Music makes you musical

"I don't teach music because it makes you smart. I teach music because it makes you into a human being." That's the way music teacher Jeroen Schipper ends a recent blog entry. It's a charming piece of prose, in which he explains that he understands why music teachers keep hammering on about music's contribution to our IQ (firmly seated in the brain and observable by means of a brain scanner, as we now all know) but that  he is actually fed up a bit with all that.

I agree with him. And I would like to add that I am also not a fan of the newest fad, which is an old fad really: the claim that music, as an art subject, makes you creative - and creativity is what our society (and especially our economy) needs. Apart from the fact that music is so much more than just creativity, and that there is a lot of uncreative but nevertheless very worthwhile musicking going on in most human lives, I dislike the ugliness of the arguments around creativity because they are so intensely tied to thoughts about being a winner and not a looser, about economic growth rather than modesty, about wanting to be better, newer, more advanced and more innovative rather than about being simply happy. (Remember the Lisbon-agenda of the EU? "The most competitive and dynamic knowledge economy of the world.")

Ach, I know, I'm old-fashioned. But music might be more than yet another instrument to be in one of the world top-3s.

What I liked best about Jeroen's blog is his question why we shouldn't turn the question around. Why do we expect music to contribute to mathematical or linguistic abilities? Why don't we ask mathematics to contribute to the rhythmical abilities of children? Why don't we ask from English to contribute to a better understanding of pop music? We know the answer: because mathematics and English have an intrinsic value. So if we want to justify why we should teach music in schools, let's not talk about how music contributes to something else. Let's talk about the intrinsic value of music, about how music makes you more musical.

Jeroen argues for precisely that. He does so by saying that music is a unique means of communication which can convey things that in no other way can be communicated. I am not so sure if that's a good argument - I'm not sure if it holds, and I would like to keep the possibility open that with music you teach something that also can be taught by other means; why would that make music less worthwhile?

But I like Jeroen's expression that music makes you human. In a way this is of course also an example of instrumental reasoning - music is good for something else. But by adding just a word it loses its instrumentality.

Music is worthwhile because it makes you into a musical human being.

Problem solved.

André Rieu - Respect.

We were watching a show on television - André Rieu and his orchestra playing in Sao Paolo (Brasil). Lots of Japanese in the audience, of course, as Sao Paolo hosts what I believe is the largest Japanese community outside of Japan. Lots of waltzes, lots of costumes, a bunch of sopranos, three tenors of course. Funny sketches in between and during the pieces. Lots of operetta tunes. Not really my music, but then again: the music was not really meant to be for me, so why bother about that?

The audience had fun, that was clear. So had the musicians. The audience came expecting a great show and they got it. Not only did Rieu play the repertoire he is famous for, he also played a couple of latin pieces and finished the show with Brasilian Michel Telo's world wide hit  'Mosa Asi Voce Me Mata'. He spoke to the audience in (a sort of) Portuguese. And he played 'Amazing Grace', complete with tin whistle and bagpipes - which moved the audience to tears. I was wondering why, but a bit of googling around gives a possible reason: a Brazilian kid gospel singer Jotta A. performed the song in 'Brazil's Got Talent' with enormous success.

'Smart guy, our André', I said to my wife when the show was finished and we talked about how he completely captured his audience. She replied: 'He shows respect.'

I guess we both were right. But I think my wife's remark was smarter than mine, as well as more respectful.

The King: 'Will there be more music, or was this all?'

The new King and Queen visited Groningen. We know how much they like music ('Koningslied'). And as the Groningen conservatoire is named after the King's father, the big band of the conservatoire was supposed to play for the royal couple while they were doing a walking tour of the inner city.

The King and Queen took their time. The meticulously planned scheme of the visit, which indicated from minute to minute where the royalty was supposed to hear what and talk with whom, was not prepared for a King and Queen being humans, rather than robots. And so it probably came to pass that the big band finished playing their piece just at the moment K&Q, slightly late, arrived.

Slightly puzzled, the King asked the mayor of the town: 'Will there be more music, or was this it? ... Well, thanks.' And off they went to see other things and meet other people. Whereafter the big band started playing their next piece, I suppose, for an audience of Royal backs.

Or was it planned like this? Had the organisation sold the break between pieces of the big band as an abbreviated performance of John Cage's 4'33''? Has someone pointed out to the royal couple, in answer to the King's question, that music really is in the silence between the notes? And has this led to instant Buddhist enlightenment with the King? Which later on in the day made him apologize to a cow ('Sorry, Bertha.')? Will he soon seize power and turn our country into a Buddhist state?

How useful a big band is!

Gil Scott-Heron

I am writing this blog entry sitting in the living room, while my wife and two oldest kids are watching the Eurovision Song Festival finals. (I was in an expert meeting on music yesterday (by chance and/or by mistake), and people assured me that to develop culturally everything starts with getting acquainted with culture at a young age within the family. So we don't have to worry about the musical future of the kids, I am sure.) As you know, for the first time in many years The Netherlands reached the finals. Well done, Anouk! The Netherlands should have reached the finals some years ago, as you'll remember, but we sent the right guys with the wrong song. Of course, there again is some media discussion about whether or not Anouk's song is nice and/or good - Koningslied revisited, as it were. I understood that one of our national singing heroes has said that the song made him slightly depressed (and it indeed is a ballad about a suicide), and then other people told him to shut up because the song is GOOD so he should LIKE it.

Never a dull moment in The Netherlands, musically speaking.

Playing without the fear of losing

In my regional newspaper Coen Simon, a Dutch philosopher, was interviewed. He wrote a book about guilt; a book I need to read because part of it is an interesting argument about sports. Sports, he says, has become economized (economicized? whatever) - it has become a domain where gaining has become the main goal. You play to win.

Simon thinks - at least according to my usually not too philosophical newspaper - that is wrong. Our society   has become a society where gaining, growth, winning, being the best and the biggest has become the norm. The way we sport reflects that. Simon thinks we should go back to a world where sport is essentially the playing of games: something you do together, something where you realize that if someone has to win someone else has to loose - a world where losers and winners are on an equal footing, and where you realize that when you have lost you made the game possible in the first place.

Great, great, great. I love people who invent their own mission impossible. Convince the world that soccer, baseball and chess is not about winning - not even about winning the battle against obesity. We have trouble even to think that thought - let alone to make it reality.

I especially love this because it reflects some of my ideas about making music. I understand that playing an instrument requires 'mastering' it. And that that is a process with no end - my experience is that people who start playing an instrument in some way buy themselves into a paradigm which requires them to become ever better. And I include myself in that. I want to learn to play the 5-string banjo better, faster, louder, with more swing. It is one of our 'codes of culture': the professional musician - the music specialist - as the role model for an entire music culture.

But at the same time I know that precisely this 'athletic view of music' (Bruno Nettl) is the cause for so many people abandoning playing an instrument, or worse: not even starting it. And that is why Simon's idea about a world of sports where we play games without the fear of losing is so sympathetic to me.

Wouldn't it be great to be playing instruments without the fear of losing?

King's Day - 'Koningslied' Revisited; or: on quality and taste.

It is the evening of the first King's Day - or is it the last Queen's day? Or both? In the morning the kids watched the television to see Kings, Queens, Princes and Princesses; and in the afternoon we went to buy other people's junk. I hoped for a 4th-hand working Hoffner bass guitar, violin model, but the only thing I managed to buy was a Beatles record  which I hadn't collected yet.

And this evening, we watched the live emission of the newly composed (?) song for the King, 'Koningslied' - it was sung in Rotterdam, the King and Queen listened in Amsterdam. And that will be the end of the Koningslied-craze. The craze already had waned a bit, thanks to Joop van den Ende, our musical-tycoon and the only real Statesman we have left nowadays.

"Koningslied" - Song for our new king

As you may know, our current Queen steps down in two weeks time, and we will have a new king, Willem-Alexander.

When the Chinese emperor died and a new emperor gained power, long ago, the reference pitch of the fundamental tone of Chinese music was changed because basically a new emperor meant a new cosmological order. Willem-Alexander's rise to the throne is generally not seen as a cosmological change in the Netherlands; instead of a new musical system we therefore satisfy ourselves with a new song.

We are a modest people.

This new song, called "Koningslied" ("The King's  Song"), has put the country in turmoil. It is writtten by one of the most prolific popular songwriters in the Netherlands; it is sung by a whole horde of national (semi-)celebrities; all revenues will be donated to a charity. No news there, one would say. The musical style is popular and bombastic; there is a sing-along chorus and there is rap in it as well; the lyrics are full of pathos. No news there, again. It is rumoured that the song was not written for the occasion but was lying on the desk of the composer waiting for a good occasion to be used. No news there, either (Bach recycled his music extensively).

So, everything that could be expected has happened. But the curious thing is that, in certain circles (I don't know which circles, I must admit), an enormous movement against the song has started, including a Facebook page which allows people to apologize to our future king for the song - over 32,000 likes as I write, whereas the official Koningslied-Facebookpage has 767 likes. And over 19,000 people signed a petition against the Koningslied.

Those of you who know me a little by now will not be surprised that I am not going to sign the petition or like the anti-Koningslied Facebook page. Or the pro-page, for that matter; the question whether or not I like this song is a personal question of little consequence. There is, actually, only one question to be asked, as usual: What the hell is going on here?

I invite you to send me your interpretations of all this. I will start with two options. It may have to do with the feeling of many people that the King is given a  present in their name but that they would never have chosen this particular present themselves. Or, in other words: there is a lot of talk about 'us' and 'our country' surrounding the song, and many people seem to think that that means by definition 'me' and 'my country'. Option nr. 2: it may have to do with the feeling that the song is just another commercial product written by a serial song writer, whereas the new King deserves more 'quality' - whatever that may be (read composer Merlijn Twaalfhoven's well-meant reaction suggesting that the song should have been 'new' and 'fresh' rather than commercial and without quality - his words, not mine).

So, what the hell is going on? Is the argument that it's not my taste? Or rather that it's not my quality? Or something else? Help me out.

Meanwhile, to remind you of the fact that all this will pass, listen to Danny Schmidt's 'This too shall pass' ('better carve it on your forehead or tattoo it on your ass'), a song where a King plays a role in the final verse.