BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
Welcome to our series, What the Fact?!
Throughout 2018, we’re teaming up with talent at the Australian National Academy of Music to bring you informed answers to real questions and topics about your music career.
Ever wondered why you feel performance anxiety? What the deal is with tuning to 440Hz – or not? How to lead an orchestra? We’re here to tell you all about it.
Douglas Boyd (pictured above) is a veteran performer in the classical music industry. Except, he doesn’t like the word “classical”. Or “industry”.
In this interview, we chat with the conductor about why we continue to call everything “classical”. And his responses might come as a surprise, considering he spent 21 years as founding member and principal oboe of the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, a decade as music director leading the Manchester Camerata, and seven years as music director of Musikkollegium Winterthur – an orchestra with which Richard Strauss himself associated.
This month, Douglas Boyd will lead three of the most famous “classical” symphonies – Mozart’s 39, 40, and 41 – with the ANAM Orchestra in the Melbourne Recital Centre. But once you read this interview, you might start to think about these works a little differently.
Hacking the stereotype of “classical” music.
Douglas, why did you want to pave a career in the classical music industry?
I was lucky to be brought up in Glasgow, which at that time had a wonderful system of youth orchestra summer courses, which were life changing events; making friends, making music together. I thought: ‘If this is what music is like I want to be part of it.’
Then, I went to the Royal Academy of Music, later to Paris, to study with truly wonderful teachers who taught me what was possible technically and, more importantly, musically to express on the oboe.
I also auditioned for the European Community Youth Orchestra and played under [conductors Claudio] Abbado, [Herbert Von] Karajan, etc. for four extraordinary years. That gave birth to the Chamber Orchestra of Europe, and the rest is history!
If I may, I really don’t like the term ‘classical’ music or ‘industry’. We play some of the greatest music ever written – that’s all. And it’s totally relevant to our lives today. There’s nothing ‘classical’ about it. Similarly, we have to fight against the idea of it being an ‘industry’. The only reason to make your life in music is because of an obsession and love for what music can express.
What did the idea of classical music mean to you while you were still starting out?
I must say that when young people are inspired by music early enough, they have no preconceptions about whether it’s hip-hop, garage, classical, or whatever. It’s just music, and that has to be the goal for us as musicians to inspire future generations.
Why is it that we tend to categorise the past few hundred years of Western music as classical, regardless of whether or not the works were written in the formal classical era?
‘Classical’ indeed refers to a form and style, which encompasses the music of such masters as Haydn, Mozart, Schubert, and Beethoven. It has been hijacked by the media and embraced – wrongly, in my view – by the ‘industry’ you refer to above. And so, the pigeon-holing continues. We don’t help ourselves, of course. For example, most musicians believe that this music is more relevant than ever to our times. Yet, most orchestras, [especially] men, continue to wear concert clothes designed for the 1890s.
In your own view, what then is classical music?
Maybe a better question is: Why is this great music relevant to us now in 2018?
Because, fundamentally, apart from the unbelievable craftsmanship and imagination of these great composers, their music expresses every emotion of the human spirit – from joy to sadness, love to terror. Or, to take Mozart as an ultimate example: he expresses what it is to be human and the best of humanity.
How do you feel about 20th and 21st Century composition being dubbed as contemporary classical?
Let’s dump all these labels! Maybe keep the word ‘new’ for something just written! Some people think Schoenberg is too ‘contemporary’, even though it was written more than a hundred years ago.
Also, the idea of contemporary music being ‘weird’ or different is a relatively new concept. In Mozart’s time, they only performed contemporary music: Mozart’s studies of Bach and Handel were inspiring to him, but these works were rarely or never performed. Now, we mostly only perform music of dead composers.
So do you feel the banner of classical music influences, or alienates, modern audiences? Should we ditch this label once and for all?
Yes, the term ‘classical’ is alienating and the image – rightly or wrongly for many people, especially some young people – is that it is something dry, academic, and in the past. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth.
On the other hand, general attention spans have diminished over the last X number of years for a variety of reasons – not least social media, but also perhaps because of popular music culture. Most forms of popular music last a couple of minutes, and consist of repeated four-bar phrases with a mechanical beat. Our music is more like the blood and organs of our bodies. Just as blood from the heart flows at endlessly, differing speeds depending on our physical and emotional stat, so it is the same with great music. Pulse is different from metronome.
And listening, in many cases, requires some level of commitment; and maybe to listen again, in order to reap the rewards that make you want to cry with sadness or joy. So maybe we do need to redefine and passionately explain what great music can do – and yes – let’s get rid of that word ‘classical’!
Douglas Boyd will conduct the ANAM Orchestra in Mozart 39, 40 & 41 this September 28 in the Melbourne Recital Centre.
We’re partnering with ANAM to hook up with some of the strongest talent in the world in our new educational series! Check back in soon for our next What the Fact?! with professionals in the music industry (or as Douglas might simply put it: in music!).
