Diversity in classical music

[thorn]

This thread is a follow on from the 'Drama' one but I thought that firstly a different title might encourage more people to join in, and secondly it would be a nicer conversation without being tied to the ramblings of one toxic critic.

To stimulate discussion the themes from the other thread were misogyny, ageism, race, and identity (does a non-western pianist trained in say the UK/US become a "British/American pianist" vs. maintain the national/ethnic identity on their birth certificate).

In the last post there was also an article that raised the themes of positive discrimination, tokenism, and "wokeism" which I thought best to get into in a new thread vs. respond to back there.
 
I'll post my thoughts some other time, keeping the OP as just a conversation starter. And obviously feel free to raise other issues- disability, sexuality, religion, etc.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

I guess I'll just post a few fantastic pieces by composers who are members of marginalized groups.
Alkan - Op. 31 Preludes (Huseyin Sermet and Laurent Martin)

Alkan - Op. 63 Esquisses (Laurent Martin)

Alkan - Op. 39 no. 11 "Ouverture" (Jack Gibbons) [I would say that this is my favorite piece for solo piano, at time of this writing]

Alkan - Op. 22 Nocturne (Jack Gibbons)

Mélanie Chasselon - Nocturne ("Gamma1734" on youtube)

Cécile Chaminade - Op. 40 Concertstück (Christina Harnisch)

Cécile Chaminade - Op. 21 Sonata (Joanne Polk)

Florence Price - Piano Sonata in E Minor (Michelle Cann)

Saariaho - Ballade (Daria-Karmina Iossifova)

Also worth mentioning Art Tatum (up there with Cziffra as one of the best piano improvisers of all time), though admittedly I'm not very familiar with him or his recordings/performances. Same with Scott Joplin.

(does a non-western pianist trained in say the UK/US become a "British/American pianist" vs. maintain the national/ethnic identity on their birth certificate).

They're whichever combination of those nationalities they identify as. White people need to stop trying to force specific ethnicities/nationalities on to other people (ISTG the amount of people in the US who think that everyone from Central/South America is just "Mexicans...")

[moonlight88]

They're whichever combination of those nationalities they identify as. White people need to stop trying to force specific ethnicities/nationalities on to other people (ISTG the amount of people in the US who think that everyone from Central/South America is just "Mexicans...")

i mean i agree but thats a bit of a slippery slope...

[thorn]

I had to look up why Alkan was relevant and I didn't know he was Jewish. You learn something new every day!

They're whichever combination of those nationalities they identify as. White people need to stop trying to force specific ethnicities/nationalities on to other people (ISTG the amount of people in the US who think that everyone from Central/South America is just "Mexicans...")

i mean i agree but thats a bit of a slippery slope...

Yeah we have to be super careful about this. I mean if being influenced by western institutions makes one western then literally the entire world is western because colonialism/global capitalism. It's an extremely reductive logic.

[essence]

When discussing diversity, class is hardly ever mentioned, but is maybe more dominant than any other influence. In England, most British youngsters know almost nothing about classical western music. Likewise, some sectors of British society have never heard of Tupac.

The idea that any country or race or ethnicity is a homogenous whole is one of the great lies.

[thorn]

When discussing diversity, class is hardly ever mentioned, but is maybe more dominant than any other influence. In England, most British youngsters know almost nothing about classical western music. Likewise, some sectors of British society have never heard of Tupac.

I read an interesting book on this topic a few years ago, 'Class, Control, and Classical Music'. It's an academic study vs general reading, but really well done.

[ranjit]

I have a thought about this that I haven't seen mentioned anywhere. I think the rationale is usually music = language, therefore musical style = accent, learned in early childhood.

I don't think this is true. In my experience, my musical understanding of pieces and my stylistic interpretive choices are predicated on the music that I listen to and enjoy and whose language I've internalized, primarily as a late teen/adult. I think this is also true for many students I have seen: people tend to mirror their influences.

The critical period hypothesis for phonemes is probably true (it can be learned as an adult, but through a somewhat different mechanism and the neural circuits are not as pliable), and it is probably true for perfect pitch as well. But most of musicality, imo, is sound memory and sense of drama/style as opposed to raw processing of musical information, which while still likely better in childhood, can be retained well into adulthood.

[essence]

I read an interesting book on this topic a few years ago, 'Class, Control, and Classical Music'. It's an academic study vs general reading, but really well done.

I've had a glance at this - fascinating.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334546539_Class_Control_and_Classical_Music

[moonlight88]

Yeah we have to be super careful about this. I mean if being influenced by western institutions makes one western then literally the entire world is western because colonialism/global capitalism. It's an extremely reductive logic.

i was more so talking about some pretty disgusting ideas related to certain political groups, though that's another topic.

[thorn]

I've had a glance at this - fascinating.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334546539_Class_Control_and_Classical_Music

The intersection of class and race is also worth mentioning. When I was training as a teacher (I'm also based in England) the research consistently showed that kids from Asian backgrounds did better than kids from white, black or traveller backgrounds- and that this overlapped with who was more likely to be entitled for free school meals. To return to the example of Aristo Sham from the other thread, how many people can afford to send their kids to Harrow?

i was more so talking about some pretty disgusting ideas related to certain political groups, though that's another topic.

Yeah I don't think overtly political threads are a thing on this forum. Probably for the best.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

The intersection of class and race is also worth mentioning.

This.  You can’t only mention class without including race

[essence]

Nor can you mention race without mentioning class.

You think, for example, that west Indian culture does not have clear distinctions on class? Even if they do menial jobs on arriving in UK?

You think Obama's have same culture as ghetto people in dirty south?

I don;t use the word ghetto in a perjurative sense. Just a result of old housing policies.

[rachmaninoff_forever]

Nor can you mention race without mentioning class.

You think Obama's have same culture as ghetto people in dirty south?

I don;t use the word ghetto in a perjurative sense. Just a result of old housing policies.

You literally just said Obama isn’t like other ghetto black people. 

[essence]

I don't think so, if I did completely unintended. It was middle of the night. The Obamas came from academic middle class families.

My use of the word ghetto was clumsy. I was simply referring to, for example, the wards of Houston, and I know several friends who grew up in them. George Floyd too. redlining has some history there, I believe.

I think everybody would agree that George Floyd and the Obamas had very different childhood experiences. I don't think Floyd had a pathway to Columbia and Princeton. That's all I am saying.

I just meant every ethnicity is heterogenous - like you can't assume all hispanics vote democrat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining
Quote:

Other cities like Detroit, Houston, and Atlanta likewise have very pronounced black and white neighborhoods, the same neighborhoods that were originally redlined by financial institutions decades ago.

[thorn]

Let's try and keep it on topic. The relevance of the above issues to said topic is that a classical music education is a privilege.

Imagine two children with equal raw talent:

Child 1 lives in a home where there is a piano, they show interest at a very young age, they have parents who notice and value that interest, said parents do their research and find a good teacher, said parents can afford the best teacher they can find- either a) because they have well paying jobs, or b) because they live in a broader culture that normalises spending money on your child's education.

Child 2 lives in a home without a piano, they eventually encounter one at school and a teacher notices their talent. Best case scenario their school/parents encourage said talent but don't realise there's good teachers and bad teachers (and in any case couldn't afford top level ones) so just send the kid to someone down the street. Worst case scenario nobody gives a damn about the child's talent and they remain messing about with school/street pianos as and when they can.

If you did a survey of conservatoire graduates and international competition entrants (not even winners, just those who even make it to the entry stage) which of the above two examples would be the most common? And what class, race, culture etc. kids are *more likely* to grow up in homes that look like this? (Of course no class, race, culture is heterogeneous, but I'm talking *more likely*).

[thorn]

I just came across a couple of UK-based events for Pride month where they're programming works by LGBTQ+ composers. I won't share links as these often get flagged as spam, but the composers they're playing are Britten, Ravel, Szymanowski, Poulenc, Tchaikovsky, Barber and two I've never heard of: Ysaÿe and Henriëtte Bosmans, as well as a couple of contemporary composers (also hadn't heard of them)- Jennifer Higden and Michael Tilson Thomas.

I find this topic quite interesting because this is a minority community that has historically hidden itself pretty well- nobody sits debating whether Clara Schumann was a woman or Scott Joplin was black, but some of the above composers like Ravel are hotly contested. Which is a shame because we can talk about how someone's gender or race has/has not influenced their music, but there's not much conversation about how LGBTQ+ identities influenced music- only whether the individuals in question were/were not LGBTQ+.

To drag this all back to piano, the only solo piano piece in the two concerts is Ravel's Ondine. I've always found this to be an ambiguous piece (like L'indifférent from Shéhérazade)- Bertrand's poem is clearly written from the poet's perspective, but Ravel's piece is almost entirely from Ondine's perspective (nobody plays this imagining they are hearing Ondine, they play it as if they are Ondine).

[essence]

Ysaÿe is I think a violin composer.
I don't find sexuality of composers very interesting in itself, but it can lead to some explorations which find their way into the music.

I thought Ravel's sexuality or personal life were an enigma?

I seem to recall Debussy's heterosexual life was very complex and active. No girl was safe.

Of course, lacking a married life leaves more time for composition, and being imaginative in composition might be lined to imagination in intimate relationships.

I have a feeling, for example, that imaginative scientists and mathematicians lead an imaginative life, just look at Einstein and Feynman. The idea of of dusty old scientist is a myth.

Just random musings while I take short break from work.

 

[thorn]

Yeah Debussy had a full life in that respect!

My view of Ravel is he was almost certainly neurodiverse and living in a period where nobody understood these things so labelled such people eccentric/aloof/emotionless and so on- and of course those are the primary sources scholars of Ravel have to go on. But the fact he chose poems like Ondine and L'indifférent, both about the unrequited love of a character in the shadows, tells me that he absolutely did have those emotions. Whether he connected with characters in the shadows because he was neurodiverse vs because he was gay/bisexual is something we'll never know. But I don't think LGBTQ+ musicians adopting those works does anyone any harm.

Szymanowski was one I didn't know about, but did a quick search and his close friend Arthur Rubinstein said he was solidly homosexual so you learn something new every day (again a new way of reading Metopes, Masques, Mythes)

[liszt-and-the-galops]

"Out LGBTQIA+ composers" is a rabbit hole that I've been meaning to explore for a while now, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Hopefully soon.

Tangentially related, I've heard it said a few times that the dedicatee of Prokofiev's Second Piano Concerto (a pianist, though I don't think he was a composer) killed himself because he was gay and had found out that his best friend (Prokofiev) wasn't. Though I haven't been able to find the original source of this story, let alone confirm its accuracy.

Also been exploring the pieces of Fanny Mendelssohn a bit recently. It's a shame that so little of her oeuvre seems to be recorded; she's one of the best composers of the early Romantic period IMO, at least from what I've heard. I've attached one of my favorites below:

[dizzyfingers]

I remember a dry quote from Rubinstein about Szymanowski "fully going over to the other side", in effect.
I couldn't find it but I found this:

In his autobiography, My Life and Loves, the pianist Arthur Rubinstein recalled a profound shift in the composer Karol Szymanowski’s personality following a trip to Sicily.   .Rubinstein noted:  "Karol had changed; I had already become aware of it when a wealthy friend and admirer invited him to visit Sicily. After his return, he raved about Sicily, especially Taormina.  "Szymanowski then confided in Rubinstein that his experience in Taormina, where he saw young men resembling "models for Antinous," solidified his homosexuality. Rubinstein observed that his friend shared this confession with "burning eyes"

Personally, I think we live in a dark grey age which prefers to polarize sexuality, into hetero and homo.  It's a necessary evil coming out of a very dark age, heralded by Christianity, which condemned (condemns) homosexuality.  Eventually we may evolve to an age when sexuality is not simplified, where each person can have a unique expression, and there is no expectation and no condemnation.  Just personal choice.

[thorn]

Personally, I think we live in a dark grey age which prefers to polarize sexuality, into hetero and homo.  It's a necessary evil coming out of a very dark age, heralded by Christianity, which condemned (condemns) homosexuality.  Eventually we may evolve to an age when sexuality is not simplified, where each person can have a unique expression, and there is no expectation and no condemnation.  Just personal choice.

I agree. When I first heard about Chopin's letters to Tytus Woyciechowski the comments were full of people arguing hetero vs homo, absolutely nobody considered the possibility he was either bisexual or a straight youth who had a dabble... (Incidentally some say Liszt was also bisexual)

"Out LGBTQIA+ composers" is a rabbit hole that I've been meaning to explore for a while now, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Hopefully soon.

"Out" is a tricky word, especially when you go back in history. People like Barber and Britten were as out as it was possible to be in their time, but it's hardly what you'd call out in 2026. Speaking of Barber one of my friends programmed a piece by his lover Gian Carlo Menotti for their piano diploma:

Thomas Adès is a living out composer:

[essence]

It's a necessary evil coming out of a very dark age, heralded by Christianity, which condemned (condemns) homosexuality.  Eventually we may evolve to an age when sexuality is not simplified, where each person can have a unique expression, and there is no expectation and no condemnation.  Just personal choice.

Jesus said remarkably little about sexuality. Speaking personally, music and erotic desires go hand in hand. i am 99% hetero, but have enjoyed many friendships. I can almost relate each musical piece I play with a certain girl.

Enjoyng listening to Dylan's highlands right now. Yes, makes me thing of my lovers in Houston.

[thorn]

Jesus said remarkably little about sexuality.

I'm not a theologist but as an ex-historian I think we have to be really careful of reducing Christianity to the surviving primary texts, ignoring the centuries of human history that have passed influenced by interpretations of those texts (whether right or wrong). Jesus didn't authorise the transatlantic slave trade either but the Pope still just apologised for the Church's role in legitimising it.

[liszt-and-the-galops]

"Out" is a tricky word, especially when you go back in history. People like Barber and Britten were as out as it was possible to be in their time, but it's hardly what you'd call out in 2026.

Yeah, I'm primarily expecting to find living composers, with a few recently deceased composers in there as well.

Jesus said remarkably little about sexuality.

...And the line that's cited by far the most often was written centuries before Jesus himself was even born.

[essence]

I'm not a theologist but as an ex-historian I think we have to be really careful of reducing Christianity to the surviving primary texts, ignoring the centuries of human history that have passed influenced by interpretations of those texts (whether right or wrong). Jesus didn't authorise the transatlantic slave trade either but the Pope still just apologised for the Church's role in legitimising it.

The only other forum on which I am active is https://www.thinkinganglicans.org.uk/ which seems to spend a lot of energy on matters of sexuality. Recent discussion I provoked was whether priests should be called 'Father' or indeed 'Mother'.

What really bothers me is when someone calls a radio phone-in program and starts with 'as a Christin bla bla bla sex and more sex'. They do an enormous disservice to Jesus. They should read St Augustine on science.

[dizzyfingers]

I'm glad we don't discuss religion here.
And politics.
Though music history is pertinent, and how can you discuss history without touching on historical organizations like religious institutions and governments.

How did Beethoven instigate a new type of "professional composer", anyway?  Mozart was likely an inspiration.  But Beethoven took that to the next level.  The socio-economic-class atmosphere was changing as well.  Has anyone covered that?

We don't discuss sex much either, though I'm not opposed to it, however I don't really want to hear about persons' personal tastes and proclivities.

I think Brahms, who certainly revered Beethoven and used him as a musical model, may have also mirrored his decision to not marry, nothing more soul wrenching than unrequited love, put all that angst into music imagination.