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Beyond the Conservatory Model
Amid enormous changes in higher education, audience and music listener preferences, and the relevant career marketplace, music faculty are increasingly aware of the need to reimagine classical music performance training for current and future students. But how can faculty and administrators, under urgent pressure to act, be certain that their changes are effective, strategic, and beneficial for students and institutions? In this provocative yet measured book, Michael Stepniak and Peter Sirotin address these questions with perspectives rooted in extensive experience as musicians, educators, and arts leaders. Building on a multidimensional analysis of core issues and drawing upon interviews with leaders from across the performing arts and higher education music fields, Stepniak and Sirotin scrutinize arguments for and against radical change, illuminating areas of unavoidable challenge as well as areas of possibility and hope. An essential read for education leaders contemplating how classical music can continue to thrive within American higher education.
130 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2021
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October 13, 2019
This is a much needed breath of fresh fire to the discussion surrounding the training of the next generation of "classical" music performance majors. The two authors, Michael Stepniak and Peter Sirotin have compiled a brief and cogent examination as to just how underserved so many of these students are by a curriculum that was designed generations ago for an industry that has evolved, moved, died, changed gears, and continues to baffle even seasoned professionals. However, not giving in to mere despair or relying on the notion that the superiority of the art will win the day for the students, they have actually accumulated data from industry and academic professionals and given precise recommendations while acknowledging the inherent difficulty for curricular change at many institutions.
The four chapters are:
1) Beyond Beauty, Brilliance, and Expression: Musicianship and Reconnecting with the General Public.
2) Gathering Insights From the Field: How the Classical Music Marketplace is Changing, and What That Change Means for the Training That Students Need.
3) Why This Change is Unusually Difficult: Three Specific Factors May be Thwarting the Will and Ability of Music Leaders to Change Performance Training Models
4) Making Music That Counts
By gathering information from numerous managers and presenters they effectively show how the expectations of modern audiences, even in so cloistered a field as classical music, have shifted to more honest engagement with the performances and from the performers, incorporation of visual and other arts into the performance, and aspects of the performance that move beyond the brilliant execution of great music. This is a topic that some schools discuss peripherally, but generally speaking, either don't seriously contend with at the administrative level or expect will be happening in the students' lessons with their applied teacher.
The awareness of the difficulties of curricular change are quite honest and represent vast experience in the field. Their recommendations, if implemented literally from the page, would likely take years in any typical university process. However, the necessity for these changes in preparing performers for the industry as it exists today makes this necessary and urgent.
Very often, this issue is discussed (elsewhere, not this book) and practical solutions are discussed that have nothing to do with the industry. For example, if you wish to graduate students to be prepared for the music business, merely combining a business and music performance degree with no genuine overlap accomplishes nothing. If you want the student to be able to apply to work in multiple fields, great, dual-degrees are great but implicitly combining a music degree and a business degree actually doesn't focus the student at all on THE music business. Some efforts at bringing the industry in to the curriculum are helpful but only if pursued consistently throughout the curriculum, otherwise, the average undergraduate will move on to their next piece, next area of repertoire, get back in the practice room, and quickly dismiss what they learned.
Training performers that are relevant to the current classical music field is a much needed change and it requires genuine performers and academic leaders to iron out the process. Stepniak and Sirotin have provided a potent and brief launchpad for these changes.
The four chapters are:
1) Beyond Beauty, Brilliance, and Expression: Musicianship and Reconnecting with the General Public.
2) Gathering Insights From the Field: How the Classical Music Marketplace is Changing, and What That Change Means for the Training That Students Need.
3) Why This Change is Unusually Difficult: Three Specific Factors May be Thwarting the Will and Ability of Music Leaders to Change Performance Training Models
4) Making Music That Counts
By gathering information from numerous managers and presenters they effectively show how the expectations of modern audiences, even in so cloistered a field as classical music, have shifted to more honest engagement with the performances and from the performers, incorporation of visual and other arts into the performance, and aspects of the performance that move beyond the brilliant execution of great music. This is a topic that some schools discuss peripherally, but generally speaking, either don't seriously contend with at the administrative level or expect will be happening in the students' lessons with their applied teacher.
The awareness of the difficulties of curricular change are quite honest and represent vast experience in the field. Their recommendations, if implemented literally from the page, would likely take years in any typical university process. However, the necessity for these changes in preparing performers for the industry as it exists today makes this necessary and urgent.
Very often, this issue is discussed (elsewhere, not this book) and practical solutions are discussed that have nothing to do with the industry. For example, if you wish to graduate students to be prepared for the music business, merely combining a business and music performance degree with no genuine overlap accomplishes nothing. If you want the student to be able to apply to work in multiple fields, great, dual-degrees are great but implicitly combining a music degree and a business degree actually doesn't focus the student at all on THE music business. Some efforts at bringing the industry in to the curriculum are helpful but only if pursued consistently throughout the curriculum, otherwise, the average undergraduate will move on to their next piece, next area of repertoire, get back in the practice room, and quickly dismiss what they learned.
Training performers that are relevant to the current classical music field is a much needed change and it requires genuine performers and academic leaders to iron out the process. Stepniak and Sirotin have provided a potent and brief launchpad for these changes.
Displaying 1 of 1 review