This is in accordance with a time-honored tradition in music education where all are free to make their own choices.

Studying in a conservatory or with individual music teachers can provide, or should provide student musicians with a practical knowledge of the strictures and academic disciplines that would enable them to enter the classical music world as performers, or, alternatively, to either use or abandon such training to instead follow a path into the world of jazz or entertainment music.

Every kind of music in and of itself has specific performance structures and styles that have evolved throughout its developmental history. If performers were to play any such music without a working knowledge of those performance practices, it would be tantamount to trying to function in real life with a learning disability like a speech impediment. What would a connoisseur think of a musician cluelessly and unintentionally playing modern jazz with a dixieland style and articulation? Or a soloist playing baroque music with the style disciplines of the romantic era? Such an observer would not only recognize the musical ignorance of such a player but would also notice the tell-tale signs of the developing pervasive decadence in the musical consciousness among many in the new generations.

To avoid such a cultural decline, it is incumbent upon performers who respect their art to regularly update their knowledge of the relevant genres and styles.

In point of fact, within the somewhat vulnerable domain of brass chamber music, many have observed what they consider to be a loss of artistic quality which serves as the inspirational source behind the thinking of too many in the current brass community. One often hears musicians who are not all that familiar with jazz or entertainment music crossing the line into a grotesque musical fusion of "classic-jazz-entertainment", taking advantage of even more ignorant audiences to validate their efforts.

Hope in the 1960s

When a serious "classical" brass chamber music practice started to develop in the 1950s-60s (in parallel with a correlated movement of brass instruments for solo playing) it was first necessary to enter into the refined concepts acquired over centuries by singers, string, or woodwind players. The military-symphonic heritage of brass playing tended to stay within "fanfare" like eclats, while the sweetness of the small anglo-saxon groups (derived from the brass bands and Salvation Army bands movements) tended to promote a sentimentality underlined with strong emotional vibratos.

Some pioneer ensembles adopted an ambitious and interesting orientation: The New York Brass Quintet in the USA and the Philip Jones Brass Ensemble in Europe, along with some others, tried with intelligence to create an original artistic chamber music repertoire and to find compatible historical works. They promoted brass instruments into a chamber music practice inspired by the voice, string or keyboard art tradition. During the 1970-1995 period many brass ensembles were profiled within an elegant and refined development. It seemed as if brass players (as did their prominent soloists like Adolph Scherbaum, Maurice André, Denis Brain, Hermann Baumann, Branimir Slokar, Michel Becquet or William Bell and Roger Bobo at the level of solo playing) would finally obtain their credentials of artistic nobility.

Back to the starting boxes...

The impatience of musicians, the evolution of audiences (more and more fond of entertainment), and some other reasons which would be too long to develop within this article, "pushed" some ensembles to choose "light" concert-show (« Pops ») programs in which musical humor and technical bravura would become the principal weapons of seduction. The Canadian Brass succeeded especially well with that formula and consequently became world famous. Nothing against this particular group: they have done a professional job at a high level and they certainly deserve their success. What is genuinely embarrassing, however, is their growing influence on more and more young brass ensembles who attempt, often with an appalling lack of imagination, to copy these artists.

One observes now a proliferation of modern-day versions of court jesters, replete with their heavy jokes, fool-playing, and parodies of ill-conceived arrangements of world hits from successful movies or rock/pop songs in order to have the audiences slapping their thighs instead of feeding their spirit. And this is how, once again, many "classical" brass players have descended from serious musical trends and developments, jumping with delight from one watered-down style to another, with heavy winks and nods to ersatz jazz and false entertainment values. They have returned to the starting box, where they had existed historically for so long, systematically being excluded from the high art concert world. It seems today that strings or voice ensembles are no longer the examples to follow, not too mention serious contemporary composers which is, of course, a far too serious (in other words, boring) subject.

The great challenge which seemed to stimulate the brass world for the past half a century is quickly dwindling away. It seems today that only a minority of artists (thanks to them!) defends the values of a fine and committed instrumental art. No need to be musicologist or historian to maintain that in the medium/long term, copying (especially bad copying) has no future (even if it is usefull to the beginner).

Why don't we let the real jazz musicians play real jazz (but caution, there is also a strong pre-disposition to copy in that genre which makes them turn in circles), the real entertainment performers play their music with their usual and specific skills and then have the truly "classical" (academic) instrumentalists defend the traditional and new of "serious" music?

Comment of Thomas Stevens after revising and editing this article in English: "I leave you with my favorite verbatim quote from Paul Hindemith’s 1949 Norton Lectures at Harvard University": You are not permitted to sell unsanitary macaroni or mustard, but nobody objects to your undermining the public’s mental health by feeding it musical forgeries.