Ever since working with Bernie Zaslav on his book The Viola in My Life, I have wondered exactly how it would have been possible for a professional string quartet devoted exclusively to (almost all serial) new music to exist in New York City in the early 1960s. In his chapter about the Composers String Quartet Zaslav mentions that Gunther Schuller came up with the idea of creating this quartet, and was its "manager and our guardian angel. He drew upon his wide knowledge of contemporary music, his numerous contacts, and his understanding of what was new and worth being heard, to choose the music we performed (and slaved over)."
I knew Gunther Schuller was an important person in the new music world, but importance and getting enough money to pay busy New York freelancers to rehearse, perform (premiere), and record the very difficult new music that was being written required enormous resources. I imagined that Gunther must have come from money, and that he might have used a personal fortune to fund this project. But then I read his memoir, and saw that the the only real wealth he and his family had was musical ability, energy, and intellect. That can get you work, but it doesn't provide enough money to generate a musical movement consisting of music that listeners wouldn't be able to understand and honestly didn't like (including many of the musicians who did their best to play it as well as it could be played).
My ears perked up the other day when I heard this 2021 episode of Sound Expertise. Eduardo Herrera and Michael Uy are musicologists who specialize in the rise of New Music during the Cold War (both have written books on the subject). They talk about the role of the Rockefeller Foundation in promoting (i.e. generously funding) serial music in the Americas. I won't offer any spoilers, because I want your jaw to drop the way mine did.
There's also a transcript if you prefer to read instead of listen.
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2 comments:
I listened to that episode last year some time. I believe that... unusual funding sources were also involved with the famous Iowa writers workshops and that particular model of approaching fiction.
I should read the transcript!
"...music that listeners wouldn't be able to understand and honestly didn't like (including many of the musicians who did their best to play it as well as it could be played...."
The notion that serialism has moved "music" forward in some way is now being proven false. Even your own music is decidely tonal, is it not? From the early 20th century assertion that in a hundred years we all would be hearing serial music and enjoying, it seems the real "pathway to new music" ended up going through the many streams of pop culture, film and television, musical theater with synthesized instruments in the pit alongside standard fare, and more. This leaves "serial" music to be better considered a blind alley, and parallel to that sort of cultural politics which thinks it can see into the future. Like Soviet Socialist Realism was in a different way.
The sad thing is that university libraries' stacks are filled with now-dusty serial scores, while more pile up. When I was asked decades ago to bring in a piece from the 1940s, I brought in the last Strauss Songs. That was unacceptable. Then I brought in Cole Porter. Unacceptable. Then themes from a film score. Unacceptable. This professor regularly was demanding I "find" my own "voice," and yet the only acceptable voice was serial. And then it wasn't. The market and even a composer named Fine went another way entirely. Regards.
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