<span class="vcard">Wendelin Bitzan</span>
Wendelin Bitzan

Delving into Stravinsky

I am currently preparing a contribution for a Stravinsky volume that kind of absorbs me. The chapter will focus on analytical examinations of Old Igor’s music, confronting historical writings (starting with Messiaen’s and Boulez’s analyses of the Sacre) with contemporary approaches. Beyond the ubiquitous Taruskin, Kholopov, Straus, Horlacher, et alii: is there anything notable or indispensable in Stravinsky studies that you think I should care about and include in my survey? Any leads and opinions are much appreciated.

GMTH Survey on Adjunct Teaching

There is a new survey issued by the AG Lehrbeauftragte of the Gesellschaft für Musiktheorie, addressed to people who work as adjunct lecturers in music theory and/or ear training at German music universities. The survey examines the working conditions and income of adjuncts, and their integration in the professional structures. If you belong to the abovementioned group, please spare 10–15 minutes and take the anonymous online poll, which helps us collect valuable data on the situation of the largest status group in academic music theory.

» Find the online survey here

Of Chips, Old Blocks, and Other Things

My children have both changed their school and now attend the Georg-Friedrich-Händel-Gymnasium Berlin, a high school with an extensive and versatile profile in music education. Ensemble courses and rehearsals are part of the regular timetable, so as students are not required to take extra lessons in the afternoon. My 13-year-old daughter sings in the Rundfunk-Kinderchor Berlin and also continues in the Berliner Mädchenchor, besides studying harp, piano, and music theory at the local music school. My 9-year-old son plays in the school’s youth orchestra, while singing in the Vokalhelden choir and taking guitar and violin lessons at the music school. Both children also compose their own pieces and show a very promising attitude and intrinsic motivation for music, which is a great pleasure to witness!

Holistic Funding Instead of Only Tax Reduction

In my opinion, the current debate over turnover tax exemptions for music education somewhat lacks cultural-political vision. From the perspective of funding bodies and service providers, there are legitimate concerns about tax liability of educational services that do not serve a public benefit or a purpose of vocational training, as this would inevitably cause a cost increase at the expense of the final customers—who should actually profit from the funding—and thus a lack of equal opportunities. A full alignment of German tax legislation with the EU directives, which demand overall turnover tax exemptions for all educational services, is necessary to ensure that music lessons are affordable for all social classes and to avoid competitive distortion at the expense of private service providers (see the statement of the Bundesarbeitsgemeinschaft Selbstständigenverbände). On this occasion I am sharing the corresponding petition again, encouraging everybody to take notice and sign.

However, this claim does not go far enough: In order to achieve a nationwide and sustainable basic education in music, regardless of the families’ income and social status, not only tax incentives are needed, but also an increase in municipal and state funding. Any qualified extracurricular music education serves a purpose of social welfare and needs to be equipped with a negative tax, as it were, in the form of public subsidies, irrespective of the services being offered in communal responsibility, by private institutions, or by freelancers. Besides a general turnover tax exemption for all institutional and legal forms of music education, the following funding models are required, as claimed by the Bundesverband der Freien Musikschulen: a top-up for public education vouchers, and a full tax deductibility of the fees for music lessons. If the public authorities subsidised the customers’ costs with 50 % in general, it might be possible to decouple the charges from the income of teachers and operating expences of the service providers, and there would be no need to play off the interests of providers and customers against each other anymore. Fair payment of teachers would be justifiable without the risk of accusations of making music education too expensive. On the side of budgetary politics, such a subsidisation would mean a shift of the tax burden from educational institutions to the topsellers and profit-oriented companies in music business, obliging them to increase their contribution to funding basic education in music.