More and more, the egalitarian movement in higher arts education is downplaying the role between mastery and learning from past masters, instead promoting the idea that the “creative” impulse takes precedence over learning the classical canon. It is all about “today,” and something new, even if that newness doesn’t come close to the quality of the past. In this way, classical music schools are cutting their own throats.
In his third article about troubling trends in American conservatories, Andrew Balio cites master painter, teacher, and author Juliette Aristedes, who described a similar trend in the visual arts:
… in the cultural climate that exists today this pattern of receiving an artistic heritage and either building on it or reacting against it has been broken. Many contemporary artists acknowledge no relationship at all to the art of the past.
With that continuity between past and present severed, with creativity, everything and mastery nothing, classical music will die of its own doing. Stunts such as John Cage’s 4:33 (4 ½ minutes of silence) may seem clever on some sort of precocious juvenile level, but they won’t put butts in seats for long—the classical music audience is too smart for that. And without butts in seats, what is the point of continuing the entire enterprise?