I wonder why this subject that hasn't been discussed much in a public way on line? In my last google search I was surprised to find only seven entries for "musical code of ethics," and only two for "code of musical ethics." A search for "musical ethics" had many more, but they all seemed to be connected with the business of music, popular or commercial music, or legal ownership of intellectual property. I had hoped to find something addressing musical ethics among practicing classical musicians.
A code of ethics would make life much easier. There isn't really, for example, an established ethical way to deal with situations involving possible performances of new works. Communication between composers and the people they write music for might fall into the category of business ethics, except for the fact that with classical music there is little (if any) money to be made. Ethical situations encountered in teaching music to students might be a lot like ethical situations in other forms of teaching, but they involve issues unique to music.
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I'm not sure I follow you. Can you do a follow post with some examples of situations involving musical ethics? All that springs to mind for me is plagerism or only teaching the music of dead white guys.
There are situations where conductors treat principal players badly because of their own personal insecurities (or a number of other reasons, I guess), there are situations where stand partners or people who play in the same section of an orchestra can make each other's professional lives miserable. There are also times in part-time orchestras where personnel issues are made at the whim of the conductor. The situations I know about all seem to be a violation of ethics, or at least are situations where I would consider people (or one person) acting in a way that is unethical.
The behavior is unethical - but those situations all seem like the sort of thing that labor agreements and an organization's personnel policies should cover. There are parallel behaviors in the business world, for sure.
Yes, they should, but there are many musical organizations that do not have established personnel policies. Contractors for freelance jobs have a huge amount of power that they sometimes abuse (i.e. Blair Tindall's "Mozart in the Jungle"). There are also situations involving questions of ethics in music that don't involve money. Sometimes, for example, these situations involve the maniupuation of student (because everyone wants to teach good students and not all students are equal in ability). Sometimes there is manipulation in the part of that "prize" student, and sometimes there is unethical behavior on the part of a student's parent.
Hi, a bit late, but you can check out my site about topics relating to ethics and music. I'm looking to make it my dissertation topic a few years down the line:
http://ryangtanaka.com
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