Hope, Labour and Privilege in American New Music

Abstract

This chapter critically interrogates musical labour discourses and practices. I criticise the positioning of new music as hope and place such discourse with a broader neoliberalisation of classical music in the United States. I compare and contrast two overlapping domains: discourses and practices of Chicago-based new music ensembles and entrepreneurship books that hail such ensembles as models for change. These books describe musical professions as meritocratic, but frequently omit research that demonstrates persistent racial, gendered and class-based barriers to musical education and professional work. They thus perpetuate an incorrect view of musical labour, theorising from a position of privilege by holding up virtuosic performers as realistic models for would-be professionals. My ethnographic research with elite new music ensembles rebuts such theorisations. While books describe new music ensembles as a radical break from classical music’s problematic past, new music ensembles maintain strong connections with classical music. Professional success in new music consistently requires unearned advantages such as access to specific training, work with prestigious institutions and skills developed via life-long study and supported via family and professional contacts. By accounting for persistent forms of exclusion, I demonstrate new music as a privileged field of labour and the new music ensembles Eighth Blackbird, Third Coast Percussion and Ensemble Dal Niente as an elite class of workers. Despite advantages, however, they remain in states of relative labour precarity. Those who advocate for reform by uncritically celebrating new music as hope maintain the forms of exclusion that shape art music in the United States.