Producing (Musical) Difference: Power, Practices and Inequalities in Diversity Initiatives in Germany’s Classical Music Sector

2021 ◽  
pp. 174997552110394
Author(s):  
Kristina Kolbe
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
Diversity Initiatives ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Opera House

This article examines whether diversity debates in the Western cultural industries can contribute to the undoing of racialised representations of otherness or reproduce ‘race’-making logics. Based on a year-long ethnography of diversity efforts made at an opera house in Germany, I explore how difference is negotiated in the production of two opera pieces meant to bring together Western and Turkish musical practices. I specifically examine how power relations around ‘race’ and ethnicity play out in processes of commissioning, composing and rehearsal. Situating these creative practices within classical music’s institutional histories and wider discourses of citizenship and belonging in Germany, I examine to what extent racialised representations of difference are challenged or remade. I document how diversity initiatives in the cultural industries, even when aimed at institutional change, proceed within hierarchical parameters that can perpetuate the marginalisation of racialised others, their continued construction as otherness, and the persistence of institutional whiteness.

scholarly journals Musical Practices in the Funeral Context: A Case Study of Cemeteries in the Ljubljana Region in 2016

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-241
Author(s):  
Anita Prelovšek
Keyword(s):  
Popular Music ◽  
Folk Music ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Instrumental Ensemble ◽  
Vocal Ensemble ◽  
Musical Practices

In Ljubljana and in its surroundings the music at a traditional funeral still consists usually of a vocal ensemble or a trumpet, but in 2016 this has increasingly tended to be replaced by a girl’s vocal and instrumental ensemble. The choice of music depends largely on the wishes of the relatives of the deceased. Folk music predominates, followed by popular music; the music requested least is classical music. The most frequently performed songs of the year 2016 were: Gozdič je že zelen, Lipa zelenela je and Nearer my God to Thee.

Locating Classical Music in Culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Anna Bull
Keyword(s):  
Classical Music ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Musical Institutions ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Aesthetic

This chapter reframes existing research on classical music by putting it into dialogue with sociological understandings of class and gender to outline what a social analysis of classical music should look like. This also lays the foundations for theorizing more widely how music might be analysed in relation to class, an urgent theoretical intervention at a time of increasing economic inequality within many nation-states. It asks, how are musical institutions, practices, and aesthetics shaped by wider conditions of economic inequality, and in what ways might music enable and entrench such inequalities or work against them? The chapter argues for understanding music and inequality through a multi-scalar approach that examines how sociocultural discourses and practices can be traced within musical practices, and how such practices can then be heard in the aesthetic that they create.

scholarly journals The Elephant in the Room: Race and STEM Diversity

BioScience ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 237-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria N Miriti
Keyword(s):  
Education Research ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Institutional Change ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Faculty Of Color ◽  
Academic Disciplines ◽  
Diversity Initiatives ◽  
Recruitment And Retention ◽  
Science And Education ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Despite considerable efforts to enhance participation of underrepresented demographics, participation of scholars of color in STEM remains stagnant. In contrast to other academic disciplines, the experiences of STEM scholars of color are relatively unvoiced, which hinders examination of the factors that reduce participation and retention. Social science and education research reveal the importance of intersectional strategies to address institutional and cultural practices that reduce diverse participation. Institutional change requires the support of the STEM workforce. I summarize important issues that influence recruitment and retention and offer strategies that can improve recruitment and retention of faculty of color. Broad awareness among STEM practitioners of the relationship between race and the biases that reduce recruitment and retention of underrepresented scholars can support STEM diversity initiatives.

Reimagining the archive as thick sound: A case study of Dhrupad from Bettiah and beyond

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-58
Author(s):  
Sumitra Ranganathan
Keyword(s):  
Complex I ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Philosophical Problem ◽  
Oral Traditions ◽  
Music Making ◽  
Musical Practices ◽  
Indian Classical Music ◽  
And Function ◽  
Archival Work

The ephemerality of music is a consuming philosophical problem; it is also a practical dilemma for archivists and researchers. For oral traditions such as Indian classical music, notations, recordings and transcriptions fail to capture much of what is communicated in musical performance, which problematizes the creation and function of archives. This article explores an approach to archiving musical practices in relation to constitutive processes of emplacement, a complex I denote by the term ‘thick sound’. Using a rich and historic Dhrupad tradition as a case study, I discuss how I used documentary, material, aural, embodied and sensory performance data to construct my archive. I investigate the ways in which such documentation captures ecologies of music-making and the challenges posed for the analysis of histories of (thick) sound. I conclude by discussing the implications for theorizing archival work as active intervention, mediating relationships of past, present and future.

Capital of Culture

2020 ◽  
pp. 137-150
Author(s):  
Rohan McWilliam
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Capital ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Creative Industry ◽  
Art World ◽  
Intellectual Work ◽  
The West ◽  
Major Site ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
Opera House

This chapter examines the West End as a place for the formation of cultural and intellectual capital. This dimension to the West End was associated with the construction of high art and culture. The chapter looks at painting, music, and the literary and journalistic worlds. Each in their different way was a flourishing creative industry, demonstrating how the West End could employ art and intellectual work to propel the economy. The art world developed an extensive network of galleries particularly around Bond Street. The concert world was boosted by the creation of the St James’s Hall which made classical music more widely available while the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden increasingly displaced Her Majesty’s Theatre as the centre of the operatic world. The emergence of Gilbert and Sullivan showed how the district could be the site of new musical forms. The Strand area in turn became a major site for the construction of networks among the literary intelligentsia. The overlays, contrasts, and juxtapositions between art, music, and journalism was what gave the West End its character.

scholarly journals Accounting for hegemony. Fascist ideology and the shifting roles of accounting at the University of Ferrara and the Alla Scala Opera House (1922–1943)

2021 ◽  
pp. 103237322110095
Author(s):  
Michele Bigoni
Keyword(s):  
Power Relations ◽  
Accounting Information ◽  
Accounting History ◽  
Opera House ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The University ◽  
Alternative Reading

Accounting researchers have shown how accounting is implicated in the creation of power relations. Most studies assume a unidirectional relationship between the ideological beliefs of those in power and accounting practices. The study adopts Gramsci’s understanding of power relations to analyse how Italian Fascists enlisted accounting information to ensure that two important organisations, the University of Ferrara and the Alla Scala Opera House, would become a conduit for the diffusion of Fascist ideology. The article shows how there is not an uncomplicated, unidirectional relationship between ideology and accounting. The illusorily neutral appearance of accounting allows it to be adapted to play different roles and acquire different meanings even in the achievement of the same set of ideological beliefs. The study also shows how Gramsci’s thought offers an alternative reading of power relations to that of Foucault and Marx and considers a set of ideological beliefs which are scarcely analysed in accounting history studies.

Sociological Institutionalism and European Integration

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabine Saurugger
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Change ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Rational Behavior ◽  
Sociological Institutionalism ◽  
Institutional Frameworks ◽  
Sociology Of Organizations ◽  
Basic Understanding

Sociological institutionalism is part of the larger group of new institutionalisms that share the basic understanding that institutions matter in social processes. Opposing a more descriptive, “old” institutionalism and a rational-choice version of institutionalism, which defends the idea that actors have the option to choose independently from a large number of attitudes, sociological institutionalists introduced the notion of logic of appropriateness, influenced by a specific strand of the sociology of organizations. This understanding, however, led to limits in the explicatory force of the approach: institutional change, as well as continued conflict and differentiated power relations among actors, could not be explained well. More recent approaches that took sociological institutionalist assumptions very seriously offered a series of possible solutions to those difficulties. While elements of rationality and power exist implicitly in different conceptualizations of sociological institutionalism, these authors explicitly brought together both actors’ rational behavior and their embeddedness in broad institutional frameworks through concentrating on the power relations that exist among agents.

scholarly journals Utopia for music performance graduates. Is it achievable, and how should it be defined?

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 179-189 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Focus Groups ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Classical Music ◽  
Music Performance ◽  
Cultural Industries ◽  
International Performance ◽  
Performance Career

For the majority of undergraduate classical music performance students, ‘musotopia’ is a place where performance ambitions are realised with an international performance career. However, given that so few musicians achieve this ambition, should this ideal be redefined? This paper investigates instrumental musicians' careers by exploring the realities of professional practice. A detailed study which incorporated interviews, focus groups and a lengthy survey, revealed the multiplicity of roles in which most musicians engage in order to sustain their careers. The findings call into question the concept of a musician as a performer, positing that a musician is rather someone who practises within the profession of music in one or more specialist fields. The diversity of roles pursued by practising musicians is not reflected in the majority of conservatorium curricula, thus the enormous potential for the transfer of music graduate skills into the broad cultural industries setting remains largely unrealised. Acceptance of, and preparation for, a more holistic career will enable many more graduates to find their own musotopia.

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