Holiday concerts in tune with striking right chord

Welcome to the season when public school music teachers can never win.

As they choose music for concerts by student choruses, bands, and orchestras at this time of year, the teachers must deal with the perennial debate over how much Christmas is acceptable in public school where not everyone celebrates the holiday.

Traditionally, schools have had to be sensitive to Jewish students, but in recent years the issue has become more complex with the influx of Muslim and Hindu students from India, China, and other countries.

Now some schools call the December performance a holiday concert; others, a winter celebration. And some schools have moved December concerts to January to avoid the holiday dilemma.

Local music teachers are criticized for including too much religion in their concerts or too little holiday cheer, or for excluding certain cultures entirely.

Nationwide, 35 percent of teachers in an online survey conducted recently by the National Association for Music Education reported conflicts with parents on this issue, 25 percent with students, and 19 percent with school administrators.

This year, teachers in Burlington, Medford, and Belmont took different approaches to selecting music for their December concerts, getting by with just a handful of complaints from parents and students.

At Burlington High School, John Middleton-Cox, district music coordinator and choral director, said he chooses a balance of Christmas and Hanukkah music. Several of the pieces include the words ''Jesus" and ''Lord."

Middleton-Cox received his first complaint against his music selection this year from the mother of a Jewish student. According to Middleton-Cox, she told him she would prefer music that is not holiday or religious based, since there is plenty of secular music available.

Middleton-Cox said the holiday concert is an opportunity to share the cultures of the students and help promote tolerance and diversity, recent school themes.

''I think it boils down to, are we looking for the melting pot or the salad bowl," he said. ''In the melting pot, cultures get blended into one, and the salad bowl celebrates those differences. Here we want to reflect the cultures and diversity of the town of Burlington."

One problem with this approach is students who celebrate neither Christmas nor Hanukkah are not represented in the concert. For example, over the past decade the number of immigrants from India and other Southeast Asian countries in Burlington has grown to nearly 10 percent. However, Indian music is often not notated and uses a different scale than western music, making it difficult to include.

Middleton-Cox brought in experts and held a workshop for teachers on Indian music last year, but at least for this year's concert, the culture of those students is still excluded.

At Medford's Andrews Middle School, choral director Sarah Grant said song selection should not only be representative of the population at the school, but of the world. She teaches her students to sing in many languages and is including ''Feliz Navidad" and a Hawaiian Christmas song in this year's concert.

Grant, however, stays away from religious music, instead choosing lighter secular songs.

''I would do the same thing anywhere I was teaching," Grant said. ''Hopefully I'll have this job for a long time and in the span of my career I'll pick songs -- maybe a little more obscure that aren't usually celebrated -- and I'll teach as many cultures as possible."

At Belmont High School, the Fine and Performing Arts Department developed a policy based on national, state, and local arts standards on how to choose classroom materials that ''represent the most significant artistic contributions of men and women to civilizations."

While many of the selections in this year's music concert have religious content, the songs are not popular religious standards -- such as ''Silent Night" -- but classical works from Franz Joseph Haydn's ''The Creation" and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's ''Magnificat."

Cassandra Morgan, choral director, said she has had some complaints over her musical selection, and recently allowed one student, an atheist, to leave class early and leave the stage during a concert to avoid a song that included the concept of God.

The districtwide policy, endorsed by the School Committee, encourages sensitivity, but emphasizes the value of historic works.

''They may include selections of religious works of art that provide historically and culturally significant examples of the diverse and powerful ways in which humanity has transformed, reconciled, and recorded its existence," the policy reads. ''Classroom discussions about values and beliefs within the cultural context of a work of art may frequently occur, and will clearly emphasize its artistic content, intent and academic value. No work of art will be selected or taught for devotional purposes."

The National Association of Music Education, which guides and collects information on this controversial topic from its thousands of members, has a policy similar to Belmont's.

Michael Blakeslee, deputy executive director of the national association, said his organization supports the use of religious music in public schools, as long as the purpose of the selection is not to proselytize or preach.

''Our position is excluding that kind of music would be excluding a huge amount of music available for kids to study, sing, and take part in," Blakeslee said. ''Especially when dealing with choral music, so much of it historically has come out of a religious concept."

Students rehearsing at Belmont High this week agreed in the value of religious music in their education.

''To have all different types of religion is fine, but to have one is uncomfortable," said Abby Smith, a freshman who previously attended Catholic school. ''I personally enjoy learning about different holidays."

Morgan said she is in the business of teaching music, not religious values.

''We please them all," she said. ''If they don't want to sing, we don't force it."