Notes on an Anniversary

The great Los Angeles Philharmonic celebrates its 75th anniversary this weekend. For the occasion, Music Director Esa-Pekka Salonen has done well to offer Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with its immortal setting of Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.” Countless Angelenos might address to the Philharmonic the words that Schiller addressed to joy:

Your enchantment knits together

What routine harshly tears apart.

But there is a mourner at this wedding. Nationally, the United States has a ratio of only one certified music educator per 497 students, a very poor ratio for an industrialized country. California is in last place nationally, with just one music teacher for every 1,500 students. And the ratio in the Los Angeles Unified School District is one for every 5,000 students. In many smaller districts music has been eliminated altogether as a frill.

Music is not a frill. Music is a part of the fabric of the mind. Study after study has shown that students who study music perform at a superior level in other subjects, and the cause lies much deeper than the accident that the best private schools always teach music. Even preschoolers taught music take their baby steps toward literacy faster than preschoolers left musically illiterate.

The higher SAT scores are there for those who require them to justify music, but Schiller and Beethoven would rightly shudder at such a justification, and so do we. Maestro Salonen is off to a splendid start. We hope he remains with our orchestra for many years. And we fervently hope that our schools will begin again to produce listeners for him.