This volume brings together contributions from a wide range of international academics and practitioners. It traces innovations within classical music practice, showing how these offer divergent visions for its future. The interdisciplinary contributions to the volume highlight the way contrasting ideas of the future can effect change in the present. A rich balance of theoretical and practical discussion brings authority to this collection, which lays the foundations for timely responses to challenges ranging from the concept of the musical work, and the colonial values within Western musical culture, to unsustainable models of orchestral touring. The authors highlight how labour to meet the demands of particular futures for classical music might impact its creation and consumption, presenting case studies to capture the mediating roles of technology and community engagement. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of musicology and the sociology of music, as well as a general audience of practitioners, freelance musicians, music administrators and educators.

This volume brings together contributions from a wide range of international academics and practitioners. It traces innovations within classical music practice, showing how these offer divergent visions for its future. The interdisciplinary contributions to the volume highlight the way contrasting ideas of the future can effect change in the present. A rich balance of theoretical and practical discussion brings authority to this collection, which lays the foundations for timely responses to challenges ranging from the concept of the musical work, and the colonial values within Western musical culture, to unsustainable models of orchestral touring. The authors highlight how labour to meet the demands of particular futures for classical music might impact its creation and consumption, presenting case studies to capture the mediating roles of technology and community engagement. This book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of musicology and the sociology of music, as well as a general audience of practitioners, freelance musicians, music administrators and educators.

Understanding the Classical Music Profession is an essential resource for educators, practitioners and researchers who seek to understand the careers of classically-trained musicians, and the extent to which professional practice is reflected within existing classical performance-based music education and training. Taking Australia as a case-study, Dawn Bennett outlines how Australia is now a service economy, and an important component of service provision is in the culture and recreation industries. Despite this, employment in culture and recreation is poorly understood and a lack of cultural intelligence contributes to a less than satisfactory environment that inhibits the creative potential of cultural practitioners. Musicians in the twenty-first century require a broad and evolving base of skills and knowledge to sustain their careers as cultural practitioners. Bennett maintains that a musician cannot be simply defined as a performer, but that a musician is someone who works within the profession of music in one or more specialist fields. The perception of a musician as a multi-skilled professional working within a portfolio career has significant implications for policy, funding, education and training, and for practitioners and students seeking to achieve sustainable careers. This indispensable book provides a comprehensive analysis of life as a musician, from education and training to professional practice as well as revealing the structure of the Australian cultural industries. Although Australia is the focus of the book, the basis of the research originates from many different places and most of the issues discussed relate directly to other countries throughout the world.

Through an ethnographic study of young people playing and singing in classical music ensembles in the south of England, this text analyses why classical music in England is predominantly practiced by white middle-class people. It describes four 'articulations' or associations between the middle classes and classical music.

This kaleidoscopic collection reflects on the multifaceted world of classical music as it advances through the twenty-first century. With insights drawn from leading composers, performers, academics, journalists, and arts administrators, special focus is placed on classical music’s defining traditions, challenges and contemporary scope. Innovative in structure and approach, the volume comprises two parts. The first provides detailed analyses of issues central to classical music in the present day, including diversity, governance, the identity and perception of classical music, and the challenges facing the achievement of financial stability in non-profit arts organizations. The second part offers case studies, from Miami to Seoul, of the innovative ways in which some arts organizations have responded to the challenges analyzed in the first part. Introductory material, as well as several of the essays, provide some preliminary thoughts about the impact of the crisis year 2020 on the world of classical music. Classical Music: Contemporary Perspectives and Challenges will be a valuable and engaging resource for all readers interested in the development of the arts and classical music, especially academics, arts administrators and organizers, and classical music practitioners and audiences.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”