Muzine, Op. 97, No. 1: Music and the Amateur

**Music and the Amateur**
by
Hao Huang
Introduction:	Music is an art of participation, and classical music especially so, because it demands a degree of understanding which can be obtained only through active exposure as well as earnest study. This article is dedicated to music lovers who will never make it to Carnegie Hall, but see that as no reason not to make music. For if music is to be shared, the ideal of bringing back family music making in the home, and in amateur and school groups, is more relevant to its continued health and success than ever.
Active or Passive?	Why do comparatively few children and adults sing or play an instrument today? The answer is that, although music is an inescapable part of our present sound environment, it usually comes prepackaged--from a car radio or cassette player, a home stereo system, or a television set. We have become a nation of cultural voyeurs. And so, with respect to our relationship with our culture, I would like to ask: Why should non-professionals be involved in making music? Why should we want more musical amateurs?
The True Meaning of "Amateur":	To address meaningfully the role of the amateur in music, the word itself must be clarified. Our current equating of "amateur" with "dilettante" does not follow the original sense of the word, which is rooted in the Latin amator, meaning "lover". In the Medieval and Renaissance periods, distinctions of ability between professional and amateur musicians were not at all clear: the professional made his living with music, whereas the amateur--often of the aristocratic class--had the luxury of making music for the sheer love of it, and amateurs often outstripped professionals in the quality of their training and musical skills! History is dotted with such musical amateurs: King David, singer and lyre player; Frederick the Great, flutist; Thomas Jefferson, violinist. The late Renaissance composer Gesualdo was an aristocratic amateur whose economic independence freed him to make audacious experiments with harmony, and--more recently--Charles Ives' profession as an insurance mogul gave him the financial resources to experiment boldly without worrying about pandering to the public or even to the critics. Amateur musicians, no less than their professional brethren, follow in the footsteps of giants.
Music in the Home:	The significance of the German term hausmusik can be found in a quote from Carl Maria von Weber, who wrote that it was only "...private music making which must always be the foundation of genuine musical achievement and real musical appetites." This was opposed to the great public concerts, which were social occasions and functioned in much the same way as traditional religious festivities. The love of music was cultivated in the home (haus), for private enjoyment. Most musical training was not directed towards public spectacle, but rather toward a deeper artistic perception and appreciation, and to promote understanding through making music with and for others. Individual accomplishment led to aesthetic refinement, and lives were enriched accordingly.
One Family:	The same sentiment should apply to most people in music today, be they college music majors, adult students, or talented youngsters. The great majority of those who devote themselves to excellence in music will never be concert performers. But in our age of specialization and fragmentation, amateurs and professionals must reconcile with each other, and realize that we are a family, bound together by love for a musical culture that is threatened by the prevailing tendency to equate art with entertainment The attendant perception of great music is that it is something for snobs, a leftover of earlier class distinctions.
The Joy of Participation...	How can we deal with this attitude? How do we combat the notion, too often reinforced by politicians and school boards, that music is an unnecessary luxury? The best way to discover the joy of music is to invest a part of one's personal life in it. Thus, we must encourage more people to participate in, as well as listen to, great music. When an individual participates in artistic creation himself--however humble the result--he becomes an autonomous shaper of his culture rather than a mere passive consumer of it. Moreover, he gains an appreciation of the technical and interpretive hurdles involved in any creative enterprise. But even more important, self-development, exploration of creativity, discovering one's aesthetic sensibilities, optimizing performance skills--far from being limited to elite artists, these goals represent essential skills for life, quite apart from mere training for a profession. The quality of life is not circumscribed by career objectives. What you are is not merely what you do as a profession--this is my mantra, one which I continually impress upon my students.
...today!	Modern life is exhausting; the constant demands on time and energy leave little room for creative endeavor, so we must tap into the cultural legacy of the human community to help motivate individual behavior. And if the core of who we are is in fact what we do as creative beings, then life without active involvement in the arts will eventually catch up with and impoverish us. As Weber wrote in 1817: Music is...to the arts and to mankind...what love is to man...for it is love itself, the purest, most ethereal language of the emotions, containing all their changing colors. A story has been told that if only the nightingales sang, the forests would be silent. Let's make those forests ring!