I am working with two different home-schooled groups. One is a class at Children’s Theatre and one a teenage troupe, Youth Shakespeare Company, who are staging “Love’s Labours Lost” under Suzy Messerole’s direction. My song replaces the Pageant of Nine Worthies and is without doubt the most unremittingly cheerful thing I have ever written. The word “love” occurs I dunno…twenty? thirty? times…
Three-part harmony, and a little difficult to teach it at the first rehearsal, as the piece is in B flat and the middle B flat in the church-basement piano is missing its hammer. I’ll bring the keyboard next time.
As representatives from the minority party and our governor have been hammering away about the economic crisis, and characterizing art as “wasteful spending,” I’ve been thinking about our need for art. Art feels necessary, but I have a peculiar viewpoint because I live inside it most of the time. For most people art is a luxury, but a luxury that makes us human. I think of the words Shakespeare put in the mouth of King Lear:
O reason not the need! Our basest beggars
Are in the poorest thing superfluous.
Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man’s life is as cheap as beast’s. Thou art a lady:
If only to go warm were gorgeous,
Why, nature needs not what thou gorgeous wear’st,
Which scarcely keeps thee warm. But, for true need–
We have innate desires to be expressive and to experience others’ artistic expressions. Whether “low” or “high”, for use (church music) or for pleasure (a dance party); the form doesn’t matter as much as the fact that the art exists and is appreciated. Art needs a certain level of activity, of churning around, of training, of performance, of collaboration, so that great works can emerge. It’s impossible to decide now what is of lasting value, although of course we all may consult our tastes and our preferences.
The anti-art-funding folks are not attacking concept of having art in the world. They love and need art too. Their children undoubtedly sing in the choir, take ballet class, act in school productions. They have pictures on their walls and collections of CDs. No, they’re not anti-art. Instead they are attempting to impose their tastes upon the state and the nation, a role that is not appropriate for anyone, least of all politicians. References to the National Endowment for the Arts invariably cite Andres Serrano (kids, ask Mom before you click this link…) or some other work which is evidently offensive. “Why should taxpayers support this trash?” we are asked, as the budget for the Perpich Center for Arts Education is cut.
The question arises: what makes the work of an arts high school and a transgressive photographer so equivalent that both are ceremonially sacrificed in the name of fiscal discipline? I’d say it is the experimental nature of their work. You really don’t know what is going to happen if you give public funding to a bunch of high school kids; the outcome is undetermined. That’s scary to people who like to keep tight control over others’ cultural expressions. The anti-funders’ proposed alternative–let the commercial marketplace rule–doesn’t answer, since they also attempt to censor art out of their direct financial control–mean nasty rap music, Elvis, etc. etc.–even and especially when consumers have expressed a great interest in it.
Given that art is here to stay, and we need it, I keep an open mind and remember that I contribute to it as a participant, an audience member, a patron and a funder, through my taxes, my purchases and my donations. Something lasting will emerge from the soup of contemporary culture, along with a lot of so-so dreck. Since it’s not my place to decide what audiences will value two hundred years from now, I’ll just accept that art-in-general is a social good, and urge us all to support it, especially when it bothers us.
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: watercolor by James Warren Childe
Felix Mendelssohn, whose 200th birthday was celebrated February 3rd, nicely illustrates this post. Mendelssohn’s reputation was besmirched by Richard Wagner’s critique in an anti-semitic pamphlet and the Nazi party banned performance of his works, leading to a nearly century-long decline in the reputation of his music. He himself was responsible for reviving the reputation of the great JS Bach, who had fallen into obscurity.
