 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2010-10-06 03:06
JJAlbrecht started an interesting discussion about the Detroit Symphony Orchestra strike. Sylvain started another about Alessandro Carbonare and the Chicago Symphony clarinet auditions. On the surface these two topics don't seem to have much in common, but I'm wondering if the outcome of the DSO situation could have a negative effect on the audition processes in other orchestras (including the CSO) in the future.
Here's why. The Detroit Symphony management, along with demands for pay cuts, also wants the the musicians to take on other duties. I don't think everything has been completely defined yet, but these duties could include teaching, small ensemble performances, library work, public speaking, and fund raising. Many musicians already do these things, but on a voluntary basis. If the DSO management gets its way, these activities would become a required part of the job. Here's a link:
http://www.detroitsymphonymusicians.org/proposalbrevisited.html
I'm sure other orchestras are watching the DSO situation carefully. If DSO musicians end up accepting other mandatory duties, will this become a new trend? Will the ability to perform other jobs become part of a prospective musician's job description? Will a clarinetist who is preparing for an audition also have to go through a formal interview? I can see it now: "Ok, Mr. Carbonare, we were very impressed with your playing, but as you know, performing is only one part of your job description. Tell us a little about your experience working in an orchestra music library." Or: "Mr. Leppäniemi, you play very well, but with our finances so tight, we'll need you to get out there to work the phones for our annual fund raising campaign."
Could orchestra musicians in the future be fired for poor performance in the non-playing part of their jobs? Tenure is slowly disappearing in the academic world, and the DSO management wants to eliminate it. I can imagine this future conversation: management calls in Bob, a twenty-year orchestra veteran, to dismiss him. He's told, "Bob, you've been an important member of our cello section for twenty years. Your musical skills are top-notch, but your evaluation for the other parts of your job are poor. We gave you a fund raising quota of $5,000, but you only raised $2,000. When we sent you out into schools for your required teaching and performances, the evaluations from the students were poor. Your library work has been substandard. We have some very talented young cellists eager for an orchestra position, and they'll cost us less than what we're paying you. Sorry to have to do this, but that's the way it is."
This all sounds strange, but in this economy, nothing is as it was. Unions, including musicians' unions, are struggling. Workers everywhere are being asked to do more for the same or less money.
Post Edited (2010-10-06 03:09)
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Author: William
Date: 2010-10-06 03:35
I see nothing wrong with orchestra members working to support their organization by assisting with administrative or office duties, fund raising activities or performing public relation assignments. The day of walking into a rehearsal and simply getting ones instrument out to play (without having to set up chairs & music stands or pass out music folders--in other words, having it all done for them) may be over as well if the importance of classical music continues decline among the modern public.
The problem with a strike is that the public may decide, "who needs an orchestra, anyhow".
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-06 05:29
I don't see a problem. It's a job, not a bestowal of royalty.
The audition process is already a lousy ordeal that directly and indirectly leads to countless hours needlessly thrown by the wayside. I find it partially to blame for the poor artistic state of many orchestras today. Such "negative impact" would be akin to throwing a couple boxes of sparklers onto a bonfire, in my view.
Besides, if your orchestra is so beholden to the whims of management, its capability for producing good music is likely severely diminished.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Paul Aviles
Date: 2010-10-06 10:12
Military musicians are already living the clarinetguy's strange life.
And if the Washington Post had anything to say about it, we'd all be fired already.
....................Paul Aviles
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Author: sfalexi
Date: 2010-10-06 12:19
Paul Aviles wrote:
> Military musicians are already living the clarinetguy's strange
> life.
>
> And if the Washington Post had anything to say about it, we'd
> all be fired already.
>
>
>
>
> ....................Paul Aviles
>
ROFL! I was JUST about to go there! If it the DSO's propositions become a trend, I guarantee that becoming a military musician will suddenly become a lot more attractive! VERY similar duties with a whole lot more pay and benefits!
Alexi
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Author: clarinetguy ★2017
Date: 2010-10-06 12:40
Very interesting reactions so far!
I was never part of the professional orchestra world. I spent many years in public schools in an urban school district, and learned very quickly that I'd be doing much more than just teaching music classes. I found myself doing everything from fund raising for my programs (although I didn't do as much as many teachers), scoring non-music tests given by the school, attending endless meetings and workshops that had nothing to do with music, setting up sound systems, and subbing for non-music teachers. This last one was hard to adjust to at first. During my music ed training in college, I learned nothing about teaching kindergarten, emotionally-impaired special ed, or sixth grade math. I quickly learned that if subs were unavailable, I could be asked to sub for anything. Refusal to comply was considered to be insubordination. I was once very lucky when an angry special ed student threw a chair in my direction and I got out of the way just in time.
The three of you who responded probably represent a large segment of the public. William might be right when he said:
The day of walking into a rehearsal and simply getting ones instrument out to play (without having to set up chairs & music stands or pass out music folders--in other words, having it all done for them) may be over as well if the importance of classical music continues decline among the modern public.
One possible response might be that professional musicians already spend many hours teaching, often in universities. Music schools love the prestige that these musicians bring. Will we see the day in the future when orchestras try to make musicians take on so many extra duties that there won't be time for them to do much teaching?
None of us know exactly what will happen, but I suspect that the job description of a professional orchestra musician in the future will be quite different from what it is today.
Post Edited (2010-10-06 12:45)
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-06 16:14
The very notion of "professional orchestra musician" makes it sound like a viable career path. It's like going for a job as a professional athlete, except without the great pay and benefits. Shoot for it if you like, but don't bank on it paying the bills. They're essentially cover bands for 100-year-old music.
I'd treat a pro orchestra job as something magical and awesome that might happen to you, not as something to get into quality-of-life squabbles about.
On the flipside, orchestra management should also treat it as something unusual and spectacular they're doing, not just as some failing venture to apply a human resources specialist to.
Any organization that's as entrenched in bureaucracy to have management vs. union squabbles is probably too stale to make good music. Scrapping the organization and starting from scratch when demand is there may not be a bad thing. Like pretty much every musical ensemble that's not an orchestra does.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: GeorgeL ★2017
Date: 2010-10-06 16:37
Quote:
If it the DSO's propositions become a trend, I guarantee that becoming a military musician will suddenly become a lot more attractive! VERY similar duties with a whole lot more pay and benefits!
Are you sure about the pay? Today's NYT article said the DSO players currently make $100K. The orchestra wants to cut them to $70K; the union wants $80K.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-10-06 17:02
>>The day of walking into a rehearsal and simply getting ones instrument out to play (without having to set up chairs & music stands or pass out music folders--in other words, having it all done for them) may be over as well if the importance of classical music continues decline among the modern public.>>
We've just had another example of decline in the Washington, D.C. area. On October 1, the Washington Post ran an article by Sarah Kaufman, "Washington Ballet lacks funds for live orchestra." The article is available online at http://www.washingtonpost.com. Because of a budget shortfall, the Ballet will dance to canned music for this season's full-length "Corasaire" in April and for the obligatory "Nutcracker" in December as well. This announcement isn't just a fund-raising ploy, because the Ballet already used canned music for "Don Quixote" and "Nutcracker" last season.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-06 20:42
But the problem IS that they cost too much. Without donors, most orchestras can't make ends meet even if the halls sell out. Orchestras simply aren't financially viable on their own. Lagging ticket sales just exacerbate the problem.
I'd suggest that so few people care about classical music at least in part because classical music cares about so few people in return. The prevalence of uninspired, phoning-it-in, non-adventurous concerts boggles the mind. It takes all the self-restraint I can muster to keep from screaming "OH, COME ON!!!" from the balcony at most performances of even very fine orchestras.
While it is, on one level, a labor of love, it would take about three seconds to find an orchestral player or ten who have grown weary of their profession to some degree. If you're no longer inspired, taking chances, going out on a limb to make music real, don't come crying to me when your funding dries up.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-10-07 11:47
There've been some innovative efforts to reach out to the public lately and I'll be curious to see whether they attract new audience members. For instance, a few weeks ago, the Washington Opera simulcast "Opera in the Outfield," from Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts into Nationals Park, the butt-ugly but fan-friendly new-ish stadium where the Washington Nationals, whom I've dubbed the (G)nats, play baseball. The stadium has a state-of-the-art screen. People can go watch the opera in casual clothes and eat ball-yard food during the performance. Young kids can run around and play if they get bored. I think it's a great idea.
And, have you noticed how many TV commercials lately feature operatic voices? The commercials are humorous, but the singing isn't entirely parodic: They're good voices.
(The [G]nats finished the season in last place in their division a few days ago. I went to one of their final home games where a mere 22,000 fans watched Atlanta swat the [G]nats 5-0 and I still enjoyed the game, because the absurdly bad team is improving and because everyone on it plays so hard. For instance, you don't see batters dogging it to first base on what looks like a routine fly ball. They're always ready to take advantage if the fielder boots one. Orchestras that snore their way through a repertory of nothing but old chestnuts could learn from this team....)
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: William
Date: 2010-10-07 15:04
On a positive note (no pun, really), there are a couple of orchestral events here in our Capitol City that attract large crowds anually and have been going on for years. One is called "Opera in the Park" and features our Madison Symphony Orchestra. It features opera arias sung by professional vocalists and attracts thousands of fans once every summer. The other features our Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra and is called, "Concerts on the Square". It is a series of concerts held every Wed evening during the summer on the grounds of our Wisconsin State Capitol Building, a beautiful copy of our Nations Capitol. It's attacts thousands of people, some to"sit-down" table meals which are provided by local catering services & resturants--others simply sit on blankets about the capitol grounds. It's programs are televised locally and features serious classical music as well as "pop" selections, often with nationally known soloists. The only minor problems are with occasionaly rainy nights and our unoffical state "bird", the mosquito.
Both local orchestras, the Madison Symphony Orchestra and the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra (totally separate groups) have AFM local 166 negotiated pay scales and seasonal contracts with their respective musicians. While the Chamber Orchestra has had recent disputes with management which resulted in a short-lived strick, both orchestras are currently in good financial shape with annual series of concerts and good audience attendance.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2010-10-07 18:18
EEBaum wrote:
"it would take about three seconds to find an orchestral player or ten who have grown weary of their profession to some degree"
Do you think that IN ANY profession it wouldn't be possible to say the same thing?
I'd say that your expectations aren't very realistic.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-07 22:01
It's not a matter of whether they're realistic. It's a matter of whether people should get all fussy about a musical group going under when said musical group has grown weary of the music they play. Most popular music groups stay together only a handful of years. Why should orchestras be any different? If you really have awesome chemistry and a great vibe, carry on, but if you're just going through the motions, you're just dragging the music down and potentially making the classical scene LESS vibrant.
If a computer scientist grows weary of writing code, he may be a bit less efficient at it, but the job will still get done. If the performers have grown weary of the music they play, the music will still be played, but it will have no excitement, no soul, and at that point I do not fault the public in the slightest for the "declining interest" so often decried here and elsewhere.
"It's a labor of love" and "Oh, sh*t, not f*cking Fantastique again" are very difficult to reconcile.
Perhaps part of the problem is that, with the saturation of performers out there, most people don't land the good symphony positions until they've already burned out on all the rep. Damaged goods before they've even started.
When the music becomes a burden rather than a joy, it shows. I don't want to go to a concert to see people trudge through Bruckner like a 7-year-old through 10 pages of subtraction homework.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-07 22:04
Perhaps, in a more sane world, people would vacate their orchestral seats when they started to lose interest, but given the amount of tooth-and-nail and luck involved in landing those positions, that doesn't happen terribly often, and if it does, it tends to be after several long years of personal artistic decline. For better or worse, the priority becomes "ME playing the clarinet in this group" rather than "someone playing awesome clarinet in this group, and I happen to play awesome clarinet."
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-07 22:06
Last post for now, really...
And I don't begrudge them for holding onto their seats. It's a job, and some people value job security very highly. I just don't sympathize when these same people bemoan the lack of vibrant, appreciative audiences.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: chorusgirl
Date: 2010-10-08 00:11
One of the most interesting things I see, as a middle school music teacher, is how much my students enjoy orchestral and operatic music, when put into context, for them.
A little background into Turandot, and they love listening to Nessun Dorma. Holst's The Planets? They love it. Even something like The Moldau, Eine Kleine Nachtmusik, a Haydn symphony - if there is a little "story" - a twist to get them hooked, they will listen, and find they like it!
I would LOVE to see major orchestras do more outreach into the public schools. Not just the urban schools - frankly, they already have much access. I spent many years working in the NYC public schools, and we were constantly awarded grants from the Midori Foundation, the Met for opera workshops, Juilliard's outreach program, etc.
I now live and work in a rural district about 1 1/2 hours away from both NY and Philly, and I can't get ANYONE interested in a rural district. No amount of grant writing can get these folks to come here. They are losing a great potential future audience.
I think, if opera companies, ballet companies, and orchestras want to survive into the future, they have to reach out - way out, beyond their specific urban enclaves - to the schools, including suburban and rural areas. Partnerships with the schools will sow the seeds for future adults to be interested in the arts again, and to come out and support, through attendance and finance, the arts.
So, doing this type of outreach would also change the job description, beyond adding administrative duties. I think it bears looking into by major musical entities.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-08 01:55
Hear hear! Especially given classical music's status, at least partially, as a preserving-history endeavor, it makes sense to be closely allied with educational institutions.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: vin
Date: 2010-10-08 02:21
Alex-
I don't disagree that some musicians could comport themselves better on stage and be more involved in audience development, however, you're making blanket statements about all orchestra musicians.
You say "most people don't land the gig until they've burned out."
Which specific orchestra musicians are you talking about?
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-08 02:48
The ones I hear playing live and on the radio. Apologies if I can't be more specific, I've just heard way too many phoned-in performances to single one out. Perhaps my standards are too high.
As for specific musicians, friends, and friends of friends. Admittedly, a lot of it is hearsay, but when hearsay comes from lots of different sources regarding lots of different people, you see a trend.
Maybe a good portion haven't burned out right when they get the gig, and maybe burnout isn't a fair term. Routine would be a more appropriate description, where the music isn't exciting, it's just what you're paid to do. I can't blame them, after the 159th time they've played Mahler 1. But I also can't blame the audience for not buying tickets to see an orchestra that is quite unenthused about yet another performance of Mahler 1.
Wandering a bit further from the original topic, I think it's also a matter of complacency. Music is a rare thing, in that there is ALWAYS something more and new and exciting that you can add or change or try a bit differently or go out on a limb for. However, I see a lot of musicians find themselves a comfort zone. Having met all the criteria they once-upon-a-time set for themselves to become "an excellent player," they stay there, in a safe little box, playing well, but rarely offering anything new. The more they stay there, the more samey it gets, the safer, the less risky, the more tame. It's more consistent, yes, and some people value consistency very highly. However, if I want consistency, I'll buy a CD. I want perspective, opinion, response to the conditions of the moment. That's why I go to a live performance. There is risk involved when you leave your safety box, and many seem petrified with the potential to botch a passage, and so rarely risk doing something above and beyond, for fear of messing it up. And so, in interests of self-preservation and a guarantee of pretty-good-ness, the music very often forfeits its chance at greatness, and becomes stale. Over time, it seems to me anyways, that becomes all they remember how to do, with the rare exception of a new or guest conductor/soloist/member jump-starting things.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-08 02:51
I'm also not saying this applies to everyone. There are shining moments where stuff comes together, but these, imho, are WAY too few and far between.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2010-10-08 06:27
Alex- I don't think it's a matter of your standards being too high, but rather perhaps you tastes being a little on the fringe? You speak about the performers needing to always offer something new and exciting and you begrudge what you consider to be routine performances. Fair enough. This is your personal taste, but should you really assume that's what everyone in the audience wants to hear? I think that a lot of audience members actually come to hear the MUSIC rather than the performers. Hearing live music is a different experience than listening to a CD. Naturally the audience want a performance which is technically polished, but do they really want to hear some twisted version of the piece just for the sake of it being new and exciting?
Here's an interesting quote from Ernest Newman, about the way conductors speed up towards the climax of Wagner's Prelude to Tristan, even though Wagner doesn't write any accelerando in the score:
"The Prelude ... is far more tremendous in its tension when the ascent is not hurried in order to get a conductor's effect of 'increasing passion', a cheap showman's trick upon which Wagner used always to pour out his scorn. The last thing he wanted was that his music should reach the hearer not as he had conceived it but as it appears after it has passed through the distorting and sometimes vulgarising medium of a conductor's mind."
In 1852 Wagner wrote to a friend:
"I don't care in the least whether my works are given or not: all I am concerned with is that they shall be performed as I conceived them. Whoever can't and won't do that may leave them alone."
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2010-10-08 07:04
I'm not asking for something new and twisted (though I do usually enjoy that). I'm just suggesting that there is hugely more to explore within the range of "as written" than happens most of the time. In fact, I think a lot MORE can be done within the confines of exactly what's on the page than people do, and that huge unwritten variations in tempo or dynamics seem to be the only tools most groups take.
If anything, I think people go too far in the macro-level of interpretation and not far enough on the micro. Too much big tempo and dynamic changes, too little done with coordinating and experimenting with the huge possibilities inside small confines. When I'm blown away with a group's interpretation of something, it's usually with how much they did with so little.
The most dramatically new and fresh way I can figure to play Brahms' 2nd Sonata, for example, is to be obsessively and even passive-aggressively adherent to every last thing that's written.
As far as I'm concerned, the difference between playing it as written and changing some aspect of it notationally is immaterial. A performance at 96 can be just as stale as one at 144, or just as exciting, and if anything, such dramatic changes from what's written can be distracting if it comes off as an ego trip of someone wanting to "make their mark" or "do something different." If you're going that far, just make Rite of Spring into a jazzy waltz to play at parties (which I've done).
It's what people do with it within the confines of any chosen speed or dynamic that makes the difference. It's more subtle, but the difference between taking chances and risks, stepping out of one's shell, vs. phoning it in and playing it safe is very noticeable, and for me is the difference between an ensemble I'll come back to and one I won't. Not so much stepping out of your shell as in "playing your solo extra loud and obnoxious while bobbing around like a dork." More about being sensitive to the other players' lines, matching stylistic nuances, playing whole note accompaniment patterns in a way that enhances the solo line, giving lines a bit of a forward push or fall backward where necessary, etc. I get a feel of "I play this boring sh*t for a long time and then IT'S MY SOLO SO YOU ALL SHUT UP I'M GONNA BLOW YOU ALL AWAY LIKE I BLEW THE AUDITION PANEL AWAY IN '89 PLAYING IT THIS WAY then I check out for a half hour until my next solo" from a lot of groups. Kills the music.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2010-10-08 13:47
My perception on the reasons for audience loss is a bit different. I'm 62. I was a child during the period when music critics and many musicians believed (or said they believed ... I suspect there was some "Emperor's New Clothes" going on there...) with great fervor that grandpa's music was dead, dead, dead. The serialists had found nirvana. Well, the audience didn't think so. All that transgressive modernity and the bullying behind it probably did have some value in encouraging musicians to try new things, but the fact is that most of the atonal, serialist, aleatory and other experimental music sounded like it was being broadcast undead from the seventh circle of hell.
The fact is that new music in times of yore was no better. Dig up some forgotten scores sometime, as I did when rooting through deceased ancestors' piles of sheet music: Most of that stuff got forgotten because it was crap. But it was a different kind of crap than what we got in the mid-20th century. The earlier crap was bad mostly because it was bland, wallpapery and derivative. It was forgettable, but it didn't make people want to run screaming and never go back to a concert hall again.
In contrast, I think the mid-20th century music drove people out because it was so deliberately abrasive. I had season seats at the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. in the mid-1970s, when Antal Dorati was conductor. He championed new music. Great idea, but what often happened was that the new music sounded like a lot of screeching and popping and hissing, and so the audience attended the traditional half of the program and left the seats empty or even got up and walked out during the new music half.
The people who sat through the whole concert often made snootily disparaging remarks about the ones who didn't. "Philistines" was a popular epithet. But you know -- much as I like the *idea* of the new music, I hated most of it. I don't blame the people who walked out. And to this day, when I talk to people about new classical music, they assume that's what they're going to get, and they're not going to pay good money to get assaulted with that stuff, and I don't blame them, either.
Part of what we need to do now is convince the public that the musical culture has evolved to the point where that bullying has stopped. It might be safe to come back to the concert hall even if you don't recognize every name on the program. "Safe" can be an epithet, of course, but it doesn't have to mean endless repetitions of the Top 40 repertory. It can mean music composed yesterday that sounds like music instead of noise.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Dileep Gangolli
Date: 2010-10-08 13:55
The orchestral industry is changing and will continue to change in huge ways. There may be a handful of orchestras that can continue in the manner of the 80's - 2010, but I doubt even they will not have to make some changes in how the musicians are utilized.
The cross-functional job description that will now apply to the DSO musicians (and the other established orchestras to follow) has always been a way of life for freelancers that make their living through their musical training. For the regional orchestras, this will now be their way of operating if they are to stay relevant to their communities.
Ernest Fleischman, the late executive director of the LA Phil, had forecast this new model several years ago in an address he gave at the Cleveland Institute.
Ironically, what is lagging is the type of training needed to be successful in this New Reality as most of the famous teachers (on any instrument) have never had to make a living in this multi-disciplinary fashion.
I hate to say it, but with US unemployment hovering at 10% (official government numbers), state and local governments carrying interest payments from past deficit spending, and working people in fear of losing their jobs, I doubt any strike attempts by orchestras will be supported by the general public or the local press.
Post Edited (2010-10-08 14:37)
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