Sunday, December 20, 2020
Tenure in a purely abstract situation
Michael Kurek gives us a clear and SHARP picture of how tenure works. The picture is nicely pure and unconfounded because Kurek is in a field that has no actual purpose.
Music has a tremendously important purpose. Music has always been created by musicians and enjoyed by ordinary people. The academic version of "music" has been totally divorced from music for more than a century.
Note that Packard sponsored a Packard Six Orchestra for jazz and swing, and a Packard Eight Orchestra for classics. Precise delineation of status hierarchy. Presumably the Packard Twelve Orchestra was by invitation only. If you have to Ask The Man Who Owns One, you can't afford it.
First, at some point around the end of the 19th and early 20th century, the patronage system waned, and support of composers transitioned away from private donors, mostly to academia. Composers began to earn a faculty salary for their personal livelihood, while governments and arts organizations sometimes paid the expenses related to the performance and recording of their larger works for orchestra and opera.In academic fields that (at least nominally) deal with solving real problems, tenure can (at least nominally) be based on real problem-solving work. This is still true in areas that work closely with industry and agriculture. Music can solve real problems, but the academic end of music doesn't even bother to work with the music industry.
Typically, one of the requirements for performing organizations to win this kind of funding, for many a crucial portion of their operating budget, is to show that they encouraged the creation and performance of “new music.” The main source of new classical music being the universities, that pipeline would feed them works that were either written by professors of composition or their like-minded alumni. This explains why much unattractive music still gets programmed, even though the organization knows most of the audience will dislike it. They may even take a hit at the box office for programming it, especially in the case of opera companies, but this is presumably offset by the grant money they can get for programming it.This vicious circle has been running full speed for 80 years. Before 1940, many formal composers were turning out formal music that people could truly enjoy. Every radio station gave airtime to classics, and a profitable segment of the audience enjoyed their choices. Movies used formal music profitably. Now only NPR stations in big cities give time to formal "music", driven by the same vicious foundations who continue to divorce "music" from music. = = = = = Just for fun, here's a 1927 weekly schedule of KFI, the largest station in Los Angeles. I've highlighted the definitely classical segments. Several others probably included some serious music. This was before the FCC started to require "public service", so the station's decisions were solely based on profit.
Note that Packard sponsored a Packard Six Orchestra for jazz and swing, and a Packard Eight Orchestra for classics. Precise delineation of status hierarchy. Presumably the Packard Twelve Orchestra was by invitation only. If you have to Ask The Man Who Owns One, you can't afford it.
Labels: Entertainment, variables and variables
¶ 10:37 PM
