09/24/08 Commencement Speech at NEC ‘08
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today we have gathered to celebrate the end of our educational experience at New England Conservatory, and to mark at the same time the beginning of a new phase of our lives as community and global citizens. As students here, we have already achieved a high level of skill in playing or composing music. However, I feel that as musicians we have to transfer this depth of understanding to all aspects of life. The role of today’s musician goes far beyond that of just playing an instrument well. Loving music well means loving people and life, as well as respecting diversity and understanding our differences. Musicians can and must empower people in a positive way to know themselves better and to become eager to participate in making a better society.
I believe that as a consequence of the diverse experiences that we have had here, we are prepared to assume our role as cultural entrepreneurs. That is, we are ready not only to write and perform music for audiences all over the world, but through the unique power of music, to play an important part in creating a better world for all of us to live in. We should not take this role lightly, nor think of it as mere rhetoric. Martin Luther King, who I consider a pre-eminent social entrepreneur, and whose wife graduated for NEC, said “Almost always, the creative, dedicated minority has made the world better.” I truly believe that we as teaching-artists have the responsibility of being the link not only between music and audiences, but between music and justice and the mutual respect that are essential in creating a peaceful society.
Several years ago, the United Nations established the Millennium Goals, an agenda for achieving worldwide social transformation during the 21st century. I feel that at least two of these goals relate directly to our own mission as cultural entrepreneurs.
The first is to achieve universal primary education. As John F. Kennedy said, “Let us think of education as the means of developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into the benefit for everyone.” We know that music is a basic educational tool for humans from early childhood to adulthood. At the New England Conservatory, I have had the wonderful opportunity to complete a concentration in Music-in-Education, and during my first internship I worked on a research project that involved observations and surveys of children, teachers, and parents from two schools in Venezuela that place music at the core of their curriculum. The results were amazing; the participants reported overwhelmingly that the focused study of music had greatly improved the children’s concentration, their logic and problem-solving skills, their reading, language and math skills, their emotional intelligence and cultural understanding, and their interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities. Equally satisfying were the reports of how placing music at the center of the school culture enhanced the social life of the entire community.
The second UN Millennium goal relevant to the study of music—and in my opinion directly related to the first—is to develop a global partnership for development. On our planet today it is more and more vital that we establish a culture of cooperation that fosters partnerships for mutual benefit and development. This past year we saw a marvelous example of this kind of global partnership when NEC not only invited the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra to play for and with the NEC community, but also held a Seminar and Symposium about “El Sistema,” the astonishing Venezuelan music education program created by Dr. Jose Antonio Abreu which has had an enormous impact in helping impoverished children and youth achieve a better life through the practice of the music.
It was for me a particularly proud moment, as some fifty music educators and cultural leaders from all over the United States, as well as Dr. Abreu himself, convened here to discuss what has made this program so successful for both individuals and communities, and how this phenomenon could possibly be adapted in the far more affluent culture of the United States.
What the Seminar and Symposium participants noticed was that first and foremost, El Sistema features high-quality music instruction. Indeed, as Abreu suggests, “when music is no longer separated from daily life, but is in fact nourished by and nourishes all aspects of daily life, then personal and social transformation become possible”. El Sistema shows how the emotionally and intellectually positive environment of the orchestra system can help children apply the values that will make them complete human beings who can grow and progress as persons of high human and professional value, and who can thus take on significant roles in their communities and their country. The children and youth are taught that through music they can cultivate social learning, respect, love, and patience, values which are modeled daily by their teachers. As Dr. Abreu puts it, “Participating in the orchestral movement helps the individual to grow within a healthy group, gaining invaluable intellectual, social and emotional experiences and learning the values of patience, discipline, endurance, the ability to compromise, and the value of one’s personal contribution in order to fulfill a collective end.”
The orchestra system is a clear demonstration that human beings are the main resource of every nation, its true wealth that can promote an ever-developing culture. Education is the best and most essential investment that each country and community can make, promoting values such as social and individual responsibility, respect, solidarity, work, creativity, and above all, love of life itself. In my opinion, that is the central idea of the Venezuelan children and youth orchestra system; it is a social project that through music seeks to solve the spiritual and material poverty of our world.
And I believe that this ideal value of education is what the Seminar participants found most applicable to American culture. Today’s Commencement speaker, Stephanie Perrin, who was one of the cultural leaders participating in the El Sistema Seminar, has been a lifelong advocate of the importance of arts education to the future of our global society. As she has pointed out, “In American schools for the last century, we have been concerned with training; that is, turning out young people who will predictably perform certain tasks and share the same specific knowledge, she goes on to say, nowadays we should seek to educate, to produce young people who ask questions and who can continue to learn throughout life. This distinction between training and education is analogous to the one between the technically competent musician and the true artist, able to use technique to express her own vision. We need artists in all areas and walks of life, and “artists” are people who share these qualities no matter what their occupation.”
I agree with this point of view wholeheartedly, as, I feel, do most of us gathered here today. In thinking about what I wanted to express to you today, I asked several NEC teachers to comment on what they would like us to take with us as we assume our various roles as cultural entrepreneurs. I was greatly impressed with the depth of feeling with which all of these mentors expressed their wishes for us. But I would like to conclude today with some comments made by the NEC professor Lyle Davidson, which I feel are particularly inspiring.
“We, as musicians, should be active in town squares,” he said, “in businesses, shopping centers, schools, churches, government buildings, retirement communities, hospitals, prisons, homeless shelters, clubs, and town halls—wherever people gather, wherever we find persons whose souls seek the sustenance that only music can provide. We should support music-making in every possible way. Music is not something to be understood, something to be studied. Music is an activity. Music is something to be done. Music is not a noun; music is a verb.”
So let us all go make music—and in so doing, re-make society. Thank you all very much.
Hermann Hudde