Not long ago, a close friend was preparing for an orchestral audition. After he walked me through his impressive technical preparations, I offered some (naturally unsolicited) advice. I suggested he be mindful not to overlook cultural input at this crucial moment. This piece of advice came from my own experiences as a performer and creator. I’ve long loved the adage, “You are what you eat.” Despite its insulting undertone and its assault on the sensual pleasures that only rich cuisine can provide, this blend of ideas makes it an appealing maxim for describing another kind of dietary practice: cultural consumption.
The mind, like the body, requires the appropriate diet for the tasks we face during different parts of our creative and emotional toils. This is especially true for those engaged in interpretative work. I recall a time when I played the Haydn Trumpet Concerto for Gabrielle Cassone, an expert in period performance, as part of my audition preparations. After hearing me play, he simply asked, “How much Mozart and Haydn are you listening to these days?” Despite my deep love for these composers, I realized I hadn’t been particularly immersed in their works in those weeks. Instead of assigning long tones or exercises, he simply asked me to spend the week with my favorite recordings of works by Classical-period composers, taking special care to avoid the Haydn and Hummel trumpet concertos and instead focus on works for other instruments.
I set out on this task. Avoiding trumpet works from the Classical period was exceedingly easy, given the truly limited and uninspiring repertoire for the instrument from that era. A week later, after immersing myself in Clementi, Haydn string quartets, and Mozart piano sonatas and operas, I played the Haydn Trumpet Concerto for Cassone once more. The improvement was striking, despite having spent little time practicing the piece itself in the interim. This experience taught me the crucial relationship between the quality of cultural input and the production of worthwhile cultural output.
As interpreters, we are tasked with bringing entire worlds to life. This responsibility can only be shouldered if we can ourselves access the worlds we intend to conjure into the physical domain. This praxis was embodied by Mahler’s “world-containing” creations or the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk attributed to Wagner. Gesamtkunstwerk is a German term meaning "total work of art." It refers to creations that integrate multiple art forms—such as music, visual art, drama, and design—into a unified and harmonious whole. This concept emphasizes works that transcend pure technique in any single direction, focusing instead on the complete artistic expression achieved by synthesizing all elements. The enduring power of artworks that embed profound meaning and synthesize expansive ideas aligns with my belief that people engage with cultural events not merely for escapism, but in search of counterworlds—places that imbue life with meaning and offer a spiritual outlet for the complexities of the human condition.
While the technical aspects of music education in the 21st century have vastly outpaced those of any previous era, most programs have overlooked the importance of cultural consumption for those pursuing a career in the arts. The result is the production of incredibly capable musicians with very poor interpretative skills. Pursuing a career in the high arts can sometimes lead to losing sight of the responsibility we bear toward the art itself and the audiences it is meant to nurture.
How can training to become active agents in the arts lead us to such unforgivable amnesia? How can we so easily forget our roles as guardians and promoters of such immense cultural treasures? These are questions for a much longer discussion, but the cost of forgetting this duty is the creation of highly technical yet characterless art, which fails to inspire audiences.
I bring up the unique responsibility that interpreters must always keep in mind toward their audiences because we are, ultimately, their servants. Music is a strictly interpretative art form. Unlike plastic arts, film, or literature, audiences cannot access it without interpreters bringing the sounds into existence. Even in recordings, interpreters serve as conduits and narrators of the score they perform. As middlemen to a composer’s creations, interpreters must have the capacity to understand a creator’s intent and psyche to bring the best possible outcome to voracious audiences.
This undertaking is, in many ways, ultimately impossible. Part psychologist, part historian, archaeologist, and spiritual guide, performers must cultivate a vibrant internal world to even begin to understand and channel the intent and genius of composers who are, more often than not, their intellectual superiors. Despite the futility of fully embodying the intent behind most compositions, the depth of commitment to this intellectual pursuit is what defines the strength of a given interpretation.
We cannot truly know how a Shakespeare sonnet might have sounded in Elizabethan England or from his mouth, but we recognize Laurence Olivier as one of the Bard’s finest interpreters because of his deep study of Shakespeare’s work and the relish with which he delivered the text. Similarly, we can draw intellectual parallels between interpreter and composer: Karajan and Strauss, Bernstein and Mahler, Böhm or Klemperer and Beethoven, or Glenn Gould and Bach.
In each of the cases mentioned above, we see interpreters who took special care to enrich their output with constant and insatiable input. I often emphasize the importance of building one’s artistic practice on solid foundations. No man is an island—especially for those who aspire to find their place in the pantheon of great artists. In the past, I have described this constant dialogue with our cultural past as a necessary step in creating anything worthwhile. My favorite artists have, by their own admission, been almost haunted by the achievements of their predecessors. Yet, this process is less ethereal than it might seem. Ultimately, it results from persistently consuming vast amounts of culture in pursuit of that dialogue.
The current cultural and intellectual parochialism of so many interpreters is not entirely their fault. As I mentioned, even the best music schools do a remedial job of exposing students to the vast depth of the Western canon. I, too, received what can best be described as a superficial cultural education during my time at music school. The music history seminars felt akin to the dull textbooks designed for American high schools in Texas or the simplistic bibles drafted for children attending Sunday School at their local reform church. (You all know the ones I’m talking about, with lions bashfully smiling at their natural prey as they board Noah’s arc.)
When studying medieval chant, for example, rather than engaging with the texts of medieval philosophers such as Saint Augustine or Aquinas, we were presented with simplistic platitudes about the Church’s dominance in cultural creation and the demonization of the tritone. Similarly, when learning about the secularization of culture during the Renaissance, we were not required to read Machiavelli, Thomas More, Dante, or Erasmus—the philosophical architects of these processes. Instead, we were given a cursory explanation that it was a period of vague classical revival of a Greco-Roman culture we also did not study in any meaningful way. We similarly did not read any works by Hume, Locke, or Montesquieu to inform us about the Enlightenment period in which Mozart and Haydn composed, nor did we read Schiller despite his direct connection to Beethoven. We also ignored Kant, Nietzsche, Hegel, and all the other thinkers who were so crucial to the composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
As if the poverty of our philosophical education weren’t enough, most artists also received a poor education in the artists who defined each of these epochs. I was never assigned readings of Shakespeare when studying the operatic settings of his plays by Rossini and Verdi (Othello, Falstaff, and Macbeth). Nor was I assigned Spenser when learning about Purcell’s Faerie Queene. Nor did professors read from Wilde when studying Strauss’s operatic version of Salomé. It goes without saying that there was no study of Greco-Roman or Norse mythology, which are so prevalent in classical music.
Music schools, and art schools more broadly, have largely become centers for practical study at best. Even when a school is considered exceptionally strong academically, its primary success often lies in instilling foundational instrumental and ear-training techniques, as exemplified by institutions like Eastman, Juilliard, Colburn, or Rice. However, many schools have even abdicated this fundamental responsibility. In pursuit of higher graduation rates, they have watered down their training programs and catered to a lethargic student body’s preference for easier courses and more self-directed learning. I have seen emerging curricula, even in my own schools, that do away with basic training. Students have managed to convince administrators and professors alike that scale tests, performance juries, or foundational music theory training are too onerous and ultimately irrelevant to their education. How foolish is that? The result is that even in the best schools, young musicians are being trained to win auditions mechanically but are left completely devoid of the contextual knowledge necessary to ground their purpose and reason for existing.
Most instrumentalists I know regard their instrumental instructors as their most important mentors. Very few of them can name any other professors who fundamentally shaped their artistry or cultural education. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with this, it creates a tendency among interpreters to simply replicate what they learned from their instrumental teachers or what they absorbed from their favorite recordings. This approach is not entirely problematic, but it often shifts the focus away from the composer’s intent. Instead, performers tend to prioritize the interpretations of past performers—who themselves may have had cultural educations of varying quality. In other words, when some of these interpreters perform Mahler, for example, they are less concerned with Mahler’s rich cultural world or how he might have wanted his music to sound and are more focused on emulating their favorite New York Philharmonic or Chicago Symphony recording.
Music education is not the only discipline suffering from academia’s abdication of duty. When my grandfather studied classics and linguistics at Colombia’s Jesuit Universidad Javeriana, he was expected to learn Latin, Greek, and French to read texts in their original languages. This was not unique to the education of a Latin American nation; it was common practice, especially in the world’s most highly regarded universities. I, therefore, take it as a profound sign of decay in educational quality that Princeton University, once lauded as one of the most important centers of learning in the Western world, decided in 2021 to do away with the requirement for Latin and Greek in its Classics department.
The lion's share of the blame for the appalling cultural parochialism afflicting so many interpreters and creators lies with academic institutions obsessed with credentialism. These institutions often employ faculty who lack the basic intellectual curiosity that should guide an artistic education. These professors are stuck in loops of what Americans call “inside baseball” or “shop talk.” These terms describe discussions or details so specialized they are only meaningful to a small, well-informed group, often unintelligible or uninteresting to those outside the field.
Cultural production centers have become hubs for this type of insular discourse. This hyper-specialization, which has infected academia at large, promotes siloed expertise and undermines general educational objectives. While such specialization has bolstered practical fields like engineering, mathematics, and medicine, it proves counterproductive in the realm of liberal and fine arts education.
While specializing in the effects of a specific type of cancer can be highly beneficial for the medical field, endless discussions about half-cadences or identitarian platitudes do little to foster a broad understanding of culture and lead to narrow, contextless instruction. In some ways, this disparity between practical fields and the arts stems from the reality that artistic expression is not a hard science and that its practicality is more closely tied to spirituality than to anything else. Perhaps the distinction also lies in the fact that practical fields do not depend on audience buy-in. (As a side note, I have always found something Freudian in the pathology that makes scientists describe their finest achievements as “elevating something to an art form,” while artists refer to their own work as having something “down to a science.”)
A bridge can be built without consulting the populace’s opinion on mathematics, and disease can be treated without the patient understanding the scientific underpinnings of a given treatment. Specialization is therefore rewarded, as innovations within these sectors—and the health of their institutions—are not dependent on maintaining an expansive knowledge relationship with their consumer base.
Such is not the case for cultural production. Artists survive through a social contract with their audiences, existing in a symbiotic—sometimes parasitic—relationship that is both difficult to define and challenging to sustain. Although an audience member does not need to be able to produce a symphony himself, his keen interest and willingness to invest time in attending the symphony are basic requirements for the event to take place. Artistic institutions do not survive and thrive primarily on innovation and research but on their ability to provide cultural services effectively to audiences they must not only understand but also deeply respect and value. Part of this involves producing concerts that elevate an audience in meaningful ways. This is only achievable if an interpreter brings something special to a given production. It is not enough for an orchestra to play the notes on the page; they must bring the score to life with all its historical, spiritual, and contextual power. If an art school’s training fails to equip its students to understand and access these inputs, the output will always be polished but insipid. Audiences will, in turn, begin to view cultural events as superfluous luxuries and niceties rather than what they truly are: fundamental connections to our humanity, our collective pasts, and our deep social roots.
Despite the responsibility academic institutions bear for the decline of broad education for artists and the erosion of the social contract between artists and audiences, receiving a poor cultural education is no excuse for a lack of personal curiosity, particularly in the 21st century. While we live in a world of distractions—and there is no shortage of doomsayers convinced that no one will ever read a book again because they lack the mental strength to pry themselves away from their phones—we also live in a time where anyone is just a Google search away from any great painting, a Spotify search away from virtually every work of music, a YouTube search away from most films worth watching, and, for the measly cost of an eReader, has access to enough free literary classics to rival the finest private libraries of any monarch or intellectual.
Screen addiction is real, but more often than not, it serves as an excuse for a profound lack of curiosity. Among artists, such a condition is unacceptable. One is left to conclude that many of those currently enjoying careers in the arts are, in fact, not all that interested in it. Considering the financial realities of creative fields, this also suggests that many of these individuals are deeply impractical.
As I mentioned earlier, I believe that good creators are, more often than not, encyclopedically reverent of the past and insatiable in their consumption of its creations. I recognize that this might sound lofty, but at its core, it simply means that great professionals in any discipline are fans of their discipline. I sometimes question whether many artists are truly fans of their medium. It has now been several years since December became a deeply revealing time for me. Since 2016, Spotify has been sharing listening data through their Wrapped marketing initiative. Thanks to Wrapped, I get a yearly, statistical glimpse behind people’s once very private listening habits—habits they now so readily and willingly share with the world. Although most of my immediate artistic circle is made up of classical composers and performers, when they post their Spotify top 5, very few of them can boast of having a classical work or composer among the list. The untainted nature of this exercise is fascinating. These lists reflect what people actually gravitate toward rather than what they think or claim to be engaged with.
If your listening habits and other cultural consumption seem simplistic… they probably are. We are all allowed our guilty pleasures. While I used to jog to Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty, even I will admit that Bad Bunny can be a better companion for exercising—and is, in every way, Brahms’s superior when it comes to lighting up a wedding dance floor. Regardless of its absurd cultural caché, I do not subscribe to the postmodern relativism that convinces some people that Beyoncé is as good as Beethoven, Bach, Duke Ellington, or Mahler, or that Paulo Coelho or Dan Brown can match García Márquez, Shakespeare, Cervantes, or Keats. I find the mental gymnastics required to make such thoughtless claims entirely unconvincing and count myself fortunate to lack the basic fear that paralyzes so many trained artists—the fear of being labeled elitist.
My critique is not directed at eclectic or diverse cultural consumption. As interpreters and creators, we stand to benefit immensely from exploring worlds beyond our own—whether that means discovering unfamiliar art forms, engaging with distant cultural traditions, or simply stepping outside the confines of our comfort zones. Such exploration can inspire fresh ideas and broaden our creative perspectives. However, there is a big difference between cultivating a truly expansive and discerning cultural palate and settling for unsophisticated tastes masquerading as diversity.
On one end of the spectrum are individuals whose cultural toolbelts are richly stocked—they have immersed themselves in the canon of their discipline while eagerly drawing from the offerings of others. Their praxis reflects a deep reverence for the past and an insatiable curiosity for the present. On the other end are those with only a single tool at their disposal, often the most fashionable or familiar one, wielded repeatedly without much thought for its limitations. While the latter may find temporary relevance, this lack of depth betrays a disinterest in the larger conversation their medium is part of. In an age where we are inundated with information and surrounded by extraordinary access to art, music, and literature, such parochialism is, quite frankly, a choice—a choice to disengage from the richness of what came before and what exists beyond.
The interpreters and creators who, like sponges, absorb everything around them, only to filter and transform it into something wholly unique are the ones humanity values and honors. On the other end, we find those who lack both depth and breadth in their artistic diets, whose engagement is superficial at best and whose output rarely transcends mediocrity.
This brings us back to the question of responsibility: not only to the audiences who rely on interpreters to access the intangible riches of our artistic heritage but also to the art itself, which deserves to be represented with integrity and depth. As cultural gatekeepers, interpreters must guard against the erosion of meaning in their work by committing to ongoing exploration, education, and dialogue with the great works and minds of the past. To do so requires more than mere technical competence; it demands a lifetime of curiosity and an unrelenting desire to learn and grow.
So, where do we go from here? How do we—as individuals and as a collective—combat this alarming trend of cultural and intellectual parochialism? Part of the answer lies in reclaiming the spirit of interdisciplinary learning and curiosity that once defined a well-rounded education in the arts. This means insisting on the integration of literature, philosophy, visual art, and history into the curricula of conservatories and arts programs, not as ancillary components but as foundational elements of artistic training. We must recognize that the value of academic credentials only holds weight if these institutions continue to provide meaningful education. The sooner universities and conservatories realize that their diplomas don’t possess the mystical power to turn any chump into a professor, the sooner they’ll understand what we all know: you can’t fix ignorance with a diploma, and a fool with a degree is still a fool.
Barring any changes in academia, artists must also take the initiative to seek this kind of education despite it. As Mark Twain wisely said, “I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” Historians like Jan Swafford, Joseph Horowitz, and Sir John Eliot Gardiner, among others, have produced a considerable number of books that can give any interpreter a real taste of the worlds they must inhabit daily, as well as the historical concerns of our finest composers. We must hold ourselves accountable as practitioners, continuously seeking out opportunities to expand our own cultural horizons. We should celebrate the richness of our artistic traditions while also challenging ourselves to venture beyond the familiar. This is not simply an academic exercise—it is an act of love and devotion to the art forms we hold dear. By immersing ourselves in the great works of the past and remaining open to the new and unfamiliar, we not only honor the legacy of our predecessors but also equip ourselves to create meaningful and lasting contributions to the cultural landscape. We must, in short, become the most passionate fans of the culture we want others to be excited by. True fandom can be infectious and is the catalyst for lasting community building.
Ultimately, this journey is as much about humility as it is about ambition. It requires us to recognize the limits of our own knowledge and to approach the creative process with a sense of reverence and wonder. It asks us to embrace the paradox of being both creators and servants, of shaping the future while remaining deeply rooted in the past. It reminds us that the greatest art—whether in music, literature, or any other discipline—is born not from isolation but from a profound and ongoing conversation with the world around us.
As we wrap this up, my mind wanders back to my friend and his audition preparations. When I suggested he be mindful of his cultural diet, I wasn’t simply offering advice about listening to more Mozart or exploring the nuances of Classical-period style. I was reminding him—and, by extension, myself—of the deeper truth that underpins all artistic endeavors: that the quality of what we create is inextricably linked to the quality of what we consume. To create art that resonates, inspires, and endures, we must first nurture ourselves with the richness of the world’s cultural offerings. Only then can we hope to fulfill our responsibility as interpreters, creators, and custodians of the human spirit.