How is the tradition of Western classical music faring on our university campuses? Before answering this question, it is necessary to understand what has transpired with classical music in the wider culture, as the relationship between the two is so strong. Cl...
Category: OpEd
Lord Balfour and the Power of Art
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During the George Floyd affair of 2020, protesters defaced, removed, and even decapitated statues of the “colonialists” George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Christopher Columbus. Climate activists likewise attack artworks by Monet, Van Gogh, Vermeer, K...
DEI Ruins Excellence in Orchestral Programming
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The problem with the LAO guide is that it destroys meritocracy in the orchestral repertoire, and places a heavy burden on artistic organizations to choose diversity over compositional merit.
Front and Center: The Place for Classical Music in the Curriculum
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Music in the academy is at risk. The decline in its status, presence, and reach can be traced to the cultural shifts beginning in the 1960s. Western classical music—with its unassailable history of accomplishment and undeniable pedagogical, cultural, and spi...
Strums and tuttis: Beaser’s music for guitar and orchestra
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This disc takes the title of its biggest and most prominent work, but it also includes three others: “Evening Prayer,” “Ground 0,” and “Notes on a Southern Sky.” Those first three are all for orchestra, written in the last ten years, while the last...