Category: Commentary

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.

Frank J. Oteri Photo by Melissa Richard

Like many other composers throughout our history, I have been a composer for most of my life but have always had other occupations as sources of income. Yet, when people ask me what I do, I always say that I am a composer first. The “composer first” response is true for every other composer I know who maintains multiple career identities. Why is that?

Today we honor Charles Ives as the first great 20th century American composer. We all know that he earned his living as an insurance salesman, and was in fact a pioneer in the insurance industry, yet somehow that part of his life is less important to us. Perhaps there is a greater connection between the two parts of his life than we realize. Long before Ives, America has had a tradition of the multi-tasking composer. One of our earliest composers, Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791), also worked as a lawyer and a judge, finding time in between to write poetry, invent a shaded candlestick, and sign the Declaration of Independence! William Billings (1746-1800), the earliest American composer whose works turn up with some regularity, earned his living as a tanner. Perhaps pursuing several careers can allow composers to have a greater contact with the rest of society and can inspire the creation of music which has an ever greater sense of connection to the lives of others.

Although Meredith Monk considers herself a composer first, the success of her unique compositional approach is at least partially attributable to the fact that she is also a dancer, a choreographer, a filmmaker, a dramaturge, and, most importantly, a singer. We asked her to talk about the multiple identities of her creative path. Kenneth Goldsmith, who himself wears many hats, has offered portraits of a group of contemporary American composers whose other jobs range from performing and recording other people’s music to conducting in-depth research in neurobiology. To have some fun, we’ve asked Michael Daugherty, Daron Hagen, Jeffrey Mumford, Melinda Wagner and Stewart Wallace, each of whom are known exclusively as composers, what other jobs they would pursue given the opportunity. We ask you to ponder what the salary of a composer in today’s society should be, just to get a sense of the economic importance of maintaining a day job!

In our News section, we pay tribute to the late William Colvig and Vivian Fine. Their contributions to American musical life will be sorely missed. We also pay tribute to Joseph Ridings Dalton, who is still very much alive but is stepping down as the Director of CRI. His energy and enthusiasm have helped to make CRI one of the most important record labels in the business. Our Hear&Now Database features a plethora of concerts featuring music by Americans around the world. This month’s edition of SoundTracks includes 33 CDs spanning American music of four centuries with a range of living composers in their 20s to their 90s, each with a RealAudio sample.

So despite all the jobs so many of us are juggling, there is a ton of musical activity going on all across the country. We can only hope to inspire a continuation of this discovery.

Michael Daugherty Photo courtesy 21st Century Music Management

If I was not a composer I would either run a used book store or be a lounge cocktail pianist. I have always loved the smell of old books and enjoyed rummaging through the stacks never knowing what I might come across.

For years I was a lounge pianist and enjoyed playing all over the globe during my student years. One meets many interesting and strange people at the gigs. My most unmemorable lounge gig: Ramada Inn, New Jersey Turnpike, Exit One.

Daron Hagen Photo courtesy Carl Fischer Inc.

If I could spend one hundred percent of my time composing I would. Now in my twenty-third year of thinking of myself as a composer, I have worked up to being able to spend eighty percent of my time pushing notes around. I’m proud of that.

While I was in conservatory I worked as a music copyist. (Interesting fact: Now that Finale, Score, and Sibelius rule the day, I am a member of the last generation of concert music composers who shall have moonlighted as professional hand music copyists –quill on vellum!– for their mentors and colleagues. Question: how long will the elite Broadway hand copyists be able to hold out?) I still treasure my Local 802 card: hand copying is a deeply honorable profession now gone.

Then, for ten years, the other twenty percent was filled first with a faculty position at Bard, then occasional stints filling in for David Del Tredici at CCNY, then a brief spell on the faculties of the Curtis Institute of Music and Princeton University.

Finally, about three years ago, I took the plunge and quit teaching entirely. That was a scary step. The dreaded other twenty percent is now spent (in descending order): giving composition master classes, pre-concert talks, doing website design (writing HTML), and (when things get really bad, which they do) music proofreading for a cherished ex-student’s Broadway copying house. Three years ago, I worked for two weeks as a Coffee Comrade at Starbucks. Last week, I also painted a colleague’s office! I do not feel entitled to a career composing music, but I will continue to work at it with all my heart.

What other jobs might I be interested in if I weren’t writing music? My second great love is to conduct my own theater music. I have begun stretching my wings in that direction – have just conducted the full-recording of my opera “Bandanna” in Nevada for ARSIS Audio, will conduct Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte for Ohio Opera Theatre in November and the full-recording of my opera Shining Brow next year. Every time I conduct my own music I learn dozens of incredibly important new things that I write down and bring to the next compositional assignment. I have since high school been extremely comfortable in the pit, both as a conductor and pianist. I adore the theater’s ennobling tradition of Communion and delight in the responsibility that a theater conductor has to not just control the flow of the entire production but also to protect and uplift the singers while helping his orchestra to shine. I am thirty-eight years old. By the age of forty-five, I would like to be spending sixty percent of my time composing and forty percent conducting revivals and premieres of my own operas. I can think of no greater honor than to spend the balance of my days balancing these two activities.

If fate tears me away from my first and second loves, I would try to write prose. As a passionate lover of the written word, I have the amateur’s enthusiasm for writing fiction. I’d like to think that I would be pretty good at it – certainly, I would enjoy myself for a while. But, as a career? No. Words are in a way too specific; I would always crave music’s ability to discuss the all-too-personal in an abstract and curiously universal fashion.

Jeffrey Mumford Photo courtesy Theodore Presser Company

1. I would love to run a radio station that plays REAL music, that does not compromise (whatever style, just intensely good and focused). It would have a live format incorporated wherein there would be performances and interviews. There would also be live panel discussions on matters of musical aesthetics (I can dream!). One of my dreams is to convene a huge stylistically diverse panel (from Charles Wuorinen, Milton Babbitt, Elliott Carter, Donald Martino through La Monte Young, Philip Glass, “Blue Gene” Tyranny, George Lewis and all in between) to have a no holds barred aesthetic free for all! Also regular calendar updates, Concert links from other countries. An IRCAM show etc. A course/show on orchestration taught and moderated by Bernard Rands AND John Adams. Shows on Black composers (in its HUGE variety from Olly Wilson to William Banfield to Tania León); on women (from Augusta Read Thomas to Ellen Zwilich to Jennifer Higdon to Pauline Oliveros) the world is wide open. Just one man’s dream.
2. Another would be to be a tennis correspondent with assignments all over the world. To be able to cover Wimbledon, the Australian Open and the French Open IN PERSON would be a real kick. Plus getting to hit with and get free lessons from anyone I want from the tour.
3. Run a coffee house/art gallery with my wife (who is a painter) and get the best art and music exhibited and played continuously.
4. Paris bureau chief for almost anything!

Melinda Wagner Photo courtesy Theodore Presser Company

In the field of music, if I weren’t so busy, I would return to teaching. I’d also really like to coach chamber music or conduct.

Outside of music, I’d really enjoy working in a library, however one that is pre-computer! I love to work with file cards. I would also enjoy making furniture. Of course, I don’t know how; but I’d love to learn.

If I had even more time, I’d be an athlete. I used to run long distance but then family and professional obligations just took over. I would run marathons. Of course, I’m running one now, aren’t we all!

Stewart Wallace Photo by Steve Sherman

I’d make things with my hands like a sculptor or a painter. Things that I could touch. Things that would be done when I was done. Where the thing was the thing itself – not a roadmap to be interpreted, not dependent on the skills of the interpreter. Or maybe I’d be an architect. With building codes and zoning laws and construction workers and corporate patrons, this seems to me even more of a headache than being a composer writing an opera.