In the May 1999 edition of BBC Music Magazine, reporter Michael Shmith
asked guitarist John Williams why it had taken so long for European
classical music to be affected by changes in international music:

   "In rock and jazz, all the traditional music forms, it has never been
   a question or a problem.  In popular music there is much less analysis,
   much less self-consciousness and pretentiousness and talk, about the
   form and its meaning.  It's pretty obvious now.  The big change that
   has come recently is that at last a large part of the classical world
   has become aware that, hey, there are many other big worlds of music
   out there to be acknowledged.

   "I don't want to get heavy and historical but my view is that European
   classical music is an imperial culture precisely because the European
   colonial powers, Spain, France, Germany, Holland, Portugal, certainly
   England, took their music to the colonies.  There is the view, their
   view, that there is wonderful music in what has now become known as
   world music, but when all is said and done, when we're talking about
   real music - the best, the most developed, most civilised - it is
   actually European classical music.  That is the kind of dying attitude
   that underlies a lot of the classical music establishment.

   "Needless to say I find it entirely wrong.  It's unhistorical, it's
   musically wrong.  It's a little bit like saying building a spaceship
   is cleverer than inventing the wheel.  It's a misunderstanding of
   complexity and progress and technology as applied to music.  It's
   assuming that something more complex in abstract structure is
   automatically more developed or better.  I don't believe you can
   separate culture and cultural meaning from content.  This has infected
   the whole development of European classical music to such a degree
   that internally its own development is automatically seen as progress,
   when in reality it is searching round for a language, say, through
   the avant-garde, through minimalism, to extend its lifescale.  It
   has run out of a cultural language of its own.

   "Isn't it strange, when you think back through history and prehistory,
   actually looking for a language in which to express yourself? We take
   it for granted it's an interesting thing to do.  But it suggests
   there is something wrong, doesn't it?"

James Kearney
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