In this reading by Bruno Nettl, the author describes the culture of music departments at "Heartland" (his term for Midwestern) universities in the United States. In the introduction to his book, he describes his experiences at Heartland universities, especially their music schools, and delineates the similarities between many of these departments. There appears to be an overwhelming focus on Western art music (conventionally known as classical music), especially in the areas of performance and theory/composition. Comparing his experiences to mine at Brown, I can clearly see the same is true in our own music department; the majority of concentrators are in the theory/history/composition track rather than MEME or Ethno, and most courses focus on Western art music. However, I do have to challenge his self-acknowledged generalization when speaking of these universities; though he clearly does have experience, the lack of anecdotes beyond the extremely vague is difficult to tolerate in a study of this sort.
In the chapter itself, "In the Service of the Masters," Netll describes the role that the most famous composers, such as Mozart and Beethoven, play as "deities" to the people of a music department. He asks, from the perspective of a Martian ethnomusicologist, just becoming aware of this phenomenon, "why is it true?" Why do we accept these composers as the paradigm of Western art music? Why do we immortalize their names on our concert halls and classroom buildings? The answer is clearly a complex one, but Nettl also brings up the idea of why we see a piece of music as more important when it is from the works of one of these great composers. Why would it lower the importance of Beethoven's 9th symphony if we learned that it wasn't composed by Beethoven, but instead by his neighbor?
Discussion question: How helpful were Nettl's comparisons of "Heartland" music departments to the Blackfoot musical culture?
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