I was talking to a good friend the other day – a man who has a lifetime experience in building businesses and nurturing entrepreneurs – who was thinking about the arts and orchestras in terms of building business, promoting a new product, and educating a future client or customer base to want to purchase and use the new product.
He was saying that in the past, when a young “entrepreneur” has approached him with an idea for a new product, but it would entail “educating” the public about it in order to get them to think they needed it, he discouraged them – because someone else can always spend more money than they in order to do the same.
He then put that same idea next to the arts, and said, “In reality though, to build an audience for an orchestra or a culture, one has no choice but to have to begin an “education” campaign in today’s society because the product of culture has become so “alien” or unknown in today’s everyday context.”
Which begs another question or two – was it always thus or when did we lose grasp of the product?
No, it wasn’t always thus. Think back to your grand-parents time, the Golden Age of Radio and the single most remembered day in their generation – Sunday, December 7, 1941. On the Continental United States that day, news of the attack onPearl Harbor spread like wildfire throughout the country within minutes and how did they all get the news?? America was tuning in wholesale that Sunday afternoon in their homes, tuning into the weekly Sunday afternoon broadcast of Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra.
Yes, people of all walks of life, all levels of education and all economic strata, listened voraciously to the radio, and great music poured out of it daily. Toscanini wasn’t performing “pops” concerts – it was Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Tchaikovsky and even a whole lot of contemporary new works, and the populace soaked it up and cried for more!
By the same token, a good strong classical education in your commonplace, everyday working class neighborhood high school sent students from all walks of life out into the world and the workplace, conversant on great works of literature, poetry – knowledge of art and music, the “Great Books” of civilization, even if they were setting off in life to become a factory machinist.
In conversations with many of my peers today – boomer generation business people and professionals – many with a noted liberal arts college degree, I am continually astounded and taken aback by the total lack of awareness of even mainstream knowledge of basic classical music and literature on their part. Was music or art appreciation, or “Western Civilization” not a part of their educational curriculum as it was a part of mine?
In college, I had an Art History class for three hours at a clip, where the professor walked us through thousands of slides of the greatest art of the past two thousand years – explaining aspects of technique, light, perspective and color and although my discipline has been music, I can still converse with people about Titian, Holbein, Rembrandt and others.
Somewhere in the 1960s, there was a movement to disengage our educational system from the foundations that built our civilization since the Renaissance – it was decided that literature, music and art of “dead, white Europeans” had no relevancy to the students of our emerging culture.
In doing so, are we in danger of becoming the Eloi? Or have we already become the Eloi? If so, who are the Morlocks?
If this allusion means nothing to the reader, then perhaps the point is made.
In H.G. Wells’s novel “The Time Machine”, an English inventor from Victorian England builds a time machine, so that he may travel forward into the future to discover what wonderful innovations and discoveries await future generations. After traveling through decades and centuries of war and destruction, he arrives somewhere 2,000 years in the future from his time.
As he disembarks and explores his new setting, he discovers a population of gentle, quiet and passive people – the Eloi. They spend their days peacefully communing with nature, relaxing in a bucolic setting, eating nuts and berries, lounging about in Grecian style togas. “At last,” the Time Traveler thinks, “mankind has evolved to a state of grace, with nothing to do all day but ponder the great questions of existence, enjoy the bounty of our earth, and exist in peaceful harmony with each other.” His inquiries about the state of their existence, their history, their art, their knowledge are all met with blank looks. “What great discoveries have you made,” he asks, “that I may return to my time and share them with my people?” “Where are your philosophers, that I may converse with them, where are your libraries, your receptacles of education, your books?” “Books?” one of them answers, “we have books.” He leads the Time Traveler to a dusty, forgotten room, full of tomes and volumes, which have all been left to rot and decompose, the knowledge of centuries past, the labors of generations upon generations gone and forgotten, as if they had never been.
Turns out, the Eloi really didn’t have need of such knowledge – they were happy to exist in their quiet passive state, and occasionally line up and answer the frequent siren calls that drew them into a cavern where the Morlocks – a carnivorous, cannibalistic race of men living beneath the earth would harvest them for consumption.
The failure to remember history, will inevitably result in the repeating of history. A society that loses its thirst for knowledge, for understanding of art and culture will inevitably decay into an indolent, passive and disengaged society – like the fall of theRoman Empire, which was rotted out from within long before the Goths rang the doorbell.
All of the daily influences on our lives today encourage further erosion of our culture – the “clicker mentality” which erodes the ability to pay attention to anything for longer than 30 seconds, as we surf aimlessly from channel to channel – the “mouse mentality” which keeps us at home in our dark computer spaces, cut off and disenfranchised from our neighbors, and the constant barrage of televised entertainment that holds the value of a steady diet of Kool-Aid and Hershey bars to keep the populace quiet, passive, happy and unthinking in our homes at night, till the siren sounds and we go out onto the freeway to report for work again tomorrow morning.
It is becoming imperative that the role of our cultural organizations is not just to produce art, but to re-educate our society about what their forebears once created and enjoyed – to have to pick up the sword-pen and do battle against these influences before the way is lost.
At Claflin Hill Symphony, we have always maintained the belief that great so-called “classical” music can be appreciated by all people, but many of them need to be introduced to it, and given an “entry-level” context for understanding it. Conductors at CHSO concerts have always made a point of speaking directly to the audiences, explaining aspects and historical perspectives of the music they are about to share, many for the first time ever.
The role of the audience member requires almost the same level of investment as the role of a performer. The ability to understand, appreciate and ultimately savor great works of culture entails a little bit of effort and time, in effect, learning the work in almost the same way the performer must – an activity alien to the “thirty second clicker” mentality.
Ideally, this activity must begin with our young people, but it is never too late to begin your cultural exploration – in fact most of the finer things in life are best appreciated with maturity.
Even the ability to focus on the written word must be cultivated – I’ve been told that people can only read something that is 350 words – I apologize for this lengthy treatise, and really must close now – it’s been long, I had too much to say, and I don’t want to miss the season finale of “Dancing with the Stars.”
Art is Man’s (and Women’s) Sake
Paul Surapine
Executive & Artistic Director
The Claflin Hill Symphony Orchestra
Paul Surapine can be reached at psurapine@claflinhill.org
