Choral Externalities

Econonomists use the term “externalities” to identify costs or benefits resulting from a product or service that makes an impact on people other than the purpose of the original activity, in which those costs and benefits are not fully reflected in the price of the original product or service. 

For example, contaminated water that pours into streams from a factory may result in clean-up costs required by nearby homeowners—the clean-up cost may be an externality not calculated in the original product produced by the factory. And for a happy example, bees that are kept to produce honey may pollinate plants on nearby farms, boosting crop growth—that increased crop growth is not calculated in the cost of the honey. These costs and benefits do not form part of the calculations in relationship to the cost of the original activity or product.

We have seen the application of the concept of externalities most vividly in the last few years in the advocacy of music education as attempts are made to promote the value of studying or participating in music for the good this will do a student’s math achievement. Many of us find this approach to advocacy a little bit troubling because we know deep down that the best way to improve math scores, is to study…well…math. However, I am not naïve to the reason this music=improved math argument exists in today’s academic totem pole, and if it is useful, use it.

As hard as we may try, we continue to feel unsuccessful in the musical arts (or in our sister art forms) in quantifying the unique value of our cultural offering, so we spend a lot of energy trying to quantify externalities. For example, Americans for the Arts is currently trying to promote the economic value that the arts make to our communities.  In this troubled economy, it seems wise to show this important financial contribution. In addition to this argument and the improved math scores argument, we hear arguments about how ensembles teach us how to work and play well with each other, and we use choral music as a metaphor for what it means to live and work in healthy community. Indeed, much of the success of the growth in new choral music organizations is directly related to the welcoming community provided through a choral ensemble.

And so the search for “why” continues—our passion for the value of what music does for the person that nothing else can satisfy, versus those externalities such as how music can help your child do better in math and how much money the arts puts back into our communities.

In the better world, it is not a matter of music or math or scienceor art. This better world exists in some places with math, music, literature, science, and history forming the best blend in a variety of combinations and methods for delivery. However, in many other places inthe United States, regulations have come up short of the perfect blend,and in our desperate attempts at music advocacy, many are grasping for externalities that validate the study and experience of the arts amongother subjects that have won out in the academic food chain. As one educator recently said to me, “We might as well try a new approach—the old one hasn’t worked”, referring to arguing for the arts based upon what they do for us that nothing else can do.

Many of us believe that our culture simply has a hole in its soul.We maintain that the hole in our soul has to be plugged, and choral music education and performance can help plug that hole for our society. As president of my high school math club and a card-carrying member of Mu Alpha Theta, I will argue with anyone that would underplay the need for an advanced skill set in the area of logic and the vocabulary of logic, but not at the expense of learning about music,and learning to love music.

Much of this current dilemma is caused by a break in the chain. We no longer have a dependable base that knows what we are talking and singing about.  They have themselves not experienced the beauty that we have experienced.  It has either not touched their soul, or there is a disconnect between what it takes to provide that touch and what those of us are doing to make those experiences happen.

However, it could be that the day for promoting music education andexperience on the basis of externalities is coming to an end.  Therecent economic crisis has exposed the hole in our global soul. Numbers and science and history and rhetoric did not save us. Music and art didn’t save us, either.  But, none of that is the point.

Recently in a conversation with a retired theologian, I asked where he found joy at this stage in his life?  After reciting family and relationships, he talked about how much he listens to the music of Miles Davis.  I couldn’t help wonder when and where he discovered Miles Davis. Similarly, at the memorial service to a former mentor, I heard the speaker reflect on my friend in his last days when he was restricted to his bed. He stated in his eulogy that my departed friend had found most comfort in wearing his headphones and listening to Bach and Mozart.

Whether what our soul finds in the arts is the source, or the externality, we can continue to debate, but could we possibly let this current crisis pass without taking advantage of the cultural and educational bankruptcy that has been exposed?  And what do we do about it?  I think that we do that thing that we do—we keep teaching and performing, and we keep doing it with passion. We create excellent programs, we rehearse and perform, we fill performance halls, we tour, we teach, we compose, and we support others that do the same.