With the reaches of cuts of funding and lack of support from the government towards the art; many schools have chosen to strip music lessons from Britain’s state school education. While reading a BBC Article it states state schools in England have seen a 21% decrease in music provision over the last five years, research suggests.
This lack of music education has reduced our generation from having the ability to ‘read music’. Compared to older generations many people who can read classically are beginning to die out.
When doing graphic scoring in lessons I was inspired to look beyond this and its benefits and how it may change our music scene. Instantaneously when one googles the word ‘composer’ the results are very clear. Every single picture is a white privileged male. It seems that these boundaries have always been bound into place and there still seems little light of change.
However, despite these chains upon music and society, I began to realise that this left pathways and opportunities for new types of creativity. For example, the rise of DJ music and computer-produced music has had ample effects on our generation’s music scene. With house music holding the charts alongside most festivals worldwide this proves that being stopped from learning to read music will not have an effect upon your ability to become a composer.
This struck clear when making graphic scores within a lesson; proving that classical sheet music is just a theoretical tradition that people have been taught to follow. Despite boundaries being there making music and becoming a composer is entirely possible.