Klarinet Archive - Posting 000270.txt from 1994/11

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Contemporary orchestral music
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 1994 10:38:13 -0500

A subject that comes up a great deal on many of the classical music
bulletin boards and lists has to do with why contemporary music is
so much less heard than the tradition repertoire. The typical poster asks
"Why do we restrict ourselves to Beethoven, Brahms, Dvorak, etc. and
seem to avoid newly composed music?"

I'd like to post an intelligent, thoughtful response to that topic and I
want to pass my thoughts on it to the members of the board, many of whom
play in major orchestras around the world. While my perspective might not
be the only reason, I see it as a major reason. It is this:

I suggest that contemporary music is played less frequently than the
standard repertoire for many reasons. But one of the more important is
that it is not economical to play a lot of it. I mean "economical" in
precisely that way: it is not cost justified to play. Let me clarify
with a specific example to demonstrate the economics involved.

In one month, my orchestra is playing Chinary Ung's "Grand Spiral." It is
a work of approximately 15 minutes duration. I just obtained a tape of
someone else's performance, my part, and the orchestral score (not an
easy collection of tasks in the first place).

The part is not terribly difficult, though it has some rough spots. But that
is not the central issue. The difficulty with the work is figuring out where
to make entrances. It is metrically complex, very thickly textured, and
quite precise in the nature of entrances that one must make with respect to
one's colleagues.

The bass clarinet part is 6 pages. Yesterday, I spent 4 hours on the first
page, just figuring out where to come in. Perhaps that amount of time is
higher than others, but I would find it difficult to believe that anyone
could do it in a few minutes. I would play the part to make sure that I
had the notes and rhythm. Then I would listen to the performance trying
to identify my particular part in the thickly orchestrated score (for which
fining beat pattern is especially difficult), and then reading and re-reading
the orchestral score to help put it all together.

Some passages, I had to go over 20 and 30 times to find an entrance onto
which I could hook my own part. Of particular difficulty were entrances
that had to be made after several measures of rest, for in such places
I find that the pulse is easily lost track of.

I estimate that when I bring this particular 15 minute work to the point
where I am ready to play it at first rehearsal after the first the year,
I will have spent a total of 40-60 hours of preparation, planning, listening,
rehearsing, practicing, etc. And then, the orchestral rehearsals begin.

I am one of about 100 who will go through some variation of this labor, to
say nothing of the conductor who must undergo a more rigorous effort than
any of us. If during some maddeningly difficult passage I screw up, only
I will know about it. But if the conductor screws up some metrically
complex passage, everyone in the San Jose area will know about it in 10
minutes.

All of this kind of effort, it seem to me, work against the performance of
new works, no matter how interesting and how effective musically. Given
my druthers, I would rather do a Brahms symphony any day, because I don't
have to spend hardly any time preparing for that. Like many of you I've
done the Brahms symphonies enough times that they are second nature.

But Chinary Ung's Grand Sprial (a very interesting work by the way) is
going to find difficulties getting into the repertoire, because of the
extraordinary effort and cost in involved in mounting it.

And I have spoken above only about the real costs of simply learning the work
in preparation for a rehearsal. There are the added costs of extra musicians
(it requires a very big orchestra), rental of music, etc., etc., etc.

So if you were a music director scheduling a season, which work would you
select, given all the financial parameters involved: Brahms 1 or Ung's
Grand Spiral? And this says nothing about audience's tendencies to avoid
the new and contemporary sphere of music. Even if the average audience
would love to hear new works, the cost of mounting them in terms of individual
and combined preparation time, speak against them.

The bottom line is this: contemporary music may be sight readable for the
genius, but for most of us, the preparation time simply is not worth the
effort involved. We are payed too little for the work effort; i.e., 40-60
hours of personal preparation, plus 4-12 hours of orchestral preparation,
plus 2 or 3 performances of the work for about $300 on an average is a poor
return on one's investment. For a 75 hour investment of one's time and talent,
there should be a return of $8,000-$10,000. This amount is absurd of course,
but what is 75 hours of a professional's time worth? And it is not likely that
I will ever play the work again in my lifetime. Therefore the 75 hours cannot
be amortized over 10 or 20 years of performances.

For a Brahm's symphony, it is profit every time I play it.

I have deliberately avoided the issue of like or dislike of contemporary
music. It is not really central to the economic argument. It is rather
that contemporary music cannot justify a sufficient number of performances
over the years to pay for the time needed to learn the music.

I can think of a dozen pieces over which I have struggled over the last 20
years and most of them have been performed once, maybe twice, in this time
frame: Alban Berg's violin concerto and chamber concerto are leaders in this
pack. But there are even works of masters such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg,
and other that are also difficult to justify economically.

Does anyone have another view they might share with me? Is this view too
personal and parochial? Are there factors beyond cost that I have not
covered? I don't want to post this matter on another board before thinking
it out carefully.

====================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
====================================