Music in the time of Malaise

PEOPLE JUST WANT TO FEEL GOOD. Maybe that’s as basic an explanation as you need for why so many creative people produce paintings, sculptures, dances, plays, photographs, songs and more. These things have the ability to make us feel good. That can be difficult for some people to fully appreciate. Especially in America we tend to value the utility of things more than the beauty of things. But as I told a class of graduate music education students in a commencement speech [VIDEO, PRINT, AUDIO] at VanderCook College of Music in 2006, “The world needs moments where we don’t say ‘What good is this?’ but only ‘How good this is.’”

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