Category: Commentary

Frank J. Oteri Photo by Melissa Richard

Throughout last year, across the street from Macy’s in New York City, a “Millennium Clock” counted down the seconds until January 1, 2000. Throughout January it stayed at 0, but at some point during this month it started up again counting down the seconds until January 1, 2001. I guess you can have it both ways?

But whether or not we’re in the last year of the 20th century or the first year of the 21st, one thing is clear – “20th century music” and “new music” are no longer synonymous terms. Is there another term than can embrace all this music? Are there qualities that all this music shares? We asked Matthew Tierney to provide us with a hyperhistory of various 20th century American approaches to rhythm, in an attempt to find some common ground. Each section is crammed with RealAudio music samples of a wide variety of repertoire.

When pondering rhythm in contemporary American music, a composer who immediately springs to mind is Elliott Carter, who has made such an important contribution to the exploration of temporal structure. A few weeks ago, I visited Mr. Carter, who at the age of 91 is in a unique vantage point for talking about the 20th century since he lived through most of it. What perhaps is more amazing than that, though, is that he is now more prolific than ever, creating music for the 21st century! (In order to further share this remarkable conversation with visitors to NewMusicBox, we’ve added RealAudio samples of some of Mr. Carter’s comments to each of the pages of the interview in addition to 21 RealAudio samples of his music.)

We also got reactions about what music in the future could or should be from several other important elder statespeople of American music: Henry Brant, George Perle, George Rochberg, and Marian McPartland. We ask you to also try to answer an impossible question: Who is the most important American composer of the 20th century?

While we take this time out to reflect on the 20th century, the clock keeps ticking, of course. In our news section, announcements of important new residencies, commissions and awards continue to sow the seeds of music for the future.

Henry Brant Photo by Kathy Wilkowski, courtesy of Henry Brant

What is happening in music may be compared to the current degradation of the natural world environment. Most music today emerges from loudspeakers, rather than from acoustically natural sources. In the United States, public interest is largely confined to commercial popular music. Genuine indigenous music worldwide is disappearing, especially through admixture with the clichés of Western music. It appears probable that all these trends will continue in the foreseeable future.

George Perle Photo by Johanna I. Sturm. Courtesy of George Perle

I have been offered 100 words to reply to the question, “What is the future of music?” but I need only three: “I don’t know.” I can, however, answer another, related question: “What sort of future would you like for music?” Every new piece I write attempts to answer this question. My starting point is the revolutionary challenge to traditional tonality inherent in emblematic works composed at the beginning (1908-13) of the last century by Skryabin, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Stravinsky, and Bartók. In spite of the disparity in their idioms and compositional methods, what unites these composers is more important than what separates them, and looks forward toward an authentic contemporary tonal language as the vehicle of contemporary musical expression.

George Rochberg Photo courtesy Theodore Presser Company

“Res Severa Verum Gaudium.” (“Serious things [bring] true joy.”)

The past is in every present, hence in every future.

“Eternity is in love with the products of Time.” (Blake)

Surfaces keep changing, never substrata. The 18th/19th centuries’ in-gatherers all loved Res Severa. Their reward, Verum Gaudium, The Beautiful. Surfaces keep changing, not substrata. The 20th century Hell branded Mahler, Bartok, Stravinsky, Schoenberg. Yet they laid claim to Verum Gaudium because they loved Res Severa. Surface changed radically, not substrata. The future of music? Who can predict its sounds, its surfaces? The substrata will remain. Their RSVG rules because it is one of Eternity’s unchanging faces.

Jennifer Higdon photo by Patented Photos

I basically do everything that an established publishing house does: I take orders from customers, print scores and parts, do the binding, mail the music, do the billing, report performances to ASCAP, and negotiate contracts for commissions.

The duplication of music is not that difficult – any copy place can aid in this endeavor. I do my own binding; I bought a $100 binder, which is easy to obtain, from an office supply store. The mailing process is straightforward, as long as you make sure that the music won’t be damaged in shipment (padded envelopes are great for this). When I first started, I created a standard bill on the computer which I still use today. And I’m able to fill requests for program notes, bio information, or a photo much faster than a big publishing house (this has been a consistent experience – substantial delays from the publishing houses!). I find that sometimes people need things FAST…I’m able to turn it around within a couple of hours, which is important. This way, I can make sure the order is correct and meets my customers’ requests.

The one thing that I don’t do, is advertise. I don’t have an advertising pamphlet to distribute, but then I’ve found people don’t perform music based on a piece of paper with a bunch of facts on it. They either have to know your name, have heard your music, or have been recommended by someone that they trust – no pamphlet will convince people to program your music without them having heard from a known source that your music makes an impact. I realize this may sound strange, but I depend on word-of-mouth advertising for my music to get to the public. Musicians are the best advertisement in the world. If they like a piece, they will approach you for more. If they hear a piece that excites them, they will tell others about it. I’ve been fortunate in that this method has worked successfully for me both in getting subsequent performances and in getting commissions.

In the various stages of my career, I have considered going with a publisher, but the more I thought about it, it seemed absurd to me to have to give up the copyright to my own creative work. Something about this idea has always bothered me. I understand the need for a large publisher to cover expenses (they are large, they have a lot more expenses), and sometimes they feel that in order to cover their costs they want to own the copyright. I, however, do not like the idea of giving up ownership of my work and I don’t want to have to buy copies of my own works.

I’ve also found that, as a performer and a conductor, I’ve had way too many experiences of having to wait too long to get music from the established houses. I don’t want my music to be so inaccessible. I don’t want my orchestra pieces to be too expensive for orchestras with small budgets (I ran across this a lot when I had a regular conducting gig)…the music should be affordable to anyone, from the poorest student to the small university chamber orchestra to the biggest budget groups around. This is not to say that I sell myself short by charging little or no money – a composer should be fairly compensated always. But I do make considerably more than I would if I were receiving a small percentage of the cover price or rental fees that are the standard of established publishing houses. I believe that composers should be paid, and I believe they should be paid fairly: 10-20 cents on the dollar is not my idea of fair compensation.

Finally, no one is going to represent me better than me. No one is going to be able to stay on top of things that need to get done better than me. I don’t want to have to check on others to see if they’ve mailed an order or filled a request; having to check can often take as much time as doing it myself.

Self-publishing aids me in being able to make a living as a working composer. This occurs because I collect my own publisher royalties and I have the revenue from music sales. Philip Glass once told me that if I want to make my living as a composer, I should keep the rights to my own music; I think that may have been some of the most valuable advice that I’ve ever received. That extra income definitely makes it possible to set my own hours and have more time and energy to write more music. With the incredible technologies available today, it is quite feasible to be your own publisher and artistic representative.

Donald Martino photo by Lourdes Awad, courtesy of Dantalian, Inc.

If not the first, I am certainly very nearly the first composer to establish by himself, for himself, and without banding together with other composers, a fully commercial publishing house which produces engraved or autographed editions in quantity by offset printing. It was the emerging tendency for the large commercial houses, out of financial necessity, to abandon engraved offset prints in quantity of new music in favor of print-on-demand “editions” (often nothing but unedited copies of the composer’s manuscript) implemented by the grossly inferior back room copy machine and then bound even less professionally with spiral bindings that, among many other things convinced me that I should strike out on my own. That “tendency to print on demand” has now become the norm for most composers and I am very glad that I got out when I did.

My company DANTALIAN, INC. was founded in 1978 out of a, by then, overwhelming frustration with my commercial publishers in virtually every domain of what I had come to expect (hadn’t we all) to be their historical responsibility. I am not going to plead the case for self-publishing by providing you with a titillating litany of complaints about a bad, perhaps in my case an unusually bad, relationship with the establishment which has long since been corrected by the action I took back in 1978 and by which I joined them. (And I will readily admit that it is very easy to criticize them until one is faced with the problems they face. Of course one has to be “the little engine that could.”) But I will say that when I founded the company, its in-house motto was ” there is no way we can do worse than they do.” We have done it much better. Our catalogue boasts over seventy items of which all except rental items are offset printed in quantity from autographed or engraved masters. Print delays do not exist. We are speedy in our response to all requests for music no matter how small the order. We advertise, promote, are liberal with complementary copies, and are very much in the black. Some of this is because we do not operate with the same constraints that impede the commercial houses nor do we have expenses of overhead and a large staff. Our mission after all is to promote the composer first, make a profit second.

Self-publishing is a huge undertaking — a full time job if one wishes to do it in a highly professional manner. To obsessive types like myself it brings enormous satisfaction in that I have complete control over every aspect of my work product. But one has to be willing to be president, manager, treasurer, editor, autographer, graphic artist, book designer, proofreader, publicity director, packer, shipper, gopher, and when all is done sweep the floors. When, you ask, do I find time to compose? Luckily I require very little sleep. And I have always found that the more excited I got about a project — composing, publishing, woodworking, playing tennis, practicing my clarinet…, the less time is needed for sleeping.

I would not recommend self-publishing to anyone who has not already achieved a certain degree of recognition. The chances are that no one will buy! Of course the problem with being an uncelebrated composer in a large commercial catalogue is that one is overshadowed by the big shots (such as they are in our art). The advantage to self-publishing is that when the potential buyer receives your catalogue, and when he tosses it in the waste basket along with all the other unsolicited mail (he may do this with the commercial catalogue, too) he remembers your name, not the publisher’s. This may seem like negative advertising; it is. But the next time you send out your catalogue this potential buyer may just take a look at it, the next time you may have a buyer, even a performer, ideally a convert, a crusader for your music.

It also takes a few items that sell and keep selling! You need a self-made subsidy — or a patron. One commercial publisher told me that there were just thirteen issues in his vast catalogue that paid the bills; all else he claimed was window dressing. DANTALIAN, INC. has its unique chorale edition for study, the 178 CHORALE HARMONIZATIONS OF J. S. BACH, which are used in hundreds of college theory classes each year, STRINGOGRAPH, used by composers and arrangers to calculate string passages, and believe it or not, a few Martino compositions that pay the bills.

Finally, there is no praise high enough for Lora Harvey Martino, DANTALIAN’S treasurer, tax accountant, investment officer, and chief financial wizard.

Terry Riley photo courtesy New Albion Records

For many years my written music was being handled for me by a publisher which was somewhat unfamiliar with what is needed to send out scores and parts to orchestras and other chamber groups. I supplied them with masters that were for the most part printed out from my computer notation program (Emagic’s Logic) Although this company has administered my publishing successfully in the sense of collecting publishing moneys owed to me, many mistakes were made, the most humorous being on one occasion sending out the parts to an Orchestra all bound together like a score. I decided to try working with some of the well known Publishers but after some futile discussions with both G. Schirmer and Boosey and Hawkes I decided to get up a Web page and offer my scores directly to the public.

At the moment there is also a page for CD’s with some Real Audio samples of the music, although very few of the scores are represented by audio samples. It is all being operated now by my immediate family and a student. We have to run to the copy shop to get things photocopied as we run out and it is starting to require quite a bit of space as we try to accomodate more inventory. People use the order form printed on the Web page and prepay with checks. I must say although it is a lot of work, I am enjoying the direct contact I get with people ordering my music direct and it satisfies an old desire to have a little “mom and pop shop.”

Amy Rubin photo courtesy of Musicians Accord

Self-publishing has permitted me to circulate my music to a wide variety of performers throughout the United States and Europe. I send perusal scores as quickly as possible to ensembles and soloists who express general interest in my work, and in addition I answer “calls for scores” listed in professional journals. Now that my CD Hallelujah Games has been released on Mode Recordings, more people are hearing specific pieces of mine such as “Hallelujah Games” and are programming them.

The performance history of my piece “Hallelujah Games” is a good example of what I’ve been able to do as a self-published composer. “Hallelujah Games,” which was commissioned by Musicians Accord in 1995 and is a direct outgrowth of my study of West African drumming with Dr. William Anku in Ghana, is a game of improvisational choices and rhythmic challenges transformed from the culture of West African drumming to the culture of Western music chamber music ensemble playing. It has been performed throughout the United States and Eastern Europe by such diverse groups as Musicians Accord, New Ear!, Synchronicity, and has been workshopped by the Colorado String Quartet and percussionists from the New World Symphony, in arrangements for two pianos, piano and marimba, marimba quartet, and piano and guitar.

“Hallelujah Games” has no formal score, but exists as a collection of “cells” ranging in length from one to twelve measures long. Each player constructs his or her own part by selecting from about 25 cell choices which can either be played canonically, or simultaneously. Each player chooses which patterns to play, which to omit, how many times to repeat patterns, register, dynamics, articulation and where to join with or counter the other player. Thus, given all the choicemaking, every performance of the piece, by each ensemble configuration necessitates a different score created by the players at hand. I have found it useful to include suggested versions of the piece’s realization in score and recorded format when sending the score out to prospective performers. The concept of the piece requires that no definitive realization exists, meaning, also, that there is no score. Instead, as a composer, I present performers with some specific potentials of combining materials together as well as the infinity of possible choices that may come about with each ensemble’s own realization.

The issue, therefore, is what constitutes a score? As each performance is created as a result of the specific performers’ musical aesthetic, formal sense, pacing and instrumentation, the score is different for each ensemble and for each performance of the work, and ultimately becomes a concrete way to allow players the opportunity to achieve spontaneity and freedom while “owning” the material in their own way. The problem this poses is what do I, as the composer, make available to interested performers, given that no definitive score exists? I have provided players with versions created by other musicians who have performed the work, recordings of these performances, and alternative choices for realization. Should I send out a “score” which consists of individual cells, each on a separate sheet, which the players then can decide to use or not, as they create their own version of the piece? Or, should I send out versions realized by other performers to guide the new performers? Should I provide sequenced versions in audio formats for performers to sample? Do I create my own definitive version of the piece and then urge new performers to take it apart and create their own? Would a score consisting of a random collection of cells, in the manner of playing cards, work, so that each ensemble could arrange the cards in its own unique way?

Self-publishing, thus far, has allowed me to make all the above possible, but it does not provide a definitive set of materials to create the definitive version of the piece.

Andrew Rudin photo courtesy of Skåne Hill Music

Somewhere in a warehouse in the Midwest, hundreds of copies of a work I wrote for flute & piano lie sequestered by a major American music publisher. After contracting to publish the work, three years elapsed before engraving was accomplished and 1st proofs offered. Another year and a half passed as I attempted in 2nd & 3rd proofs to correct errors. Finally after another six months the work was released for sale, complete with errors, some thrice corrected. Beyond announcing the work in its newsletter the publisher made no attempt to connect the work to potential buyers or performers, or in fact to distribute it to the inventories of even the most well-known music sellers. The fee paid to me upon contract was in the low hundreds, my royalties beginning only if the work went into a second printing. I received six “free” copies as a courtesy. Convincing interested performers, libraries, etc. that the work existed at all required that I be able to tell them the exact publication number of the item. Rather than being made “public” I feel rather as if the work is being held hostage.

Why should I not then find a way to make available my own compositions? And so I established Skåne Hill Music. Today, armed with good music notation software, quality paper, a xerox machine capable of 8-1/2 X 11 double-sided printing (or off-set lithography), and Internet access, any composer can surmount the pitfalls of commercial publishers. All that is missing is the alleged prestige of being represented (if that is the word) by a well-known name in the industry. And, if mistakes occur, they are your mistakes, correctible at the next printing.

Theodore Wiprud photo courtesy of Allemar Music

Self-publishing used to be a default position for me: no corporate publisher had brought out my music so I was the one copying scores and parts. Later I made a conscious decision to take my career into my own hands, to claim full responsibility for finding performers and an audience. That’s when I really became a self-publishing composer. Publishing isn’t photocopying and mailing; it’s marketing and promotion and a strategy for building a business and a livelihood. In the short term it’s putting together projects and opportunities and income; in the long term it’s an investment in the value of my copyrights.