13 Comments

1. 

   Marc P on December 21, 2009 at 10:54 am

   I looked at your report and I see only 9 works by a living composer. The LAO did a survey a couple of years ago and found 8% of the programming by their member orchestras were devoted to living composers. 9 works out of 206 equals 4.3%. But I’ll give you a few bonus points for programming “near living composers” – those who have departed recently

2. 

   Kenneth Woods on December 21, 2009 at 11:04 am

   Hi Marc-

   I share your concern- it is a point of great frustration for me. I can only conduct what I’m hired to do, and the climate the last couple of years has been ever more conservative as orchestras have been forced to cut their rental budgets back to the bone. Hopefully the next three years will be better.

3. 

   Monica B on December 21, 2009 at 3:25 pm

   “That’s why I didn’t even start in with the less than half a % of pieces by women… I am very fortunate in my current position to be able to have a BIG say in the programming. In 2009 I managed 15% works by women, 17.5% by living composers and about 55% by composers who died in the 20th or 21st century.
   But when I’m invited somewhere I have the same problem. Do you think it’s that much to do with rental budgets, or are programmes more conservative because managers are afraid they won’t put bums on seats if they risk anything more adventurous?”

4. 

   Kenneth Woods on December 21, 2009 at 3:32 pm

   Hi Monica!

   That’s a heck of a track record. In the short term, rental budgets have become an issue that comes up much more than usual as every orchestra seems to be counting every penny, but the bums on seats issue is always there. I think a lot of it has to do with the mission of the organization- my new band, Orchestra of the Swan, has made commissioning a key part of their mission statement, and they do more new work than almost any other British chamber orchestra. The ability to do that depends on having built the entire organization, including the board, around that mission.
   We all have our passions- I do a lot of Entartete Musik composers like Krasa, Klein, Gal et al, and I’ve made a big push with some off the beaten Romantic literature and have tried to do some Haydn’s other than 104 and the obvious hits, and all of those are hard work to program too.
   Thanks for the comment

   Ken

5. 

   CB on December 21, 2009 at 3:33 pm

   Wow a lot of Arnold, no Brahm’s #2 piano concerto? no Mahler’s 6th. Sibelius #4? Vaughan-Williams #3?

   Maybe this year!!

6. 

   CB on December 21, 2009 at 8:08 pm

   “I have to chime my composer bell and say that given the constant “catch up” environment of playing the field to get less heard works on a program, I personally would rather see effort in those rare 19-20th century works than in new orchestral premieres. I’m more concerned in the loss of a historical period that I believe is terribly critical and terribly underplayed, than in new music by composers that have a lot of medium and avenues available for expression, and are here to champion it. You might disagree, but what with media and technology as an available tool to the “nowness” of a composers palette, I believe for a composer to ignore those tools is also to ignore his place and time.

   Sure, writing a new orchestral work is a dream of many a composer, including yours truly; however, it’s not the mainstay and final word on great art for a composer today. A composer these days has become his own art director and must find his own audience, and I’m afraid that most of the new orchestra music that is produced is out of touch both artistically in aesthetic ideals, as well as on more practical terms with entertainment value to an audience. The old joke that only composers and their composer friends go to new premieres has even become out of touch. Even composers would rather stay at home creating their own music in their studios, or working in multimedia with a chamber ensemble than attending new music concerts and pretending they are important or interesting. You might say – oh thats only you – but I know plenty of good composers who feel the same way and aren’t afraid to voice their frustrations so.

   There is also the practical side. These days, unless you have a top notch orchestra of virtuosos, you need to underwrite to make it playable and self balancing. There are certain limits of play time and rehearsal costs, deadlines, and various sundries that make it difficult to actually enjoy the writing experience.

   And then there is economics…Given that it would take roughly $60,000 – $120,000 US dollars to record a new work with a top notch orchestra, or a slightly lesser amount to play it in a live concert hall, I would rather take that cash and invest it in technology and a small group of bad ass players along the artistic creative freedom that comes with it.

   Sorry for the long winded and scattered thoughts here, but I needed to dump my feelings on this matter.

   To sum up – play the rare important old stuff I never get a chance to hear or put into historic perspective.

   A handshake.

   ComposerBastard”

7. 

   Marc P on December 22, 2009 at 10:42 am

   “@Bryan – $60K to $120K to record a new work. I don’t think so. Kirk Trevor has 70 Naxos recordings to his credit. The average cost is about $25,000 USD and he records with the Slovak Radio Symphony in Bratislava. My client Hong-Mei Xiao just finished a project for Naxos with the Budapest Philharmonic. The cost was $21,000. Copying costs are a third of what they were in the pre-Finale/Sibelius days. So I don’t know where you are getting $60-120k unless you are talking about the AA majors.

   And I disagree with the notion that orchestras and composers should part company. I live in San Francisco and the SF Symphony does probably more premieres than any orchestra on the West Coast. SF’ers really get into new music. I would rather hear a new John Adams or Corigliano or even Sofia Gubaidulina (who recently had several works premiered by SFSO) piece than anything Arnold Bax wrote.

   There is an orchestra in Phoenix, Musica Nova, that digs up the dead and has performed works by Raff, Arnell, and who knows what else. It really is second-rate music and despite their enthusiasm for unlocking undiscovered works, the orchestra (made up of very accomplished players) can’t even draw their numbers — meaning there are fewer people in the audience than on stage.

   You are right about contemporary composers pandering. But all artists pander in way or another. Orchestras like other biological life forms must either evolve or they will most certainly go extinct. I predict 10-15 years and the entire industry will be a “vanity industry”.”

8. 

   Lisa Hirsch on December 22, 2009 at 6:09 pm

   Marc P. – Take another look at SFS’s repertory. They did not premiere “several” new works by Gubaidulina this past year. I think they had one of two anticipated. She was late with the other commission.

   I also would bet that LAPO under Salonen had more commissions and more first-west-coast performances than SFS under MTT. I mean, there was one year when SFS had eight performances of works by living composers and two or three were by MTT himself.

9. 

   Lisa Hirsch on December 22, 2009 at 6:10 pm

   Ken, that is so great about the Orchestra of the Swan. You’re a lucky guy.

10. 

    CB on December 22, 2009 at 6:38 pm

    “Yes I said with a top notch orchestra. I was referring to specifically to a major union brand – for reference lets say an LSO or RSO or LPO or NSO or BSO – not with an eastern euro film scoring naxos wrappers to get around union rates. And I don’t like paying non union. I feel unethical doing it. Don’t you?

    I also don’t think eastern orchestras sound very good, have the chops, and the recording technicians are spotty at best. They are very good for recording film music which must be written easily with the mind of getting it in one take. They do that really well, but it took them a while to understand how to do that. And btw you can sit in your own living room and have a session via video conference for a fee.

    Copying costs are still expensive even with Finale or Sibelius btw. You haven’t eliminated the copiest.

    Kirk Trevor? Hong-Mei Xiao? ummm who? The point? We are talking about staying in the society where it can be heard and appreciated. We are specifically talking about premiering music with a western orchestra *that have chops for crafty stuff* and having it recorded there. The costs of both are outrageous and that limits extremely what you can do (rehearsal time; technique; size; audience expectation etc).

    I also live in SF and I think we’ve heard enough JA and other mainstream mega managed labels such as the likes of Sofia and Corigliano, Quite frankly, my taste concludes their music is flawed, catered, uninteresting and out of touch – JA especially here. I’m sick of his cutsies titles, poor structure, and recurrent use of prologated orchestration trickery. I just don’t buy his dance anymore. For a while there Berkeley had a fairly decent orchestra, but now that Kent’s gone…

    Your Phoenix example is not really a fair one. Digging up some third rate composers and making a large program out of it is not what I was referring to. For example when have you ever heard Roussel or Honegger in a concert program – composers who had a tremendous affect on the Franco-American school not to mention a range of Eastern European and Russian artists. OK, sure…lets have a Thalberg or a Rubinstein piano concerto once in a while to liven things up.

    And contemporary ensembles are just as bad. How many concerts at ALEA III did I attend that had more people on stage than in the audience? And I was bored out of my skull (except for a erhu concerto that was fun and a viola + piano work by Shosh that was not so fun).

    No, not all artists pander. The true nature of an artist is to be curious, explore, and fail with pride endlessly. The composers and their entourages you site can’t afford to do any of that. And it’s gotten worse. Hence, my point that we don’t need orchestras to create great art anymore. They are now almost the antithesis of it. We can do quite nicely with a smaller stage and on our own. To paraphrase: “We don’t need you to write”.

    ComposerBastard

    PS: And we don’t have to wait 10 years. It’s already a “vanity production”. Just listen to the crappy self indulgent art-speak in one of those pre-concert composer interviews and you get my drift. They always go one way or another – either internally to some analytic left brain diary, or the opposite and stay they were steering away from making a statement or just ramble on and on about their pets. We just don’t buy any of it or care. You just don’t have to say anything if you have a decent work that says it all to the world. Your “composer’s” job and your voice are done when you lift the pencil off the page for the last time and pour yourself a cup of tea. And that’s the way it should be. And nothing should interfere with it.
    “

11. 

    Kenneth Woods on December 22, 2009 at 6:51 pm

    Great discussion here! Hopefully CB and Marc can have lunch and discuss soon- they live within minutes of each other.

    Meanwhile, Lisa hints at two interesting questions- how an orchestra gets a reputation for edgy programs when they’re actually doing mainstream stuff, and also what is the meaning of the differences in the repertoire profiles of conductors and their orchestras. Marin is a different programmer completely at the BSO versus Cabrillo. Wouldn’t it be interesting to look at MTT’s rep at New World versus SFSO?

    As for relevance, I wonder if there is any composer alive today who can be said to have as engaged a relationship to how the larger society sees itself than Sibelius, Copland or Shostakovich to name 3. Certainly there is a passion to engaged audiences among most composers today, what about re-shaping society? What about critiquing and re-making the world we live in? Is there any art out there today that really makes a profound critique of today’s events that is going to have an impact on how the larger society perceives itself?

12. 

    Marc P on December 22, 2009 at 8:08 pm

    “I might too conservative for Bryan. I am in favor of programming as much contemporary music as possible while at the same time rescuing lost treasures yet I am fervently opposed to the NEA and the AFM. They both have created a welfare state for artists. “

13. 

    CB on December 22, 2009 at 8:10 pm

    “Wha? We were both going to fly out Cardiff where there is actually still some civilization left!”

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