Download James Neilson on The Ethics of Band Directing - Whitwell

James Neilson on the Ethical Responsibilities of the Band Director
Dr. James Neilson was the Director of Bands at Oklahoma City University and
then became the Educational Director at Leblanc from 1962 until his death in 1985.
He was president of the National Band Association (1982-1984) and in 1981 was made
a member of the NBA Hall of Fame.
He was an educator and conductor who held the highest values, as the
following letter clearly demonstrates. The origin of this letter was my desire, as
president-elect of the CBDNA, to establish a committee dealing with the subject of
ethics with respect to the academic conductor. At the time there was little interest in
the profession in taking up this question and the discussions bore no fruit. However,
Neilson’s thoughts, as expressed here, seem to me too important not to be brought to
light.
James Neilson to William D. Revelli
cc: David Whitwell, president-elect, CBDNA
Kenosha, WI, October 11, 1974
Dear Bill:
Your letter has been face up on my desk for days, a constant reminder that
you have requested my assistance in providing a raison d’etre for the deliberations
of the CBDNA Ethics Committee. There are so many things one might say, of
course, but how to say them correctly eludes me. Before I say anything, however, I
must set forth a premise that is basic to my argument. While the school band
movement is an important factor on the American educational scene, it has only a
secondary position in American cultural life. You are aware of this fact and so am I,
and a very few among the more visionary of our colleagues also. I must also tell you
that the paragraphs to follow will not make sense unless this fact is borne in mind.
Are school band directors so engrossed in peripheral and often nonmusical
activities they have forgotten that the inscription carved on the cornerstone of music
education’s towering edifice reads, “Music for the child” and not “The child for
music”? It seems to me that a list of important benefits accruing to the school band
program might best read like this.
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First, it is for the spirit. Unless it makes the students kinder in heart, more
gentle and honorable, more compassionate and generous and easily moved to good
works, it fails to achieve its basic purpose, that of expanding the spirit.
Second, it is for the mind. Unless it makes students more aware of beauty and
eager to comprehend its sources, and better able to understand its intellectual
substance because of their strict obedience to music’s artistic and intellectual
disciplines, it fails to achieve its second important purpose, that of ennobling the
mind.
Third, it is for the body. Unless it assists students toward developing sounder
bodies and a heightened sensitivity and increased alertness toward fulfilling the
demands made upon the body by the intellect, it fails to achieve its third important
purpose, that of coordinating the body’s physical activities in a way that enables
students to take part in all the creative processes involved in making music. Good
music in excellent performance is not possible until the spirit moves, the mind
perceives, the intellect commands, and the body obeys.
The foregoing represents the permanent values of the good school band
program. School band directors must begin to understand that all other benefits
are temporal in nature. The impact these lasting values have on students’ lives
should be discussed more openly at band director association meetings and,
hopefully, with the general public at the proper time. When the school band
program really works, it is because conductor and students have submitted
themselves to a never-ending discipline of spirit, mind and body. This is why a
majority of students in good bands belong to that small group of the academically
elect whose honor and integrity compels them to disassociate themselves from
anything that is sordid, in school or out. It is about this the general public should be
made aware, while much less emphasis is placed on the fringe benefits.
The duties of school band directors, both high school and college, can be set
forth succinctly.
1. To guide students to the achievement of musical literacy. Parenthetically
speaking, this is a rare accomplishment if major emphasis is placed on the
acquisition of repertory either for contest purposes or to glorify a
conductor’s ego.
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2. To enable students to understand and enjoy hearing and playing good
music of all kinds, “folk” and “popular” music no less than “serious” music.
3. To integrate the students’ possession of musical skills and knowledge with
life values.
4. To send students into the world determined to seek out and participate in
music-making activities of some kind.
Since music truly exists only when it is heard, it needs performers and
listeners no less than composers. The silent notes and symbols the composer places
on paper represent only the face form of this art. When the performer recreates
these notes and symbols, he must do so only through the dignity of ordered sound.
Only then may he reveal whatever beauty he has found in the composer’s original
creation. Thus, it is the further duty of school band directors to make certain that
performances by school bands are of genuine artistic merit. An inept translation of
a composer’s silent notes and symbols robs even great music of its right to existence.
When they are performed ineptly, even the greatest works of Beethoven, master
composer, become bad music at that time and in that place. One often wonders how
many thousands of band students over the past fifty years have been “turned off”
permanently from enjoying good music because a “bad” band director persisted in
doing all the “wrong” things. School band conductors must insist on lofty standards
of performance. To do less is a disservice to the art of music.
Is it not right, then, to expect the personal character of the school band
conductor to be based on integrity in all things, music included? Some place or
other I read the concomitant characteristics of musical integrity given in this order:
essential goodness, inner serenity and, following that, musical talent and musical
knowledge. If a disciplined spirit must be added to the complete control of
intellectual and bodily disciplines in order to make a musical performance
convincingly sincere, why then do not band directors discuss the spiritual values
inherent in good music with students more often than they do at present? What
makes this subject taboo at rehearsals, band director meetings, and the like? Unless
they are discussed, how else can band directors make certain that students
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understand the spiritual values of good music in a way that will cause performances
by their bands to elevate the entire fellowship of musicians?
A fellowship that includes not just the conductor and students of the
moment, but all musicians there present as well, together with all musicians who
make or have made music anywhere, anytime, any place. A most notable
fellowship, I hasten to add, and one in which the school band directors must prove
themselves constantly as worthy “fellows.”
The high level of musicianship that school band directors must attain cannot
be achieved through a blinding flash of revelation. There is no royal road to success
when pursuing this endeavor. The way to consummate musicianship is long and the
road thereto rough and filled with pitfalls. To succeed, constant study and diligence
must be coupled to an unswerving devotion to integrity. Moreover, true
musicianship becomes valid only as spiritual understanding expands in equal
measure to intellectual comprehension. Heaven save students from band directors
who are stimulated only intellectually by music. Intellectual dogma has little place
in the constantly growing experience of mind and spirit that bespeaks superior
musicianship. Since it evades the spirit of the law to conform to its letter,
intellectual dogma is far too confining in the rehearsal room. Its presence there
negates music’s spiritual values, values best expressed by words like these: love –
majesty – warmth – joy – aspiration – righteousness – contemplation – and yea, at
times – sorrow – contrition – tears – lamentation – forgiveness.
The thoughtful school band director does not place himself at the center of
his musical experience to ask: “What can the school band program do for me?”
Rather, he inquires: “How may I serve students best through the school band
program?” It is his belief in the permanent values of what he does that impels him
toward righteous and positive action, and will enable him to teach and respond to
student needs in ways that will enrich their lives and bring peace and inner serenity
to them. The extent to which a good band director acts on this rightly held belief
marks the boundaries of his influence for good on students’ lives, and enables him to
go on, and on, and on, undaunted even when faced by bitter adversity and keen
disappointment that causes lesser men to give up the battle and fall by the wayside.
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The beautiful “sounds of music,” is the language by whose use we are able to
bring the grace, peace, joy and beauty of heaven down to earth. A language not
confined by bonds of race, color or creed, that speaks its message of infinite good
will to men and women everywhere. An universal language that mankind soon may
use to bring about a day the peoples of the wide world desire so fervently to see, the
day that will usher in “the dawn of peace and brotherhood of man under the
fatherhood of God.” There are some 1,500 school band directors in America at the
college/university level. What will they do, what will be their commitment to the
world-wide fellowship of musicians as together we work to hasten the coming of that
glorious day?
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