Search Results for:

What do you expect to hear when someone says “American music?” Chen Yi, Composer

Posted on August 1, 1999 by NewMusicBox Staff - Articles, Commentary

Chen Yi
Photo by Jim Hair

Since music is a universal language, music composition reflects the precipitation of a composer’s cultural and psychological construct, I think that all musical works composed in the States AND influenced by American culture are considered American music. The modern society, especially the American society, is like a great network of complex latitudes and attitudes, everything exists in equal rights under different cultures (both historical and contemporary), environments and conditions. They keep changing at every moment and interact with the others, so that each experience that we composers come across can become the source and exciting medium of our creation. That’s why I don’t have a fixed scope, a frame of styles to expect to hear when someone says “American music”. I am very open to it. I always have to do some study on the music itself, and some research on the creative background(s) of the composition before I label it.

What do you expect to hear when someone says “American music?” Judith Lang Zaimont, Composer

Posted on August 1, 1999 by NewMusicBox Staff - Articles, Commentary

Judith Lang Zaimont
Photo courtesy Judith Lang Zaimont

What is ‘American music’?

It reflects the vital, energized, young and action-oriented nation we are.
In general it’s color-sensitive, edgy and, more often than not, pulsed — wickedly pulsed. It likes to take chances, and, as befits our polyglot national character, sometimes incorporates a staggering variety of modes of expression.
In a very real sense, it is the lifeblood of our country expressed in sound.
Any/all music written or improvised by Americans.

What do you expect to hear when someone says “American music?” Howard Mandel, President of the Jazz Journalists Association

Posted on August 1, 1999 by NewMusicBox Staff - Articles, Commentary

Howard Mandel
Photo courtesy Howard Mandel

America’s music is wide and wild, fed by hundreds of old and new musical strains. It starts with Native American chants, flutes, rhythms, North American colonies of the Spanish and French and Germans as well as the Pilgrims, in the community functions, dilletante artistry and diverse forms of entertainment, becomes a free-flowing “folk” music and simultaneously a “commercial” music around the Civil War — when black and white gospel, blues, ballad and later instrumental (“jazz”) impulses mix with immigrant Hispanic, Irish, Jewish, Asian and European traditional and art musics in the city and marketplace. Dissemination of American music through American technology has led to the powerful, polyglot pop and art musics America exports today. American music celebrates the individual — the composer, the visionary, the improvising artist, the “star”: so American music sounds like a multitude.

What do you expect to hear when someone says “American music?” David Nicholls, Professor of Music and Research Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Keele University, Staffordshire U.K.

Posted on August 1, 1999 by NewMusicBox Staff - Articles, Commentary

David Nicholls
Photo courtesy David Nicholls

“Defining American Music”

What do we mean by “American music?” From a millennial perspective, the answer is apparently simple: as America’s Music, the Cambridge History of American Music, and The New Grove Dictionary of American Music make manifestly clear, it is synonymous with inclusivity. From Barber to barbershop, Cage to Cajun, and Ruggles to ragtime, it’s all there, reinforcing the contemporary view of American culture as pluralistic and multifaceted. Implicit in this definition, though, is the acknowledgment that “American music” cannot be quantified either stylistically or otherwise; rather than defining some aurally-perceivable nationalistic trait, the term actually identifies “music created by Americans, usually in America.” A century ago, the situation was rather different: there was no clear idea of what “American music” could or should be, let alone what it supposedly was. Indeed, it was only really during the 1930s that this identity crisis began to resolve itself, paradoxically at a time when stereotypical images of “American music” were at their most potent, both in America and elsewhere.

As is well-known, in 1893 Antonín Dvorák opined in the New York Herald that “the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the Negro melodies . . . These are the folk songs of America, and your composers must turn to them …” i Dvorák subsequently modified his view, suggesting that Native American melodies were also worthy of consideration; and in 1895, in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, he finally conceded that “the germs for the best in music lie hidden among all the races that are commingled in this great country.” In retrospect, Dvorák’s remarks are noteworthy on three counts: for their ignorance of both earlier and contemporaneous attempts at creating an “American music”; for their failure to understand the profound demographic and socio-cultural differences which existed between America and Europe; and for the fact that they were taken so seriously by so many people. ii

At the end of the nineteenth century, it was perfectly possible for European composers like Dvorák, Grieg, or Tchaikovsky to write genuinely nationalistic music, by integrating into the existing European musical lingua franca the folk music of their compatriots: they spoke a common musical tongue, but with characteristic and identifiable ethnic or regional accents. But in polyglot America no such musico-linguistic purity was possible, except in the most particular circumstances, such as the African American-derived pieces of William Grant Still, or the regionally based compositions of Charles Ives. Any other use of “folk songs” strikes me as disingenuous and appropriative — and I include here not just the obvious Aunt Sallys, such as MacDowell’s Indian Suite or the Alaskan Inuit melodies of Beach’s late String Quartet, but also Still’s Danzas de Panama and Ives’s setting of the spiritual “In the Mornin’.”

Somewhat ironically, just when Dvorák was encouraging American art music composers to borrow freely from African American sources, several interrelated popular music genres (all of which were to some extent intrinsically linked with African American culture) were about to enter the mainstream of American — and subsequently Western — cultural life. The meteoric rise between 1895 and 1925 of ragtime and blues (with their love-child jazz), together with musical theatre and Tin Pan Alley songs, could not have been predicted by Dvorák or anyone else; nor could the extent to which they would be perceived in the public imagination as the only authentic examples of American culture. The degree of their ubiquity by the mid-1920s is easily demonstrated: think of the “Golliwog’s Cake-walk,” La Création du Monde, L’Enfant et les sortilèges, Die Dreigroschenoper or Shostakovich’s “Taiti Trot,” an arrangement of “Tea for Two.” (Incidentally, anyone doubting the threat that ragtime and jazz apparently posed to the European cultural establishment at this time is directed to the outrageously racist remarks contained in part three of Constant Lambert’s Music Ho!. iii)

By the 1930s, a veritable smorgasbord of apparently incompatible musics sought approbation as the authentic voice of America. Apart from the popular music genres mentioned above, there was an assortment of art music contenders. The Second New England School and its descendants had created a substantial body of Eurocentric but often appealing music. Farwell and the other Indianists had taken Dvorák at his word in exploring the rich traditions of Native American music; a smaller number of composers had similarly approached the African American heritage. Copland, like Gershwin, had initially been drawn to a synthesis of jazz and art music, but by 1930 he had moved toward a hard-edged version of the neoclassical internationalism also espoused by a legion of Nadia Boulanger’s other American students. And then there were the self-styled ultra-modernists, with Henry Cowell as high priest, Varèse, Ruggles and Crawford among the communicants, and Ives as recalcitrant patron saint.

Perhaps the greatest myth of American music is the idea that a particular musical sound can somehow encapsulate the aspirations and fundamental character of the nation. Given the bewildering profusion of possibilities, the reality is rather of the pointlessness of attempting to justify a preeminent position for any single composer or genre. Yet for two authors writing in the early 1930s, it was this very multiplicity which was the key issue. Unlike Dvorák and his countless successors, who — in attempting to define American music — sought to privilege one genre, approach, or ethnic music above the others, John Tasker Howard and Henry Cowell adopted the all-embracing, anti-canonical, egalitarian approach customary today. As Cowell noted in the introduction to his 1933 American Composers on American Music, the bibliography of American music was, at the time, scant. Thus both his volume, and Howard’s 1931 Our American Music (which Cowell praised) set an important precedent. iv From them, one can trace a direct line of descent through Gilbert Chase’s 1955 America’s Music, to the more recent histories by Wilfrid Mellers, H. Wiley Hitchcock, Daniel Kingman, Charles Hamm and others.

Our American Music has been criticized for being “too genteel and ‘respectable,'” an “unmethodical, browsing chronicle,” compiled by someone who “fit Sonneck’s description of an American who wrote ‘as a European.'” v Yet for almost a quarter-century, Howard’s book was the only generally available account of American music. Crucially (and very unusually at this period), alongside its predictable chapters on art music stand substantial discussions of “other” American musics — folk, Native American, African American, popular song, and jazz — which occupy approximately a quarter of its pages. Howard’s tone may occasionally be pejorative, particularly in relation to Native Americans, but this was the unfortunate norm of the time and Howard was by no means the only culprit. The important point — one which would not have been lost on the very many readers of its first three editions — is that, in general, Our American Music examines all of its subjects with an admirable degree of dispassionate and scholarly interest.

That is not a comment one could honestly make regarding Cowell’s American Composers on American Music. Designated as a symposium, its tone is inevitably subjective rather then objective, and its overt aim is the promotion of ultra-modern art music. But the book is remarkable for two reasons: first, it includes not only a series of chapters in which composers as different as Howard Hanson and Ruth Crawford are considered by their peers, but also a second group in which general tendencies are examined. Among these we find sensitive and at times provocative statements concerning Latin American musics (Chávez and Caturla), African American composers (Still), oriental influence (Rudhyar), and jazz (Gershwin). Like Howard, Cowell took an unusually ecumenical view of American music.

American Composers on American Music is also remarkable for Cowell’s opinion, fundamentally different from Dvorák’s, that while “Nationalism in music has no purpose as an aim in itself . . . Independence . . . is stronger than imitation . . . [Thus] more national consciousness is a present necessity for American composers . . . When this has been accomplished, self-conscious nationalism will no longer be necessary.” vi Here as elsewhere, Cowell was the first to take his own advice, though one wonders whether he entirely foresaw the result of doing so. Later in 1933, in Modern Music, he argued that composers should “draw on those materials common to the music of all the peoples of the world, to build a new music particularly related to our own century.” vii For the remaining thirty years of his life, Cowell did just that, albeit inconsistently; the most immediate results can be found in a group of 1930s works which are so radical as to appear almost reactionary. “Ostinato Pianissimo,” the “United Quartet,” “Pulse,” and “Return” make extensive use of ostinato patterns; the apparent simplicity of their rhythmic material conceals a surprising degree of sophistication, not least in the relation between surface detail and overall structure. Three of the four pieces are written for percussion and utilize a plethora of unusual instruments, both invented and imported. Pitched material, where it occurs, tends to be consonant but nondiatonic, and includes artificial modes constructed along Asian and African lines. Drone accompaniments are the norm. Cowell’s remarks concerning the “United Quartet” apply to all four pieces: “[their] simplicity is drawn from the whole world, instead of from the European tradition or any other single tradition.” viii

Cowell was not the only American composer of the 1930s to adopt such a stance. Indeed, Harry Partch had, by this time, “tentatively rejected both the intonational system of modern Europe and its concert system.” ix Partch’s major creative accomplishments of the decade — including the Seventeen Lyrics by Li Po and the journal Bitter Music — exemplify his radicalism. Subsequently, he devised a new and comprehensive intonational system, built a unique ensemble of instruments capable of performing in that system, and created an all-embracing aesthetic for his work: corporeality. His frame of cultural reference ranged from hitchhiker inscriptions to Greek tragedy. More recent figures to follow in similar footsteps include Lou Harrison, Peter Garland, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and — arguably — John Cage.

That Partch, Cowell, and the others just named are American composers is unquestionable; but is their music American? Certainly none of them achieves “Americanness” through the superficial use of “American” ethnic material, by conforming to American generic stereotypes, or through association — retrospective or otherwise — with American subject matter. To my mind, though, their music — and that of many other so-called American experimentalists — is profoundly American, for it possesses at a compositional and aesthetic level the same qualities that were identified earlier in connection with the books by Cowell and Howard: those of inclusivity, open-mindedness, egalitarianism, and (in more technical terms) the hybridic synthesis of disparate elements into a cohesive and coherent whole. Given America’s official motto – “e pluribus unum” — the nation should be deeply proud of this music — but it isn’t. On the contrary, America has often shunned Cowell, Partch, and the other experimentalists I would identify as its most American composers. For while Harris, Sessions and Schuman saw the majority of their symphonies premiered by America’s foremost orchestras and conductors, only a fraction of Cowell’s twenty symphonies were afforded such treatment. Partch received little institutional support, and even in 1966, at the height of his artistic accomplishments, could complain with justifiable bitterness that “I went to the social security offices yesterday, and learned that the $538.20 check from the U.S. Treasurer is valid. It is my reward for having endured this society for 65 years.” x In 1997, Peter Garland moved into self-imposed exile in Mexico, as a result of “the effects of two decades of conservatism [that] have left people like me marginalized, probably permanently.” xi

The problem, I believe, has to do with the continuing dominance of American music and its institutions by outdated Eurocentric attitudes and values, which still equate nationalism with folk music of one sort or another. (And let’s remember that it was Gershwin, on page 187 of American Composers on American Music, who wrote that “Jazz I regard as an American folk-music; not the only one, but a very powerful one.”) These radical composers have failed — literally and metaphorically — to wave the American folk music flag, either at home, or on territory appropriated from others. As a consequence, and like some weird cult, their profound Americanism has moved them beyond nationalism into conflict with the nation.

While the term “American music” — not least as it came to be understood in the 1930s — is of necessity synonymous with inclusivity and plurality, this need not limit its manifestations to an infinite variety of self-contained musics, whose only common point is their creation by Americans, usually in America. For as the work of Cowell, Partch, and their successors demonstrates, it can also define a music so rooted in inclusivity and plurality that it becomes universal rather than national, a music that — as Cowell suggested — is “particularly related to our own century.” That the greatest musical legacy of the most self-consciously nationalistic country in the world should be a music unacceptable to its own musical establishment, is supremely (and tragically) ironic.

[David Nicholls’ essay originally appeared in the Spring 1999 Newsletter of the Institute for Studies in American Music at the Brooklyn College Conservatory of Music (www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/) and is reprinted here with his kind permission and the kind permission of ISAM co-editor Ray Allen.]

The sources of this and the following quotations are reproduced in John C. Tibbetts, ed., Dvorák in America, 1892-1895 (Portland, OR; Amadeus Press, 1993): 355-84.
See Arthur Farwell, “Pioneering for American Music,” Modern Music, 12 (1934): 116-22; Adrienne Fried Block, “Boston Talks Back to Dvorák,” I.S.A.M. Newsletter, 18/2 (May 1989): 10-11, 15; Block, “Dvorák’s Long American Reach,” in Dvorák in America: 157-181.
Constant Lambert, Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline (London: Faber, 1934).
Henry Cowell, ed., American Composers on American Music: A Symposium (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1933; reprint New York: Frederick Ungar, 1962); John Tasker Howard, Our American Music: Three Hundred Years of It (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1931).
Richard Crawford (quoting Gilbert Chase), “Foreword,” America’s Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present, rev. 3d ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987): xv.
Henry Cowell, “Trends in American Music,” American Composers on American Music: 13.
Henry Cowell, “Towards Neo-Primitivism,” Modern Music, 10/3 (1933): 149-53.
Henry Cowell, [introductory remarks], United Quartet [String Quartet No. 4] (San Francisco: New Music Edition, 1937): [1].
Harry Partch, Genesis of a Music, 2d ed. enlarged (New York: Da Capo Press, 1979): vi-vii.
Letter from Harry Partch to Lou Harrison, 23 August 1966, A Lou Harrison Reader, ed. Peter Garland (Santa Fe: Soundings Press, 1987): 60.
Letter from Peter Garland to David Nicholls, 9 June 1998.

The Philadelphia Orchestra at 100

Posted on September 1, 1999 by Frank J. Oteri - Conversations, Cover




Top: Fritz Scheel conducting a concert at Woodside Park (1900) Middle: Simon Woods, Brian Atwood, Ed Cambron, Joseph H. Kluger Bottom: Philadelphia Orchestra at the Academy of Music today Photo credits — Top: Philadelphia Orchestra Archive; Middle: Simon Woods and Joseph H. Kluger — Peter Kind Studios; Bottom: Ed Wheeler

Wednesday, August 11, 1999
at the Academy House, Philadelphia PA

Simon Woods – Artistic Administrator, Philadelphia Orchestra
Joseph H. Kluger – President, Philadelphia Orchestra
Edward Cambron – Marketing and Patron Services Director, Philadelphia Orchestra
Brian Atwood – Assistant Director of Communications, Philadelphia Orchestra
Frank J. Oteri – Editor, NewMusicBox @ the American Music Center

Interview transcribed by Jennifer Allen Cooper

1. Why An All-20th Century Season?

FRANK J. OTERI: This all began when my assistant, Nathan Michel, read an article in The New York Times announcing the Philadelphia Orchestra’s idea to do an all-20th-century season He said, “Frank, you’ve got to look at this.” I said, “This is remarkable. I’d love to get everybody involved in this together in a room and talk about how they’re going to make this happen.” We always talk about how we wish orchestras were doing more with 20th-century music and were focusing on 20th-century music, and here we have this whole season which is about that. So that’s the initial inspiration behind our interest in getting together with all of you. The first question I’d like to ask everybody is, how did this all come about?

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: As with a lot of good ideas, they are somewhat inspirational but also a by-product of a lot of input. In this particular case, when we were working with Maestro Sawallisch several years ago to plan this season, we said to him: “Maestro, the orchestra is celebrating its centennial…”

SIMON WOODS: Which, incidentally, coincides with the millennium.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: We said, “Maestro, this calls for not only the usual special-event concert, but something that is a real artistic statement. Can you come up with an idea that’s important to you that we can use as a red line throughout the season?” So he thought about it and came back to us and, actually, originally proposed, because our centennial really spans two seasons (…the 1999-2000 season is our 100th season, but our actual birthday is on Nov. 16, 2000. . .), he came to us and said, “For two years, I’d like to have on the subscription season programs devoted exclusively to works written in the last 100 years.” It was actually his idea.

FRANK J. OTERI: Wow.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: And he presented it to us somewhat apologetically, worried that we were going to react with fear and trepidation from a marketing point of view. And I remember finding myself and others who heard the idea initially getting excited by it and saying to him, “Well, maestro, we think probably we’re very excited by this because it’s the kind of thing that we think is going to galvanize us behind something that he believes in, and therefore we can believe in. We did, after looking at some of the repertoire ideas, conclude that we should not merely perform all works but really focusing on the great works of this century. In the face of deciding that we were going to try to perform only the great works of the century, we concluded that it was best to focus this initially on only one season, rather than two. That’s something the marketing people I think were pleased to hear as well.

FRANK J. OTERI: This is so interesting to me, in terms of the marketing behind this, because as a young person I got interested in classical music specifically because of contemporary music. If I lived in Philadelphia, I’d be here every night. You’ve sold a subscription to me! And from a marketing standpoint, I know so many people who I think would be much more interested in classical music if the focus was on the contemporary rather than on the past. So what is the marketing for this?

SIMON WOODS: I’m just a little bit cautious about using the word “contemporary.” Much of this music is not contemporary. You have to be clear when you’re talking about 20th-century music that that’s not what we’re predominantly playing. And, indeed, we have picked up some criticism from the more radical end of people’s taste for not doing enough contemporary music. But if you look at the repertoire, it is predominantly the first half of the 20th-century, so I think we have to get away from using the word “contemporary,” because that’s not really the point of this season. It’s not about living composers. It’s about celebrating two things. It’s about celebrating the 100 years of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the particular associations that this orchestra had with different composers in the past, like Stravinsky and Bartók and Rachmaninoff, and many others, like Shostakovich. And on the other hand, also celebrating what a rich and vibrant history the last 100 years has been.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: Many of those works, of course, were contemporary when they were performed by us originally and are now part of the standard repertoire, so there is a message we’re trying to deliver with that.

EDWARD CAMBRON: From a marketing perspective, I wouldn’t be telling you the truth if I didn’t say that when I first heard the concept there was a bit of concern on my part. I think that traditional audiences in America are traditionalists. But once Sawallisch and Simon Woods started putting the programs on, it became clear that it was a blend and it was a blend of music that was meaningful to the Philadelphia Orchestra, works that we premiered or composers that we championed that our traditional audience would love to focus on and to celebrate. And at the same time, I remember after the press announcement, I got a lot of calls. I like to think of myself as still young; I’m not sure I am. But I got a lot of calls from some of the music groups in Philadelphia who really were saying for the first time that they were going to subscribe to the Orchestra. So I think the marketing would appear to be a big challenge in the beginning, and it still is, but we have the opportunity to get both sides of the spectrum. I think for the traditionalists there’s a lot in the season that they’re going to love. They’re going to love it because it has a unique relationship to the Orchestra. And I think there are a lot of new works, or works that people are not as familiar with, that are going to bring in that other group. So I’m really looking forward to having a blend in our audience that we may not have had in previous years. And I think that this season allows us to do that.

BRIAN ATWOOD: The nice thing is, too, that that does carry over into the public relations end of things as well. I think that we had a similar reaction to Ed’s when we first heard that the season was going to be music from this past century. But I think that immediately, our tune changed, and we realized that there was such potential for media and press opportunities. And when the season actually was laid out and the pieces that we were going to be performing were put down, we thought it was a real exciting opportunity, and we look forward to it. There are a number of pieces and concerts during the course of the season, and I was going to say “Kudos to you, Simon, for spreading them out very nicely in that during the course of the season there are specific jumps during the season that we can really — from a crude point of view — lay into from a PR point of view.

2. Are There Two Different 20th Centuries?

FRANK J. OTERI: Getting back to this idea of traditional audiences, I think what’s interesting is that there’s a lot of repertoire that we don’t normally associate in our minds as being 20th-century repertoire.

EDWARD CAMBRON: Marketing-wise, one of the biggest challenges is the label “20th century.” And it’s hard, people have ingrained in their soul a definition of what that means.

FRANK J. OTERI: Where does that come from?

EDWARD CAMBRON: I’m not sure. I think it may come from the fact that culturally there is a divide in the century that it’s almost like there are two centuries in one.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: I think it comes from the experience of listening to music written between 1955 and 1975 or 1985, a lot of which is perceived by audiences to be harsh, dissonant, and something to which they can’t relate.

SIMON WOODS: I also think that if you look at this from a historical perspective, there are two quite different strands going through the century. One strand is the one that runs through Rachmaninoff, Sibelius, Copland, and Samuel Barber. On the other strand, there’s a strand that starts with Schoenberg and runs through Webern and Elliott Carter. One of the big problems is that I do think we have been brain-washed by the intellectual establishment to believe that somehow the Schoenberg-Carter strand is somehow culturally more valued than the other, and I don’t think that I would want to say that either of those strands is more valuable. I don’t think I would particularly like to put a value judgment saying that Rachmaninoff is a composer of greater or lesser importance than Elliott Carter. I think it’s important that both of those strands are given the weight that they deserve. In the past, that hasn’t been the case.

FRANK J. OTERI: It’s interesting to me, talking about the strands perhaps having equal weight rather than one ruling over the other, but in the season, if I may make one comment about the season, there is no Elliott Carter.

SIMON WOODS: There are two reasons for that. One is that we’re trying to play music that’s associated with our orchestra. So you will see works by Stravinsky and Shostakovich and other composers, Samuel Barber, and more recent works which have a particular association with our orchestra. We have not put in there works which we haven’t already played. This orchestra has hardly played any Elliott Carter. We don’t have a relationship with Elliott Carter. He’s not somebody who figures in a season that aims to make a meaningful retrospective of our music.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: It’s not designed to be a retrospective of the 20th century.

SIMON WOODS: The biggest omission that you’ll find in the season, which actually I’m a little upset about, but it just didn’t work out that way, is that there is actually not one note of Messiaen, who is one of the giants of the century. If you look at it as an overview of 20th-century music, that’s kind of the wrong way to look at it.

3. Commissioning And Recording

FRANK J. OTERI: To get back to music that the Philadelphia Orchestra promulgated through the century, I was thinking, Of course, you can’t possibly include everything, but there is definitely an emphasis on European composers, and I’m thinking, William Schuman wrote symphonies that were premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra, and in fact the first recording of Charles Ives’s First Symphony was by the Philadelphia, but those works were somehow not included. But I guess you can’t include everything.

SIMON WOODS: This orchestra definitely, over the years, has had more of an association with European composers. That’s a fair comment. This orchestra has never played very much American music. And even just last year, when we played a concert of Bernstein, it’s interesting what a somewhat lukewarm response it had from our audience, which is surprising because that’s of course not what you’d expect at all if you were playing it in New York. This orchestra does not have a particular close association with American composers with the absolute huge exception of Samuel Barber, of course.

FRANK J. OTERI: Interesting.

BRIAN ATWOOD: Despite that though, we can’t forget that the Philadelphia Orchestra does have a long-standing commitment to new music. In fact, that’s evident in our commissioning project for this 100th anniversary season. Simon, you might want to speak that.

SIMON WOODS: I think if you look at the history of the orchestra, look at the great works, which have commissioned or premiered over the years, it’s just an absolutely extraordinary list. We are absolutely aiming to keep that tradition going, and as part of our centennial celebration we’ve commissioned a bunch of composers, an extremely good and varied list of composers who we think represent a kind of … how can I put this? They will help to bring out what this orchestra does best. And I think to some extent that brings us back to the question about Elliott Carter. This orchestra doesn’t have a tradition of playing modernist music. It has a tradition of playing more conservative kind of contemporary music. We didn’t say that the composers we commissioned are conservative, but if you look at people like Richard Danielpour and Aaron Jay Kernis or Rautavaara and some of the other people we’re commissioning, they’re certainly their music has a quality of sonorous quality which is closely matched to the identity of this orchestra, so it continues the line in that sense.

EDWARD CAMBRON: A large percentage of those are American composers, right?

SIMON WOODS: Yes.

FRANK J. OTERI: I know that this season you’re doing two of the commissions, you’re doing the work by Hannibal and then you’re doing the Eighth Symphony of Rautavaara. I should point out that even though Rautavaara is from Finland (in fact I had a wonderful meeting with him in Helsinki last October during the festivities around his 70th birthday), he studied with Aaron Copland. He studied with Roger Sessions, and with Vincent Persichetti. So there are definite American ties in his music.

SIMON WOODS: Although recently, of course, his music has not been known in this country at all. It’s only in very recent years. He did a commission, I think, in Minnesota. [Plymouth Music Series] In recent years, he’s beginning to get a name in this country.

FRANK J. OTERI: The last symphony he wrote was written for the Bloomington School of Music in Indiana.

SIMON WOODS: It’s worth saying that for that piece we’re also going to do something else that’s characteristic of this orchestra: we’re going to play in our tour of Europe in 2000. Next May, we will play both the European premiere of the Rautavaara symphony in Cologne and then we will play the Finnish premiere in Helsinki, which is consistent with this orchestra’s commitment to spreading the word about music it has commissioned.

FRANK J. OTERI: Do you plan to record the works that you’re commissioning?

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: We did receive a proposal from Ondine Records to do just that, but unfortunately the economics of that could not be worked out in time to make that possible.

FRANK J. OTERI: This is actually a very big issue with orchestras around the country, and this strikes me very personally. I’m a record collector and got interested in this music by collecting records, largely buying records of the Philadelphia Orchestra, with Eugene Ormandy and with Leopold Stokowski, buying LPs of core repertoire and in fact the very first LP I bought was Ormandy’s recording of the Bartók Third Piano Concerto, which I see you’re doing this season. It’s one of my favorite records to this day. So it occurred to me that this great orchestra is not getting the word out to the rest of the world on recordings.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: We share your frustration, which is why we are working creatively to try to find a new method of working with our musicians to make that possible. But we’ve got to approach the recording process differently from the way it’s been done.

FRANK J. OTERI: I know that several orchestras, like the New York Philharmonic and the Chicago Symphony and I believe several smaller orchestras around the country, have initiated their own recording companies and are releasing works themselves.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: I think you’ll find that the orchestras you mentioned are not actually forming their own record companies, they are reissuing historical broadcasts on CD. In fact, we’re doing a similar thing with a 12-CD set that’s going to come out this fall. But what we’re doing, and I think the St. Louis Symphony is the other orchestra that I’m aware that’s doing it, is we’ve formed a record company to make new records for our own account, if you will. We’ve recently issued the first of those, coming out on a boutique label called Water Lily Acoustics. And that’s the first of what we hope will be several that come out where we take the risk on our own to manufacture and distribute the recording.

FRANK J. OTERI: I have the Water Lily Acoustics recording, and it is a remarkable achievement in terms of the fidelity of the orchestra. There was a lot of work done to make this a real audiophile product.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: It is designed to be a very true sound, using, I guess, two microphones and an analog tube system for recording on tape, which is then transferred to various digital formats.

FRANK J. OTERI: I guess the one thing that concerned me about the disc, even though it sounded fantastic, is I was wondering what the market was for such a recording beyond the audiophile market, since it was a collection of various of short pieces of repertoire from different composers, there was no overall theme to the disc.

SIMON WOODS: I think it’s worth saying that the three Dvorák overtures—In Nature’s Realm, Carnival, and Othello—were written as a set and were originally published as a set called Nature, Life and Love, and, interestingly enough, although particularly Carnival and to some extent In Nature’s Realm get recorded and played, there are many, many different recordings, there is no currently available recording, I don’t think, of the complete cycle together.

[60 seconds]
RealAudio sound clip
from ANTONIN DVORÁK – In Nature’s Realm featured on the CD Nature’s Realm, The Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Wolfgang Sawallisch {Water Lily Acoustics WLA-WS-66-CD}.
The three Dvorák overtures featured on this CD were given their world premiere performances at a farewell concert in Prague in 1892 shortly before Dvorák’s departure to America and were performed on the Carnegie Hall concert welcoming him to New York.

Order from Amazon.com

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: The theme is actually focused not so much on the repertoire itself, but more on the concept of creating a product that has sonic excellence that matches the sonic excellence of this orchestra, which we think — we hope — creates a unique identity in the marketplace. The other question is how do you differentiate a recording today from what’s out there? And it is really difficult to make the case, no matter how good the interpretation, that the world needs another Beethoven cycle. And so what we’re trying to do is come up with a niche that we think will appeal not only to audiophiles but to others who are looking for things that sound good today. So this is a repertoire that highlights the sonic excellence of the Philadelphia Orchestra in this new retro recording format.

BRIAN ATWOOD: And in addition to that, one interesting point about the new disc is in the fact that it’s our first recording on this new label, it also makes a statement, when you look at the actual pieces, in that all of the Dvorák pieces are overtures and the Liszt work is Les Préludes. It’s sort of a new beginning both on the recording end of things and also in the pieces themselves. I think that’s a nice thing.

FRANK J. OTERI: That sounds like the headline of a press release! What I found so interesting about the recording is that it was recorded on this label Water Lily Acoustics, which isn’t normally associated with classical music, but is associated with wonderful recordings of non-Western musics, of cross-cultural improvisatory music, of jazz, sort of very progressive things in music. I think it’s very important that the orchestral community reclaim the notion of being progressive and reclaim the notion that this is music that is part of an ongoing tradition. It makes me hope that these commissioned works could be recorded on a label like this to send a message that will get this music out to a new audience.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: We agree with you. We’re hoping that this first recording is successful so that we can find a financial model for doing many more like that.

FRANK J. OTERI: Let’s talk about the other new works. I noticed that you’ve commissioned Michael Daugherty, who wrote the wonderful Metropolis Symphony a few years back.

SIMON WOODS: There’s also James MacMillan, Richard Danielpour, Roberto Sierra, Jennifer Higdon and Aaron Kernis.

4. Programming American Music

FRANK J. OTERI: The majority of the eight composers you’ve commissioned are Americans.

SIMON WOODS: Plus one Brit, one Finn, and one Puerto Rican…

FRANK J. OTERI: Well, since Puerto Rico is a U.S. Commonwealth and Roberto is based in the United States, I think it’s fair to say he’s also an American composer. Which gets me to my next point, which is it’s interesting that you say the Philadelphia Orchestra has not been traditionally associated with “American composers.” I think one of the interesting things about this season and about highlighting works which the Philadelphia Orchestra in fact gave the world premiere performances of, is that a number of composers we perceive of as Europeans were in fact naturalized Americans and therefore were in fact American composers. I’m thinking now of composers like Bartók and Rachmaninoff, who spent the majority of his life in the United States, of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, who became naturalized U.S. citizens. Kurt Weill, as well, whom I see you’re also doing on this season. These composers became American composers, and a lot of the music they wrote in this country, I’m thinking now specifically of Bartók’s Third Piano Concerto and his Concerto for Orchestra, are very American works in a lot of ways.

SIMON WOODS: What do you think is American about the Bartók Third Concerto?

FRANK J. OTERI: There is definitely a jazz influence, there’s a lot of syncopation going on.

[30 seconds]
RealAudio sound clip
from BARTÓK – PIANO CONCERTO No. 3, Third Movement – Allegro Vivace
Gyorgy Sandor – piano, Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Eugene Ormandy
World Premiere Recording {Columbia Masterworks LP ML 4239}, Out Of Print

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: You may think this is a heretical statement. The world becomes smaller through technology and our ability to travel. I think, with all due respect to the American Music Center, I think we’ve got to start to recognize that we live on one world, and music is music, and the Philadelphia Orchestra is an international orchestra. The conductors are from all over the world, some of them are American, some of them are European, some of them are Asian, as are the musicians. We just have to make sure we’re presenting the best there is in the world, recognizing that that comes from many different places, and stop apologizing because we either do too much or too little of any one nationality.

FRANK J. OTERI: I’d like to challenge that for a second. When I traveled around in Europe, I discovered that Sibelius is on the money in Finland. And almost all the programs in Finland include works by Sibelius. You go to Germany, and Clara Schumann is on the money. Not just a composer, but a woman composer!

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: I would be equally critical of them in saying that their audiences are missing out on some of the great music of the world, composers like Stravinsky and Barber and William Schuman. I’m not saying we shouldn’t be performing those works, all I’m saying is the parochial point of view, wherever you are, we should be playing more Sibelius in America and less in Finland. We should be playing more American composers in Europe. It’s just a personal statement.

BRIAN ATWOOD: And we’re very lucky, actually, that this orchestra has made that commitment throughout its entire history. And when you look back and start to program a season such as what we’ve done with the 100th, I think you’ll find that the reason we’ve got such a varied list of composers and a vast variety of different areas where they come from is because that directly reflects the history of this orchestra, and we’ve always had a commitment to that and I think we’re continuing that now in our commission projects. Yes, there are a number of American composers, and I think that’s something that we’ve wanted to work on for a while, but as Simon mentioned we also have a number of folks from other countries and other areas of the world that are also being commissioned for this.

5. How To Introduce Audiences To 20th Century Music

FRANK J. OTERI: I want to respond to a comment that was made at the very beginning of this discussion. The Bernstein program that was done recently, you said that the audience reaction was lukewarm. I’d like to explore that a little bit. How does the audience react, in general, to 20th-century music, and how are we turning that around, now that next year is going to be the 21st century and all of this music is going to be old music?

SIMON WOODS: The audience’s reaction to 20th-century music, especially in our city, is very much related to how it’s presented. If you play a work by John Adams and you give people no way into that work, no way of understanding what it’s about and where it comes from, the reaction will be tepid at best. If John stands up in front of the audience, as he did when he came, and explains what the piece is about, his ideas when he wrote it, and gives them a way into it, at least they are prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. And in many cases, that has completely transformed people’s experiences of it. Certainly when you’re talking about living composers, one of the greatest tools we have at our disposal is the composer himself, the living person, who can stand on the stage and say, “When I wrote this work, I was thinking of X, Y, Z.” It can be an incredibly powerful experience and one that we’re using more and more. We are developing programs, residencies, ideas around their appearances to generate interest, to generate connections with all levels of the organization. That means with the public, that means with the press, with the board, with the volunteers. Right across the range. I think you can work composers very well into the fabric of musical life in the city to have a very positive impact.

EDWARD CAMBRON: I couldn’t agree with Simon more. I think that the more we give our audiences ways into the music, the more we talk about it through newsletters, and through the public relations we do and other marketing tools, the more they enjoy it. I think the days of just kind of throwing it out there — take it or leave it — are gone. People want connections to things, and when a composer or soloist or conductor stands up in front of the audience and shares a little bit about the music and what they see in it and how they feel about it, the audience really appreciates that. I think they listen in a different way. And I know we’re doing a lot more of this. As a marketing person, I’m always pushing Simon and our artistic team to do it all the time. It’s not always practical, and it doesn’t always make sense, but it’s the kind of thing the audience really loves. The other thing we’re doing that’s really special for this season is we did a CD sampler—a CD that gives us a few minutes of eight or nine pieces of music with Sawallisch We talk a little bit about the music, why we chose it, how Sawallisch feels about it. I think those kinds of tools gives people a little bit of insight are good for audiences and they listen in a good way.

SIMON WOODS: That CD is also designed to help us get over another of the problems, I think, with the perception of 20th-century music, that it actually somehow is difficult and challenging, where in some places it isn’t at all.

EDWARD CAMBRON: The Lowell Liebermann Flute Concerto, in particular, I think.

Fabulous Philadelphians Sampler -- CD cover

[95 seconds]
RealAudio sound clip
Wolfgang Sawallisch talks about the Lowell Liebermann Flute Concerto followed by an excerpt of James Galway’s recording of it for BMG Classics as featured on the Promotional CD – The Fabulous Philadelphians, courtesy The Philadelphia Orchestra

SIMON WOODS: And there are also older examples like the Stenhammar Piano Concerto. There are a number of works on this season which are absolutely unfamiliar to people and yet which are clearly going to be successful with the audience.

FRANK J. OTERI: To get back to John Adams, a second, because he would be somebody I would think most people would agree writes pretty accessible music, in general. There’s a statistic that’s been floating around the country for a number of years now that he’s the most widely played living American composer. It’s interesting because there’s no John Adams on the season next year.

SIMON WOODS: We’ve played an awful lot of John Adams this year. We played Short Ride in a Fast Machine, Harmonium, Century Rolls—his new concerto for Emanuel Ax…

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: … and he conducted for a week.

SIMON WOODS: So he’s by no means under-represented with us.

FRANK J. OTERI: It’s good to give other people a chance this coming season. Let’s take it away from American repertoire for a moment. You’re doing the Górecki Third Symphony this season, and it’s a premiere for Philadelphia. You’ve never done the work before. But this is a work that’s been immensely popular and brought a huge new audience to symphonic music. Lots of people bought this who would never buy a recording of a symphony. This was on the best-selling charts on Billboard; it even hit the pop chart in England at some point.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: We were particularly pleased because after we made a list of works we thought should be on the season, we went to Maestro Sawallisch and asked him which of the works he wanted to conduct, and he chose the Górecki…

SIMON WOODS: …to acknowledge the importance of this work by deciding he wanted to do it himself was very pleasing.

FRANK J. OTERI: It’s interesting because the Philadelphia Orchestra has not had a history with Górecki’s Third. It was not a work that the Philadelphia Orchestra gave the world premiere of or even the American premiere of. So what was the justification for programming it?

SIMON WOODS: If you think about the sound of that piece and you think about the sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra, you’ll have your answer.

FRANK J. OTERI: So it was purely aesthetics. Well, we can definitely appreciate that.

SIMON WOODS: Well, I don’t know that it was purely aesthetics. I think having that piece played by this orchestra is kind of a dream, really.

6. Promotion And Education

FRANK J. OTERI: Let’s talk about education a little bit. I know that you’ve made this promotional CD for the season, and, Ed, this was basically your brainchild, if I’m not mistaken.

EDWARD CAMBRON: Well, no. It was really an idea that came out of a natural excitement about the season. As people began to ask a lot of questions, Simon put together a collection of musical samples to share with the staff of the orchestra so that everyone could hear a few things they may not have been familiar with. And it was amazing the applause that came from the administration of the orchestra and how excited they became. We all saw that, and it was the kind of goose bump we wanted to give our audience. We put together the project through that.

FRANK J. OTERI: What’s the plan for the CD in terms of getting the word out?

EDWARD CAMBRON: The CD sampler is kind of a tool to get people to subscribe. So we’re trying to get it in the hands of people who might have a little hesitation about the season, those people who are stuck in the 20th century label, so we’re doing a lot of prospecting of culturally active Philadelphians, former subscribers, and the like. It’s a sales tool. I don’t really view it as an educational piece, so we’re really not positioning it as something to use as part of our education program. We are doing a lot of other things on the education front.

SIMON WOODS: We have a new director of education and community projects who’s just joined us. He’s an extremely thoughtful and highly articulate person.

EDWARD CAMBRON: In terms of adult education, we’re doing a lot more stage commentary, and we have a growing series of concert conversations that feature different composers and conductors. Paul Horsley, our program annotator and resident musicologist, leads a lot of those. That’s a very popular series of adult or audience education. The other thing we’re doing is we have a great program with Temple Music Prep, here in Philadelphia, where we have a series of onstage lectures, opportunities for audience members to meet musicians, they get to hear a little bit about how critics write reviews, that’s an adult education program that we’re excited about as well. In addition to that, we have a great many events for the children of Philadelphia, a very exciting program that we’re working on with Settlement Music School, taking our musicians into the school system.

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: I just wanted to add that while Gary has come on board and is helping us make a complete reevaluation of all our education programs, we hope to be coming out in the near future with a new plan that really makes educational activities, particular for children, part of the core activity of what we do in the 21st century. We’ve had a long history of doing educational activities, but they, in my opinion, too much focused on ancillary kind of things you need to do because it’s politically correct to do educational activities. We’ve come to the realization that it is not merely important for long term audience development, but it really ought to be part of our mission to be focusing on this as part of the core of what we do.

7. The Future

FRANK J. OTERI: My one last big question has to do with, you do the season, it happens, and now we’re in the 21st century. What happens in the 21st century? What is the long term plan for the Philadelphia Orchestra in terms of integrating more recent music? You have these commissions that are coming up. What can we expect to see two seasons from now? Another season that’s majority Brahms, Mozart, Mendelssohn? How is this new approach to programming going to carry out in the coming years?

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: First of all, we have a commitment to continue to commission new works, which we’re making decisions now for works that are going to be in the pipeline and be produced each year, I think we’re planning now as far out as 2005. In terms of the programing focus, we are committed as an orchestra to presenting the broadest spectrum of symphonic music, and are actively coming up with the particular focus for the 2001-2002 season and beyond. I’ll tease you a little bit by saying the specifics are going to have to wait, other than to say that we are very encouraged by the positive response we’ve gotten from people who have heard about this season’s programming and saying, “Wow, that’s really exciting. We encourage you to have a thematic focus to what you do and to continue to take risks.” That doesn’t mean that in the future we’re going to abandon in the core repertoire. Manny Ax said recently that the core symphonic repertoire is like the Bible, and it continues to be at the core of what we do and continues to benefit from renewed interpretation. But we’re also very committed to making sure that we move our art form forward. At the same time we present the canon of symphonic literature, we’re identifying those works that will be part of the standard repertoire in the future.

SIMON WOODS: It’s worth adding one thing to that, which is that my personal belief that there are many areas of the repertoire, not only in contemporary music, which are worth exploring. We play a relatively small repertoire and we’ll continue to go on playing the key masterpieces, but we’re also playing the Stenhammar Concerto and the season after next I can tell you we’re going to play the Franz Xaver Scharwenka Fourth Piano Concerto, which was the piece that Stephen Hough has been playing and making famous, a fabulous romantic work. There are many backwaters from the 19th and early 20th century, which we can also play. All of this is about making the repertoire a mix of things that are familiar and things that are less familiar, that I think are new and exciting.

FRANK J. OTERI: Despite the press announcements and your own materials and our conversation today about doing an all-20th-century season, even in this season, there are two Beethoven symphonies and a performance of Handel’s Messiah. I guess we can’t escape this music no matter how hard we try.

EDWARD CAMBRON: [laughs]

JOSEPH H. KLUGER: They’re not on subscription, though. They’re only on special event concerts. Every single work in the 96 subscription concerts was written after 1900.

FRANK J. OTERI: That’s great. But yet the very first concert, opening night, is all 19th century repertoire, with the exception of Samuel Barber’s Knoxville 1915.

SIMON WOODS: But that’s not related to our theme. Our theme is related to our subscription concerts. The other special-event concerts throughout the season have been programmed just as normal.

EDWARD CAMBRON: Opening night is a one night fundraiser.

FRANK J. OTERI: I’d like to thank you all for this unique opportunity to talk about this unique orchestral season. Would anybody like to add a final thought?

EDWARD CAMBRON: When any of your surfers are in Philadelphia, I hope they come by and see us at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia.

Describe your best and worst memories of premiere performances

Posted on September 1, 1999 by NewMusicBox Staff - Articles, Commentary

	John Corigliano “The best premiere I can remember is that of my Clarinet Concerto with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic and Stanley Drucker as the soloist…”
	Tim Page “…I’d choose the first performance of the orchestral version of Reich’s Tehillim in 1981 as the “worst” premiere.”
	Laurel Ann Maurer “I premiered [Meyer Kupferman’s] work “Chaconne Sonata” in April 1994 at Weill Recital Hall and we received rave reviews.”
	David Del Tredici “…I felt as though I had just farted in church and then had to bow in recognition.”

The Orchestra in Contemporary American Musical Life

Posted on September 1, 1999 by Frank J. Oteri - Articles, Commentary

Frank J. Oteri
Photo by Melissa Richard

Is the orchestra a viable contemporary American institution? That’s a question that’s been on a lot of people’s minds both within and outside the orchestral music community as well as within the new music community which all too frequently has been treated like an opposition political party.

There are two schools of thought about the function that the orchestra should serve in a community. One camp contends that the orchestra is a sonic museum that preserves the timeless classics of our musical heritage, presenting them again and again in a live setting so new audiences can discover them and that audiences already familiar with them can gain new insights with each rehearing. The other camp contends that the orchestra must take a pro-active role in our society, performing and commissioning new works, doing extensive community outreach and being at the cutting edge of new technologies. Opponents of the museum approach say the orchestra is outmoded and irrelevant to contemporary society, a throwback to the old boy system, a torchbearer of “Dead White European Male” culture to the exclusion of the achievements of all other people. Opponents of the pro-active model contend that orchestras should do what they do best, which is to play great music, and might rightly point to such horrific models as the expunging of “degenerate art” in Nazi regime’s rewriting of the canon or the Cultural Revolution in the People’s Republic of China as proof that dictating artistic choices based on so-called “politically correct” grounds yields a tepidly satisfying aesthetic experience at best.

Much can be gained by looking at both sides of this argument and seeing how to preserve the great legacy of orchestral music of the past while at the same time building a new and vibrant orchestral experience which may indeed be tomorrow’s great legacy. We invited you to take a stand in this great debate in our interactive forum

This month, we have chosen to enter the NewMusicBoxing ring with four members of the staff of the Philadelphia Orchestra: artistic administrator Simon Woods, president Joseph H. Kluger, marketing director Ed Cambron and assistant communications director Brian Atwood. The Philadelphia Orchestra, considered by most music aficionados to be one of our greatest orchestras but rarely perceived of as a maverick in the orchestral music community, has taken an unusual step for their 1999-2000 season. Every work played in a subscription concert this season was composed in the 20th century. And while contemporary music fans may balk at a “20th century” season filled with Ravel and Rachmaninoff but missing Carter and Messiaen, it’s a more-than-welcome change of pace from the bottomless sea of Basically Beethoven, Totally Tchaikovsky or Masochistically Mozart. Andrew Druckenbrod’s hyper-history surveys the commissioning and premiering legacies of 18 additional American orchestras in an attempt to determine how American and contemporary contemporary American orchestras actually are. We have supplemented both the Philadelphia Orchestra interview and the orchestral hyper-history with a variety of documents ranging from press releases to lists of commissions and premieres spanning the entire century to try to paint as complete a picture as we possibly can. In fact, we have also supplemented our leading news story this month — an announcement of two premieres by the New York Philharmonic financed by the Walt Disney Company — with the complete transcript of the press conference led by Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

We decided to contrast this serious probing by having a little fun with people’s memories of premieres. We’ve asked composers John Corigliano and David Del Tredici, flutist Laurel Ann Maurer, and former music critic Tim Page to tell us their best and worst memories of premieres from the varying viewpoints of composer, performer and audience member. Unfortunately, orchestral music was not the focus of a large percent of either our listings of concerts featuring American repertoire or our online exploration center for new recordings of American music. But there are many fascinating items to be found there nonetheless.

We hope that through presenting all this material we can inspire further dialog and help energize the playing field of American orchestras, a community which, in size and geographic distribution, is on par with America’s other great team sports and which, if the conditions are right, can create an evening as memorable as a shut-out game in a World Series!

Soundtracks: September 1999

Posted on September 1, 1999 by NewMusicBox Staff - Headlines, Ledes

As the cost of making orchestral recordings in the United States continues to skyrocket, less than 15 recordings by the major American orchestras have been slated for studio time this year. Clearly, something must be done to make American orchestral recordings viable once again and the answer is in the recording of new American repertoire. It is sadly ironic that in the month we have chosen to focus on the performance of American repertoire by American orchestras only 4 new recordings of American music are orchestral and of those, only 3 are new recordings of American music by American orchestras. (The fourth is a long-overdue re-issue of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra‘s 1960s performances of symphonies by Amy Beach and William Grant Still.)

Although they were not included in our round-up of American orchestras this time around, the New York-based Riverside Symphony has proven its commitment to American music once again with its world premiere recording of Andrew Imbrie’s 1984 Requiem, one of his most profoundly moving compositions. The Albany Symphony, which is most definitely included in our orchestra report, gains yet another accolade for its new Roy Harris CD. And Universal Classics has finally issued Michael Tilson Thomas’s New World Symphony performances of three Morton Feldman orchestral works in the United States, although none of the works on the disc are world premiere recordings as the label claims.

Chamber music, which is much easier to organize and record, continues to dominate the new recordings of American repertoire. Four new American composers join the ranks of “composers with single-composer discs” featuring works for a wide array of instrumental combinations: Robert Avalon, Amy Rubin, Jan Krzywicki and Chaya Czernowin. And it is great to hear inspired performances of small-scale works by Ralph Shapey even though recordings of so many of his large-scale works are still pipe dreams. CRI has also re-issued four song cycles for voices and chamber ensembles by Leo Smit and Sony Classical’s latest Columbia Masterworks Heritage re-issue features historic composer-led performances of vocal chamber works by Samuel Barber, Virgil Thomson and AMC-founder Aaron Copland.

On the improvisatory end of the American chamber music spectrum, a couple of new jazz groups have finally made it to disc including George Schuller‘s Schulldogs and Rob Reddy‘s Honor System, featuring the great Pheeroan Aklaaf. Sony Classical, who’ve done much in recent years to stretch the definition of the “C” word, have issued uncategorizable bassist Edgar Meyer‘s latest blend of jazz, bluegrass and contemporary concert hall music with co-conspirators Sam Bush, Mike Marshall and classical violin star Joshua Bell. And for something even more uncategorizable … if the 10-CD boxed set on Organ of Corti wasn’t enough, the small L.A.-based label Transparency has re-issued an additional 4-CD boxed set of material recorded by a variety of ad-hoc pre-industrial experimental ensembles from the mid-1970s known collectively as the Los Angeles Free Music Society.

Electronic media, of course, allow composers to employ chamber means to paint with orchestral palettes, and several new recordings take full advantage of the latest technology. Carl Stone programs computers to create a wide-array of super-human sounds while Larry Austin gets more out of chamber ensembles by combining acoustic instruments with electronics and computer processing. A re-issue of ’60s electro-acoustic music by Richard Maxfield and Harold Budd shows how far our technology has come while at the same time proving that antiquated technologies can still yield timeless music. Finally, Eric Belgum uses multi-track recording to create unique collages of spoken conversation which hover at the boundary between literary art and music.

How American Are American Orchestras?

Posted on September 1, 1999 by Andrew Druckenbrod - Analysis, Articles

Andrew J. Druckenbrod
photo by Allison Schlesinger

The twentieth century will be viewed as a time in which composers expanded the range and possibilities of musical language and sound. But also as a period that saw a rift develop between new and old music, especially in the U.S. Here, orchestras delved into the pantheon of dead composers to satisfy their audiences’ affinity for past music. All during a time when more U.S. composers than ever before make at least a partial living from writing music.

So as we head out of this wild ride of a century, it’s as good a time as ever to take a closer look at to what level orchestras are supporting new, especially American music. Specifically gauging how many works they commission, since the ultimate support for a composer is money in the pocket to allow for the space and means to write.

We scanned 20 orchestras to check out their record for commissioning works over the last 30 years. The sampling isn’t scientific, but it is diverse. The so called “big five” are all here, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, and the Boston Symphony. As are several other large-budget organizations from around the country: the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Minnesota Orchestra, the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, and the Dallas Symphony Orchestra.

We also included four smaller-budget orchestras who have a special commitment to new music — the Women’s Philharmonic, the Albany Symphony Orchestra, the Louisville Orchestra, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic — as well as two smaller-sized groups: the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony. Finally, there’s an examination of two youth/student organizations, the Manhattan School of Music Symphony Orchestra and the Etowah Youth Orchestra. The American Composers Orchestra, the only American orchestra whose mandate is exclusively the performance of music by American composers, has already been profiled in the first issue of NewMusicBox as the ultimate composer-led new music ensemble. Some of the orchestras were chosen for their exemplary record in supporting new music, while others were chosen for their general status in the musical community or their geographical location.

One observation from the survey is that bigger is not always better. That is, the bigger budgets of some orchestras do not guarantee a better track record for supporting new music. Ensembles such as the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the San Francisco Symphony rival the New York Philharmonic and its $35 million annual budget in commissioning and both outpace the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. The Louisville Orchestra has a commissioning record that doubles or triples that of orchestras with double and triple its annual operating expenses. And the Cleveland Chamber Symphony runs circles around that other ensemble by the lake, the Cleveland Orchestra.

Partly because of artistic and cultural inertia and partly because the larger orchestras spend money to secure costly guest performers and conductors and build facilities (such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s new ECHO public music learning center), they tend to program a bit more conservatively. The smaller-budgeted ensembles often have the opportunity to experiment more, and several do. Commissioning fees are high, but they are high to all orchestras. Some just make it more of a priority.

The survey ultimately indicated, however, that commissioning has been on the upswing in the last three decades. Most of the orchestras examined have a higher percentage of commissions since 1970 than before (many a substantial increase). Also, over 80 percent of these new commissions have been for U.S. composers, a healthy mark by any standard. It would appear, then, that the ship is pointed in the right direction as we move into the next century. A balance is beginning to form between the present and programming, between living composers and living audiences.

The Orchestras:

Describe your best and worst memories of premiere performances John Corigliano, Composer

Posted on September 1, 1999 by NewMusicBox Staff - Articles, Commentary

John Corigliano
Photo by Julian Kreeger courtesy G. Schirmer

The best premiere I can remember is that of my CLARINET CONCERTO with Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic and Stanley Drucker as the soloist. My father, who died in 1975 — two years before the premiere — was the concertmaster of the Philharmonic, and they had never played a piece of mine, so the concert had a very special meaning to me. It was a blazing performance — one a composer usually only dreams about.

My worst premiere was in the 1960’s when a mezzo-soprano, who had won the prestigious JOY OF SINGING award, gave the first performance of THE CLOISTERS, a cycle of four songs with text by William M. Hoffman.

The problem was that the singer didn’t want to use the music (which was admirable), but also didn’t know the songs (which wasn’t). The result was a Gertrude Stein text set to a John Cage score. The New York Times loved it. I’ve always wondered what they would have thought of the piece we actually wrote.”

NewMusicBox Staff

Subscribe to our newsletter and never miss a beat!