Klarinet Archive - Posting 000290.txt from 1994/11

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Contemporary orchestral music
Date: Mon, 21 Nov 1994 08:43:21 -0500

> Mr. Leeson's statement about contemporary music seems to ignore the fact that
> there is a lot of good quality contemporary music out there which does not
> require mega-hours of rehearsal and would be accepted by most audiences. I
> fear there is too much generalization about new music. Much of it is
> difficult, much of it is not. Much of it would please an average audience,
> much of it would not.

Jim Sclater correctly comments on the fact that I was generalizing. I live in
a rather musically conservative area of the U.S. and we just don't do very much
in terms of contemporary music, which is why I was asking my colleagues on
the board what their thoughts were in this regard.

But in the last 15 years, whenever we have done a contemporary work, it has
presented exactly the problems of which I spoke earlier; i.e., large and
expensive instrumentation, mega-hours of personal and then orchestral
rehearsals, indifferent audiences, etc. And most of all, the feeling,
after it was all over, that it was financially unproductive for everyone,
particularly me. I now know a work that I will probably never do again
in my lifetime.

I wish that we were doing more contemporary music that did not require
such efforts to mount, and that may be the fault of whoever it is that
is selecting our repertoire. But no matter whose fault it is, it is
what is happening. I was not being critical of contemporary music, only
speaking of the environment within which we are performing it.

I can also see (but not understand) the attitudes of people who receive
scores for consideration. When the see something that appears traditional,
their reaction is something like "Looks like Brahms or Hindemith. If I
want music that looks and sounds like Brahms or Hindemith, I'll choose
Brahms or Hindemith. If I do something contemporary, it has to have
SHOCK value."

Or even worse: "Last piece of contemporary music that we did sounded
like Brahms or Hindemith and it was a failure. I won't do that again."

But whatever the reasons, contemporary music is not getting the hearing
that contemporary music got when, for example, Beethoven was alive. They
did very little BUT contemporary music then and most of it never
succeeded. What one dozen works of contemporary literature have
been written in the last 20 years that have remained in the orchestral
repertoire or are likely to remain in the orchestral repertoire? This
is not a criticism but rather an inquiry as to what is happening, why
it is happening, and how we, as performers, can influence the situation.

I gave what I thought was an important reason for the problem; i.e., the
high cost and low return phenomenon, both personally, and collectively.
Certainly something is wrong somewhere? We are curators of museums more
than introducers of new music, in the main that is.

Just some food for a discussion of an important topic; that's all.