How the Cold War Shaped Music Education
Classical music has long been used to signal national prestige and ideological superiority. What does this mean for music education now?
Last week, I had the pleasure of playing in a farewell concert for a relatively well-known British conductor. In a bid to establish his legacy and pass on wisdom acquired over many years, the conductor-who-shall-not-be-named, made a number of rousing speeches on the transformational power of (classical) music. The most eyebrow-raising of these, however, he saved for the audience on concert night.
The conductor’s speech began innocuously enough (if a little on the pessimistic side), bemoaning the current state of Music Education in the UK. He put the ‘steady decline’ down to the horrors of technology — too much scrolling among teenagers rather than practicing their instruments — as well as the government’s disinterest in cultural matters. It took an unexpected turn, however, when he began to warn of the dangers of allowing ‘autocratic states like Russia and China’ to surpass us in classical music-making prowess. ‘We must support the arts’ he proclaimed, ‘unless we to see the Chinese and Russian armies marching past, instruments in hand, playing Mozart better than we ever could’.
Hearing the gasps of shock and nervous laughter from audience and orchestra-members alike, I suspect the orchestra committee members may have regretted giving the conductor free-reign on his farewell speech.
While to modern ears this type of thoroughly non-PC remark may seem ridiculous, I think it’s easy to forget quite how heavily the Cold War has impacted the landscape of classical music, and approaches to music education, in the UK. Indeed, the conductor in question began his career at a time when the Cold War was in full force.
In the ideological battle between East and West, Communism and Capitalism, the arts played a central role in the fight to establish cultural superiority. The promotion of classical music education by Western Governments during this time is reflective of a broader emphasis on pursuits deemed to represent ‘high culture’.
In the UK, institutions such as the Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, and Royal Conservatoire of Scotland received government funding to sustain their educational programs.
More notably, five Music-specialist secondary schools aimed at providing pupils with an ‘elite’ musical training were established during the Cold War period. Among these, are The Purcell School and Chetham’s School of Music, founded in 1962 and 1969 respectively. Research by Ian Pace suggests that the purpose of these institutions was initially to train musicians to rival those being produced by the Soviet Union.
Under the guise of diplomacy, international competitions such as the International Tchaikovsky Competition and Cliburn Competition also served as an arena through which bids to build national prestige could be played out on the world stage.
In both the West and the Soviet Union, music education was used as an ideological tool. Indeed, classical music, like most of the arts, can be co-opted to serve of a range of value systems. We can view the classical orchestra, for instance, as a microcosm of collective society, or we can emphasise facets of performance such as individual expression of the performer and creativity as reflections of democratic or neoliberal values. Either way, the performance of the virtuoso soloist provided a tangible measure of a nation’s success in the cultural sphere, albeit within a narrow criteria foregrounding technical ‘excellence’.
While the Cold War era of elite competitions over national prestige has ostensibly passed, it is worth examining the legacies in music education that remain.
As a classical musician and teacher, my thoughts on this issue are complex and sometimes self-contradictory. While I sympathise with the conductor’s concerns about the decline of technical excellence and classical music education in the UK, I remain unconvinced that specialist music schools (at the secondary level) are the best use of public funding. I am also unconvinced that the growing prevalence of technology in music education, and life in general, has harmed the quality of instrumental music-making across the country. Technology and phones? — No. Lack of funding and consistent access to instrumental tuition across the country?— Yes, absolutely.
The reality for most professional musicians, classical or otherwise, is that to be commercially successful in today’s world they will have to play in a range of genres, and possess some level of competence in music technology. If anything it is a tool to share and harness musicianship for new creative ends.
Creating virtuoso musicians is not something we need to be pouring our money into — it will happen naturally if the opportunity to learn an instrument classical or otherwise, for fun, for the friendships that develop through playing in an orchestra or band — is made available more widely across the country.
And with this, I think my old conductor friend would agree.
