Classical music and race article

In the pop and hip hop spheres, race seems to be a topic never far removed from
discussion. The unapologetic appropriation of black culture by Iggy Azalea, and the ensuing
criticism by Azealia Banks, comes to mind as a recent polemic. In the classical music industry,
issues of appropriation are not manifested in this way: nearly all of the staple canonic composers of
the years 1600-1950 (the years in which the Western classical tradition exists in the public nexus)
operate from positions of significant cultural power, and the borrowing of each others ideas has
not generally been so blatant. It is a given that classical composers of the past are white, European
(or Russian), and male.
If there are issues of appropriation, they are more likely to be found in the stealing of the
music of gypsies or other outsiders of the academy. Bartok meandered round the Carpathian
countryside, collecting folk tunes for pieces such as the Hungarian Peasant Suite, an act that
would perhaps seem questionable today, but did not give way to furore during his lifetime. One
could propose that he was not acting as heinously as Iggy, as instead of performing a marginalised
culture through a whitewashed lens, making tons of money in the process (all without
acknowledging the roots of the genre), he transferred the melodies from an improvisatory context
to a notated one, respectfully preserving their aural histories, and clearly credits folk culture in his
title. This is not to say that his method is free from problems, as it would have contributed to a
certain otherising of gypsies which is still felt today. Certainly, the classical canon is no stranger to
orientalism: many key Russian romantic composers relied on orientalism, such as Balakirev, who
actually promoted the use of Eastern themes in order to set Russians apart from the Germans, in
pieces such as Islamey (which literally translates as Oriental Fantasy).
In the performance world, it seems that certain nationalistic schools of performance
practice have become so widely disseminated, that they no longer have much to do with your
ethnicity. Indeed I know performers of nearly all ethnic backgrounds, who play in a large variety of
nationalistic schools of instrumental aesthetic. I had a chat with the Chinese-born, Britishschooled violinist Anny Chen, who has been instructed from a very early age in the Russian violin
school. She defines this school in terms of being taught the degrees of the scale in Solfege, and
in terms of the repertory learnt: standard pillars of virtuosity including caprices by Rode, Paganini
and Wieniawski, and later typically canonic pieces by Brahms, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn. \
One reason she cites for stereotyping about Korean, Japanese and Chinese players
(particularly girls, and particularly violinists and pianists) is their prevalence on the international
competition circuit. They often all go for a similar repertory, favouring the classics of the Germanicromantic school over anything unusual, and all going for the same kind of look in their publicity
photos: a perfect up-do, pastel dress, blank background, an attractive smile with pearly teeth and
dewy skin. Furthermore, they all generally play with an extremely high level of technical proficiency,
due to the stereotype (which is not without some grounding) that East Asians put in more hours of
work than Westerners. Chen stated that stereotypes may often work to their disadvantage: if a
male German violinist came and played the same Brahms sonata that 10 Asian girls had just
played, perhaps people may be more immediately drawn to him just because of the difference in

appearances. Those who believe that the music-making is all thats important when it comes to
these competitions would seem to be wrong: good stage-presentation is often positively correlated
with success, and rightly so, as audiences are not blind. However, audiences often seem strangely
reluctant to engage in bodily discourse concerning performance (for me this stems from general
British bodily repression): the classical music sphere seems to have an aversion to embracing
physicality. Yet the stinking irony is in that most of the music in concert halls is to do with sensuality
and the body, and of course that the rest of society associate music with bodily movement
(dancing, anyone ever heard of that?). Of course, issues of race overlap with issues of the body.
Music competitions are still dominated by Europeans, Russians and Asians: events such as the
Sphinx competition in Detroit for young Black and Latino string players, have done much to combat
this imbalance, with top prizes running into five-figure sums, as well awarding high-profile
platforming opportunities.
In writing this article, I had the a very interesting talk with the brilliant Mahan Esfahani, the
only non-white international harpsichord soloist. He talked of his debut at Viennas Schubert Saal,
feeling that as a brown-skinned Iranian on the podium, he would not be treated in quite the same
way as a brown-skinned Iranian running the corner shop down the road. He did an extremely brave
thing: prior to his first note, he gave a short speech to the audience, about the racism that his
mother felt upon moving to Vienna. I strongly feel that it is people like him, speaking with such
clarity, and performing in a way that transcends bodily differences, who will dismantle racist
attitudes and issues stemming from white histories within the industry. He talked of the British Early
Music scene being run by posh white boys, a dominance that he felt very prevalently upon his
stint as Artist-in-residence at New College in Oxford. However he said that racism was not as
pervasive in the UK as much as in the US, where the classical music scene is dominated by a
churchy, upper-middle class crowd. When I asked about whether he felt his Iranian name could
affect CD sales either here or across the pond, he came across as visibly pained, due not only to
the tangible possibility of this oppression, but more due to the fact that his lifes work (he practises
non-stop) spent dedicating himself to the music he loves could be missed due to something so
superficial as a name. I probed him on more questions of race and the academy, and eventually he
grew frustrated with my perhaps pessimistic outlook, stating that he does not generally witness
racial oppression surfacing in his everyday life as an International soloist.The far more pressing
issue is that he has a ton of Bach to go and practice: rightly so.
Much effort is made by institutions in order to try and address the eurocentricity and
patriarchy present within the classical canon of composers: on the Oxford Music course, there is a
module entitled Studies in Women Composers led by the brilliant Brasenose professor Susan
Wollenberg, in which the lives of talented female composers who may have been kept out of
having true canonic status (such as Clara Schumann, though she found fame as a virtuoso pianist)
are explored, and celebrated. However, their numbers do not at all compare to the amount of men
who were trying to make it; this has led to some of my fellow students complaining that the course
is irrelevant or strange, perhaps as the dominance of patriarchy in musicology before 1950 is
almost overwhelming, making the pursuit of forgotten gems seem like a lost cause. As Sophie
Drinker explored in her 1948 book Music and Women (which was unsurprisingly ignored by the
academy), female music-making, both of her contemporaries and those before her, was almost

always confined to domesticity, which capped its potential for dissemination. The situation is now
somewhat improved, with many females doing well in most fields of the industry, but the amount of
women making career in stereotypically male-dominated, leadership roles such as conducting is
still negligible (see the 78 Wikipedia pages on women conductors versus 3626 pages on
conductors). This huge imbalance isnt helped by purely backward, parody-like comments such
as those by Bruno Mantovani in 2013 (head of the Paris Conservatory, amongst the top 5
conservatories in the world), who stated that the profession of a conductor is a profession that is
particularly physically testing, sometimes women are discouraged by the very physical aspect
conducting, taking a plane, taking another plane, conducting again. It is quite challenging.
This grotesque imbalance is of course due to structures which work against women in
general, but also due to a particularly pungent manifestation of patriarchy within classical music.
Those in industry leadership roles (heads of departments at conservatoires, principals, teachers
and more) are more often than not male, and often abuse their institutional privilege to magnify the
objectification of women: I have a large number of female friends who have decided to stop
learning with a male teacher, due to feeling sexually infringed, or not being treated the same way
as men. Unfortunately, I have also seen them put up with abuse in pursuing musical goals. Female
conductors are unfortunately still seen as oddities; the ones who succeed have surely shown
superhuman endurance and talent in the face of outdated traditions. When I was conducted by the
brilliant Simone Young in the National Youth Orchestra, the inevitable question of whats it like to
be a female conductor in the industry during a Q&A session was answered brilliantly: male
conductors come in all shapes and sizes, tall short, fat thin, bald, hairy: Im just the same, but with
tits.
A woman conducted the last night of the BBC Proms for the first time in 2013 (an annual
event founded in 1895), and the first female Master of the Queens music was appointed in 2014 (a
title first awarded in 1626). Oxfords own Anna Lapwood (a 2nd year Music Student) became
Magdalen College Choirs first ever female Organ Scholar in 2013, an establishment which was
founded in 1480. These events highlight the alarming disparity of gender within our industry,
especially when compared to all other performing industries. As Susan McClary said in Feminine
Endings, the Western classical musical sphere has seriously lagged behind other humanities in
terms of even considering itself in the light of feminist perspectives and demographic imbalances.
Female or non-white classical musicians in positions of power have often been considered
newsworthy idiosyncrasies: although we are getting closer to equality, there is still a lot to be done,
due to a large-scale patriarchal hangover, arguably stemming from a German-romantic nineteenth
century aesthetic on which the classical music industry still hinges. The day that the minor issue of
gender or race will no longer be so apparent, will allow audiences to focus on the important event
at stake (actual music and music-making). Hopefully, in the future, society will laugh at todays
gender asymmetry, which will exist only anachronistically. At least, it will if we can manage to
continue taking a stand against injustices.