An Open Letter to Daniel Elder and His Muse

This is an open letter in response to composer Daniel Elder, specifically his essay published in September 2020 on his website: https://www.danieleldermusic.com/post/equity-silences-the-muse

Daniel and I were classmates at Westminster Choir College, graduating together with the Masters of Music in Composition in 2012.

Daniel: I do not mean to belittle you personally, or your music. As a white male composer, indeed your exact contemporary, I understand keenly the unusual sensation of feeling obsolete. It is most unpleasant. Your complaints are heard. What you have experienced is by no means unique, and your interpretation of it is by no means unexamined. So, rather than addressing the minutiae of your essay, which would make for not only tedious reading, but a piss poor attempt at changing your mind (to which myriad unresolved internet arguments bear witness), I will respond only to the first sentence of your essay, which — in a nutshell — summarizes the seed and source of each and every one of your woes today.

Mr. Elder, music has always been political. Did you imagine that Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro was apolitical? Or that Gershwin experienced no criticism on account of the racially divisive nature of his works? Or that Beethoven’s third symphony was meant simply as a piece of pure music, unmediated by Ludwig’s own social position and political opinions? Surely you remember more from Music History 101 than you are letting on. The fact that you claim to fashion your own creative process as a space devoid of the influence of your own identity, or indeed your position within the world itself, is perplexing. Which historical period is the one that ratifies this philosophical stance? Certainly you do not self-identify with the Romantic era, which begat transcendentalism and vibrant expressionistic work, informed deeply by the personal and worldly experiences and identities of authors and artists. Perhaps it is the Baroque period where you seat yourself, when composers like Lully and Monteverdi worked within a patronage system that catered to the ruling classes, and commented on their policies and power. Perhaps it is Mediaeval or Renaissance music you seek to create, the development of which continuously was in the thrall of conflict between sacred and secular traditions and lifestyles. Make no mistake: you exist in the world, and so does your music. Turning off the comments will not spare you this fact. Your music is as much subject to identity politics as Mozart’s ever was, and more, since we live in a world with more people, and more kinds of people than Mozart ever did.

So I ask, my fellow composer, from whence came this idea that music exists outside of the personhood and politics of the composer? And, regardless of the origin of this insidious idea, what are the effects of isolating music from its politics? I contend that the effects are fatal. The only way to revive classical music to anything resembling relevance is to re-politicize it. We must recognize that, if anything, the current effort to acknowledge and respond to the identities of the players in the classical music world is a noble effort by us, its practitioners, to save classical music from being banished to the annals of history. I am certain you are well aware that Eric Whitacre falls short of being broadly popular when compared to Beyoncé. Do we assume that Beyoncé is fanatically beloved solely due to her blackness and her womanhood? Do we claim that Beyoncé’s unequivocal acclaim is part of a grand conspiracy to give preferential treatment to black women? No, we understand that—all other things being equal—Beyoncé is infinitely more popular with current audiences when compared to Eric Whitacre not in spite of her blackness and womanhood but because her lived experience as a black woman endears her and her music to the zeitgeist (and not just the zeitgeist of music, but of the whole of civilization). If Eric Whitacre had produced “Formation” it would mean something very different, just as “Water Night” would mean something different if Beyoncé had composed it. Identity in music is important—not all-important, but essential.

You claim that efforts toward equality — blind auditions and the like — were well and good, but then opine that you haven’t the faintest idea why white men are the only ones who gravitate toward the field of classical composition. On the contrary, blind auditions were nothing more than an expression of the very aforementioned effort to isolate music from the world and from politics. Would Lizstomaniacs have responded well to a blind audition? Or did they care just as much about Liszt the man as they did Liszt the music? I ask again, why should we seek to depoliticize music? Could it be that yesteryear’s practitioners of classical music (our predecessors) were well aware that those blind auditions, despite being well-intentioned, would fail to increase diversity? Read this sentence twice: could it be that the social-political vacuum into which classical music has been placed was always already an attempt on the part of a white male establishment to insulate music from the emerging political forces that they knew would mean their eventual obsolescence?

Now, I will say again, I do not mean to belittle you personally, or your music. As a white male composer, I understand keenly the unusual sensation of feeling obsolete. It is most unpleasant. But the response to a lack of relevance ought never be to blame the world. Great art does not come from looking only inwardly, and never has, not in the Romantic or any other era. Never in the history of this blessed green earth was music divorced from his eternal bedfellow politics. If there ever were a Muse, you best believe she lived in the city and went to the council meetings.

The world does as it pleases and its inhabitants have for millennia worked toward a greater quality of life for everyone, despite some notable setbacks. It is a mistake to view 2020 or postmodernism (oh, the horror!) as one of those setbacks. Respond to your own waning relevance not by blaming the world, but by striving to make yourself relevant. Collaborate with musicians whose work astonishes you. Create immeasurable beauty and share it with the world unapologetically, without expectation of praise or entitlement to be celebrated. Help your neighbors. Lift up your friends and your enemies alike with reckless kindness. Look at the world and its people and ask yourself how you can make them more prosperous, not just with music, but with your whole life. Look at the world and its people and ask yourself how you can empower them. All this whining will accomplish nothing.

I will close with a quotation from Whitman, a white male American creator. Whitman penned this advice to artists in 1855, and rest assured divisions being sown today ain’t got nothin’ on the identity politics of the American social landscape of the 1850s.

The fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations are not independent but dependent. All beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. If the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman it is enough. The fact will prevail through the universe. But the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail. Who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem.