Vincent, one of this blog’s most loyal and frequent followers,
comments that “For many parents in Asia, learning an instrument without aiming
for a grade or competition is pointless”.
That is typical of the good sense and realism Vincent brings to every
comment he makes in this forum; and it depresses me deeply.
When I first settled in south east Asia some 30 years ago,
that was very much the prevalent attitude.
Music was seen as a competitive sport on a par with badminton, soccer or
running, and the pleasure that Asian children derived from it was similar; the
joy of winning, the joy of showing one could do better than one’s peers and,
most of all, the joy of being the source of parental pride. I quickly accepted that many Asians enjoyed
music, but in a very different way from those in the West who regard it as a
means of enriching the intellectual and emotional aspects of daily life. Music’s function in Asian society seemed to
be merely as another vehicle through which the joy of competition and public success
could experienced.
My belief was that, after a while, those in Asia who saw
music only as a channel through which to improve their standing in society,
would eventually come to appreciate its deeper and more fulfilling elements. When Victor Hugo suggested that “Music
expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain
silent”, he was telling us that music was a means of expressing our most
deepest and profound thoughts, and thoughts which went beyond the confines of
language. To a certain extent, this
quote led to the cliché about Music being an International Language.
Vaughan Williams, in his wonderful essay National Music, put the lie to that by
pointing out that while English and French “have 24 of the 26 letters of the alphabet
in common”, their languages are mutually incomprehensible. So it is, he argued, with music, where
notation may be pretty standard (although ask any German to play the note B on
a keyboard and you will hear a very different note from what the English play)
but the use it’s put to differs so much as to make it often quite
incomprehensible to those from another culture.
It has long worried me that people describe music as being “Western”
not least because most of the instruments in our orchestras originated in Asia,
notably the Arab lands and China, and even my own instrument, the organ, was not
only of Arabian origin, but long after the foundation of Islam, was regarded as
primarily an Islamic device. A report on
the National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, screened on the BBC today, interviewed an
Iraqi girl playing what the reporter described as a “western musical instrument”
– the cello – and while in that particular case the reporter was technically correct,
the implication was that the entire orchestra was attempting to adopt an alien
culture. One of the recurring comments
made about the growing disintegration of the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra
has been the perceived folly of “imposing an alien culture” on Malaysians.
Vincent’s comment stresses that cultural divide. Asian parents, as he puts it, do not accept
the cultural dimension of music, only the physical one. I would not be so distressed by his comment
were it not for the fact that this was exactly the comment made to me 30 years
ago. At that time, I hoped that with the
growing interest in music in the region – after all I was one of those who believed
that we were on the brink of an Asian revolution, when the next generation of
great musicians and composers would come from Asia – it was only a matter of
time before its essential qualities became apparent and then uppermost in Asian
musician’s minds. That the old attitude
still prevails with the children and grand-children of those parents who I
encountered in the 1980s makes me realise that Asian attitudes to music have
not changed one iota.
True, there are some wonderful Asian musicians as well as
Asians who do derive full emotional and intellectual joy from music, but they
are a tiny minority of those who indulge in the physical activity of music, and
their ranks show no sign of increasing. Who
would have thought, for example, that 15 years on, the Malaysian Philharmonic
Orchestra has not yet been able to find a Malaysian with an ounce of musical
knowledge to head up its organisation?
When it started the CEO needed the support of a professional musical
management team from Europe. That team
has long since gone and now the organisation is teetering on the brink because
there is nobody in command who knows anything of the business they are
purportedly running. Who would have
thought, again, that the kind of catastrophically low marks handed out to
examination candidates in south east Asia are still being handed out
today? When I gave 17% to a Malaysian
grade 8 candidate in 1985 I assumed that, as musical life improved and
understanding of musical skills developed in the country, so standards of teaching
would also rise. I hear from colleagues
that marks of 15-20% are still given.
True, Asian students have always included a few of such phenomenal skill
that they earn higher marks than anyone else – a colleague recently handed out 100%
to a Chinese diploma candidate, a mark I would have thought just about
inconceivable in Europe – but their numbers do not seem to be increasing.
In short, my belief that Asia was on the brink of becoming
the hub of great musical activity, has been proven wrong. I see no evidence at all that Asia is going
to supplant (if that’s the right word) the West in musical prowess any time
soon. The attitudes Vincent highlights
condemn it to its role as competitive sport for decades ahead.
This, though, doesn’t stop westerners churning out the tired
platitudes about Asia being the future of music. Reviewing a recent disc of Lutosławski (a
brilliant performance of the Piano Concerto, by the way, on Chandos CHSA5098) by
pianist Louis Lortie, who many will remember well for his phenomenal Beethoven performances
with the MPO – one of the great achievements of that orchestra’s life – I noted
in his biography that one of its highlights was “an historic tour” of the “People’s
Republic of China”. No mention of Malaysia. Now forgive me if I’m wrong, but has any
orchestra in China half the quality of the MPO in its heyday? Has any concert hall in China half the acoustic
and environmental sympathy of Dewan Filharmonik PETRONAS, in Kuala Lumpur? Does any concert audience in China possess
half the etiquette and understanding of the Malaysian audience? For as long as western artists believe that
the worst of Asian orchestras, concert halls and audiences represents the great
future of music, then the elevation of the bad and the mediocre to
world-beating status seems inevitable.
In the light of that, who can blame Asian parents for seeing the
function of music merely as one where you can earn grades and win competitions.