Category: Commentary

Wayne Peterson Photo by Jack McDonald, courtesy C. F. Peters Corp.

Winning the Pulitzer has meant nothing for the piece that won. Back when Blomstedt was at the San Francisco Symphony, David Zinman conducted it and did a beautiful job. But they never did it again and nobody else has ever played it. It’s a very difficult piece. I write chromatic music and chromatic music is not in vogue at the moment. I think that has not helped things.

The Prize has benefited me in other ways, however. You get a lot of notoriety out of it. My commissions have soared and everything I have written since that time has been published. And I am fortunate enough to have some of the best musicians in the world playing my chamber music, which has led to a CD that has just come out.

[Hear a sample of Wayne Peterson’s Pulitzer Prize winning piece in our Sonic Gallery of the Pulitzer Prize.]

Charles Wuorinen Photo by Bob Adler

It’s hard to tell what the Pulitzer meant to my career. The only direct result of receiving the prize that I’m aware of came in the form of a modest commission for a string quartet from the Fine Arts Quartet, who (I believe) had formed the habit of requesting a new work from each year’s winner. Otherwise, who can say? It’s very hard to hypothesize about what life would have been like without the Pulitzer, but as I look over the list of winners I am struck by how many of them have faded into invisibility; it’s tempting to think that the composers who have not disappeared would have stayed visible (and audible) without the prize.

Then there are those who might have received the award but didn’t. In the case of the Nobel Prize for Literature, for example, the list of authors who were passed over is stunning: Dostoevsky, Proust, Joyce…

There’s a lesson here.

[Hear a sample of Charles Wuorinen’s Pulitzer Prize winning piece in our Sonic Gallery of the Pulitzer Prize.]

Ellen Taaffe Zwilich Photo by Andrew Sacks

It’s a shame that my teacher Roger Sessions‘s work was not recognized with a Pulitzer until he was in his 80s. I was very lucky in that when I received the award I was young enough to get a good kick out of it and felt that I still had a tremendous amount of music in me. At the same time, I was also old enough to have a body of work behind me and old enough to know that things like this really do not measure your worth.

There are lots of other awards that a composer can win where your name doesn’t necessarily get in the newspaper. The fact that the whole journalism community is eagerly waiting to see who has won the various Pulitzers gives it an extra degree of interest. I believe it was a writer from the Los Angeles Times who mentioned to me that I was the first woman to win the award. At the time I won, I had no idea.

It doesn’t really do anything except open some doors. But any time people are curious about our work, that’s always a good opportunity for a composer. But you’re still faced with the same issues as every other composer. When you’re putting new notes on the page, there isn’t a lot of time to sit around resting on your laurels, whatever they might be. You’re still struggling just like everybody else.

[Hear a sample of Ellen Taaffe Zwilich’s Pulitzer Prize winning piece in our Sonic Gallery of the Pulitzer Prize.]

Hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

There’s no doubt that many distinguished composers and deserving works have received the Pulitzer Prize in Music over the past six decades. Still, reading through the list of Pulitzers, I’m struck by the rather orthodox view of American musical history it suggests.

Like most prizes, the Pulitzer is selected by a jury, not a judge. But indulging my own (undoubtedly myopic) hindsight, I’d like to offer the following list of how the awards might have been made.

Compiling this list turned out to be far more complicated than I’d imagined.

For one thing, I discovered that it’s much easier to find information about premieres and recordings of so-called Uptown music than it is to find similar information about music by Downtown composers (not to mention the rest of us Out-of-Towners). Clearly, composers with the support of academic institutions and large publishing and recording companies have had a distinct advantage in competitions such as the Pulitzer. In time, as the rest of the new music community becomes better organized and better known, this should change.

To receive the Pulitzer, a work must have received its premiere in the United States, between March 2 of the previous year and March 1 of the year of the award. But as it turns out, many important works of American music were first performed in another country.

And in many of the years, the competition was very stiff: Any of several equally-strong composers and works might just as easily appeared on my list. So this is just one of many possible alternative histories I could’ve written.

Certainly most NewMusicBox readers could produce lists of your own. And I hope you will. I offer this particular list in a spirit of constructive provocation, not so much as a critique of the Pulitzer, but to raise questions about how and why such awards are made, and what effect they may have.

Why do some composers repeatedly win prizes such as the Pulitzer, while other composers of equivalent artistic stature never do?

If some of the composers on my list had actually won the Pulitzer or other major awards, how might that recognition have influenced their artistic and professional lives? In turn, how might this have affected the course of American music in general?

If you could rewrite the history of the Pulitzer – (or the Grawenmeyer, the Guggenheim, the MacArthur, the Alpert, the Fromm, the Koussevitsky, or the Grammies, to name only several) – which composers and works would be on your list?

1943 – Carl Ruggles: Evocations
1944 – John Cage: Amores
1945 – Samuel Barber: Capricorn Concerto
1946 – Igor Stravinsky: Symphony in Three Movements
1947 – Aaron Copland: Symphony No. 3
1948 – Virgil Thomson: The Mother of Us All
1949 – Paul Bowles: Concerto for Two Pianos, Winds and Percussion
1950 – William Schuman: Violin Concerto
1951 – John Cage: String Quartet in Four Parts
1952 – Lou Harrison: Suite for Violin, Piano and Small Orchestra
1953 – Ruth Crawford Seeger: Suite for Woodwind Quintet
1954 – Elliott Carter: Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord
1955 – Harry Partch: Barstow
1956 – Alan Hovhaness: Symphony Number 2 (“Mysterious Mountain”)
1957 – Lejaren Hiller and Leonard Issacson: Illiac Suite
1958 – Harry Partch: The Bewitched
1959 – John Cage: Concert for Piano and Orchestra
1960 – Roger Sessions: Symphony Number 4
1961 – Ornette Coleman: Free Jazz
1962 – Earle Brown: Available Forms I
1963 – Charles Mingus: Epitaph
1964 – Milton Babbitt: Philomel
1965 – Terry Riley: In C
1966 – Charles Ives: Symphony No. 4
1967 – Muhal Richard Abrams: Levels and Degrees of Light
1968 – Morton Subotnick: Silver Apples of the Moon
1969 – Harry Partch: Delusion of the Fury
1970 – Alvin Lucier: I Am Sitting In A Room
1971 – George Crumb: Black Angels
1972 – Steve Reich: Drumming
1973 – Lou Harrison: La Koro Sutro
1974 – Ben Johnston: String Quartet Number 4 (“Amazing Grace”)
1975 – Philip Glass: Music in 12 Parts
1976 – Frederic Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated
1977 – Steve Reich: Music for 18 Musicians
1978 – Conlon Nancarrow: Studies for Player Piano
1979 – Lou Harrison: Threnody for Carlos Chavez
1980 – William Duckworth: The Time Curve Preludes
1981 – Robert Ashley: Perfect Lives
1982 – La Monte Young: The Well-Tuned Piano
1983 – Glenn Branca: Symphony Number 3
1984 – Morton Feldman: Three Voices for Joan LaBarbara
1985 – Stephen Scott: New Music for Bowed Piano
1986 – Morton Feldman: For Philip Guston
1987 – Janice Giteck: Om Shanti
1988 – John Adams: Nixon in China
1989 – Lois V. Vierk: Cirrus
1990 – Paul Dresher: Double Ikat
1991 – Meredith Monk: Atlas
1992 – Eve Beglarian: Machaut in the Machine Age
1993 – Michael Gordon: Yo Shakespeare
1994 – David Lang: Lying, Cheating, Stealing
1995 – Julia Wolfe: Tell Me Everything
1996 – Peter Garland: Another Sunrise
1997 – Mikel Rouse: Dennis Cleveland
1998 – Ingram Marshall: Evensongs
1999 – MaryAnn Amacher: Music for Sound-Joined Rooms
2000 – Robert Ashley: Dust

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS

In addition to awards for specific works in specific years, Lifetime Achievement awards are ocassionally given in recognition of the exceptional importance of a composer’s complete body of work.

My list of these awards would include:

Amy Beach (posthumous)
Duke Ellington
Edgar Varése
Thelonious Monk
Henry Cowell
John Coltrane
Miles Davis
Henry Brant
Cecil Taylor
Pauline Oliveros
James Tenney
Christian Wolff

Frank J. Oteri Photo by Melissa Richard

This month marks the one-year anniversary of NewMusicBox and I am thrilled to say that it has been extremely successful thus far. When we launched our first issue a year ago, we had a little bit more than 5000 user sessions to the site. Not bad for a start-up, but last month we had over 20,000, which is a 400% increase!

I don’t cite these statistics to brag about NewMusicBox, although I’m understandably very proud. Rather, I offer this information as proof that the American new music scene is vital and that people around the world are paying attention to it more and more. A glance at this month’s News, our database of concert listings, or our compendium of new CD releases only begins to give an idea about just how much is going on every day. A reason for NewMusicBox being launched by the American Music Center in the first place was that there were no nationally significant media outlets covering new American repertoire on a regular basis. We were tired of bemoaning the lack of attention in traditional media outlets such as newspapers, magazines, radio and television, and decided to use the new medium of the Internet to create something that would have been unthinkable as recently as five years ago.

To celebrate this anniversary, it seemed instructive to look at another important informational medium, radio, and see how it deals with the music of our composers. This past February, I attended the annual conference of the American Music Personnel in Public Radio (AMPPR) for my sixth consecutive year. Each year the Conference is something of a battle ground between the folks who believe in public radio as a mouthpiece for alternative intellectual enrichment (music, news, etc.) and people who believe that the only way to stay alive in today’s climate is through maximizing an audience via statistical research about what listeners want to hear at any given moment. I must admit, it frequently feels a bit like a battleground to folks who believe in the cause of contemporary American composers, and this year’s Conference in New Orleans was no exception. Several members of the Board of Directors of AMPPR were kind enough to meet with me for an informal chat about the role of radio in today’s environment. Their comments, which once again are presented in a full transcription along with some QuickTime video excerpts, will hopefully provoke some comments of your own.

Jennifer Undercofler has put together a remarkable HyperHistory exploring the tenuous relationship between radio and new American music. For the first time, the HyperHistory goes beyond an intro and one set of branches to numerous branches sprouting from each set of initial branches. So read on and discover a fascinating legacy that extends back to commercial radio’s commissions of the 1930s and looks forward to Web casting. In this month’s Hymn & Fuguing Tune, we offer comments about radio from composers Milton Babbitt and Joan Tower as well as conductor Andrew Litton and music critic Steve Metcalf. As a bonus, we also present a full transcript of Gunther Schuller’s keynote address at this year AMPPR conference, one station’s list of the 52 most important pieces of 20th century music which were broadcast one a week over the course of a year, and my own “Another Century List”, another attempt at devising a means by which radio stations can program in more new music.

Frank J. Oteri

Milton Babbitt Photo courtesy C.F. Peters Corp.

I turn on the radio every morning and every night. But more often that not, I turn it off and put on a CD because in all the many years of listening to some half-dozen public stations, I have not heard a note of the most influential music of the 20th century. Mainly what I hear are the complete works of Arnold Bax, or Delius, or Gerald Finzi. For example, I have never heard the piano concerti of Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Sessions and Carter. Instead they play Sir Hamilton Harty and Herbert Howells… and the announcers tell us how important and beautiful their music is! These announcers even suppress the names of contemporary composers when they broadcast live concerts. I have documentation of this… It’s an outrageous situation.

There was a time when WNYC had a program director named Teresa Sterne, who tried to play significant contemporary music. That didn’t last very long. The programs on public radio now are no better than those of a commercial station.

Where I live, we happen to get stations in Philadelphia, New York and a local Mercer County station…. They are the worst. The only time I ever hear something I haven’t heard before is on the university stations like WKCR at Columbia, which is the best, and WPRB in Princeton, but they spend limited hours on classical music… It pains me to think of the view of 20th century music and even 19th century music that you get on these self-righteous public stations. It makes me very angry, I confess.

Andrew Litton Photo by Steven J. Sherman, courtesy Aleba Gartner

I keep my clock radio tuned to Dallas’ classical music station, WRR-FM, the oldest radio station in Texas, and occasionally wake up to music that may trigger some programming ideas. At least, that is my excuse for delaying getting out of bed! I mean, one has to lie there listening until they back-announce the piece, right? Anthony McSpadden does a great job on the morning shift, and we at the Dallas Symphony definitely appreciate the support that our classical station gives us. Sometimes I awaken to my own voice when WRR plays one of our ads, which is extremely frightening. That does get me up and out of bed, though.

Dallas is one of those American cities where one needs a car for almost everything. Since I have a CD changer in my car, I do a lot of recreational CD listening instead of turning on the radio. I’m a fanatical record collector and am unable to leave a Tower or Borders without buying a fist full of CD’s, so driving is an ideal way to take all this music in.

In the car and at dinnertime with my family, we most often listen to jazz. At home, we either choose DSS digital satellite music or put on one of the 1000 or so jazz CDs we own. Jazz is one of my great loves and inspirations. The sense of natural breathing and phrasing you hear on Ella Fitzgerald‘s “Songbook” recordings is something I try to put into my music-making. The sense of impeccable ensemble on a Boss Brass album is inspiring and I revel in Oscar Peterson‘s unsurpassed technique, musicality and sense of time.

Steve Metcalf Photo by Paul Cryan

As a child of the ’50s, I have a romantic attachment to radio, or at least the idea of radio. I even built a little crystal radio set from a kit, an achievement I recall to this day because it was the one and only time I have ever had a soldering gun in my hand. I love hearing something new and exciting come over the airwaves and then racing over to the record store to buy it.

All of which is why I am depressed by what radio has become, at least in my part of the world. Our local public radio station plays Quantz trio sonatas and concertos for multiple flutes by Baroque composers I’ve never heard of. Our rock stations are hosted by people who make Howard Stern sound like Frank Kermode. Our mainstream oldies station, which should provide comfort and diversion in the car, has a playlist that seems to have topped off at approximately 36 titles. I don’t need to hear “Time Won’t Let Me” by The Outsiders for the next two decades, minimum.

I am disgusted with “formats,” particularly since they all seem to have been dreamed up by 26-year-olds from California. I find myself wondering why I can’t hear the following things on my radio dial: Audra McDonald, choral music, show tunes, Jackie Wilson other than “Lonely Teardrops,” early Mel Torme, Schoenberg‘s Gurrelieder…

I dream about having my own show, a show that would defy category, and that would defy all the marketing rules, and that would draw untold numbers of rapt listeners with attractive demographics. I await a call from some station owner with vision and deep pockets.

[Ed. Note: Steve Metcalf, classical music critic for the Hartford Courant (CT), also regularly contributes comments about music to NPR‘s Performance Today.]

Joan Tower Photo by Steven J. Sherman, courtesy G. Schirmer, Inc.

Frankly, I only listen to the radio in the car and then I’m listening primarily to the local NPR stations. On long rides, I love to listen to Car Talk, which is entertaining and funny, or the News Forum from the Washington Press Club, which often features some very interesting speakers on topics that are discussed in some depth. And sometimes, coming home at night from a party, I like listening to old-style jazz, especially the big bands.

[Ed. Note: On May 7, 2000, the Syracuse Youth Orchestra performs Joan Tower’s Tambor. As composer-in-residence with the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Ms. Tower hosts their “Second Helpings” Series concert at the Dia Center for the Arts in NYC (548 West 22nd St.) on June 7, 2000. This summer, Ms. Tower is also composer-in-residence with the Yale/Norfolk Chamber Music Festival and Summerfest in La Jolla CA.]