MATT KOPERNIAK
Matt Koperniak is in his sixteenth year of teaching music, currently serving as a band director in Fulton County (GA). He has conducted performances at The Midwest Clinic, National Concert Festival, and CBDNA/NBA regional conferences. Koperniak is currently President-Elect for the Georgia Music Educators Association, and previously served as State Band Chair. He serves on the Board of Directors for the National Band Association and on the National Executive Committee for Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia. He has been published in the Music Educators Journal, National Band Association Journal, and International Trombone Association Journal, and recent presentations include the 2016 & 2018 NAfME music research national conferences. Matt serves the MayDay Group as Associate Editor of TOPICS.
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Underrepresented Composers and Traditional Large Ensembles: Reforming Practice or Reinforcing Norms?
Large ensembles are common in school music education in the United States as well as other countries. The notion that “repertoire is the curriculum” is generally accepted as an integral aspect of this practice. Recent efforts to diversify the repertoire/curriculum by including underrepresented composers represent a specific movement to address issues of discrimination, bias, and oppression in large ensemble music education. I acknowledge my role deep within the practice and draw upon my lived experience to inform this provocation, as illustrated as in the following example.
As a member of the board of directors for a state Music Educators Association, I instituted an initiative requiring all selected ensembles at our annual conference to perform at least one work by an underrepresented composer. The result was the over-programming of one prominent woman composer, whose works are already established in the canon. I received complaints about this requirement, including the following words from one conductor: “We should pick the best music for our students, period. We shouldn’t have to pick music based on a non-musical characteristic like gender!” The essence of this quote is repeated ad nauseum throughout professional fora for large ensemble teachers when discussing inclusion of underrepresented composers, and rests upon a pseudo-philosophical foundation of “aesthetic autonomy” as described by Thomas Regelski. Further, I argue this line of thinking reveals a notion of neoliberal aesthetics, or, the idea that the “best” works and composers will rise to the top, without regard to privilege or lack thereof.
As I draw upon a variety of examples illustrating practice, I consider the following questions: (1) How might efforts to include underrepresented composers simultaneously challenge and reinforce the neoliberal foundations of traditional large ensembles? (2) How might these efforts to diversify composers of large ensemble music expose normative, aesthetic assumptions that go relatively unquestioned and/or unchallenged? (3) How might these normative, aesthetic assumptions be interrogated within the context of including underrepresented composers, opening space for reforming practice?
This provocation takes the form of a problematization, in which I draw upon tools developed by Michel Foucault and explicated by Colin Koopman. A problematization “is both an object of inquiry (that is, an underlying depth problem that inquiry illuminates) and an act of inquiry (that is, that which renders the seemingly natural more problematic.” Using Foucaultian lenses of power and knowledge, I examine efforts to include underrepresented composers, with the understanding that a problematization “intensifies the extraordinarily thorny problems of the relations between structure and agency, discipline and liberation, and power and freedom.” I do not aim to propose simple solutions in this provocation; rather, I ultimately use this specific problem to illustrate a broader generalization for how efforts to address issues of discrimination, bias, and oppression can simultaneously reform practice while reinforcing norms.
References/Endnotes
See for example, Kenneth Elpus & Carlos R. Abril, “Who Enrolls in High School Music? A National Profile of U.S. Students, 2009-2013,” Journal of Research in Music Education 67, no. 3 (2019): 323-338.
H. Robert Reynolds, “Repertoire is the Curriculum,” Music Educators Journal 87, no. 1 (2000): 31–33.
The term “underrepresented composers” refers to prevalence of white men as composers of large ensemble music, and is defined as any composer who does not identify as a white man.
See for example, The Institute for Composer Diversity (www.composerdiversity.com); ColourFULL Music (www.colourfullmusic.com); Jeffrey Boekman, “Labels, Inequity, and Advocacy: The ‘Woman Composer’ in the Wind Band World,” Music Educators Journal 106, no. 2 (2019): 45-50.
See for example, Facebook groups including “I’m a Choir Director (26,000+ members), “Band Directors” (27,000+ members), and “Network of Positive Orchestra Directors (2,400+ members).
Thomas A. Regelski, “The Bankruptcy of Aesthetic Autonomy: Music as a Social Praxis and Agency,” TOPICS (in press).
Colin Koopman currently serves as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon.
Colin Koopman & Thomas Matza, “Putting Foucault to Work: Analytic and Concept in Foucaultian Inquiry,” Critical Inquiry39, no. 4 (2013): 827.
Colin Koopman, Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 22-23.
As a member of the board of directors for a state Music Educators Association, I instituted an initiative requiring all selected ensembles at our annual conference to perform at least one work by an underrepresented composer. The result was the over-programming of one prominent woman composer, whose works are already established in the canon. I received complaints about this requirement, including the following words from one conductor: “We should pick the best music for our students, period. We shouldn’t have to pick music based on a non-musical characteristic like gender!” The essence of this quote is repeated ad nauseum throughout professional fora for large ensemble teachers when discussing inclusion of underrepresented composers, and rests upon a pseudo-philosophical foundation of “aesthetic autonomy” as described by Thomas Regelski. Further, I argue this line of thinking reveals a notion of neoliberal aesthetics, or, the idea that the “best” works and composers will rise to the top, without regard to privilege or lack thereof.
As I draw upon a variety of examples illustrating practice, I consider the following questions: (1) How might efforts to include underrepresented composers simultaneously challenge and reinforce the neoliberal foundations of traditional large ensembles? (2) How might these efforts to diversify composers of large ensemble music expose normative, aesthetic assumptions that go relatively unquestioned and/or unchallenged? (3) How might these normative, aesthetic assumptions be interrogated within the context of including underrepresented composers, opening space for reforming practice?
This provocation takes the form of a problematization, in which I draw upon tools developed by Michel Foucault and explicated by Colin Koopman. A problematization “is both an object of inquiry (that is, an underlying depth problem that inquiry illuminates) and an act of inquiry (that is, that which renders the seemingly natural more problematic.” Using Foucaultian lenses of power and knowledge, I examine efforts to include underrepresented composers, with the understanding that a problematization “intensifies the extraordinarily thorny problems of the relations between structure and agency, discipline and liberation, and power and freedom.” I do not aim to propose simple solutions in this provocation; rather, I ultimately use this specific problem to illustrate a broader generalization for how efforts to address issues of discrimination, bias, and oppression can simultaneously reform practice while reinforcing norms.
References/Endnotes
See for example, Kenneth Elpus & Carlos R. Abril, “Who Enrolls in High School Music? A National Profile of U.S. Students, 2009-2013,” Journal of Research in Music Education 67, no. 3 (2019): 323-338.
H. Robert Reynolds, “Repertoire is the Curriculum,” Music Educators Journal 87, no. 1 (2000): 31–33.
The term “underrepresented composers” refers to prevalence of white men as composers of large ensemble music, and is defined as any composer who does not identify as a white man.
See for example, The Institute for Composer Diversity (www.composerdiversity.com); ColourFULL Music (www.colourfullmusic.com); Jeffrey Boekman, “Labels, Inequity, and Advocacy: The ‘Woman Composer’ in the Wind Band World,” Music Educators Journal 106, no. 2 (2019): 45-50.
See for example, Facebook groups including “I’m a Choir Director (26,000+ members), “Band Directors” (27,000+ members), and “Network of Positive Orchestra Directors (2,400+ members).
Thomas A. Regelski, “The Bankruptcy of Aesthetic Autonomy: Music as a Social Praxis and Agency,” TOPICS (in press).
Colin Koopman currently serves as Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon.
Colin Koopman & Thomas Matza, “Putting Foucault to Work: Analytic and Concept in Foucaultian Inquiry,” Critical Inquiry39, no. 4 (2013): 827.
Colin Koopman, Genealogy as Critique: Foucault and the Problems of Modernity (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 22-23.