonic, so naturalized, that even outsiders to musicology have adopted them when they broach musical subjects.'

The Use of 'World Music' in Early Music

The use of 'world' music in early music during its heyday of the revival was done to escape from the classical approaches to music. It was a form of musical exoticism, an attempt to depict an atmosphere through music that was fundamentally different from that of the time and place the music was being performed. This coincided with many events of the time, folk music revivals, and the rise of New Musicology and of Cultural Studies are particularly notable, and an interest in music of other cultures, for example, by the Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Ravi Shankar and Yehudi Menuhin.

Despite the huge importance of Bulgarian folk music in particular in the revival, no one mentioned this in the early music departments I attended. 'World music' weeks were dedicated to gamelan, sitar, samba and salsa, but not to the 'world' music which was relevant to our studies in early music. Arabic music was never mentioned, but the influences of 'Arabic' music and culture on medieval, renaissance and baroque music was immense. One could hardly fail to notice the 'Arabic style' of medieval music, but it was not discussed in the conservatoires.

One can find examples of the influence of Bulgarian music in early western music, such as Palestrina's Missa Primi Toni from Ensemble Bulgarka Jr (1998), an original interpretation of Palestrina merging with the styles and techniques of Bulgarian traditional music. Vladimir Ivanoff and Labyrinth's 1999 recording Medieval & Bulgarian Music is another example of works which challenge expectations of cliché, and of perception between Western and Other. Ensemble Unicorn's (1996) On the Way to Bethlehem: Music of the Medieval Pilgrim presents medieval Western music with folk musics of Bulgaria, Syria and Turkey, a mixture of Western, Balkan and Islam.

However, the radius of 'world music' in education rarely touches upon such areas, leaning more heavily on gamelan, sitar, and samba. What we are seeing is a standardisation of early music which (sometimes) incorporates quasi-Arabic ornamentation into a style of European music on European instruments, to signify an Other and using quasi-'Arabic' ideas to represent a non-classical practice, as well as a standardisation of early music to recreate a music that was not standardised. The orchestral and educational mindsets of the nineteenth century prevail.

The Need for Genuine Integration

The solution is specialised education in different areas of 'world music', not merely a week of playing those instruments.

Early music has been influenced heavily by 'world music', but these 'world' musics are not included in the history classes or theory classes; they are not even mentioned. Many of these traditions survive to the present day in the remoter parts of Europe. In many regions of the Balkans, for instance, the epic ballad, like the medieval lai, is still part of modern rural life. These songs are performed at ceremonial occasions, weddings and so on, by the descendants of the medieval minstrel.

The fujara of Slovakia is an instrument that has not been incorporated into the Western classical tradition. The instrument was a dying tradition before UNESCO's 2005 Third Proclamation of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity included the fujara; since 2005 the fujara has taken on a new life, in Slovakia and across the world. Instrument makers can be found outside of Slovakia, as can players. Different people have taken the instrument in very different directions, from PVC instruments to make fujara-type instruments more accessible, to performers working with composers and promoting new music for this folk instrument.

Certainly there is the danger of presenting the instrument out of context, and thus it is stripped of its original cultural meaning, and for the fujara this is the symbol of defiance against the Ottoman invaders, a symbol of freedom that is distinctly Slovak. In countries that have fought ongoing battles to preserve their borders, folklore is often a direct representation of that struggle.

The stroh violin and the gadulka are other notable examples of musical instruments which have bordered upon extinction because they do not fit into either a classical tradition nor of an 'other'. Incorporating 'other' musics into a classical music practice does not need to appropriate the culture from which they came: there is evidence of historical connections between cultures. The gadulka of Bulgaria and the hardanger of Norway are both cousins of the viola d'amore. We can study these others through the common threads that tie the traditions together, taking not only a Western viewpoint, but learning about culture and tradition and the encounters different peoples have had.

The connections between rabāb, gadulka and khushtar of Uyghur (and the musical styles they play) is readily apparent and should be explored and taught; the cultures from which they come from should also be taught. This is not the adoption of one cultural element to another culture; it is a cultural encounter. In classical music education cultural encounters are not spoken of.

We need a polystylistic classroom to begin to facilitate a deeper understanding of global music. If education were to embrace such diversity, it would allow students to explore relationships between cultures and beyond the classical canon. It leads musicians to an open-mindedness which allows them to explore, to learn, to question, and ultimately, to their artistic voice which is found through exploration.

We need to find other ways to approach this, through recognising that we in the west are not distinct from other types of music, through not alienating them or appropriating them, but by recognising that cultures influence each other inevitably. We no longer need to view a non-Western music as an exotic other, observing from a distance, but learn about and embody it, to educate and develop. We need to explore this more and promote intercultural dialogues in music.

Certainly, when we fall in love with a musical sound, we want to learn how to replicate it, we want to appreciate it for what it is: amazing. There's no harm in learning, borrowing, and sharing our gift with others.

Music programmes could build a reputation around a niche speciality. How many schools can say they have a fully developed fujara or duduk or kemence traditional music programme?

In Germany, people who are particularly interested in the music of other cultures have the opportunity to study ethnomusicology at some universities. There is also the specialised Pop Academy in Mannheim and almost every university with a music branch offers jazz and pop as a subject. 'To separate ethnomusicology and European music so strongly is a kind of colonial practice,' said music expert Julia Gerlach, who has been studying diversity in contemporary music for years. A lot has changed over the years, she noted, but it is still always presented from the perspective of the European who looks at a musical tradition, transcribes its music and then stores it in archives.

We need to expand upon the 'world music' departments and break the barrier between classical departments. We need cultural exchanges, cultural dialogue. We need education that does not limit 'world music' to an 'other', to an 'exotic' music, but to include specialists and cultural education in the curriculum. In many places, traditional forms of music are now seen by natives as archaic and antiquated. Some are actually altered to conform to the Western paradigm. Over time, these alterations might slowly deprive them of their traditional heritage. Nowadays, even when new forms of music are created, they are basically moulded to the so-called modern, and thus Western, standards.

Western Music Theory and Colonial Legacy

Conservatoire education does not generally teach students of classical music about the effects of colonialism and slavery on their music. At the time of writing, largely erroneous stories are being circulated about Oxford university 'scrapping sheet music' from their music program, causing classical music institutions to review their courses and 'decolonise' classical music. While the 'scrapping' of sheet music is not accurate, 'classical music' describes the music of white, European composers. Female composers are underrepresented, as are non-European/American composers.

Sheet music and 'classical music' as we know it developed during a period of colonialism and is representative of white privilege. Adam Neely in his 2020 video Music Theory and White Supremacy refers to music theory as 'the harmonic style of 18th century European musicians' and describes how music theory (referring to Western music theory) is used as a means of comparing all musics from all cultures to the stylistic practice of (for example) Bach, Beethoven and Mozart.

Neely goes on to point out that music theory textbooks have not fundamentally changed since the time of Rimsky-Korsakov, referencing figured-bass in modern textbooks as an out-of-date means to understand music of white European composers and to enforce that music under a guise of being historical and therefore relevant. Moreover, figured bass is a means of teaching Schenkerian analysis, a system of analysis relevant only to Western classical music. Arguing that if you cannot apply Schenkerian analysis to a music, that music is devoid of 'genius' and is inferior.

He points out that western music theory allows us only one perspective from which to look at music, when there are many other ways and theories, citing Indian Raag music. Meaning that the organisation of pitch, rhythm, and scale into a 'music theory' has been done by many cultures and peoples and there are multiple ways in which music can be seen, but the single viewpoint of classical music is that of a white, male structure. Neely argues that Western music theory has developed the language that attempts to show white culture superiority over non-white culture under the guise of objective analysis.

The Culture Lag

Schools, including conservatories, often teach students how to answer questions rather than how to question or solve problems on their own. This traditional model, whilst effective in teaching technical skills, does little to cultivate the creativity and problem-solving abilities that will be crucial for success in the real world. The culture-lag between what is taught in schools and what is needed in the present and future continues to grow, yet music education still remains entrenched in old paradigms.

As students are often conditioned through their undergraduate music history courses to think that musicologists do nothing more than compile and memorise various facts, music schools must shift their focus from merely transmitting knowledge to fostering an environment where students can actively question, experiment, and innovate. A curriculum that encourages students to embrace uncertainty, explore new musical genres, and develop entrepreneurial skills will better equip them to create fulfilling careers rather than simply following in the footsteps of traditional pathways like orchestras or conservatories.

Jorgensen (2003) notes:

'Too often, college and university music education, as with music education at the elementary and secondary levels, is pervasively instrumental, focused on the acquisition of techniques without the opportunity to integrate and generalize the skills learned. Unless one generalizes what has been learned instrumentally and technically, and makes it one's own, one has gone only part way toward becoming a musician. Musicians need to be reflective about their practice as they also think practically about music's theoretical aspects. One of the challenges of our time is to integrate musical study so that the knowledge gained is vital and practical just as it is informed and theoretical. The future of Western classical music depends on preparing musicians who are reflective practitioners of their art, faithful to their tradition, and eager to renew it. To this end, projects that foster holistic musical experiences need to be plentiful at every level of instruction.'

The Problem of Mistakes and Perfection

The largest component of a conservatoire course is related to the instrument: one-to-one time with the teacher, time in the department of that instrument, time practicing the instrument. It is very easy for the student to, as Partch wrote, 'acquire the traditional techniques. Under the pressures of study these are unconsciously and all too easily absorbed. The extent to which an individual can resist being blindly led by tradition is a good measure of his vitality.'

Under the 'pressures of study' the student may all too easily overlook, neglect, and ultimately forget their other musical abilities, abilities which are not as developed since the time has not been put into them, but secondary abilities which potentially make the student stand out.

Hundreds of musicians graduate from a conservatory every year across Europe alone, having been trained for surviving an orchestral audition, and with the ability to reproduce exactly what is written. Yet a fraction of these musicians will go on to have orchestral careers, without even questioning whether those careers would be sufficient to the graduates, let alone fulfilling. If a classical violinist (for example) had developed their skills in improvisation, arranging, workshop leading, or honed their interests in pop, or in folk music, they would have skills that enable them to carve unique paths as a musician, doing more than just reproducing classical music.

Secondary abilities conservatoires currently do not want the student working on are the things that make the student creative, idiosyncratic and original. These secondary abilities are not requirements for passing an audition and so they are downtrodden. Yet, these secondary abilities should be valued and honed.

The issues with doing this, other than the simple problem of resources and teacher knowledge, ability and willingness to teach such things, are often related to a lack of time, this is an issue frequently mentioned when discussing incorporating 'world music' in a curriculum, but the more pressing issue is that it goes against the ideology of perfection and mastery of an instrument. Simply put, when a student is encouraged to explore and experiment and to question, the inevitable result will be to make mistakes along the way.

This is counterintuitive for classical music education, which trains players to not make mistakes.

As Chris Lloyd notes: '[instrumental teachers] aim to mould their students into replicas of their own image, with one motive only, to create the best possible players. But the teacher is not only one cog in the machine, they often play the role of mentor with guru-esque stature in the life of a young musician. So if they are not openly passionate about business/marketing/PR, in teaching theory, in a fully-rounded musical education, then where will the influence come from?'

Technical mastery, sheet music, reproduction of artefacts, are all a means of avoiding mistakes in music, but if mistakes are not being made, nothing new or original is being attempted. Following interests and passions in other genres of music and other approaches to classical music means mistakes will be made as part of the learning process, and this needs to be accommodated for as much as possible.

Teachers are often forced to downplay individualism in conservatories, and the result is that musicians graduate with no artistic identity; their artistic identity has been suppressed. No one wants an orchestral musician to sound individual, they want them to blend in.

The neglect of creativity, artistic identity, and expressivity in favour of reproduction, copy-and-paste, and technical perfection, as well as the problems encountered with breaking out of the standard approaches, has led many musicians to turn to jazz and pop musics to find and express their artistic identities. Jazz and pop embrace the 'different' in a way classical music has rarely achieved.

The sacrifices made for an unreachable perfection does not end there, the student will put too much focus on technical precision and forget to make an emotional connection to the music. Music is a language, and a piece of music tells a story. If we can speak the words perfectly, it does not mean we can tell a story in a way that an audience will engage with. The student's efforts will be to match the technical ability of their peers and teachers, the people who will notice and care about technical imprecision, but the lack of emotional connection is noticed by the audience, who are ultimately buying the tickets.

'Classical Music is Dead'

Over the last couple of decades numerous obituaries for classical music have appeared. In A Requiem for Classical Music, Julie Lee writes of classical music 'It's old. It's serious. It's stuffy'. Other descriptions range from 'bland' to 'boring, dictatorial entertainment with tried formatting and outdated dogmatic etiquette, where your behaviour is rigorously regulated by an ageing audience of people more concerned with the religious aspects of a concert as opposed to the entertainment factor of incredible music.'

Chris Lloyd observes:

'The shocking thing to think about is this; Classical music performance has not evolved in almost 100 years in terms of format or etiquettes observed. Programme notes from the 1920's are available and follow almost an identical format to one you could see at Wigmore Hall tomorrow night, I've been wracking my brain to think of something comparable that has absolutely refused to budge in such a long time period!! Since then, we've seen the emergence of blues, ragtime, jazz, rock and Queen Miley, and all the while, classical music has been sitting in the corner like a nerdy friend who feels guilty for speaking too loud at a party. Countries have been formed, reabsorbed, reformed and the word 'tweeting' made its way into the Oxford Dictionary. The English Cricket Team even had a period where they were on top of the Australians, truly a sign that everything MUST change in time. Human existence has transformed so much with technology, world travel and education, yet we stubbornly believe this archaic performance tradition will somehow return to vogue.'

Those programme notes will more-likely-than-not describe the history of the piece, or its structure. They'll talk about why it's historically important, or why other people like it. Why does a performer not talk about their own personal feelings towards the music? The listener would respond far better to this personal contact.

This 'boring, bland' classical music is the music of the concert hall, where common traits are: the audience and musicians are kept in their designated places with activity flowing in one direction from the orchestra to the audience; the players are all required to wear the same, black, uniform, hiding individuality; the concert is appraised on the beauty of the collective sound, not on whether the individuals have something to say. It is incidental whether classical music is indeed 'dead', that its value and the value of music education is being called into question is beyond doubt, as we see continuous cuts to funding of arts and art education.

'Religious' is a good description, since the ideology of classical music 'cherishes the idea of transcending the time and place in which a piece of music was written.' The parallel between classical music and religion places the great composers such as Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart as the gods, and their works are the sacred texts. The performers are the priests, spreading the words of these gods, not expressing their own unique, creative and personal approaches and interpretations of those works beyond certain strict boundaries.

Composer David Bruce expresses this problem in his YouTube video:

'Part of the problem I think comes down to the types of artistic conversations us composers have, which over the last one-hundred years seems to have become more insular. Many of the structures and institutions which support and surround contemporary music have, over time, become ones that perpetuate the attitude of an ever-narrower, self-serving, inward community. Certainly people have started to realise this happens with regard to women composers and composers from ethnic minority backgrounds. Put simply, if you have white, middle class males on the selection panel, you're likely to get white, middle class males in the choices they make. And combined with this is the fact that so many composers end up working in academia. I would guess around 90% or more of classical composers who are still active by the time they reach, say, forty, have academia as a main source of income. So are the artistic conversations they're having primarily with their Ivory Tower colleagues rather than with the outside world? If your whole career and future depends on what your peers and colleagues think of you, it's pretty hard to find the bravery to step outside of that bubble.'

This is equally applicable to instrumentalists as it is to composers: as soon as an instrumentalist steps outside of their bubble which was formed in academia, through instrument choices, playing technique, and repertoire, they risk the scrutiny of their colleagues, thus risking their future and careers.

This is at the root of all the problems there are: classical music has become impersonal, it is a leftover from the Industrial Revolution and the education of it continues to produce musicians measured against a standardised scale, and not creating creative players and creative thinkers willing to make mistakes, willing to explore and willing to be daring and creative in their careers with their instrument.

This ideology of classical music, founded in the 19th century, has created a barrier between classical music and both its audience and musicians.

What We Must Do Differently

Embrace the Living Environment

Music must return to being a living practice rather than a museum artefact. This means:

Recognising that historical performance practice, whilst valuable, cannot fully recreate the past. We should study history to inform our present practice, not to escape into reverence for a lost golden age.

Creating environments where students are immersed in music-making rather than isolated in practice rooms. Chamber music, improvisation sessions, collaborative projects, these should be central, not peripheral.

Understanding that notation is a guide, not a straitjacket. Students should learn to read music fluently but also to play by ear, to embellish, to vary, to make music their own.

Fostering communal aural understanding. Students should spend time listening to and performing with each other, developing shared musical vocabularies that make spontaneous collaboration and improvisation possible.

Reintegrate Improvisation

Improvisation should not be treated as a specialist skill confined to jazz programmes or early music departments. It should be fundamental to all musical training.

Students should improvise from their first lessons. Simple modal melodies, variations on familiar tunes, call-and-response games, these develop musicality and confidence from the beginning.

Technical exercises should incorporate improvisation. Scales become the basis for improvised melodies. Articulation patterns become rhythmic variations. Theory becomes practice.

Historical repertoire should be approached with an improvisatory mindset. Students should learn to ornament baroque slow movements, to improvise cadenzas in classical concertos, to understand how composers like Bach and Mozart thought improvisationally.

Cross-cultural improvisatory traditions should be studied. Jazz, Indian classical music, Arabic maqam, klezmer, these traditions keep improvisation alive and offer models for how it can function in different contexts.

Jazz is especially regarded as a stereotype of a creative discipline and although this statement is an over simplification, jazz musicians do possess traits that are different to those of classical musicians: notably, transcribing (learning by ear) and improvisation. Improvisation exists in many forms in music, but is almost synonymous with creativity and individuality, despite the many forms and approaches improvisation has, the art itself is not able to be distilled from concepts of individuality and of self-expression.

Break Down Boundaries

Music education must become genuinely intercultural, not as tokenism but as recognition of historical and contemporary reality.

Ottoman music should be taught alongside classical music in programmes that cover the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Students studying Mozart's 'Turkish' music should understand the actual Turkish traditions it drew on.

Folk traditions should be integrated, not segregated. The connections between classical music and folk music, between the viola d'amore and the hardanger fiddle, between courtly dances and village celebrations, should be explored.

Non-Western instruments should be available not as exotic curiosities but as serious objects of study. A conservatory might offer fujara, duduk, or kemence programmes taught by specialists from those traditions.

Cultural context must be taught alongside music. Understanding the Ottoman Empire, the Wayang shadow plays, the social world of New Orleans jazz, this contextual knowledge is not optional background but essential to musical understanding.

Foster Questioning and Independence

Students should be encouraged to question everything. Not just surface questions ('How do I play this passage?') but fundamental ones ('Why do we play it this way?' 'What would happen if we tried something different?' 'What does this music mean to me?').

Assessment should reward creativity and originality, not just technical accuracy. A student who takes interpretative risks and fails should be celebrated for the attempt, not penalised for deviating from the norm.

Students should graduate asking questions, not having all the answers. The goal is not to produce musicians who have mastered a fixed body of knowledge but artists who know how to continue learning, questioning, and growing throughout their careers.

Teachers should model uncertainty and curiosity. Instead of presenting interpretations as definitive, teachers should say 'This is one way to approach this, but there are others' or 'I'm not sure, let's investigate together.'

Rethink Assessment

Standardised assessments have limited value in artistic education. How do you measure someone's ability to express themselves, to feel fulfilled, to experiment and explore? As long as students focus primarily on standardised exams, they will not be willing to explore, because exploration runs the risk of making mistakes.

Assessment should be individualised and holistic. Rather than grading students against a single standard, assessment should recognise different strengths, different learning paths, different artistic goals.

The process matters as much as the product. A student who documents their practice, articulates their thinking, and demonstrates growth should be valued even if the final performance isn't flawless.

Mistakes should be learning opportunities, not failures. We should not encourage mistakes, but we must not cultivate fear of them. Growth happens at the edge of our comfort zones.

Prepare for Sustainable Careers

Conservatories must stop pretending that orchestral jobs await all graduates. The reality is that most musicians will need to create their own opportunities: teaching privately, performing in diverse contexts, collaborating across genres, building audiences.

Entrepreneurship and career skills should be integrated throughout the curriculum, not relegated to a single 'professional development' course in the final year.

Students should develop multiple income streams and diverse skill sets. The ability to improvise, compose, arrange, collaborate across genres, and teach effectively is not a luxury, it's a necessity for a sustainable music career.

Students should be encouraged to define success on their own terms. Not everyone needs to be a soloist or orchestral musician. Success might mean teaching, composing, community music-making, or work that combines music with other interests.

The Tanglewood Vision

In 1967 there was a conference of educators and musicians in Tanglewood, Massachusetts on the direction of music education. They produced The Tanglewood Declaration, a vision for music pedagogy. Now 60 years later and this vision is still unfulfilled, for example points 2 and 6:

The Tanglewood Declaration

(2) Music of all periods, styles, forms, and cultures belongs in the curriculum. The musical repertory should be expanded to involve music of our time in its rich variety.

(6) Greater emphasis should be placed on helping the individual student to fulfil his needs, goals, and potentials.

We need to broaden all classical music education to include all forms of music, jazz, early and world music especially as they are currently taught in conservatories and those departments should likewise be open to other possibilities. A willingness to accept unconventionality and new ideas is absolutely crucial to the success of classical music in the future.

Broadening the scope of music education does not mean getting rid of the 'problematic' aspects of classical education, it merely means building upon them for an education model that is eclectic, holistic, and leans towards the students' individual interests and artistic identity.

Examples of Musicians Breaking Boundaries

The possibilities for breaking out of standardised approaches are already being demonstrated by pioneering musicians who have forged unique paths. These examples show what becomes possible when musicians refuse to be confined by nineteenth-century categories:

Margaret Leng Tan has built an extraordinary career around the toy piano, an instrument dismissed by most classical musicians, creating a unique niche in contemporary music.

Maximilian Haft's PhD focuses on reinventing the stroh violin, an obscure horn-fiddle invented in the early 20th century and now mainly popular among folk musicians in Western Romania. His work aims to 'recover, expose, revive, and promote the Stroh violin in the 21st century contemporary music world as a way to reinvent this unique instrument.'

Catalina Vicens has pioneered the revival of the medieval organ, bringing historical keyboard instruments into contemporary performance practice.

Harrie Starreveld has integrated the shakuhachi into Western classical and contemporary music contexts.

Raúl Lacilla has revived the medieval bagpipe in early music performance.

Garth Knox, a leading violist in new music, has made the viola d'amore and the medieval fiddle major parts of his career, demonstrating how historical instruments can thrive in contemporary contexts.

Jasser haj Youssef combines classical, jazz and Arabic music on the viola d'amore, opening new worlds for the instrument and demonstrating the possibilities of genuine cross-cultural integration.

Matthew Dane, Mats Edén, Benedicte Maurseth, and Dan Trueman have all found unique pathways for instruments outside of the classical ideology, particularly with the hardanger fiddle and viola d'amore.

Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh plays viola d'amore in folk music contexts, Sara Caswell in jazz, demonstrating how these 'early' instruments can live in contemporary genres.

Vache Sharafyan's cross-cultural compositions, as heard in Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Roads Ensemble, show how intercultural dialogue can create new musical languages.

Jazz bagpipe remains confined to two players, Rufus Harley and Gunhild Carling, while jazz alto-clarinet has no equivalent. These gaps represent opportunities for pioneering musicians willing to venture into unexplored territory.

James Rhodes and Martynas Levickis are marketing themselves as performers of the people, as opposed to the generic pedestal-occupying preachers. French conductor Thibault Back has started a revolution trying to rediscover the zeitgeist and aesthetics of historically accurate performance etiquette to great success, and the overwhelming response from musicians and audience members is that this is good, and we want more.

The viola d'amore is particularly instructive as an example. It is an instrument very much associated with baroque music, but it is a classical instrument which Haydn, Berlioz, Prokofiev and Hindemith wrote for, yet it never entered into the body of classical instruments. This is where its strength lies, in it not being standardised. The instrument defied standardisation and still does. This viola d'amore necessitates the musician to be creative, to think of new ways to approach problems, to question the music and the instruments, and to be creative in their searches for repertoire. Today we see players of the viola d'amore taking the instrument into new realms through exploration, and in doing so they carve out unique career paths and connect with audiences.

What if this were an approach taken by more musicians? If the trumpet player were to venture into such realms, we could see greater development of, say, the conch, the carnyx, lur, etc. in different areas of music. The shakuhachi and panflute have likewise been mentioned, but what about the bansuri with its long and rich tradition? Or the renaissance or medieval flutes, dizi of China? And who is to say that an instrumentalist need stay within the family group of their first study? The possibilities here are endless.

A Different Path Forward

I believe music education should nurture complete musicians: artists who possess both technical mastery and creative freedom, who understand historical traditions whilst forging their own artistic voices, and who move fluidly between improvisation and interpretation. Rather than training students to reproduce a canon, I develop independent musicians capable of asking questions, taking risks, and creating meaningful musical experiences.

This isn't about lowering standards or abandoning technique. It's about recognising that technical excellence and creative freedom are not opposed. It's about understanding that music is a living, evolving practice, not a museum of masterworks to be preserved unchanged.

The Eclectic Approach

Effective music education should not involve teaching in a single method or pattern, no definite shape either in subject, method of teaching or of assessing students should be taken. It must be eclectic: drawing on numerous styles, methods and ideas. It should develop critical thinking abilities and imaginative faculties. This is because one of the important dimensions of effective teaching of music is that it must activate the imaginative ability of the student.

An eclectic approach, using a variety of methods can bring the subject to life, appealing to both the intellectual and emotional faculties of the students. We need to go beyond the oral presentation, lectures, textbooks and narration of events and objects alone, and embrace a mix of content and approach. By so doing, an environment is created in which students can gain abilities in thinking of, understanding, and honing their skills in research and understanding.

Education is about enriching the minds and hearts of people. All students are unique individuals with their own hopes, talents, anxieties, fears, passions, and aspirations. Engaging them as individuals is the heart of achievement in education.

This model does more than expand upon musical tradition for the sake of creativity and knowledge allowing the students to become artistically fulfilled and have unique abilities to form entrepreneurial careers, it also encourages open-mindedness. Something very much missing in classical music.

Creativity is key to problem solving, something which an entrepreneur will encounter on a daily basis. Creativity is not the invention of new things, but the result of combining different disciplinary ways of seeing things, not thinking in compartments. As long as we continue to put students into departments of classical, early, jazz, world, wind, keys, brass, string, etc. we continue to systematically destroy curiosity, creativity, and ability to move their respective instrument(s) into new and pioneering areas, those areas where the student can really shine if they want, and be happier and more fulfilled in their studies and life, thereby actually learning and not memorising facts for the next test measured by arbitrary standards, and the result is a creative musician with unique skills they have honed and developed, ready to blaze their own trail in the real world, offering unique skill sets and specialisations.

A Call to Action

The problems in music education won't fix themselves. Conservatories won't spontaneously transform because a few teachers write manifestos. Change requires collective action: students demanding better, teachers experimenting with new approaches, institutions willing to question established practices.

But it starts with individuals. With students who refuse to be passive recipients of knowledge and instead ask questions, propose alternatives, develop their own projects. With teachers who prioritise student growth over institutional convenience, who create space for experimentation even when it's messy and uncertain. With administrators willing to support innovation rather than defaulting to 'this is how we've always done it.'

Every student who leaves music education able to improvise, compose, and think critically represents a small victory. Every musician who maintains their creativity despite institutional pressures keeps the art form alive. Every teacher who fosters independence rather than dependence plants seeds for future growth.

Music is too important, too powerful, too essential to human experience to be reduced to technical proficiency and mechanical reproduction. It deserves education that honours both its historical depth and its contemporary vitality. It deserves teachers who develop artists, not automatons. It deserves students who are willing to take risks, ask questions, and forge their own paths.

The conservatory system has created a culture of fear, perfectionism, and conformity. It has severed music from its living cultural contexts. It has marginalised improvisation, excluded non-Western traditions, and prioritised status signalling over artistic fulfilment. It has produced technically accomplished musicians who struggle to sustain careers and who have lost touch with the joy and freedom that drew them to music in the first place.

Tradition is the passing on of the fire and not the worship of the ashes

Look, I don't have all the answers. I don't have a foolproof theory for how to fix classical music education. But I do have this:

If we look back to Praetorius, with a view to escaping from the nineteenth-century blueprint for music, we see something crucial. Instruments weren't defined as valid because of their chromatic abilities, or their range, or their dynamic possibilities. The shakuhachi, recorder, panflute, harpsichord, viol, viola d'amore... all of these instruments are in use in contemporary classical music today. The shakuhachi and panflute are notable because they're the 'ethnic' instruments, whilst the others are the 'early' instruments. But by nineteenth-century standards, they are, to some degree at least, no longer relevant to classical music, and especially not to orchestral music.

Yet here they are. Thriving. 

What we see with these instruments is a movement in classical music towards embracing different cultures, histories and musics. With the shakuhachi, we see the musical practice of Japan being embraced. With 'early instruments' we see an embracement of non-nineteenth-century practices. The viola d'amore's repertoire from the nineteenth century is not the most remarkable aspect of the instrument's library. We see with it, similar to the recorder, an almost equal use in early (baroque) and contemporary music.

Naturally, exploring different instruments from different cultures isn't going to be of interest to everyone. But the point here is to have an education system which expands on tradition and teaches open-mindedness, constantly exploring new possibilities.

Music pedagogy needs to address the potentially widely different experiences, abilities, backgrounds and interests of students. We can approach this challenge and make a diverse and engaging approach to the subject through an eclectic and creative model of teaching. History doesn't need to be confined to history. Early music needn't be confined to early music. World music doesn't need to encompass an 'other' music.

And this isn't a suggestion beyond the realms of possibility for any student. Today, instruments which were once rare and expensive are, at least for student models, readily available if you're willing to look. Information is abundant, as are scores, like they've never been before. 

The proposal here is to help musicians become more diverse, thereby able to adapt to the market. Education needs to equip musicians to create sustainable careers in classical music. Instrument-wise, repertoire-wise, this is the way forward.

But here's the thing, and it's the most important thing I can say:

We've been sailing on a map for too long. Following lines drawn by dead men. Staying within the shipping lanes because that's what's safe, what's known, what's always been done.

Classical music education is drowning because we're still staring at the map whilst the ocean rises around us. We're arguing about which route the old masters would have taken whilst our students are desperately trying to keep their heads above water.

The answer isn't to throw out the map entirely. The map has value. History has value. Tradition has value.

But each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth...

It's time to stop worshipping the ashes. Time to stop measuring ourselves against nineteenth-century standards designed for a world that no longer exists. Time to stop training musicians to be perfect reproductions of an imaginary past.

The students having panic attacks in practice rooms? They're not failing. The system is failing them. The talented musicians leaving conservatories disillusioned and in debt? That's not their fault. That's our fault. The audiences staying away from concert halls? They're not uncultured. We've made culture a chore.

We need to give students permission to make mistakes. To explore. To question. To break things and see what happens. To sail on the ocean instead of the map.

We need to remember that music is supposed to be alive. That it's supposed to bring joy and meaning and connection. That it's supposed to be ours, not something we're borrowing from the dead and keeping in a glass case.

The conservatory system isn't going to fix itself. Change requires collective action. Students demanding better. Teachers experimenting with new approaches. Institutions questioning established practices. Every musician who maintains their creativity despite institutional pressures keeps the art form alive. Every teacher who fosters independence rather than dependence plants seeds for future growth.

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Recordings

Ensemble Bulgarka Jr. Palestrina's Missa Primi Toni. 1998.

Ensemble Unicorn. On the Way to Bethlehem: Music of the Medieval Pilgrim. 1996.

Ivanoff, Vladimir, and Labyrinth. Medieval & Bulgarian Music. 1999.

Ma, Yo-Yo, and The Silk Road Ensemble. Various recordings featuring compositions by Vache Sharafyan.