Can Mammon Stifle Human Aspirations for High Art?
Going to music school in the 1980s, where I would have “simple and tiring” passages hammered home to me, I did not even suspect what a nice and happy epoch our music education was then going through. You could see children dashing by on the street, with string- tied note folders or violin cases in hand, and hear the piano reaching you from standard apartment house windows, while silver screens struck you with the skill of pert child prodigies. It was prestigious to go to a music school and difficult to enter one without musical talent, but still preference was always given to music, not dancing or foreign languages.
Now, however, the sweet dreams of many parents, who want their offspring to be taught to play an instrument, are being shattered against hefty tuition, which has jumped lately from the erstwhile 1.5- 15 rubles to 15-25 hryvnias a month. The analysis of parents’ notices of withdrawal from music schools shows that the majority of pupils drop out due to inability to pay. Also a heavy blow is being inflicted on little musicians by regular Cabinet and Finance Ministry resolutions on the necessity to cut the number of music school pupils. According to principal of Children’s Music School No. 2 in Cherkasy, Stanislav Tsarynny, his school had 535 children until recently. The school lost almost a fourth (106) of pupils after a series of injunctions such as: “In connection with the lack of funds to maintain educational institutions in the field of culture, reduce the number of pupils at Children’s Music School No. 2 by... 12% in the 1997/1998 academic year.” All music schools are in a situation like this.
These conditions also brought to the brink music teachers whose real salaries depend on the number of pupils and often do not go beyond a hundred hryvnias. Here are the data for school No 2: a violin, accordion, violoncello, choir, and solfeggio teacher earns 40, 55, 63, 36, and 50 hryvnias a month, respectively. Of special pity are teachers of the bandura, Ukraine’s unique national instrument. A lady bandura teacher with a nice voice and conservatory education (and this means it took her at least 16 years to reach her present professional level) has today two pupils and earns as little as 43 hryvnias (a little under $8). However, as we were told by Lydia Nikytenko, chair of the city culture department, a decision was made recently to reduce the bandura-teaching fee, which inspires a hope that the situation might change.
It is equally hard today to teach and learn music. The blows come from all sides: the high, sometimes unreachable, prices of musical instruments and the absence of musical-note publications. Bookstores will offer you some used, tattered, but still quite expensive, teaching literature or even homemade collections of guitar passages. What a contrast with the musical- note treasures of the early eighties: luxuriant foreign multi-volume editions, tender blue clad complete works of Chopin, an optimistically orange Haydn, velvet dark green two volumes of Beethoven’s sonatas! Olena Shpylko, merchandise expert at the House of Books, nostalgically recalls the former systematic structure of book trade: “In those times I worked for the publishers Soviet Composer, Music, and Musical Ukraine according to a subject- related plan. I knew what publications would come out, I maintained ties with music schools and libraries and sought the advice of repeat customers. I was aware of the musical- note requirements and of the number of pupils in the oboe and accordion classes. I could place an advance order for literature, knowing what solfeggio manual teachers at a certain musical school prefer... Now musicians, both pupils and teachers, work with Xeroxes.”
But still, is it possible to stifle the human aspiration to high arts by the “buck?” Now there are six esthetic- education schools with an enrollment of 3,500 children functioning in Cherkasy, although not in so stable a fashion as in, say, Germany and with a lesser occupancy than in Russia (tuition fees there are much lower than here, and the inflow of students is still unabated). The department of culture organizes and holds a contest called Your Talents, Cherkasy, the winners, apart from getting prizes that the department and sponsors always try to award to the pupils, are also exempt from paying tuition. You are welcome to learn and make use of your talent! The names of “stars” and “starlets,” such as, for example, I. Riesling (musical school No. 1), D. Diachenko (musical school No. 2), and N. Sotnychenko (children’s art school), are well known in the city.
“I think it is an achievement to preserve the current number of pupils in such hard conditions,” thinks Lydia Nikytenko, chief of the city culture department. There is no such figure — 3,500 pupils — in Poltava or, say, in Kirovohrad. Only 1200-1500 children go to art schools there. Despite the financial pressure in the field of culture, we have managed to retain specialists and all esthetic-education schools, although their needs account for 90% of today’s city budget.”
The 2000 state budget is now the sorest point for musical schools. The Methods of the Approach of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine in Forming the 2000 Budget envisions saving funds to be allotted for culture, at the expense of 26,859.5 employees in art schools. It is suggested that these employees be excluded from the overall number of culture employees, and that the schools, where they are employed, be put on a self-financing basis, that is, be deprived of local budget support. Putting the schools on a self- financing basis is a short road to their closure. For tuition fees will inevitably rise in this case at least twofold and the dropout rate will reach the critical point. And should things develop like this, 9000 children in the oblast will be robbed of the opportunity to learn the ABCs of art, and over 1200 teachers will be jobless. It is difficult to imagine any greater scrimping of governmental funds, especially with due account of the prospect of a chain-like paralysis of the whole multistage (up to the conservatory level) system of musical education in this country.
“I remember the latest PTA meeting, which collected signatures in defense of our educational institution,” says Stanislav Tsarynny. “The mother of one disabled pupil said from the heart: material problems apart, the state is robbing my child of the opportunity to study music, as if complementing the physical ailment with the prospect of spiritual injury.” Terrible, inharmonious words. A terrible prospect. Waiting for a reply to this question also inspires worry.
