It has been a turbulent time for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. At a solo recital programmed by MSO on August 11, pianist Jayson Gillham introduced his premiere of Connor D’Netto’s Witness, a work dedicated to the journalists of Gaza, by saying:

Over the last 10 months, Israel has killed more than one hundred Palestinian journalists. A number of these have been targeted assassinations of prominent journalists as they were travelling in marked press vehicles or wearing their press jackets. The killing of journalists is a war crime in international law, and it is done in an effort to prevent the documentation and broadcasting of war crimes to the world. In addition to the role of journalists who bear witness, the word Witness in Arabic is Shaheed, which also means Martyr.

Soon after, orchestra subscribers were sent an apology for Gillham’s remarks, which were characterised as “an intrusion of personal political views.” The apology further stated that “the MSO does not condone the use of our stage as a platform for expressing personal views,” and that Gillham had been pulled from another concert programmed for later that week. This decision was apparently made without the approval of the board.

Gillham is the latest in a long line of artists punished for their solidarity with Palestinians amidst (and before) the current genocide. The MSO management’s repeated assertion that a “concert platform is not an appropriate stage for political comment” follows an ahistorical attitude common within institutions, audiences and the broader public that classical music is an artform without real meaning, politics and thus, arguably, contemporary relevance.

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In the week that followed, faced with significant audience backlash, the MSO locked their social media channels and removed information from their website about board and management staff. They then  admitted that the organisation had made an “error” in cancelling Gillham’s  performance and would reschedule it, whilst reiterating the belief that his comments were inappropriate.  In response, musicians of the orchestra delivered an overwhelming vote of no confidence against executive staff Sophie Galaise and Guy Ross, writing that their “values no longer appear to be aligned with those of the Orchestra and staff,” and requesting an independent external review. The Cat Empire postponed shows with the orchestra until it took actions that align with their “beliefs as a band”.

On August 26, MSO announced that Galaise would be departing, and that Peter Garrett and KPMG had been appointed to independently review the organisation. Although this latest incident appears to be a boiling point, tension within the orchestra dates back at least to Covid, when management chose to stand down more than eighty musicians rather than accept an offer by players’ representatives to take a temporary 50 per cent pay cut to allow a salary floor for the lowest paid. While it may be Galaise’s opinion that her sacking was “not fair”, this latest is one of many issues that have accrued over her tenure.

On August 23, it was reported Gillham was pursuing legal action against the MSO, hoping to defend “artists’ right to freedom of expression” and asking for a public apology, an affirmation of the right of artists to speak freely, financial compensation for reputational damage, future performance opportunities, a piano concerto commission for a Palestinian composer, and a donation to the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music in Palestine. These requests have been met with a hostile response from the MSO’s lawyers at Arnold Bloch Leibler (who themselves have withdrawn money from arts organisations over their pro-Palestine positions).

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The first time I played Shostakovich’s Festive Overture, the conductor set the mood by describing his own first encounter with the piece. He described an old Russian conductor stopping the rehearsal in frustration, leaning in to dramatically whisper “Shostakovich wrote this the day he found out Stalin had died”. From further research, I don’t think this was actually true.

Shostakovich’s work moved in and out of political favour for much of his career. He was denounced twice, and also celebrated — spending eight years as the General Secretary of the Union of Composers of the RSFSR, a role that required party membership. The culture of music, politics and repression at the time complicates the task of ascribing intention and meaning to much of his work. Which choices were made out of will and which out of fear? Which were intended as acts of subversion, and which as acts of propaganda?

To me, the Festive Overture mimics the tone of patriotism with a relentlessness that becomes unhinged. It moves like a train without breaks, with an optimism so incessant as to seem both manic and  feigned. Shostakovich wrote more undeniably political music — such as Antiformalist Rayok, which quotes, among other texts, speeches from politicians denouncing his work — but part of what I find compelling about the Festive Overture is that what I see as its parody of patriotism is not explicit to every listener. I imagine seeing it performed at Soviet events would be like watching a conservative politician walk out to “Born in the USA” — I don’t think we understand this song in the same way.

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Of course, all art is political — in fact most things in life are, as was pointed out by many of Gillham’s supporters. But it is undeniable that classical music is rarely discussed in such terms, and that its politics are often obscured.

The political themes of classical works are esoteric to many because of a simple lack of literacy. Music education in Australian schools overall is poor. While the subject is now theoretically part of the Australian Curriculum, in practice much of the time its teaching is fairly ad-hoc — not continuous or overseen by specialists unless families pay for it as an extracurricular activity.

As a result, the extent and quality of music education is highly dependent on socio-economic status. Australia’s schools have some of the highest social segregation in the OECD, with 36 per cent of students enrolled in non-government schools. Unlike public schools (outside of Queensland, which performs well), most independent primary schools are able to employ music specialists that provide students with 60–90 minutes of instruction per week.

This educational gap also helps to code classical music as an artform of the “elite”, a prestigious form with a fixed canon. These audiences tend to value “absolute music”, place emphasis on the “pure” aesthetic qualities of a piece of work over the thematic or political ones. Underlying this can be a sense that art does not exist to better understand the world, but to forget about it entirely.

This is the rhetoric that characterises the MSO’s response to Gillham’s statements. In the words of Sophie Galaise, they “still believe the MSO should be a platform that is neutral and that focuses on doing good music … the MSO should be a safe haven, a place where people can come and listen to music and know they are going to be safe.” In the context of the violence Witness responds to, it is ridiculous to refer to Gillham’s statement as something that made audience members unsafe. Perhaps what she meant was uncomfortable with being reminded of horrors that take place outside of the concert hall.

The way many Australians imagine classical music is also inextricably related to how they view European culture more broadly: namely, something “higher” to replicate and aspire towards, or a historical tradition to be preserved. Isobel D’Cruz Barnes, ethnomusicologist and member of the teaching staff at the University of Melbourne, told me:

I do think there’s this specifically Australian thing happening where Australia was invaded in 1788, and since then, classical music here has been trying to emulate something that’s older than that.

While apologising for coming off as an “arrogant, neocolonial European”, Dutch opera writer and dramaturg Willem Bruls agreed:

I mean, we struggle with conservative audiences in Europe as well of course, but for Australians classical music is imported. Playing and attending and funding classical music builds an identity of sophistication and European-ness. It represents something they want to be.

This perception of classical music has perhaps saved it from the funding cuts under conservative governments that other art forms have faced. For example in 2015­–16, under George Brandis’s infamous ministership, 32.3 per cent of all Australia Council funds went to symphony orchestras, 13.7 per cent to opera, while just 2.7 per cent went to literature. Having moved from music to writing at the time, I was surprised by how many writers and editors could cite these figures off the top of their heads. But I believe courting a reputation of safety comes at a greater cost in the long term. To imagine any art form as free from political concerns is a falsehood only attractive or available to the very privileged few. To remain solvent and relevant, classical music institutions must do more to engage wider audiences. They must show how this music can speak to our lives, to the political context of today.

Young people’s overall disinterest in classical music is not helped by the programming many institutions attempt to court them with. Collaborations with popular artists and film and videogame franchises can bring in ticket sales and indeed result in beautiful musical events, but they do not demonstrate how classical music can hold meaning and relevance on its own terms, and will not build new loyal audiences. Australia also lacks a real culture of substantive classical music criticism. The vast majority of coverage comes from specialised publications — Limelight, Cut Common — which tend focus on industry news, interviews and almost universally positive shortform reviews. While there is absolutely a place for this kind of writing and coverage, it assumes a baseline interest and knowledge that prevents it from reaching wider audiences. These publications exist more as a bulletin board of what’s on than a justification of why an ordinary person should care.

Even those most educated in classical music often lack deep engagement with its politics. Australian classical music institutions tend to encourage a competitive pursuit of technical excellence over all else. D’Cruz Barnes describes

this pervasive attitude among classical musicians, where many are just so concerned about practicing enough that they almost think that talking about, writing about, thinking about music is this secondary thing that just gets in the way of being a good artist.

Music is not just technique and sound in a vacuum, but the way it is taught and written about can obscure this fact. It mirrors rhetoric that imagines a painting’s only value as its realism — an anti-intellectual refusal to engage with the themes, politics and ideas of art.

Again, we see this in the way MSO management responded to Witness. They apparently took no issue with the piece or performance itself — its technical or aesthetic qualities. What they objected to was the introductory statement that sought to contextualise its composition and interpretation, the attempt to ascribe the work any meaning. I am struck each time by the specific wording used, that it was “an intrusion of personal political views on what should have been a morning focused on a program of works for solo piano.” “Works for solo piano” is a meaningless and asinine way to describe an event, as if Overland were to call this piece a “collection of words.” These words are written in response to an event, as was the work for solo piano.

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These institutions’ disinterest in examining the political context of their music extends into a broader disinterest in the different social and political contexts their students and musicians exist within. Instead, they are defined by their instrument alone. Award-winning violinist Kyla Matsuura-Miller describes having felt like “if someone was really good at playing a violin, they were a better person, deserved more respect, were more worthy of existing.” Strings players are perhaps especially cognisant of their ranking, are able to track it by their position in orchestral seating plan. It is the most aware I have ever felt of how I measured up against my peers, how “worthy” I was.

But classical music is not a pursuit equally available to everyone. Musicians with talent and passion are unable to thrive without resources. Matsuura-Miller, again:

Who succeeds at classical music? Who gets to live at home? Who gets bought a very nice instrument at fifteen years old? Which families can or cannot prioritise paying for violin lessons week in week out? It’s not a meritocracy! There are so many different factors that go into whether someone succeeds in the profession, and the biggest factor of all is money.

My own musical education was only made possible by the charity of strangers — scholarships, a teacher who never raised her rates from when she was a uni student, another who taught me from her garage when getting to her usual space was too difficult, parents of other players picking me up and dropping me off for rehearsals. Not all of these people were particularly nice to me. I often felt like a burden, often overheard hurtful descriptions of my (Muslim, disabled, single) mother. At the same time as the culture of these spaces often made me feel very alone, I internalised their logic, took great satisfaction at being “better” than students who were wealthier than me.

At a Christmas party, an Eton boy my age also played the violin. His parents proudly announced that he had just passed his grade 5 exam, and asked what number I was up to. I modestly replied that I had finished the numbered grades. My father (who I saw very little) overheard the exchange and was delighted — the only time he seemed to see value in my musical education was when it could deliver this victory. But artistic practice should not be something you win, nor is it healthy for marginalised students to constantly compare themselves to those with vastly more resources.

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Over the years I spent in classical music, a fear of some kind of oncoming yellow peril was common. The racist stereotype is familiar: East Asian musicians perceived as technically excellent to a degree that renders them mere machines, unable to understand or convey the emotion a piece required. All the while, Australian opera companies continue to stage works like Madame Butterfly, Turandot and The Mikado with actors in yellowface — a form of dehumanisation that assumes white composers and performers can successfully imitate Asian cultures, yet Asian musicians cannot truly understand or perform the deep emotions contained in western music.

D’Cruz Barnes:

Every time we try to have these conversations, there’s always half the room that feels like we need to take it to the absolute basics of Is Australia racist? Is this relevant to music? before we can get into anything more meaningful … They seem to think applying a political lens or any sort of contemporary values will kill this music, stop it from being performed.

Bruls describes working as a dramaturg where musicians felt they must “defend the music” from an opera’s director.

That’s sometimes very complicated and very odd because directors don’t want to destroy the music. They see something in the music that they want to bring out, and you need a way to bring it out, which is to take a different approach to the classical execution of the music.

There is a deification of the work we imagine as canonical that discourages critical analysis or reinterpretation. Yet new perspectives can also revitalise and honour. In the world of musical theatre, a recent staging of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Cats reimagines the work within New York’s Ballroom scene, bringing out “the queer-coded-ness” co-director Zhailon Levingston described seeing in the original production as a child. With the catastrophic failure of the Cats movie, the well-publicised “costly mistake” of Bad Cinderella and the end of Phantom of the Opera’s thirty-five-year-plus Broadway run, it is safe to say Lloyd Weber’s reputation is at a low point. Yet Cats: The Jellicle Ball has been met with enormous critical success, three extensions and positive responses from Lloyd-Weber’s fans and detractors alike.

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A friend and I pass a phone back and forth, showing each other music we loved as teenagers. Weeks later, he goes for a jog. His phone for some reason regurgitates a piece I had shown him, “Spring 1” from Max Richter’s recomposition of The Four Seasons. He tells me how beautiful the moment was: the music, the sun, his body moving through space. It feels special to share this, but it also makes me sad that until then, much of my favourite music had always seemed so unwelcoming to him, so irrelevant.

For all its criticisms, this piece is not intended as an attack on classical music, but rather as a defence of it. I feel so grateful for the way these artworks have shaped me, shaped my understanding of history, politics and expression at both factual and emotional levels. But by posing the form as “apolitical”, by imagining it exists to preserve a single cannon, by failing to address the many discriminations embedded in these spaces, institutions like the MSO contribute to the death of the artform they are supposed to champion.

There is still something I find quite radical about orchestras as an experience of community — hearing your part become a layer in something bigger and more beautiful, feeling a hundred bodies move and breathe as one. It’s this shared energy that I miss most about being a violinist; the closest I get to it is at a protest.

Imagine: Wikimedia Commons
 

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