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In her essay published by Aedam Musicae, Réinventer la musique dans ses institutions, ses politiques, ses récits, Sylvie Pébrier, musicologist and professor at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris, takes stock of French cultural policies and observes that institutional narratives are running out of steam. The fruit of long-term experience in contact with players in the music world, this book is distinguished by its strong, courageous positions, which sometimes invite debate, and which we echo.
Sylvie Pébrier has a personal relationship with cultural otherness, probably inherited from her research on Jesuits in Latin America during the colonial era. This indescribable feeling of incompleteness and intimate transformation, in the experience of encounters (cultures, languages, works of art, people...), may explain the author's deep attachment to mediation as "the sharing of a sensitive experience corollary to the joint elaboration of meaning".
Cultural policy: a mixed bag
This book invites us to "melee", to "leaf through the eyes" and to search for an "overall vision" in a compartmentalized world that bears witness to the division of labor. It is aimed at players in the music world, as well as artist-teachers, directors of institutions and students wishing to understand the evolution of French cultural policy and the creation of the institutions of our present day, always magnificently contextualized.
The latest survey on French cultural practices reveals a decline in classical concerts as a cultural practice (only 6% of the population went to a classical concert in 2018, slightly more for jazz, at 11%), which can be read as a mixed assessment of the two main currents of French cultural policy since the creation of the Ministry of Culture in 1959. Sylvie Pébrier could have been content to spin the "it was better before" metaphor, but she gives us to see cultural rights, enshrined in French law since 2015, as a "major element in a possible renewal of public cultural policies", a form of articulation between André Malraux's cultural democratization(access) and Jack Lang's cultural democracy(participation), highlighting the fertile potential of people's contribution to cultural life and possibly to works of art* (let's cite here the works of David Hudry, Loïc Guénin or Alexandros Markeas).
Cultural rights in action
In its final chapter, Avancer ensemble dans l'incertain (Moving forward together into uncertainty), the essay puts education, early childhood and youth back at the heart of the issues at stake, evoking the need for a "significant concentrated effort in training, action and evaluation".
While the government's support for artists and performing arts organizations during the pandemic is to be commended, as are the inspiring reflections of professional organizations on societal and environmental issues, it is regrettable that there is no overall vision for music, and above all that aspiring musicians (as well as future amateurs and citizens) - the "base of the musical pyramid" - have not been the focus of attention. Indeed, the author reminds us that "a person's cultural life is determined from the very first years of his or her life, and that the quality of relationships and interactions with his or her environment is decisive".
As local resource centers, conservatories could be put back at the heart of discussions, at a time when the profession is experiencing a loss of meaning. Taking cultural rights into account in artistic education establishments is an opportunity to shift towards an anthropological definition of culture, a chance to see (and hear?) differently, to approach questions of "creation" and "transmission" from the angle of "planetary citizenship", of "complex thinking" evoked by sociologist Edgar Morin**. This shift, she tells us, leads us to "question history, not to wipe the slate clean, but to become aware of the processes of construction". In other words, recognizing that certain hierarchies are the fruit of constructs does not mean annihilating the past in the face of the idea that "everything is equal", but does enable us to approach certain legitimate contemporary issues with humility, such as inclusion, ecology or gender equity. In particular, we can think of the sometimes condescending distinctions that persist between "learned" and "popular" music, between so-called "concert" and "pedagogical" repertoires, between activities that are supposedly noble (soloist, concert performer, conductor, teacher) and others that are less so (mediator, assistant, accompanist, dumist...), and which need to be questioned.
A policy of relationships
With the aim of placing amateurs at the heart of conservatories' concerns, which are sometimes accused of being "elitist", it is easy to understand the concerns musicians may have when faced with injunctions to open up, which could lead them to withdraw, or even disappear. But openness to other traditions, other repertoires, other gestures that is not accompanied by a "policy of relationship", favoring tuning, translation and hybridization, often leads to misunderstanding, through the juxtaposition of players within the institution, with no possibility of encounter. In the same way that languages are probably our most precious heritage, we could reaffirm the transmission of repertoires, gestures and techniques in the service of a form ofaisthanomai (I feel that I feel), a way of perceiving and thinking about musical creation as a gateway to the vibrations of the world, empathy and hence citizenship, a reflection that some composers have sometimes led.
MARCHER [dessus le paysage] by Loïc Guénin from Loïc Guénin on Vimeo.
Opera, a witness to our times
Sylvie Pébrier reminds us of the need to articulate the 3 missions of conservatoires, i.e. pathways to higher education, amateur training and missions in the community, one of which cannot be achieved without the others. The AIMS program developed by the Conservatoire de Paris in cooperation with other art schools is a prime example. It's an opportunity to reinvest the political arena - in its etymological sense - despite the historical temptation for music to assume a certain autonomy, as the visual arts have well understood. Contemporary opera is perhaps the best place to tell the stories of our world, as shown by the very recent works of Philippe Manoury(Kein Licht, 2017) on the issues of nuclear dangers after Fukushima, Kaija Saariaho (Innocence2021), a multilingual work on mass murder, and Sivan Eldar (Like Flesh, 2022) on ecology and artificial intelligence. Needless to say, there are many other subjects still to be explored!
Discussing quality
Among the proposals in this book is the method of shared evaluation, implemented since 2013 in the Cultural Centers of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation. Bringing all the players involved in a project to the table to "extract value" allows everyone to feel like a player in the project, because, as Luc Carton reminds us, "quality is up for discussion". Since September 2021, I have personally been experimenting with a shared evaluation process within the accordion class at ESMD Lille, as well as with projects linked to the region at the Conservatoire à rayonnement régional de Boulogne-Billancourt, strongly inspired by my experiences as a musician in contact with other artists, the results are extremely promising, nourishing as they do an excellent relationship with the instrument (with a smile), a deeper understanding of the most demanding repertoires taught, and a spirit of co-construction, a way of weaving the experience of art into life.
The essay closes with a shift in scale: the role of music in the service of peace, not unlike the preoccupations of the annual international seminar on music and social transformation organized in Bogotá by the Batuta Foundation (Colombia): Sylvie Pébrier reminds us that bringing the world's cultures into dialogue is essential to maintaining peace.
This remarkable essay, supported by inspiring bibliographical references, invites us to experiment, to practice difference, cooperation and to "engage in the construction of a world where life is at the center", with equality as the political horizon.
Vincent Lhermet
