"But it is equally necessary to consider the implications for a society if there are fewer and fewer young people making music because we are economising on music schools or musical education in schools"
About this Quote
A society that pinches pennies on music education, Johannes Rau warns, doesn’t just lose a few future violinists; it quietly rewires what it values. The line is built like a policy memo with a moral punchline: “equally necessary” implies he’s answering a narrow budget argument already in play. Yes, you can tally savings. Now tally what those savings buy you - a slower cultural heartbeat, a thinner civic life, fewer shared languages beyond politics and commerce.
Rau’s intent is preventative and strategic. He frames music-making not as elite refinement but as generational infrastructure: “fewer and fewer young people” is demographic and cumulative, the sort of decline you notice only when it’s too late to reverse. The verb “economising” is doing sly work. It suggests not responsible stewardship but a cramped, short-term logic applied to the wrong domain, like cutting seeds to save on farming.
The subtext is that culture isn’t a luxury add-on; it’s one of the few institutions that trains attention, discipline, listening, and collaboration at scale. Music schools and school programs are where talent is discovered, yes, but also where kids learn to participate in something larger than themselves without being sorted by test scores or income.
Context matters: Rau, as German president in an era of austerity pressures and post-reunification recalibration, is defending the postwar European idea that the arts help hold a pluralistic society together. His warning lands because it translates an abstract “culture budget” into a concrete social forecast: less music education means fewer citizens practiced in harmony - literally and politically.
Rau’s intent is preventative and strategic. He frames music-making not as elite refinement but as generational infrastructure: “fewer and fewer young people” is demographic and cumulative, the sort of decline you notice only when it’s too late to reverse. The verb “economising” is doing sly work. It suggests not responsible stewardship but a cramped, short-term logic applied to the wrong domain, like cutting seeds to save on farming.
The subtext is that culture isn’t a luxury add-on; it’s one of the few institutions that trains attention, discipline, listening, and collaboration at scale. Music schools and school programs are where talent is discovered, yes, but also where kids learn to participate in something larger than themselves without being sorted by test scores or income.
Context matters: Rau, as German president in an era of austerity pressures and post-reunification recalibration, is defending the postwar European idea that the arts help hold a pluralistic society together. His warning lands because it translates an abstract “culture budget” into a concrete social forecast: less music education means fewer citizens practiced in harmony - literally and politically.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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