Alan Jacobs on bad arguments for the liberal arts that defend the funding of jobs and departments rather than the liberal arts themselves

https://blog.ayjay.org/bad-humanists/

N. Ángel Pinillos asks, Why Are Humanists So Bad at Defending the Humanities? — and his answer is that humanists’ defenses of the humanities fail when they argue that the humanities have any kind of intrinsic, as opposed to instrumental, value. Now, Pinillos says that he happens to believe in the intrinsic value of the humanities, but people outside the humanistic disciplines don’t, so the intrinsic-value argument, “deployed as a public argument, has lost us the public. …

…

Pinillos seems to think that this case has “been ignored,” though for half-a-century I have been reading essays about how a humanities education makes you a better citizen. He also says straightforwardly that we professional humanists “teach a set of skills that you cannot get anywhere else,” which seems to me … well, I started to say that it seems to me a debatable proposition but in fact I think it is demonstrably false. I know many people who can do all the things Pinillos lists in the paragraph quoted above who have never taken so much as one course in the humanities. 

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He says that his essay is a defense of the humanities, when in fact it is an argument that universities should continue to fund humanities departments — because of their instrumental value. [emphasis added] If you could show that students can learn to read contracts and evaluate communications from doctors without the help of courses in the humanities, then nothing would remain [emphasis original] of his defense of “the humanities.” 

 

I say, in reply, that (a) the humanities are not to be conflated with courses in universities that bear the “humanities” designation, and therefore that (b) Pinillos has not defended the humanities at all, but instead has simply pleaded that university administrators and boards of trustees allow people like us to keep our jobs. [emphasis added]

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Maybe Frank Zappa would say it’s like the advertising representatives and talent scouts saying that they are the people who need to keep their jobs in the music industry because if you don’t have them you don’t have the music industry.  The musicians?  Well, uh, anyway, never mind them for the moment. 

I can't help but be reminded of Jacques Ellul riffing on the role art critics came to play in technocratic societies, blogged about here and here.  Ellul observed that the arts critic has only been with us a few centuries, the implication obviously being that the super-majority of the history of human artistic activity has never required arts critics or arts departments for productive activity. At a more rudimentary level Theodor Adorno kicked off Aesthetic Theory with the observation that now that art had been liberated from service to throne and altar it was free, yes, but it has been stuck in an intractable crisis of purpose and legitimacy from which it can't possibly escape. Ellul, for his part, said that Adorno correctly grasped the state of the arts presented the Scylla and Charybdis bind, art either serves a state or is a hermetic technocratic cult that has no appeal to outsiders. 

I previously mused upon the idea that without a gatekeeping element to their role an arts critic is a super-consumer in a world of consumers.  The crises presented by AI-generated arts are crises for educators and gatekeepers before they are crises for consumers. Last summer I wrote "Why the priests of Art Religion can't accept an AI-generated offering on its altar: remainder humanism; AI-generated music; and a figural reading of Levitical rites on the question of whether The Velvet Sundown is even a real band"  An academic can talk to students about whether something is a duck or a rabbit. I have been suspecting in the last year that the crisis of AI-generated art is that it replicates at a massive scale the lies promulgated about the arts from within academic traditions.  To put this another way, if humans can be trained to create duck-rabbit drawings and taught how to interpret the same image as a duck or a rabbit and to toggle back and forth between them, the threat of AI may be that the AI slop people worry about has to be programmed to present just the duck or just the rabbit.  In chains of ones and zeroes there's not room for a 0.005, a 0.2341 or a 0.66666 is a way to put it, but those fuzzy and fudged cases are where art happens, to put it in a purely and slickly bromide way. 

Joseph Horowitz has been mulling over the state of US classical music across 250 years and it's predominantly musings on the state of orchestral repertoire

I am not going to attempt to summarize or describe Joseph Horowitz’ eight takes on the question of whether or not the United States has delivered on its classical music promise.  If you have read them you have read them, too, and if not, here are links.

 

https://www.artsjournal.com/uq/2026/06/at-250-has-america-delivered-on-its-classical-music-promise.html

https://www.artsjournal.com/uq/2026/07/jonas-kaufmann-vs-the-orchestra-of-st-lukes-take-two-mahler-steinbach-festival.html

https://www.artsjournal.com/uq/2026/07/american-classical-music-at-250-take-two-the-bam-experiment.html

https://www.artsjournal.com/uq/2026/07/american-classical-music-at-250-take-three-the-orchestra-gap-europe-vs-the-us.html

https://www.artsjournal.com/uq/2026/07/american-classical-music-at-250-take-four-the-orchestra-gap-contd.html

https://www.artsjournal.com/uq/2026/08/feeling-it-giuini-and-arrau-vs-george-szells-new-world-perfectionism.html

https://www.artsjournal.com/uq/2026/08/american-classical-music-at-250-take-five-the-disconnect-between-scholars-and-orchestras.html

https://www.artsjournal.com/uq/2026/08/american-classical-music-at-250-take-six-the-ford-foundations-misguided-philanthropy.html

https://www.artsjournal.com/uq/2026/08/american-classical-music-at-250-take-seven-another-boston-symphony-perspective-on-the-malaise-afflicting-orchestras.html

 

The thing that jumps out for me is that even the one time Future Symphony Institute is now the Foundation for the Future of Classical Music.  They don’t even call themselves the Future Symphony Institute anymore.  They still want a future for orchestral and symphonic music, of course, because while Roger Scruton has died many of the people at the core of the institution have remained.  I kind of started tuning them out after Scruton died but also after Douglas Murray got added on to the senior fellows roster.  I had my issues with Scruton but I do still own half a dozen of his books.  Writers like the late Roger Scruton and Theodor Adorno can benefit you when you don’t agree with them. 

 

Being a guitarist I find that I am more drawn to hearing what is going on now than in revisiting past glories.  Matanya Ophee is no longer with us but he dispelled the idea that the classical guitar ever had an actual golden age.  Do sonatas by Sor or Giuliani compare to the works of Schubert or Mendelssohn?  Most would say not favorably.  On the other hand, when Stephanie Jones gave a recital in Seattle a few seasons ago I enjoyed her program of contemporary Australian and Austrian composers writing for the guitar.  I am looking forward to the second half of Nikita Koshkin’s 24 Preludes and Fugues finally getting recorded.  I just noted recently the death of Frank Campo as reported at Slipped Disc. 

 

Jens Ibsen has floated some ideas that self-policing within genres can stifle innovation.  Ibsen has contended that within the United States classical music is functionally underground music now.

https://sfclassicalvoice.substack.com/p/classical-music-is-underground-let

 

I wonder if that’s a bit of an overstatement but for contemporary composers I think I can take the point as given.  Anyone who is attempting to build bridges between classical and metal is already interested in inter-canonical experimentation that I can be sympathetic to.  The concept of inter-canonical translation and exchange comes up inIbsen’s profile on Jon Batiste. I’m okay with a slow-drag reworking of a Mozart warhorse. Ragging the classics has been a thread of improvisational and compositional activity for centuries.  Batiste is also correct to say that improvisation was previously inextricably bound up in musical life and practice in the days of Mozart and got steadily purged out of classical music theory and practice. 

 

If arts non-profits are having a banner bad year then the future of classical music in the United States probably isn’t “entirely” bound up in the states of institutions.

 

I haven’t been to orchestral concerts in decades and I have nothing against orchestral music.  I went and heard the symphonic suite Mathis der Maler when it was programmed.  Yes, I am a bit of a Hindemith fan.  I went and heard Samuel Jones’ Tuba Concerto twice and even bought the score.  I liked Wynton Marsalis’ Violin Concerto, which I feel is several steps above what he was doing with All Rise (which I really wanted to like but couldn’t get into).  I even recently listened to a violin concerto by Kip Winger.  Don’t know who that is?  Well, I still hate the band Winger but Kip Winger’s violin concerto is solidly made.

 

But to me the present and future of classical music is in small-scale works.  It’s not going to surprise anyone if a guitarist feels the present and future of classical music is more likely to be found in guitar music than in orchestral literature.  I have made this point a few times over the last ten years but I think the symphony has gone the way of the votive mass for the dead; the prestige of the genre and form hasn’t gone away but the niche nature of the musical form means it has lost its place of prestige.  Richard Taruskin pointed out that the social role of opera was displaced by cinema and television and that’s basically not going to come back.

 

I have not written as much about Regaining Classical Music's Relevance: Saving the Muse in a Troubled World as I, at one point, planned to.  I have had concerns about how easily John Borstlap decided to valorize Schleiermacher and scapegoat Herder.  Both philosophers were not “just” philosophers but Christian pastors and theologians both of them advocated aesthetic pluralism as well as encouraged nascent nationalist projects.  It’s possible to admire Schleiermacher’s ardor for aesthetic pluralism and music while agree with Emil Brunner that the trajectory of Schleiermacher’s thought and theology was ultimately a dead end. 

 

It is possible to regard Herder as more complex than Borstlap has allowed for.  American fundamentalist preachers who think Song of Songs is chiefly about the joys of marriage and sex don’t give Herder any credit for having swept allegorical and typological readings of Song of Songs away for a newer interpretive approach.  I can think of Schleiermacher as having positive contributions to make in hermeneutics while also finding him an annoying panentheistic crypto-Marcionite. It has been hard to shake an impression that Borstlap is eager to valorize and scapegoat figures like Herder or Adorno than to wade into the complexities of their respective bodies of work to show how mixed their legacies are.

 

So, obviously, I’ve made it clear I differ with Borstlap on a few things.  But I have realized that right there in the subtitle may be he simplest point of divergence.  Borstlap seemsto think the muse needs to be saved, the muse of classical music.  I think the muse has moved on from orchestral repertoire. She might come back now and then to check in on the state of her previously favored idiom but where ever the muse has headed off to, you will not find her by trying to “save” her so that there can be another Beethoven’s Ninth.  She may have moved on to intercultural exchange projects.

 

What if the failure of the promise of American music has happened because people sought that future in the symphony?  What if by the time Americans were looking for the creator of the great American symphony the muse had already moved on? 

 

Frank Campo 1927-2026 (composer, in case you've never heard of him before)

https://slippedisc.com/2026/08/us-composer-dies-at-99/

The distinguished composer Frnak Campo has died six months short of his century.

 

Unfortunate spelling mistake but I knew whose name I was looking at.  Decades ago I couldn't resist grabbing a chamber score Campo wrote that included guitar.  Folks who know me in person (or as a blogger) know that I have an interest in chamber music for classical guitar.  I think it was actually the score for this trio I grabbed when Capitol Music had a clearance sale in order to leave their 9th Avenue location decades ago.  I just saw that whoever Frank Campo was he wrote a trio for an instrumental combination I couldn't resist.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfqwgLmtBWE

 

Bruce Duffie did an interview with Frank Campo way back in 1991.

https://www.bruceduffie.com/campo.html

It's a somewhat long interview and Campo has a funny yet sad observation about the problem of writing contemporary music and how that comes across in performances. There are musicians who perfectly execute note-for-note what is on the page and all that does is just get them to the starting point of the notes on the page.  The performer may not resonate with, understand, or even necessarily like the music itself, but they can play it note perfect.  Orchestral performances can be a risky proposition because so often your new work (whoever you are, composer, who wrote something to share with the world) will be programmed alongside some war horse.  As Campo put it, the rehearsals focus on the warhorse because everybody knows that is the music upon which the night's music gets judged and that all too often means that your music gets sloppier and less careful attention; the music can come off badly and the audience feels they got a bad piece even if you know, as the composer, that the music didn't get a fair shake.

Sounds like a reason to stick with composing for the guitar to me, but then I'm a guitarist, as just about anyone who's read this blog in the last twenty years probably already knows.  :)  

 

So, I eventually grabbed another Campo score, which by now might be kind of hard to find.

Two Studies for Trumpet and Guitar

Anthony Plog recorded the two studies a long time ago and I got that CD back when it was still feasible to get. Here's the information in case you want to hunt down the disc, which has a solid interpretation of the Hindemith Trumpet Sonata.

Crystal Records CD663: ANTHONY PLOG, TRUMPET.

 

Because the disc is kind of hard to find these days I'll refer you to a performance filmed in 2023 with Anne McNamara on trumpet

and Angelo L. Favis on guitar.  It's not a commercial recording, by the way.

 

Favis' channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnCamW3Bvvk

McNamara's channel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRELgryfwpU

 

To go just by the two Campo works I've been able to study his a composer who isn't a guitarist himself but who has given the guitar some rewarding and challenging music.  

Dolly Parton, 1946-2026

I have not been a country fan overall but I came to admire and respect a number of songwriters in the country tradition, generally the most obvious candidates.  I abominated new country and back in college I told one of my music professors that about as late as I could go with country songwriter/singers was probably Dolly Parton.  After her I hadn't managed to hear a country singer/songwriter who had "it" when it came to songs.  I could, obviously, be wrong. :)

https://apnews.com/article/dolly-parton-death-country-icon-87156f3e6a1547b88bf414529b644ad3

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2026/aug/25/dolly-parton-obituary

Even Norman Lebrecht has a few generous words for the recently departed queen of country.

https://slippedisc.com/2026/08/dolly-parton-rip/

I wasn't a super-fan of Parton so I mention her death briefly, but her death is also a reminder to me that there can seem like a chasm between those who listen to and study music and those who write about music.  Sometimes it just feels like we live in an era in which gatekeepers (or would-be gatekeepers) want to just keep gatekeeping and insist that everybody stay in their lanes.  Parton's life and career may be another of many musical lives showing that cross-over has been more of the musical norm than purist genre policing in the last 80 years. Whitney may have made a song her own but Dolly still had to have written it. 

Ethan Hein on how AI is harmful to learning (specifically musical learning) and I am reminded that Augustine of Hippo said that our ability to reason and our capacity for memory are essential to musical art

https://www.ethanhein.com/wp/2026/ai-is-harmful-for-learning-which-is-why-im-banning-it-in-my-classes/

…

Academic integrity is not my main motivation for the AI ban. It’s a factor, but it’s not the main thing. The main thing is that I want to help these students learn, and using AI is directly harmful to learning. Common sense says that prompting ChatGPT doesn’t have the same learning benefits as doing the reading and writing yourself, but if you need something more robust than common sense, here’s a sampling of the research literature.

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There are two basic reasons for this and to make these clear I’m going to go way back to Augustine of Hippo’s ancient, uncompleted treatise De Musica.