Lorenzo Perelman /City Journal
The news was thunder: on August 25, the Boston Globe reported that Brandeis University would close its doctoral program in music by no longer accepting applicants in musicology and composition and theory. The decision was surprising for innumerable reasons. One in particular is the university’s deep connections with Leonard Bernstein. He also says a lot about the state of academia, American culture, and the type of character that has been prevailing.
The news media noted that the big problem was funding and the university’s desire to focus on the university’s music program. A reasoning that sounds empty. College music programs often rely on graduate students to help professors with classes and mentor younger students. To a casual observer, the closing of a PhD at a small private university must merit little more than a shrug.
Why should we care about intellectuals who study music theory? In fact, given the deep roots of classical music in European culture, which today has fallen out of favor in certain quarters, some might even ask why we should study it at all.
The answer is simple. We should be concerned because the Brandeis decision legitimizes the broader dethronement of musical arts and culture as central components of a university’s mission. Eliminating a PhD is just the beginning. Next will come questions about the relevance of the music program. It is a kind of departure from education, a total destruction and dismantling of the fundamental humanities.
| Allan warren, CC BY-SA 3.0 /via Wikimedia Commons
| Christina Burton /Courtesy The Leonard Bernstein Office
The dethroning of Leonard Bernstein’s ideas
The Brandeis connection to Bernstein makes the decision especially impactful. Bernstein, a native of Massachusetts and a true genius, was essentially the founding father of the university. Consider him the Thomas Jefferson of Brandeis. His involvement in the early years of the university gave the company the legitimacy it craved and needed to survive. Although Bernstein was itinerant, he always returned to the institution because he believed in its relevance.
Bernstein’s life and legacy are more closely intertwined with Brandeis than with any other institution. The New York Philharmonic, for example, existed for a century before Bernstein made his debut with the orchestra in 1943. Bernstein’s connection to Brandeis dates back to 1951, just three years after the university’s founding, when he He became a teacher and then an administrator and continued in some form until the end of his life.
In 1952, he produced the Brandeis Creative Arts Festival, which became an annual event. He Brandeis website notes that the Festival was dedicated to the notion that “the art of an era is a reflection of the society in which it is produced and, through creative efforts, the thoughts and expressions that characterize each generation are revealed and transformed.” ”. Brandeis’s disassociation from Bernstein’s legacy is perhaps a reflection of that current society.
Does the university remember what the first Creative Arts Festival included?
The Brandeis website lists “premieres of Mr. Bernstein’s opera ‘Trouble In Tahiti’ and Marc Blitzstein’s translation of ‘The Threepenny Opera’ performed by Lotte Lenya” and “dance performances by Merce Cunningham, music by Aaron Copland and Miles Davis, poetry readings by William Carlos Williams, and symposiums on the state of the arts.” Any major city of any era would envy such a festival.
Bernstein, the focus of an upcoming film starring and directed by Bradley Cooper, once again looms large in American culture. Brandeis could have used this moment to benefit his Ph.D. She could have contacted Bernstein’s children, active in all efforts to publicize his father’s achievements, to see if they could help find funding for the program (instead, dropping out of college has caused them a statement of dismay).
“No philanthropist supports music” or the way to cancel the arts
It’s hard to imagine that the university couldn’t have found philanthropists willing to fund the program on Bernstein’s behalf.
The character of a nation depends crucially on its educational institutions. On the eve of the 75th anniversary of its founding, the leadership of Brandeis University has turned its back on one of its ancestors, those who followed in its footsteps and its own roots. Music students and alumni have expressed his disapproval, but many others at the university may not care. Their apathy won’t last forever, however: It won’t be long before fiscal or ideological pressures encroach on other core programs that made Brandeis the institution it is today.
Lawrence Perelman is founder and CEO of Semantix Creative Group, a classical music PR and strategic advisory firm that counts the Salzburg Festival, conductor Gianandrea Noseda, and violinist Anne-Sophie Mutter among its clients.
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2023-09-11 14:35:57
#Disdain #music #cancel #culture
