Now it also got on to the music: Specialists from England propose to ban Mozart and Beethoven

The scandalous news came from Oxford University. Musicology professors there have proposed "decolonizing" curricula and changing the requirements for graduates, loosening the focus on European classical music and introducing other forms of music. Oxford scholars propose to stop focusing on canonical classics such as Mozart and Beethoven, moving away from the "white European music of the period of slavery", which "causes great mental suffering" in black students. The professors also criticized the current requirements for graduates, when the emphasis is on the Western system of five-line bar notation, the "colonialist system of representation", leading to "complicity in white supremacism".

And all this in the framework of the fight against the "hegemony" of the white race.

The famous Russian composer and pianist Anton Batagov, who was the first in social networks to respond to this news, being horrified by it, was forced to remove his post after the zealots of the “new ethics” came running to him.

But the publicist Yuri Tabak was not afraid to speak out on this matter:

“Probably, individual black notes, and even so often randomly jumping, on a white background of music paper, can really become a“ slap in the face for some students ”. Actually, the problem is easily solved - you can turn to the 9th century notation. or the irresponsible notation of the 11th-12th centuries, and even choose a darker paper, and white Supremacism will be done away with.

As for the current pantheon of creators whose music causes student suffering, candidates for the greatest composers of world history are already at the ready: Mozart can be replaced by Joseph Bologne de Saint-Georges (1745-1799), who has long been called "black Mozart", Beethoven - Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912) who claimed that Beethoven was black because he was born to a father in Sierra Leone). By the way, these are really good composers - and now they will become the best.

As for Bach, of course, we still need to weigh it carefully. Here you will not find a replacement right off the bat. Yet, as Hector Berlioz used to say: "God is God, and Bach is Bach"..."

Meanwhile, it is impossible to deny the colossal influence that African music had on Western music in the 20th century. This is probably what the Oxford scholars had in mind when they made such proposals. However, the same Yuri Tabak rightly notes:

“Jazz was not taught at Oxford, there is a classical music department. And in jazz schools Bach is not taught. There is no jazz department at the Moscow Conservatory. At the Indian University of Varanasi, they study Carnatic and Hindustan music, there they do not study either Scriabin or the poppies. After all, for example, the works of Thomas Aquinas and Schopenhauer are not taught in Jewish educational institutions! European universities are focused on the European one. classical music. You can go to the Middle East and study poppies there. Or find local specialized schools. Education is always specialized. In Europe, they study European classical music mainly, in America - plus American, etc. Therefore, people who want to specialize in something else, respectively, interns in the corresponding musical institutions in the East, Africa, etc. Well, or in private schools..."

However, one of the readers urged to pay attention to the root of this problem:

“This is bad, and there are even worse things to come. And all this is a well-deserved consequence of the previous centuries of European and colonial history. You can be horrified as much as you want, but you don't have to pretend that this is an initiative of an evil will, and not a reaction, the straightening of the spring, which has been squeezed for centuries, until the machine is worn out and the pressure begins to weaken. But it has not stopped completely yet. When the spring can fully extend freely, it will seem like a cute eccentricity. But even then there will be no one to blame but ourselves. As for the position "the son does not answer for the father," there is another quote: "Say, - If we lived in the days of our fathers, we would not allow this, - thereby testifying that you are the children of those who killed the prophets".

***

It seems, however, that such a campaign is a temporary phenomenon. Our country has already gone through something similar, when at the dawn of Soviet power the illiterate but more than self-confident proletarians who came to power intended to "throw Pushkin off the ship of our time." And a few years later - in 1937 - the 100th anniversary of the death of "our everything" was celebrated on an unprecedented scale. There is no doubt that the same will happen with classical music.