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Tuesday, 29 November 2005 11:09 |
| Seamus McNerney
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Music education is in the toilet. Funding has been drastically cut and, more disturbingly, interest among students and teachers (as well as administrators) alike is at an all-time low. I??m not speaking about any level of private or public education, but rather in education as a whole.
I??m biased. I happen to believe that quality communication, quality conversation is only possible when mediated by some amount of music education. When listening to music, one is trained to truly listen, not just hear something.
True listening is trained by serious engagement with a piece of music. Listen. I??ve rambled on about patience and courage, both of which are required tools when approaching a musical piece (particularly a classical piece).
But what about the anemic back-and-forth that regularly occurs between
yourself and a significant other? It is nothing but hearing a voice,
indifferent to the idle chatter of someone close to you. Blather, the
pollution of the telemarketer and the septic poison of bureaucratic
speech. Right? Wrong. It is about listening. And the conversation
depends upon it.
I??m frightened by the number of people incapable of a real
conversation. Or, they may crave a conversation (after all,
conversation provides the relief needed from a day of tedious
alienation). I am not so frightened by the number of people incapable
of listening to a piece of music; they are both symptoms of a much
deeper problem. We have ears for a reason, but not the reason usually
supplied by proponents of communication theory.
Training in music results in quality conversation and better civic
comportment. Personally, I hate it when someone talks over me ?? that
is, speaks while I??m speaking. All nuance is obliterated, all subtle
reference is murdered.
In the Jewish tradition, finishing someone??s sentences is akin to venial sin. I like that. Imagine trying to finish a
string quartet or piano sonata before you have actually heard it. A
sustained interest in what flows into our ears is as important, if not
more so, as the food we put in our guts and the breath we put in our
lungs. And I will grant the fact of boring music, as well as
uninteresting and unimaginative conversation. Tedium is tedium.
It is said the occasionally interesting composer Sergei Rachmaninoff would go days without speaking. No
conversation there. On the other hand, the annoyingly verbose composer
Antonio Vivaldi is reported to have never allowed his interlocutors a
full sentence. How Italian... two ends of the listening spectrum.
My only point is this: In a world dominated by idle chatter, chat
rooms, chat crap and high-speed emotional pick ups, it is nice to think
of a real person speaking in a real way ?? music and conversation. Can
you imagine what this would do to the political process?
Here is a recipe for radical political change: music education. A
resurrection of listening, and with it a rebirth of nuance and
subtlety, and all of the despair and joy that accompanies it.
?ΓΏ
Seamus McNerney is
a lecturer in the humanities with an emphasis on music history at the
University of North Carolina at Asheville.
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