It must have been fifteen years ago that our daughter went on a school trip to hear the Chicago Symphony. She was very excited that the program included a piece by Melinda Wagner, who, to her young and impressionable mind was like her mom: a composer who was a woman. Rachel listened carefully and took notes on the whole program (her mother was also a music critic at the time). She was a critical listener, with a distinct bias towards her mother's music, and she loved the Wagner. It was her favorite piece on the program.
The Chicago Symphony continues to commission music from Melinda Wagner, and the Chicago Symphony continues to perform music by Melinda Wagner.
Be like the Chicago Symphony.
Yesterday The New York Times published Michaela Baranello's encouraging piece about Florence Price. The University of Arkansas library has a whole archive of her unperformed work. Perhaps it is time for the big American orchestras to lead the way and do what the title of the Times article says about welcoming Price into the canon. The Times can do its part, but it is ultimately up to the people who make programming choices for the major orchestras. They could share some of the musical wealth that Florence Price left us, and "lesser" orchestras might follow suit. The handful of pieces I know are terrific. I would certainly like to hear more.
Douglas Shadle discusses the problem eloquently, and offers some sensible solutions.
To people who write about music: be like Michaela Baranello and Douglas Shadle
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3 comments:
Googling "composers in American universities" is instructive and alarming. The first response begins, "Of the nearly fifteen hundred composers at American colleges and universities, just over ten percent are women." Okay.
Putting aside numbers between male and female, let us consider that 1,500 composers is a number to begin a conversation. Then one can factor in those like Price, whom you mention, as well as Elaine Fine and other composers who are not tallied in with the 1,500. How many might one guess all totaled, in America alone? Thousands and probably across a century, many thousands.
How many slots in classical programming are available for repertoire unfamiliar to a ticket buying public? Whatever your answer, it would come nowhere near to answering any question of "access" irrespective of social jargon about racism and sexism flavoring a discussion about programming.
How many performances of Price alone are there? The NYT notes of Price alone "unpublished and unsubmitted manuscripts." How many for Elaine Fine? So while the discussion can go round and round, what will be a "gorilla in the room" limiting factor is that one's favorite symphony -- say Chicago -- could start programming ONLY unknown works and unknown composers and never come to an end. Who evaluates which is a better work and which deserves a hearing? And which does not? Certainly among those many thousands of composers as tallied above, not all have worthy repertoire. Or do they? And who decides? And who previews scores in the thousands and tens of thousands?
While the seemingly political issue of such things as racism and sexism can be aimed as criticism of mainstream orchestras, that seems cheap, given the enormous challenge of the sheer amount of work "out there."
Moreover, when one thinks of a favored composer -- let's say Beethoven -- in his era alone there are many lesser names whose work remains little or completely unknown. Multiply such numbers of composers across centuries and mix in today's thousands of composers turning out new scores, one is left with an interesting picture.
A Gordian knot, in fact. Political evaluations and sociologic considerations aside, can an Elaine Fine or a Michaela Baranello or a Douglas Shadle even begin to read through and evaluate for potential inclusion into programming all the works which are surely out there? Daunting work, at the minimum. And for an editorial two-cents on my part knowing some of the work some academic composers are writing, I'd avoid such a concert and wait for Brahms to come around again. Or Puccini. Or....
There seems simply not time nor resources enough to be able to survey all, and perhaps that is not a negative. Too many conundrums remain unresolved. Price or Beethoven? Melinda Wagner or Brahms? That's the problem programmers face. Program all that is little known or wholly unknown and watch the subscribers stay home with what is now for most of us an amazing collection of CDs and DVDs, not to mention YouTube and all the digital format.
Hundreds of thousands of pieces. I'm not ready to wade into that ocean without a lifeguard on the shore.... I suspect a new grandmother has better things to do with her time too. Like composing.
Thank you for this comment. It is daunting to look at the whole ocean of music and try to figure out how possibly to make worthwhile programming choices for concerts that sometimes will have an audience of dozens at best.
I have my personal programming problems solved: I play two viola and piano recitals a year. One has viola and piano music by lesser-known men, and the other has viola and piano music by women. I am really fortunate to have a great musical partner in crime, and he game to read through a lot of music with me in order to come up with programs that really work. We make lists of people, and seek out music, and make transcriptions of non-viola pieces. The dozens of people who make up our audience keep coming back, which is nice, and I am fortunate that I can make transcriptions and write new material myself.
I feel for conductors, particularly conductors of regional orchestras who are constantly being approached by composers (both male and female) to look at their music. There is only so much room on a concert season for new music, and in order not to lose the audience conductors need to offer "standards" along with the new music. I'm playing a concert with a piece by a composer who happens to be a woman, and its companion pieces on the program are the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto and Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. No matter what the quality of the new piece, it is sharing a program with two of the best-known and best-loved pieces of music in the repertoire. We will give it our best shot, but I fear that people will leave the concert with strong feelings about the way the Mendelssohn was played (and the violinist is excellent), and will be humming the Beethoven. The new piece will be their first hearing (as well as ours).
My personal solution to the orchestral problem for composers is only to write and arrange orchestral music that I know will be played (i.e. string orchestra music for the summer strings orchestral that I organize). If I don't do it, they won't have anything new to play.
Dear Ms. Fine, your comment is most apt. That "personal" solution is being followed by a number of composers of my acquaintance.
When young and nested in a group of working musicians, I saw first hand the amount of time and effort put in to hearing "no thanks" from those who program for venues, as well as by the so-called first rank publishers.
But, like your work posted to Petrucci alongside the Beethoven and Mendelssohn works you mentioned above, I think this is the way forward and something that "modern" publishers are soon to learn. As more fine -- pun intended -- music becomes public domain and posted to IMSLP and the many archive organizations, I wager the backward-thinking print publishers will shrink on their own self-made vines.
One only need think back to de Keyser Music in Hollywood or Pattelson's in Manhattan and others like them, now all gone. Digital catalogs are certainly a wave of the future, as are the Creative Commons sorts of legal jargon.
I have no worries that classical music will survive and prosper, but not everyone will turn out under the sharp lens of historical hindsight to be revealed as in the league of Mendelssohn and Beethoven.
One small aside: at a symphony concert recently attended in which a "new" work was sandwiched between two giants, rather like the program you are playing, the audience at intermission was overheard to express disdain for some "new" music, rather like having to eat your broccoli -- remember Bush's remark? -- in order to get to the dessert.
It would be most enlightening for some grad student with time and resources to do a study of all the "new" symphony pieces produced and rarely if ever again performed. I suspect the list would be longer than many might wish to read. Certainly the 20th century has its giants in the symphonic repertoire, and this century will too. But it will likely emerge that merit outclasses other sorts of criteria for selecting works to perform. One would have to wait and see, over the span of a couple of lifetimes -- which aren't available to us.
But it seems that politicking is not a way forward for art. After all, classical music is littered with lesser scores which were promoted at one time, is it not?
Keep composing and playing. That is the answer.
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