Ivory Tower Values are Keeping New Music Inaccessible and Unaffordable

Money Matters is a NewMusicBox x I CARE IF YOU LISTEN collaboration, supported by New Music USA

In ongoing debates about how to make the new music community more socioeconomically equitable and accessible, one of the most commonly proposed solutions is to create resources such as grants, scholarships, and workshops that help composers navigate the field. But instead, what if we sought to challenge the institutions that fundamentally shape the contemporary arts landscape? In this essay, I would like to specifically focus on the role higher education plays in quietly shaping the sound and the economy of new music by normalizing expectations of higher-education access and privileging aesthetics rooted in legacies of exclusivity.

Many of the idioms we have come to expect in new music developed specifically because of the art form’s prolonged reliance on academic support. Yet by centering aesthetic standards that closely align with academic culture, we are effectively marginalizing the voices of composers who do not have access to that culture. How did we get here?

This shift began when higher education became the de facto sole patron of new music during the past century. Pivotal academic composers who were part of this wave include Milton Babbitt at Princeton, Alvin Lucier at Wesleyan, and Morton Feldman at SUNY Buffalo. Casting contemporary music as a scholarly pursuit pressured the art form to evolve into something that could justify its own continuing patronage under the academic system. It had to become defensible as a form of research. Composition pedagogy thus became hyper-specialized and increasingly isolated from the specialties of performance and theory with which it had been intertwined for centuries.

The art form also had to become more easily teachable as a course sequence in a catalog. Its aesthetic had to become more rubric-friendly, its contemporary reference canon had to become more syllabus-friendly, composition turnover time had to become more semester-friendly, and performance requirements had to become more campus-friendly. Today, university-level composition students are trained to demonstrate their mastery of the full gamut of their predecessors’ groundbreaking post-1945 sonic techniques. Often, this means compressing them all into rehearsably short electroacoustic chamber pieces for their recitals every semester. Thus, a highly distinctive “maximalism in miniature” — one which is considerably difficult to learn fluently without university-level resources — has become a standard foundation for aesthetic norms in the new music field as a whole.

Is an advanced degree inherently necessary to become a composer? If we define the art form’s possibilities by the astounding array of sonic tools available today, and by the “openness” the field supposedly values, then the answer is “no.” However, when we look at the field’s cultural norms in practice, they send a very different signal.

In an effort to assert new music’s place in a contemporary canon, we are usually expected to present some evidence establishing the “relevance” of the repertoire. Often, this begins with composer biographies, which include summaries of degrees earned, awards won, teaching positions held, or scholarly papers published. The music itself is usually considered secondary to these metrics, the implication being that composers and their music do not have inherent worth on their own. In academic fashion, we feel obligated to establish our own — and each other’s — credentials as “composers.” By repeatedly referencing institutional affiliations as evidence of a composer’s legitimacy, we are collectively reinforcing the message that access to the world of higher education is inherently necessary for composers.

Complicating this expectation of access is the embedded legacy of exclusion within academia itself, despite laudable attempts to make higher education more open and affordable. If our efforts to diversify this field come only from scholarships and similar expanded higher-education opportunities for marginalized populations, there is still the risk that this act of inclusion is ultimately superficial because we are requiring people to receive training in value systems and aesthetic traditions that are rooted in patriarchy, Eurocentricity, and socioeconomic exclusivity.

Of course, unaffordable tuition is not the only way that financial hardship can impact someone’s access to higher education. Socioeconomic privilege frequently determines who is ultimately granted access to higher education, including music composition education. U.S. teens from lower-income families often have to work after-school jobs (22.5% of the country’s high-school students have jobs outside of school, according to 2023 Bureau of Labor Statistics data). They may also end up having to manage households themselves or provide care for younger siblings. All of this can leave very little time, if any, to sow the seeds of “competitive” college application resumes that more affluent families regularly invest in, such as athletics and extracurricular clubs, external academic support, and formal standardized test preparation classes. Furthermore, financial pressures can make the difference between whether or not a student has access to private coaches and tutors. These effects of income inequality on higher-education opportunities have been on the rise for decades, according to a May 26, 2020 FEDS Notes publication.

Even if higher-education institutions keep lowering these barriers to entry, the ivory tower still arguably operates with a model of composition pedagogy that risks alienating incoming creative voices. The conceptual cornerstones of stochastic, aleatoric, concrète, and spectralist music — laid by socioeconomically privileged men of European descent between 50 and 70 years ago — still foundationally anchor the “serious” sound of university-level composition to this day. As long as new music continues to rely on a predominantly institutional pathway to compositional training, the sounds of new music will keep centering an example based on socioeconomic privilege. If we maintain the status quo, new voices will be recruited into the existing aesthetic tradition to sing the same old song, without being empowered to lend their own characteristic sonic and conceptual innovations to the field. Put differently, new music will not come closer to “sounding” like the kind of space where the socioeconomically disenfranchised can have their lives and experiences affirmed.

But as the field stands, composers frequently depend on — and are thus competing for — academic resources. Degree programs, festival and conference participation, and the support that comes with a faculty position can be just as much about artistic enrichment as they are about building one’s C.V. This artistic benefit makes it easy to forget that these dynamics are a consequence of economic forces within higher education in general, not of new music per se. However, because new music has become so reliant on academic support, the academy’s economics have essentially become the economics of new music.

Part of expanding socioeconomic inclusivity is recognizing the many ways in which current new music practice subconsciously centers perspectives rooted in socioeconomically privileged education. My hope is that, if new music culture continues to welcome artistic voices from outside the ivory tower, then the field will become more accessible to those without access to this privilege. In light of growing worldwide trends attacking free speech and academic freedom, institutions of higher education must be protected as sanctuaries of innovation, research, and inclusive dialogue.

But if new music is to transcend academia’s lingering socioeconomic constraints, then the academy must be willing to empower new music while surrendering systemic and aesthetic control over it. For instance, university programs could train students to be “autonomous composers,” equipped with the technical and entrepreneurial skills to not only compose but also perform, distribute, and sustainably finance their own music when traditional academic supports are unavailable. Likewise, the new music field must be in a place to weather the risks of expanding beyond the patronage of academia. Admittedly, this is not a quick fix; I am advocating for nothing less than a culture shift. However, if we collectively mobilize to give greater legitimacy to composer-specific achievements that aren’t dependent on access to academic support networks, I believe it will be a real step in helping reshape the new music landscape into something more socioeconomically equitable and accessible.

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