Give Me Your White Trash

I have thrown myself back into the stew.  After spending the majority of my life studying music, musical styles, and music composition and arranging, I have dropped myself back into the stew of the history of American music.  When I took my General Exams for completion of the Doctorate of Musical Arts in Composition at The Ohio State University, little did I know how unprepared I was.  I adequately was prepared with the appropriate knowledge in my subject area.  I knew and understood music theory.  I had studied various forms of harmony, counterpoint, form, motivic development, and melody.  This included J.S. Bach's four part writing which we learned in Music Theory 101 at UNC-Chapel Hill.  I knew tonal harmony, modality, twelve tone, pan diatonicism, and other harmonic systems such as those used by the Second Viennese School.  This included Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, and Alban Berg, his pupils.  I have written a breadth of contemporary classical piano music, which I will publish in the future.  It is in the process of being refined in computer notation.  None of these areas of study remotely are related to musical reality in my current station in life.  While there are two universities nearby with music schools, I doubt that either has a program in music composition.  They struggle to keep any music students at all, and while they have graduated professional musicians in the past, their music faculties have been hired to do things other than graduate music students.  This is a bit of an irony.  The faculties at both universities perform a different function.  There are not enough music students to merit a full time faculty, so a core of doctoral level professors cover the bases.  I am not sure what they are, even though my sister graduated from one of these institutions.  I can be bold enough to say that they are very different from UNC-Chapel Hill.  I have had one college job interview in my lifetime.  It was Western Carolina University, and I did not fare well in my interview process.  I had been working on the D.M.A. in composition at OSU, therefore I was accustomed to graduate lecture classes, composing music, and existing in a professional plane.  Little did I know that Western Carolina University had no doctoral program.  They had a limited Master's program, and the job for which I was interviewing was?  I to this day don't really know.  It was a four area position.  Those four areas were Sightsinging, MIDI Lab, Jazz Ensemble, and Contemporary Theory.  No music history.  No music appreciation.  No applied lessons.  (or perhaps there was some jazz piano)  I was capable of covering these topics, but I'll admit sightsinging was not my specialty.  I learned my intervals in Music Theory 101 at UNC, and I could sing them mostly.  I was a capable pianist, so I could harmonize, transpose, and improvise.  I was a good musician, but that Sightsinging thing.  Most people don't know what that really is, being able to sing a melody from written notes on a page.  The method taught at UNC by Dr. Anne Woodward was solfege.  Solfege assigned a syllable to each note of the diatonic scale to make it easier to sing them.  Each syllable, say Do, Fa, or La represented a pitch in the major scale.  I all ready know how to sing the intervals, say a  Perfect 6th having learned it in Music Theory class.  "N-B-C."  Having to learn a syllable, a word to represent this pitch seemed ludicrous to me.  "Do -La."  This is what she required.  For me it became strict memorization.  She wanted us to sing all the parts of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" in solfege for our final exam.  They were in different clefs.  Most people don't know that there are clefs other than treble and bass.  There are alto and tenor clefs.  There is soprano clef and mezzo soprano.  She wanted us to be able to sing in this clefs by using moveable Do.  Moveable Do assigns the syllable Do to the tonic of whatever key in which you are going to sing.  I had been reading piano music since the first grade, and I all ready knew how to sing these pitches.  Her method meant I had to learn and assign a word syllable to each pitch and sing it instead of a lyric.  If I had just resigned myself to her methodology, I would have memorized these syllables.  Do through Ti like the song from the Sound of Music, but I had a mental block.  Why do this, when I all ready could sing the appropriate pitches having learned the intervals.  It appeared to me to be jumping through hoops to get a grade.  As such I made a 59 on my final exam, which would have kept me from graduating.  Because she knew I deserved my degree, she gave me the one point.  Thank you, Anne Woodward.  We don't live long enough to waste time in this life, and I did not have enough time to learn her method.  It was not necessary.  In any case this is what they wanted at Western Carolina, a class in solfege.  I wonder if Mr. Pavel Vlosek, the North Texas graduate who got the job is still teaching this.  It would seem at any university the responsibility of its music faculty is subjective.  I have heard horror stories about music faculties and their accompanying politics.  These are the hoops which must be jumped through to teach at the collegiate level.  It is difficult to say if any music program at any university is viable anymore.  Berkeley College of Music in Boston began selling degrees not that long ago.  If you pay your tuition, they will give you a degree.  It may have nothing to do with music study.  I suspect our entire academic system in America has become the same way.  Upper education became big business, and state legislatures kept approving the maximum amounts of tuition increase each year no matter what.  College educations became high dollar affairs, and students began to graduate with debt before their careers even had begun.  This is a travesty.  As such never have I looked back.  The academic system of music in America is antiquated, anachronistic, and ineffective, because the only jobs to be had in the field of music are back in academia.  It is an incestuous relationship.  Pop music was bought out by digital distributors, and prime time music talent shows have become radio stations.  It all is smoke and mirrors, and dare I say that symphony orchestras are the only musical entities left which are realizing music in a historically thoughtful way.  Wynton Marsalis and his jazz foundation are not promulgating jazz, they are marketing pop for their own well being.  Never have I heard such an unswinging, unhip, Uncle Tomming orchestra in my life catering to what they think is the "In Crowd," these exact academicians.  It is a huge jerk off assemblage, and it has nothing to do with music or music's real intentions.  It is vying for power, prestige, and money.  Wouldn't it be nice if we could exorcise this contingency in America and return her to her grassroots?  Reestablish core American values shaped by the settling and development of virgin land.  Rid America of the controlling populace who grossly are ignorant of any real effort, sweat, or blood?  I have dropped myself back into the stew of America, and it is awful.  The racism, the violence, and above all the ignorance.  I have come to realize that America is nothing more than a posse of privileged white trash.  This is why my musical education is inconsequential.