Finding the Right Notes
So the much anticipated Mediterranean Music Academy is finally having it's 'soft opening' with the Muti seminars and concerts. It should be Malta's most important musical event this year, or perhaps this decade, so I bet we are all on tenterhooks to see how it will all turn out. This is after all Malta's Pride and Joy!
Except for one slight hitch. It has nothing Maltese about it, any more than French fries have anything French about them. So, Malta's most important music happening is an event done by foreigners, with nothing in it except foreigners. So far, so good. Nothing against foreigners; and from the looks of it they are more than competent foreigners. The objection arises when public funds are being pumped into this venture. How can the goverment justify spending thousands of pounds into such a project?
In order to answer this question, we have to ask ourselves even more questions. First and foremost is the question, 'What are we trying to achieve?', and this question can really be exended to the whole Academy venture. With funding being one of the main issues of culture in Malta, is this Academy really a priority? With a music education system which is struggling at the most elementary leves (The Johann Strauss School of Music being a case in point), it is indeed foolish to even think about having higher level music education. An Academy is really a place for professionals to perfect their techinique, and in Malta the number of professional musicians (and by extention artists) is shamefully small. And the few professionals we have, we are treating badly.
The Muti concert was preceded by a week-long seminar on Italian opera. This seminar is an opportunity to watch him conduct rehearsals, followed by a few discussion sessions. Only 15 active members were allowed, of which only 2 are Maltese. I will not go into whether it is justifiable to have such a limited number of participants, but one cannot fail to notice the meagre Maltese representation. If on one hand this project is aimed at Maltese musicians in general, then the exclusivity policy is utterly repugnant as access should have been available to a much wider audience, including music students and young professionals. If on the other hand it was aimed solely at professional musicians, then it is sad that we could offer only 2, which argument then brings us to the futility of an Academy if we have no professional musicians.
An even sadder situation is the way our only professional orchestra was treated. The members of the Orkestra Nazzjonali were obliged to sit as silent observers for all the rehearsals. This means that a group of professional musicians was forced to sit and watch a student orchestra rehearse (Muti's orchestra is in reality a student orchestra, though this is in no way to imply that they are not musically competent). This is an insult not only to the orchestra members but also to our general national pride.
An even greater insult has been flung towards the general public. The tickets for the main concert start off from Lm60 downwards. It is an exorbitant price by any means and it excludes many factions of society, not least music students. In a genre which is constantly struggling for audiences, it is utter madness to have tickets at such a price. And at the end of the day the concert on offer is not even a terribly exciting one; nothing more than a concert version of Donizetti's Don Pasquale. It is by all means very safe musical territory, apart from the fact that bel canto opera in concert version becomes nothing more than a stream of arias and duets. If this is the artistic direction that the Mediterranean Music Academy, then it certainly does not bode well. It is an artistic vision which is still locked in the pre-WWII ethos and steers away from innovation and experimentation.
Oh, yes and I actually mentioned the Academy in all this. Indeed for all this trumpeting about, no-one has as yet come up with any structure for this new instution, let alone a definite purpose for it. And yet, one can already get a glimpse of it through the programmed concerts; classicism and academicism, with some more classicism. Of course, we have all the 'East & West' discussion going on, and how the Academy will bring together east and west. And exactly how? By having Middle Eastern musicians playing Western works, and convincing them that this is so much better than their music? We will not foster cutural understanding simply by having Arab musicians coming in for masterclasses or courses, any more than I will foster religious tolerance by eating Jaffa oranges in front of a church.
More importanly, we are a decade too late on the whole idea. Daniel Barenboim has already been there and done that with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (an orchestra made up of Jews and Palestinians). It was a project which was born out of a real issue which affected the area. If we had to go on a similar venture we would have to look not East, but South to North Africa. That is where our real issues lie. Moreover, Barenboim's orchestra is all about letting young musicians from widely differing backgrounds come together to create something together. If members of our Orkestra Nazzjonali can't even perform for a rehearsal, I very much doubt young Maltese musicians will ever get a chance of actually performing or getting into the Academy.
Except for one slight hitch. It has nothing Maltese about it, any more than French fries have anything French about them. So, Malta's most important music happening is an event done by foreigners, with nothing in it except foreigners. So far, so good. Nothing against foreigners; and from the looks of it they are more than competent foreigners. The objection arises when public funds are being pumped into this venture. How can the goverment justify spending thousands of pounds into such a project?
In order to answer this question, we have to ask ourselves even more questions. First and foremost is the question, 'What are we trying to achieve?', and this question can really be exended to the whole Academy venture. With funding being one of the main issues of culture in Malta, is this Academy really a priority? With a music education system which is struggling at the most elementary leves (The Johann Strauss School of Music being a case in point), it is indeed foolish to even think about having higher level music education. An Academy is really a place for professionals to perfect their techinique, and in Malta the number of professional musicians (and by extention artists) is shamefully small. And the few professionals we have, we are treating badly.
The Muti concert was preceded by a week-long seminar on Italian opera. This seminar is an opportunity to watch him conduct rehearsals, followed by a few discussion sessions. Only 15 active members were allowed, of which only 2 are Maltese. I will not go into whether it is justifiable to have such a limited number of participants, but one cannot fail to notice the meagre Maltese representation. If on one hand this project is aimed at Maltese musicians in general, then the exclusivity policy is utterly repugnant as access should have been available to a much wider audience, including music students and young professionals. If on the other hand it was aimed solely at professional musicians, then it is sad that we could offer only 2, which argument then brings us to the futility of an Academy if we have no professional musicians.
An even sadder situation is the way our only professional orchestra was treated. The members of the Orkestra Nazzjonali were obliged to sit as silent observers for all the rehearsals. This means that a group of professional musicians was forced to sit and watch a student orchestra rehearse (Muti's orchestra is in reality a student orchestra, though this is in no way to imply that they are not musically competent). This is an insult not only to the orchestra members but also to our general national pride.
An even greater insult has been flung towards the general public. The tickets for the main concert start off from Lm60 downwards. It is an exorbitant price by any means and it excludes many factions of society, not least music students. In a genre which is constantly struggling for audiences, it is utter madness to have tickets at such a price. And at the end of the day the concert on offer is not even a terribly exciting one; nothing more than a concert version of Donizetti's Don Pasquale. It is by all means very safe musical territory, apart from the fact that bel canto opera in concert version becomes nothing more than a stream of arias and duets. If this is the artistic direction that the Mediterranean Music Academy, then it certainly does not bode well. It is an artistic vision which is still locked in the pre-WWII ethos and steers away from innovation and experimentation.
Oh, yes and I actually mentioned the Academy in all this. Indeed for all this trumpeting about, no-one has as yet come up with any structure for this new instution, let alone a definite purpose for it. And yet, one can already get a glimpse of it through the programmed concerts; classicism and academicism, with some more classicism. Of course, we have all the 'East & West' discussion going on, and how the Academy will bring together east and west. And exactly how? By having Middle Eastern musicians playing Western works, and convincing them that this is so much better than their music? We will not foster cutural understanding simply by having Arab musicians coming in for masterclasses or courses, any more than I will foster religious tolerance by eating Jaffa oranges in front of a church.
More importanly, we are a decade too late on the whole idea. Daniel Barenboim has already been there and done that with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (an orchestra made up of Jews and Palestinians). It was a project which was born out of a real issue which affected the area. If we had to go on a similar venture we would have to look not East, but South to North Africa. That is where our real issues lie. Moreover, Barenboim's orchestra is all about letting young musicians from widely differing backgrounds come together to create something together. If members of our Orkestra Nazzjonali can't even perform for a rehearsal, I very much doubt young Maltese musicians will ever get a chance of actually performing or getting into the Academy.
posted by Gedudu at 7:11 PM
1 Comments:
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