Yet what we really need nowadays is artistic expression coming from that source of music where every tone is the expression of new hope.
What we need is a Renaissance of Music. We should try to liberate it from all that in the course of the centuries was added to it, from all that is superfluous, artificial, untrue.
Music of to-day is best compared with an enormous cake: too big, too high, too colourful, too much decorated, too much « make-up », in short inedible, because the « decoration » has become more important than the good old taste of the cake.
I would like to rescue music from all those to whom it is merely a means to acquire fame, and I would like to lead it back to its origin, i.e. to the spot where a man may dream his dreams and where music, freed of its ballast, may touch us directly again.
Our educational system is of course not based entirely on the competitive idea. Many musicians introduce their pupils into a world of higher values, preferring musical expression and personal interpretation to pure technical training and endless exercises. By doing so, however, they risk acting against the rather severe and often antiquated rules and regulations of the public institutions, which to a certain extent cause the « suffocation » of music to-day.
Attending music competitions or examinations one gets the impression every now and then that the music professors have a certain resemblance to coaches and that the jury preferably allots its laurels to the super-models! Our world of to-day seems to have a suspicious craving for Super-humans, Super-products, Super-stars, whereas simplicity and spiritual values have been sadly pushed into the background.
The question is: Must we really continue to teach, learn and make music on the competition level?
Jean-Pierre Mathez.
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