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Gerald L. Phillips, Dead Composers, Living Audiences: The Situation of Classical Music in the Twenty-First Century. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008. Cloth, xvi, 358 pp., $114.95. ISBN 978-1-60497-558-1
www.cambriapress.com
"The music of dead composers constitutes the overwhelming preponderance of music heard today." This observation, made by Gerald L. Phillips in the introduction to this volume, provides the hook for the title. Phillips's thesis is that, by concentrating upon the musical works of the past, performers and their teachers are hampering, or even preventing, the creation of new masterpieces. The emphasis upon the past is suffocating the work of present. To substantiate his assertion, Phillips thoroughly investigates the role and state of classical music in contemporary society. He poses a question fundamental to all musicians and their teachers: What is the role of the art - and its instruction - in societal context? The discussion is wide-ranging and multidisciplinary, and considers philosophic, literary, scientific, and historical perspectives in an effort to balance the rational and the a-rational in music.
The volume is divided into four parts. Part I, devoted to issues specific to voice pedagogy, is comprised of three essays that originally appeared in the Journal of Singing: "Diction: A Rhapsody" (JOS 58, no. 3 [May/June 2002]: 405-409); "Singing, Creativity and Courage" (JOS 62, no. 2 [November/December 2005]: 159-165); and "A Modest Proposal" (JOS 63, no. 1 [September/October 2006] : 45-51). In the first essay, Phillips urges singers to use diction not merely to clearly articulate the text, but also to express emotional content. The second essay explores the role of creativity when singing someone else's words and music, while the third calls upon voice teachers to lead the charge to revitalize classical music by assigning music of living composers to their students.
In the second section, Phillips widens the discussion to topics that extend beyond voice pedagogy, but...