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A new art music for the 21st
Century? Challenging
our view of art music
This paper was
originally presented at Birmingham University as part of the conference
on Art Music in the 21st Century (18.11.00).
The aim of this paper is to examine the recent development and growth of courses in music technology and popular music between 1994 and 1999 at undergraduate level and examine the impact this may have in formulating our concepts of art-music within the academe. The paper acknowledges the context of critical discourse which has surrounded art-music in the last twenty years or more and in particular focuses on those ideas of art which have been sustained and culturally embedded in the academe for well over a century.
The emergence and increasing
popularity of courses in popular music and music technology pose an
interesting challenge for music teachers in
higher education. These innovative courses are now well established
and sufficient in numbers to present
a significant alternative to the more traditional study of music.
In the long term, the continued expansion of these courses at all
levels of education will not only have an impact on student demographics,
but is likely to have a significant
impact on our perceptions of art music.
I would like to argue that for an art-form to survive it must be
relevant to the society which created it and to explore our responsibility
as educationalists and academics to deal with this issue of relevance
in the design of our curriculum. In simple terms I ask if we, as academics, are going forwards or backwards in our thinking
and how this relates, if at all,
to the artistic direction of a new generation of students.
1.
Concepts of art music
It is not the purpose of this paper to attempt
a detailed discussion of what
art music is (and is not) and
it would be misguided if I were to attempt such a task within the
constraints of this discussion. Art
music has, and I am sure will continue to have, a long and complicated,
ever changing history. Since the
time of Plato (and probably
before) we have found it necessary
to place a value on music, to justify our tastes in music and to attempt
through reasoned, and occasionally through unreasoned argument, to
influence the thoughts of others. Asking ‘what is art music?’ is similar
to asking, ‘what is good?’; ‘what
is beauty?’; ‘what is popular?; or ‘what is music?’.
None of these questions will elicit a specific or definitive
answer, only a set of rules, principles or beliefs which, more often
than not, are effective by what the exclude
rather than by what they include.
The situation becomes problematic largely
because the terms we use in discussing art music are those that Richard
Middleton (1985) described as ‘active’ and as such, possible meanings
for the discursive terminology we create must be historically located. In this way art-music can be seen, not as a
fixed definition or essence, but as a moveable concept - a reflective
term which changes as we as a society and as individuals within a
society change. Context therefore, becomes very important to understanding
the art music terminology, but the context should not be considered
as being straightforward or simplistic.
Cook (1998) has argued that when we use signifiers such as
‘art-music’, we have to recognise the:
… nexus of interrelated
assumptions built into the basic language we use of music: that musicianship
is the preserve of appropriately qualified specialists; that innovation
… is central to musical culture; that the key personnel in musical
culture are the composers … that performers are in essence no more
that middlemen… (Cook, 1998: 17)
By including keywords such as ‘qualified specialists’, ‘innovation’ and ‘composers’ in his discussion of music, Cook uses terminology which developed in the 19th century which by its very context, automatically excludes the set of assumptions built into the language which is commonly used to describe popular, commercial or music in the mass media. Central to the culture of popular music is the performer or performer-composer and composers, rather than being key personnel in the musical process, are often the ‘back-room-boys’ who provide a framework for the performer to add their individual and authentic stamp. Much of the popular music discourse is the antithesis of the way Cook describes art music. For his part, Cook recognises that he is operating within carefully controlled linguistic and cultural boundaries which do not necessarily recognise that other forms of music exist. [i] Popular music is the often the domain of the amateur, of the non-specialist performer who rather than being the middleman is the central aesthetic figure of much popular music culture [ii] . The language and assumptions of art-music are effective only by their stylistic exclusivity and any attempt to use these linguistic assumptions lead to a number of problems not least of which is that the lack of transferability of the terminology in some ways devalues those musical styles that do not fit. Putting it another way, any recognised inadequacy of a particular genre is probably the result of an inadequacy of the terminology to be able to deal with a broader, pluralistic musical spectrum. [iii]
This inadequacy has created one of the major
problems for academics dealing with popular music because the art-music
meta-language is not historically located in the world of the popular:
it has no context in the new musical vocabulary created by popular
artists. The consequence of this is that a significant proportion
of academic writing on popular music during the last two decades has
been involved in clarifying the analytical and musicological language
used rather than engaging in the analysis of musical texts. This now
seems regrettable but necessary and even at the time of writing, textual analysis of
popular music is less than prolific. The scholarly tools that we have
to work on popular texts offers little that is useful and aside from
a few pioneers, there remains significant resistance by many academics
to explore unknown territory.
In the introduction of his book, Interpreting
Popular Music, David Brackett summarises this difficulty which
he shared with other writers of the 1990s.
This project
began as an attempt to find language that could explain my continuing
fascination with popular music in the face of notable lack of encouragement
within academia to pursue that fascination. Not only did popular music
have no place in the music curriculum, but the training I received
seemed to make defending the viability of popular music an impossibility.
Somehow, I knew that the popular music I enjoyed was
in no way less interesting than the classical music that both I and
my teachers loved; yet the methods I was learning to describe, praise,
discuss and write about music gave me no vocabulary to describe the
“interesting” qualities of popular music…. (Brackett: 1995, xi)
Brackett’s situation probably strikes a
chord in many students of the time. Outside of the classroom, music
heard on a daily basis reflected a great deal of popular culture,
inside the classroom the situation was typically resistant to those
musical genres which did not fit the canonic mould.
Simon Frith perhaps gives one of the most damming summaries
of the situation by suggesting that: the art music discourse
is organised around a particular notion of musical scholarship, a
particular concept of musical talent, and a particular sort of musical
event, in which music’s essential value is its provision of a transcendent
experience … only available to those with the right sort of knowledge,
the right sorts of interpretative skills. (Frith, 1996: 38-9)
Explained in these terms, concepts of art and art-music are
seen to be culturally determined through the mediation of scholarly
activity. The academy supports and continues to sustain art-music
by training its students to appreciate, understand, interpret and
create appropriate music in a particular
way. In doing so, the academy establishes, defines
and sustains the musical canon.
The scholarly skills developed
in university music departments – archive skills, reading skills,
interpretive skills – are, then, just like those developed by art
historians or literary critics. Their purpose is the same: to establish
the canon, to come up with a coherent, linear historico-aesthetic
narrative…. (ibid.)
Through the apparatus of the academic institution,
boundaries are constructed, legitimised,
and gate-keepers appointed around conventions of performance,
composition, notation and aesthetic expectations.
[iv]
It is these gatekeepers who
regulate the flow of the type of music into (and sometimes
out of) the art-music curriculum and thereby into the art-music canon. This is not to say that our institutions have not taken note of
current academic contexts and, however slowly, entered the dialogue
which is a response to the critique provided by Frith and others.
In his own contribution to the dialogue, Jim Samson asks pertinently,
Who and what is this body of knowledge for? And how, anyway, does it sit with developing orthodoxies premised on the multidisciplinary and the intertextual? (1999: 37).
For the most part, the body of knowledge is for those with the appropriate (who decides?) apparatus to decipher and decode the new orthodoxies. However, the body of knowledge is also for those who follow us, for the students we teach in our institutions and from that viewpoint it raises specific questions of institutional responsibility and cultural relevance.
New
directions from the academy. Against this art-music background there
have been numerous calls to introduce popular music into the arts
curriculum. In the 1976, Graham
Vulliamy and Ed Lee provided a strong pro-popular music debate in
their book Pop Music in Schools (although Keith Swanwick
had produced Popular Music and
the Teacher in 1968). These
books provided a platform for a (slow) discussion advocating the inclusion
of popular music in the music curriculum. Some schools developed CSE
courses in popular music and a few degree and sub-degree courses included
popular music in their music curriculum but it was not until the early
1990s that popular music was available to the full time student when
the BTEC National Diploma courses in Popular Music became available
to 16-19 year olds studying in Further Education.
More recently, a study from the National
Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) on music lessons in schools
suggested that there should be some attempt to make music lessons
in schools more relevant as ‘pupil enjoyment, relevance, skill development,
creativity and expressive dimensions were often absent. Overall, music
was the most problematic and vulnerable artform’ (NFER, 2000: 568).
Given the popularity that music has outside of school,
[v]
it is interesting that only 4% of pupils in year
11 nominated music as their favourite subject in comparison to English
(23%), science (21%) and art (19%) which was the third most popular
subject. The survey also suggested:
that while 84% of
pupils doing music has apparently chosen to take it because of their
personal interest or enjoyment of the artform, they found that the
actual experience of music lessons at key stage 4 did not meet their
original expectations (NFER: 526). One fundamental issue at stake is that of
relevance: music in school does not connect with the popularity music
has outside of school
[vi]
and while other factors do enter into the equation,
there is clearly a problem with the curriculum and the report highlights
a crisis for music in schools.
In higher education, a number of institutions
have taken on the issue of ‘relevance’ and championed degree and sub-degree
courses in popular music and, more recently, music technology. Now,
in the 21st century, the popularity of courses in popular
music at undergraduate level continues to be significant. The following
table indicates the demand for popular music courses through between
1994 and 1998. The figures show applications to HND and Degree courses
in popular music but do not show those courses where popular music
is available as a module or as part of the degree
[vii]
.
Table 1. Courses in popular
music
The table indicates that in a four year
period, the number of degree and sub-degree courses in Popular music has doubled
from 5 listed institutions to 10 in 1998. The trend has slowed
in recent years but courses there are more courses available each
year. The supply of such courses remains below the demand in applications and clearly
there is a reluctance by many institutions to muddy their feet in
these areas for a variety of positive and negative reasons. In 2001
there were 12 institutions offering popular music as a single degree
study (or ‘with music’). Overall, for 2001, the number of courses
was 52 including HND and combined courses with business, history,
education, and popular culture.
In 1994 there were 2,229 applications for
popular music courses with 2,353
in 1998. The number of applicants for these courses is remaining remarkably
stable. In addition, by way of an interesting statistic, the number
of males outstrip females by more than 4 to 1:
of 1,929 male applications in 1998 there were only 424 female
applicants.
The area of music technology for the same
period provides even more dramatic statistics, although these include
BSc/BEng type courses as well as music-based courses the growth in
applications and in places available are quite significant.
The number of institutions offering Music Technology related degrees in
2001 at BA, BMus level numbered 17 out of a total of 127 HE courses
including BSc, HND and Dip He courses.
At Barnsley College
[viii]
in 2000 there were 120 undergraduates studying
on ‘Creative Music Technology’ courses, a term coined to differentiate
them from the technically based courses and reflect our interest in
using technology for creative outcomes including commercial, dance
music and the interdisciplinary work demanded by the study of multimedia.
These courses attracted a wide range of
students from an equally diverse range of backgrounds from the UK
and abroad. The students presented a number of interesting challenges
as they brought with them musical styles and practices which we, as
a staff, were relatively (and possibly totally) unfamiliar with.
In the early days of the courses, one of the difficulties faced
by staff was that, in comparison to our more traditional courses,
many students on popular music courses could not sight read. For the
majority of staff whose musical values privileged music notation (the
ability to read music at sight, analyse scores and transcribe music)
this presented an immediate problem. The problem was not the students
ability, it was simply that this particular skill, highly regarded
by traditional music educators, was of limited value to many of the
students and had little if any relevance
to their musical aspirations and practices.
In the area of technology staff are constantly
facing new challenges as new experiences emerge. The latest challenge
comes from the DJs who bring with them a new art-form: turntablism.
At its lowest it consists of someone playing a record and mixing between
one track and another. At its most skilful level it consists of DJs
able to identify and play individual notes to create melodic lines
and isolate beats with virtuosic dexterity in order to combine sound
sources in a creative way to produce something new and original. This
linked to the art of re-mixing brings additional problems in the area
of composition and performance where the areas become extremely blurred.
[ix]
Further challenges come in the form of the
student’s ability to use software effectively, even from the first
week of the course. An arranging assignment which, until recently,
was completed on a score, painstakingly copied, rehearsed and performed
live, moved into a new notation-free
dimension when a song was downloaded from the internet as a midi file,
placed onto a sequencer, rearranged and edited there, transferred
to the programme Acid where grooves and other lines were added, transferred to Reactor
for further sound editing
and finally mixed into Sound Forge before being transferred
to CD.
A very impressive sequence of events produced an exciting, creative, original and professional arrangement from a DJ student who could not read music or play a conventional instrument. Events like this seriously challenge the ways we teach and educate, our categorisation of musical ability, our methods of assessment and our values and responsibility. It is not only the approach that students take, but also the musical forms are changing. Recent developments in computer games have resulted in the aesthetic values (and to some extent the practices) of the Hollywood film being introduced to programming and alongside this, including the approach to music for games. However, imagine a game where you could be transported into a number of different scenes at any time with hundreds of characters each with their own lietmotif. The composer would have to create a soundtrack for each new gameworld – in effect create multiple soundtracks which the programmer could select from at any time but the intention would be to produce a seamless soundtrack. It is clear to see that a new art-form is emerging with new possiblilities not only in compositional techniques but in exploring the potential of surround-sound technology which is now standard with games and home video. More importantly, it is an everyday artform which our children are growing up with, yet they can only explore it in the confines of their bed rooms or a few colleges which have moved into computer games development.
These changes bring about significant problems
for the academe: on vocationally led courses, there can be no room
for theory to lag behind art-forms as has often been the case. Students
are fully aware of the cultural products they interface with and back
at their computer screens in college hardly want to provide beeps
and crashes for space invaders when a new Hollywood gameworld beckons.
The new generation of student brings new skills, new ideals, new aesthetic
principles which both challenge and make a significant contribution
to the discourse which exists on art music. It was Richard Middleton who, writing in
1990, invited us to take a ‘critical stance’ when looking at musicology,
and this critical stance needs to be replicated in the wider discourse
of music as an art. This may lead to a dilemma,
where by critically reviewing the nature of music as an artform, and
by being critically challenged not only by academics but by the students
who take our courses. Our artistic traditions, heritage and time honoured
values become dislocated with the present and our thinking may become
disorientated. For some, this may represent a crisis or the ‘death
of a musical tradition’, but as Cook suggests, … if there
is a crisis in classical [art] music, it is not in the music itself,
but in the ways of thinking
about it (Cooke, 1998: 50)
Taking this a step further, it may be time
to think the unthinkable; that our past notions and concepts of art
music may now be irrelevant, unworkable, alien to a new generation
and out-of-step with current musical worlds. The landscape is changing
extremely fast and we either adapt to change or we quickly loose our
way.
New
art forms emerging: new concepts of art In a recent guardian feature on ‘dumbing
down’, Andrew Clemments considered the problems facing contemporary
classical music ending the article on a critical note suggesting that
Music has to speak on behalf of the society that spawns it: when it cannot do that or when society fails to hear what it is saying, the future for the art form is bleak. (Guardian, 4.11.00: Dumb? p. 18)
Clement’s assertion that music has to speak
on behalf of society may not find agreement with everyone, especially
those who see music as an autonomous entity, but some music does speak
on behalf of society, and society can
hear what it is saying. If this case, the future of the art form may
not be bleak but the future of the artform-as
we-once-knew-it, may indeed be bleak. New Art-forms are emerging
everywhere, some from surprising beginnings. The disco was once a
place where people danced to records. From that artistically inauspicious
beginning Gilbert and Pearson suggest that:
… the techniques of beat-mixing, of DJing as musical performance, have been developed to the extent that DJing is considered an ‘art form’ in certain discourses around dance culture. There are various skills or criteria in such an evaluation: being able to programme the musical selection, to read and react to the crowd, and to demonstrate an ability in the beat-mixing technique developed by Grasso and those he inspired. (Gilbert and Pearson p.127)
Observing some of our students in performance
suggests that DJing is an
art-form in that it is a highly specialised and skilled praxis which
combines craft with aesthetic considerations which extend to lifestyle.
This presents a challenge which we can meet if we take a moment to
reflect that our individual and group concept of art is ‘active’ and
cannot be thought of in fixed terms. These innovatory moments in the
music-time continuum place a certain pressure on our understanding
of art and certainly challenge the institutional view
[x]
. The impact of new musical forms, of new technology
and of new methods of working linked to the fragmented state of music
today suggests that the meaning of art-music will change.
Conclusion: the dilemma
In conclusion, it would be remiss of us
to believe that the concept of art has not been challenged in previous
musical eras and that the 21st century is unique in some
way. It seems inevitable that art music will survive in the 21st
century, but not, I would suggest, in its present form. However, it
is my contention that what we mean
by art-music will change very little but the musical boundaries we
establish will change as our society changes. Art-music has survived through the process
of canonisation which, according to Frith, is what music departments
are for. But in these times of critical musicology, of deconstructionism,
it becomes clear that all is not what it seems. Art-music is as much
a political term as it is an historico-aesthetic one. As a political
term it will survive and this is evident in the area of popular music
and music technology. Pop courses have duplicated the apparatus of
art music: the canonisation of rock and pop is now well established
and its validity and truth almost unquestioned. Musicology has been
replace by rockology, rock being the dominant commercial artform.
The music may be 21st century but the approaches to study and the way we understand the academic study
of music remain rooted in the past. The meaning of art is changing,
but the methods of justifying its position in the musical hierarchy
remain remarkably similar. The challenge is to come clean and take
a ‘critical stance’ so we do not continue to obfuscate the subject
of music by dividing it into artificial hierarchical boundaries.
Perhaps the real challenge for the 21st
century as we consider the addition of popular music and music technology
courses to the academe is
to decide whether we go backwards
or forwards
[xi]
. This is not to evoke a post-modern/modernistic
philosophical discourse, just simply to ask –why should ‘art music’
as we understand it now, survive?
The challenge then is to challenge, preferably
before those of us who are teachers, academics and artists are challenged
by a new century and a new generation who refuse to accept old ways
of thinking.
[xii]
In being challenged we must not rest on the
spurious legitimisation of our subject by replicating the musical
and academic canons of the past. A new generation is with us who may
not know what ‘art music’ is, but they know their
art and guided by technology, unaware of the mythologies which surround
art music discourses and burdened by their own contemporary mythologies,
they pursue their art. The students on these courses
are our futures, and they and their society are responsible for the
future of their art. All we can hope to do as responsible institutions, is to allow them the opportunity to develop their
art and not suppress or repress it through the processes of institutional
legitimisation: to survive in the 21st century, our thinking
about art music must go forward. Bibliography Blake,
Andrew, 1997. The Land Without
Music: Music, Culture and Society in Twentieth-Century Britain. Manchester
University Press Brackett,
David. 1995. Interpreting Popular
Music. (Cambridge University Press).
Cooke,
N. 1998. Music, A Very Short Introduction.
(Oxford). Frith,
S. 1996. Performing Rites. (Oxford). Gilbert,
J. & Pearson, E. 1999. Discographies.
(Routledge).
Harland, John. et
al. 2000. Arts Education in Secondary Schools: effects and effectiveness.
(NFER) Middleton,
R. 1985, Articulating musical meaning/reconstructing musical history/locating
the popular, in Middleton,
R. and Horn, D. (eds.) Popular
Music: Continuity and Change. Samson,
J. (1999) Analysis in Context in
Cook, N. and Everist, M. (Eds) 1999. Rethinging Music. (Oxford
University Press) Swanwick,
K. 1968. Popular music and the teacher. (?) Tagg,
P. 1994. Tagg’s Diatribe in IPM
Newsletter, August 1994. (IPM, Liverpool) Vulliamy,
G. and Lee, E. 1976. xxxx
Pop Music in Schools. (Open University Press) Wicke,
P. 1987. Rock Music, Culture, Aesthetics and Sociology. (Cambridge
University Press)
[i]
Or, if these other forms of music do exist, quite often
they are marginalized so as not to be discussed. To discuss other
forms of music would present a significant challenge to the vocabulary
which has grown up around art music.
[ii]
It could be argued that the notion of popular music
being the domain of the amateur is part of the mythology which surrounds
the musical style. Many popular musicians were ‘working-class’ untrained
musicians, others were art-school graduates, but increasingly, there
are more and more trained musicians entering the pop scene. Different
genres have different mythologies with training in jazz
(Berkley in the USA producing the Marsalises for instance
not to mention several guitar heros), Generalisations are therefore
dangerous and everyone and everything has to be taken on merit.
Furthermore, we have to consider the relevance of these backgrounds
as they can have a bearing on authenticity. It forms an interesting
subject in itself and represents a set of values which come into
play before any music is heard. Peter Wicke reminds us that Behind
all music ‘stands not only a complex web of contexts of use, but
also a context of reflection mediated in political and ideological
terms which determines the musical performance’ (Wicke, P. 1987.
Rock Music, Culture, Aesthetics and Sociology. (Cambridge Universtity
Press). P92.
[iii]
This in itself is revealing of my own individual aesthetics
– that of inclusivity – and of the more inclusive nature of the
critical musicology movement. It occurs to me that this could only
be written within a certain
context and as such is probably as flawed. Such a position does
not come with any apology, just a warning (as this is also the time
of health warnings) that it does reveal a bias, a leaning to a more
open system of understanding music and a rejection of any notion
of supreme musical genres or of one particular musical value being
in any way superior to another. The critique comes full circle,
but it is a position I am happy with since it rejects any notion
of essence but contributes to the active debate we should have.
[iv]
Andrew Blake makes provides a timely reminder of the
extent of this process of
exclusivity in his book The Land Without Music.
It provides an interesting discussion about the role of other
institutions such as the BBC who had a mandate to educate as well
as entertain. He suggests that the BC had
a perceived duty to find and promote the best of British
music, which led to systematic discrimination in a medium whose
exposure could already by the late 1930s make or break careers.
The discrimination was justified as a pure meritocraty: the organisation
decided early on to promote the young Benjamin Britten, for example.
Its exclusions, however, seem to indicate that there were other
factors at work than any abstract notion of the aesthetic ‘success’
or otherwise of composition as judged by a neutral reading panel.
The BBC chose not to push Havergal Brian…who was a working-class
autodidact from the Potteries, rather than part of the comfortable
Oxbridge-Royal College of Music nexus…. (1997: 56).
From
his position in Cultural Studies the discussion provides a strong
critical framework for the work of not only the BBC but of other
organisations who, like the Arts Council, specifically patronised
certain forms of music at the exclusion of others. Taken one step further, what I term
exclusivity does become discrimination and the ideology that supports
it is distinctly unpleasant.
[v]
Popularity takes many forms, and outside of school,
the importance of popular music as a cultural identifier is very
important. Like many forms, it is largely passive. The issue here
is one of relevance and I concede that the popularity of music is
debatable. However, it does permeate most of our media orientated
lives and a brief encounter with the magazine section of WH Smiths
indicates a lively readership for guitar, drum, bass and keyboard
magazines as well as technology publications exploring the potential
of sequencer and recording technologies in making music. This does
not include more passive musical magazines covering virtually every
musical genre.
[vi]
“It’s a lot to do with music teachers being prepared
to use musical forms and genres relevant to young people out of
school. Successful teachers were able to breakdown the boundaries
between hip-hop, jazz, and classical music. (Will
Woodward, education editor, The Guardian, 10.10.00.)
[vii]
I realise that the number of courses at sub-degree
level have outstripped degree programmes significantly, but for
the purposes of this paper I have chosen to be selective in highlighting
degree courses in music related activities. This is not to undermine
the pioneering work of many of these excellent courses which exist
in a variety of excellent institutions, but to allow me to problematise
the inclusion of popular music in the academe.
[viii]
At the time of writing, I was Programme Leader for
Music at Barnsley College.
[ix]
I am reminded here of a ground-breaking student who
in 1994 presented a performance on computer where he mixed sequenced
sounds together on the then state of the art Atari for a performance
examination. As a musical experience, it was quite satisfying but
as a performance we could not deal with the issues. In the end,
we had to ask him to perform again but on guitar. How times have
changed as hundreds of people turn up at festivals to see the dj
of their choice ‘perform’ for them mixing records, triggering samples
and interacting with ‘musicians’.
[x]
The Open University philosopher Oswald Hanfling reminds
us that:
It
may be that sooner or later, and perhaps due to the innovatory pressures
of today’s art and the institutional forces behind it, the conceptual
geography will have changed to such an extent that the word ‘art’
will no longer mean what it means now.
[xi]
Thanks to Phil Tagg whose diatribe (Tagg’s diatribe…
IPM Newsletter, August 1994 supplied the idea).
[xii]
Writing in the Guardian Newspaper, Fran Abrams suggests
that: Rock music, when it comes to filling courses, looks like becoming
the new media studies. It's a free market out there, and the courses
that pay are the courses that attract large numbers of applicants.
On that basis, if on no other, these degrees can't fail. Last
year, prospective students had a total of 1,206 music courses to
choose from, according to the Universities and Colleges Admissions
Service. This year, they have 1,329. In 1994, 2,677 students accepted
places on music courses. Seven years later, in 2001, the figure
had risen by almost 70% to 4,509. Much
of the increase has been in subjects related to pop. There will
be 11 new popular music courses this autumn, bringing the total
to 52, and 10 new music production courses, boosting the number
on offer to 29. And eight new performance studies courses, in addition
to the 19 already on offer. But
is the popular music degree a Good Thing? Is this explosion of new
courses set to produce a new generation of slicker, more professional
musicians and managers, or will it just turn out a better-qualified
breed of benefit claimant? (Fran Abrams, The Guardian. |