“We are fighting” – a questionable way of thinking for musicians!

ast week I attended a beautiful concert of Monteverdi madrigals, presented by the wonderful semi-professional choir Versum Vocale and the amateur baroque orchestra Greifenberger Barock. The concert took place in a cosy little Bavarian church near where I live.

When I arrived, people were streaming through the door – many young people, even children, and also some older ones. Everyone was cheerful, lively and laughing, and the church was warm and very Christmassy. It glowed in golden light and was lovingly decorated with traditional Bavarian poinsettias and lights.

Outside it was dark, very cold, and the village felt rather bleak. But as soon as I stepped through the door, I felt my mood lift – I had entered another world: warm, joyful, harmonious and inspiring!

A puzzling conversation

I was so happy to have discovered this little gem of a church right on my doorstep – why had I never been here before? The atmosphere was so welcoming and open that I spontaneously struck up a conversation with a man at the door. It turned out that he was the church organist and had apparently been working there for 30 years.

He was a rather serious-looking man, about 65 years old, and despite the overheated church he was wearing a heavy raincoat. When I offered him a BarockConnections handout, he declined, saying: “I don’t want to carry something like that around with me.” He didn’t take even a second to look at it or ask what it was about.

I was quite surprised. Everyone else coming through the door had accepted the handout gratefully – many sat down immediately and began reading it. That seemed only logical. Who comes to a concert of Monteverdi madrigals? Most likely family and friends with whom the musicians have shared their passion for early music.

Surprised by the organist’s attitude, I was curious to learn more and asked him about his work and the church. “We are fighting,” he said, his expression suddenly hardening. “For years now, people haven’t been coming to church anymore. It’s not like Munich – if people want to go to a concert, of course they go to Munich. Here we have no interested audience, no chance. Young people especially never come to church – not even for concerts.”

As he said this, five or six smiling young people walked past us, looking for seats – the church was already almost full. “Yes, we are fighting,” he repeated, with a weary expression.

Was this concert a one-off? Perhaps. But if he regularly organised concerts like this, how could he say that no one comes? I didn’t have time to ask further, as the audience began applauding – the musicians were already stepping onto the stage…

What does “fighting” mean?

In the seven years since moving to Germany, I have often heard the word “fighting” used to describe musicians or ensembles in the early music scene in Munich. “He’s been fighting for his orchestra for years,” or “this ensemble / concert series is fighting for survival.”

I’ve heard these exact words many times, often spoken with great intensity – and with a certain hardness in the tone. In those moments, the atmosphere seems to cool for an instant, as if the speaker is already imagining a battlefield.

And that’s not surprising. The word “fight” implies positioning oneself against someone or something. To fight, one needs an enemy. One must defend oneself, attack, eliminate. One needs armour, must show no weakness, must have allies or mercenaries, good weapons and a clever, ruthless strategy kept secret. In the end, “fighting” means that something is destroyed.

Are musicians really fighters?

This phrase “we are fighting” appears so often that I wonder whether it truly reflects how my fellow musicians feel – or whether, perhaps, the opposite is true: has this language itself helped create an unhealthy, war-like mindset among professional musicians?

From my own experience as a foreigner (living in Germany for seven years), I can say that an alarming number of colleagues are indeed suspicious of new ideas. They prefer to keep fighting in the same way they always have.

Is “fighting” inevitable?

But is this mindset really constructive for musicians? Does “fighting” actually help?

Especially since the pandemic, the world seems to encourage people to build walls, create barriers, isolate themselves and fear one another. Perhaps it is simply human to fight and to destroy, to focus only on one’s own survival?

I believe otherwise

I believe that music is the opposite of “fighting”: music is cooperation.

Music is one of the few oases in this world where people can – and must – find refuge from the madness of conflict, from “fighting”. Together.

The cake is actually infinite

In my view, there is a widespread mindset in the early music community that hinders the growth of audiences. Many musicians behave as if everything were a zero-sum game: if I win, someone else must lose. If someone else takes a large slice of the cake, my own share becomes smaller.

Here is the Wikipedia definition of this concept:

Zero-sum game is a mathematical representation in game theory and economic theory of a situation that involves two competing entities, where the result is an advantage for one side and an equivalent loss for the other.  In other words, player one's gain is equivalent to player two's loss, with the result that the net improvement in benefit of the game is zero.

I believe, however, that for us musicians it is not a zero-sum game. In fact, the opposite is true: if we all work together to make the cake bigger (i.e. the audience and awareness for early music), then in the end we will all get more of it. There are infinitely many people out there – we just have to reach them!

We actually need more events, concerts and awareness, because that increases demand. If we stand together and support one another, everyone will benefit. The cake (that is, the opportunities – concerts, funding) will grow as the community and demand grow.

Instead of thinking that there is only a fixed number of concert opportunities or financial resources, I suggest we think differently: there are in fact infinitely many possibilities waiting to be realised – but for that, we need to work together to make things move forward more quickly.

To survive, we should do the opposite of “fighting”: we should cooperate. Especially in the early music community in Munich, which is small and, at the moment, unfortunately really is struggling. Here in Munich, we genuinely need a bigger cake so that everyone has enough work and can earn enough.

BarockConnections, the information portal for early music in Munich and the surrounding area, has the potential to make that cake bigger. With BC, we make it easier for audiences to discover early music – through an event calendar and a forum. We connect the community and help build audiences. In this way, we expand the cake. For everyone – for artists and for audiences. That is exactly why we do it. Together.

Signing up for the newsletter and using the event calendar are two ways in which you can not only support this new initiative, but also learn more about wonderful concerts and the world of early music in and around Munich. Or simply share this link with like-minded people.

A thought experiment

What would the early music community in Munich look like today if, over the past seven years since I moved here, I had heard the phrase “we work together” instead of “we are fighting”?

Music is the origin of communication, cohesion and collaboration, and transcends all kinds of boundaries. As Oliver Sacks points out in his book Musicophilia, the human brain continues to respond to music even when everything else fails – music remains and touches the human soul, even when the brain is affected by Alzheimer’s or other damage. This is because music is rooted in the most primitive part of the brain, which developed before language – early humans had to cooperate in order to survive, and they used a primitive form of music and rhythm to do so.

Music requires and fosters the best qualities of the human species.

These qualities helped humans survive the ice ages, during which many other species became extinct:

• Communication – listening and responding

• Openness – creativity and learning

• Cooperation – working and creating together

And the result is:

• Opportunity

• Growth

• Beauty

• Creativity

I felt these qualities in abundance at the wonderful concert last week – in the collaboration between the amateur choir and the orchestra. The musicians truly made the world a better place. The church musician, however, seemed for a moment blind to what was actually happening around him – perhaps a side effect of the “disease” of musical warfare and years of “fighting”. The answer to his problem was right in front of him, yet he could not see it.

Of course, the financial and artistic realities of working with professionals are very different from those of working with amateurs, who can afford to make music for their own enjoyment (albeit with great effort), but who may not have the time or training to perfect their performance completely. But there is definitely a place – and a real need – for both in this world.

Can dreams come true?

I am sure I am not the only one who has ever tried to raise the flag of peace, love and collaboration in this “battle-driven” environment of the Munich early music scene.

For me, however, there is only one way forward: to remain true to myself and to what I believe in and dream of – people and music. Together, this combination is unbeatable. Human beings are capable of achieving the unimaginable, the most beautiful and the most magical things…

Together.