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News and Notes: How is a symphony season like a parrot?

By Brett Campbell
March 5, 2013
Music, News & Notes
American pianist Van Cliburn at the peak of his fame in the early 1960s.

American pianist Van Cliburn at the peak of his fame in the early 1960s.

Van Cliburn’s death last week occasioned some nostalgia, because the day he soared to world fame in 1962 might well have been the last time that something that happened in the classical music world really mattered to most people who aren’t already members of the increasingly cozy Classical Music Club. Cliburn’s celebrated victory in Moscow occurred at about the midpoint, or so it seems now, of American classical music’s determined swing away from contemporary culture and toward a slavish obsession with European masterworks by dead composers. The results of that disastrous turn, documented in books by historians Joseph Horowitz and (forthcoming) Greg Sandow, has been the transformation of a once vital art form (during, say, Beethoven’s heyday) to a dusty historical museum (at least on many major orchestra concert programs) increasingly disconnected from today’s culture and facing a future of dwindling audiences.

However, there’s good news on the horizon. Increasingly, more of classical music’s visionaries regard it as a living art form — and an American one. They value the rich symphonic tradition of American music, and believe that it should be nurtured by supporting and commissioning new works by living composers. In fact, the US and the West Coast in particular boast an extensive repertoire of worthy symphonic works that could fill programs for years, and the area teems with young (and not so young) composers eager for an opportunity to write more. Even little Oregon alone has a worthy roster of orchestral works by our own composers, from Lou Harrison to Robert Kyr and Tomas Svoboda, and a nascent alternative classical music culture — and burgeoning young audience — that sees the music as part of a vibrant living tradition.

That seems to be the operating philosophy of the other major West Coast orchestras. Next season’s Seattle Symphony season contains a half dozen premieres and plenty of lovely 20th century fare. In San Francisco and Los Angeles, Michael Tilson Thomas and Gustavo Dudamel (and before him, Esa Pekka Salonen) have made their orchestras more relevant to younger audiences, in part by championing contemporary composers.

Decomposing Composers

Then there’s the Oregon Symphony’s just-announced 2013-14 season, which consists almost entirely  of music by European composers, almost all of whom are — well, we’ve been asked to avoid offensive language on this sensitive subject here on ArtsWatch, so I’ve borrowed some synonyms for the D- word from a famous Monty Python episode. However, compendious as it was, the Parrot Sketch still didn’t provide enough polite substitutes for the offending yet entirely accurate term, so I resorted to translations into the composers’ own language, and another Monty Python sketch, which appears below. Here’s the lineup, with the composer’s nationality and viability status duly noted. To make it easier to see the proportions involved, I’ve starred the names of composers who are still alive and writing. Most of those works are fairly short.

Bartók: Dance suite. He’s resting. EUROPEAN
Beethoven: Piano Concerto no. 3. Stone dead. EUROPEAN
Haydn: Symphony no. 64, “Tempora mutantur.” Six feet underground. EUROPEAN
Johann Strauss, Jr.: Tales from the Vienna Woods. Definitely deceased. EUROPEAN
Verdi: Macbeth ballet music. Tired and shagged out following a prolonged squawk. EUROPEAN
Ravel: Piano Concerto in G major. Bleedin’ demised! EUROPEAN
Berlioz: Romeo and Juliet, orchestral excerpts. Passed on. EUROPEAN
Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 4. Is no more! EUROPEAN
Prokofiev: The Love for Three Oranges symphonic suite. Ceased to be. EUROPEAN
* Lindberg: Violin Concerto WOO HOO! LIVE PEOPLE WRITE CLASSICAL MUSIC TOO! EUROPEAN
Tchaikovsky: Symphony no. 4. Expired. EUROPEAN
Beethoven/Weingartner: Grosse fuge. Gone to meet his maker. EUROPEAN
Bach: Concerto in D minor. Bereft of life. EUROPEAN
Strauss: Burleske. A stiff! EUROPEAN
Beethoven: Symphony no. 8. Rests in peace. EUROPEAN
Grieg: Peer Gynt suite no. 1. Stunned! (Norwegian Blues stun easily.) EUROPEAN
Nielsen: Violin Concerto. Pining for the fjords. EUROPEAN
Strauss: Aus Italien. Pushing up the daisies. EUROPEAN
Dvorák’s Symphony no. 5. Metabolic processes are now history. EUROPEAN
* Pärt: Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, WOOHOO!! EUROPEAN
Shostakovich: Cello Concerto no. 2. Off the twig! EUROPEAN
Haydn: Symphony no. 96. Shuffled off this mortal coil. EUROPEAN
Mahler: Das Lied von der erde. Run down the curtain. EUROPEAN
Takemitsu: From me flows what you call Time. 死んだ JAPANESE
Rimsky-Korsakov: Scheherazade. Joined the bleedin’ choir invisible! EUROPEAN
Brahms’ Double Concerto. Tot. EUROPEAN
Weber: Overture to Abu Hassan. Not at all well. EUROPEAN
Shostakovich: Symphony no. 10. Departed. EUROPEAN
Britten’s War Requiem. Defunct. EUROPEAN
Sibelius Symphony no. 1. Perished EUROPEAN
* Glanert: Shoreless River WOOHOO! 18 whole minutes! EUROPEAN
Wieniawski: Violin Concerto no. 2. Kicked the bucket. EUROPEAN
Debussy: Nocturnes. Mort. EUROPEAN
Haydn: Symphony no. 53. Inanimate. EUROPEAN
Rachmaninoff: Piano Concerto no. 2. мертвый EUROPEAN
Messiaen: The Forgotten Offerings. Lovely plumage! EUROPEAN
Chopin: Piano Concerto no. 2. Martwy. EUROPEAN
Brahms: Symphony No. 4. Extinct. EUROPEAN
* Dzubay: Snake alley WOOHOO! And once lived in Oregon to boot! 660 seconds of actual 21st century music. AMERICAN
Sibelius: Violin Concerto in D minor. Kuollut EUROPEAN
Stravinsky: The Firebird. THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!! EUROPEAN

Le Tombeau de Haydn

Le Tombeau de Haydn

The orchestra also announced its latest recording project. After two excellent disks consisting mostly of much-recorded 20th century English music (and, to be fair, one contemporary American work by John Adams), surely it’s time for the Oregon Symphony to record some Oregon music, no? Nope, this once-a-year (if that) opportunity will be devoted to the works of … Franz Joseph Haydn, 1732-1809.

Now, I yield to no one in my admiration for the Austro-Hungarian father of the symphony; in fact, I actually think he can be taken for granted, since he lacks the dramatic story of his contemporaries Mozart and Beethoven. Along with Jimi Hendrix’s, Haydn’s symphonies always makes me crank the volume knob. I utterly adore his music, live or recorded. And it’s true that American orchestras don’t record it that often. But unless there’s some new interpretive discovery, as happened when the period instrument movement made us hear old music really differently, the world doesn’t necessarily need yet another Haydn symphony recording — certainly not nearly as much as it needs recordings of Oregon composers and other American composers whose works haven’t been recorded, or recorded enough. The Pentatone CD project, like the Carnegie Hall appearance, was a rare opportunity for the Oregon Symphony to bring Oregon music to the national stage — and “our” orchestra refused the chance to boost Oregon’s creative culture, choosing instead to make yet another recording of ancient music that’s easily available in most concert halls and at the click of a button online.

None of this is to say that what the OSO will play next year isn’t immortal music or entirely irrelevant to today’s world. Classics are timeless and universal by definition. The 40-work list contains most of my own very favorite composers and many works of great power and beauty that I recommend everyone hear. It will almost certainly be performed at a quality level that at times approaches that of the very best orchestras in the land. In fact, I think every orchestra concert should have a classic or sometimes even two on it.

Nor is this Euromusiconecrophilia atypical of Oregon orchestras (the Eugene Symphony’s upcoming season has a total of two living composers on it), or most other American classical music institutions, Oregon and otherwise. But as has been pointed out here recently, the Oregon Symphony is the state’s flagship orchestra and receives a substantial public subsidy. The question is: whose flag is it flying?

In fact, whatever criticisms the OSO merits here also applies to most of Oregon’s classical music institutions, so substitute whatever name you like. Apologists for these hidebound institutions usually scatter a few token contemporary works on their schedules, if only to appease uppity critics and enable the institutions to claim, disingenuously, “Why, yes, we do program American music. Here’s an entire hour of it, combined, on the whole season schedule. And we did an Oregon composer, back in ’06, I think it was.” The percentage of minutes per season devoted to contemporary and American works is really what counts, and as the list above reveals, it’s minuscule. It’s not a question of never playing Beethoven and Bartok — the straw man the conservative acolytes always erect, to pose a false choice between contemporary and classical. Every music season must strike a balance between old and new works and audiences. We can and should have both — our “Scheherazade” and Svoboda, our Haydn and our Harrison. It’s a question of proportion. Right now, the balance is almost entirely tilted toward European, post-living music, mostly from the 19th century.

Judging by this schedule and that of seasons past, OSO music director Carlos Kalmar seems determined to build the best imitation early 20th century Viennese orchestra in America. He might well achieve it. But is that what Oregonians want, or that our music culture — and even the symphony itself — needs?

Narrow definition, dwindling relevance

The problem is that this almost exclusively retro view defines classical music, and its audience, in a terribly narrow way. It sends the message that classical music is something by and for dead Europeans, not living Americans — when we know better. The OSO’s season and others like represent a slap in the face to Oregon’s music culture, and thumbing of the nose toward living American classical music.

And it also sends this message: interested in the music of your time? The [fill in name of conservative classical music institution] doesn’t care about you — or at least, not nearly as much as it does the backward-gazing folks who like their composers good and dead and their music at least a century old. Like the music of your own country or your own state? Even though we’re taking a quarter million dollars of your tax money, we — the administrators who program conservative classical music programs –think the people of Oregon need to hear Brahms for the zillionth time more than they need to hear an Oregon composer for the first. Why would those programmers then expect those music lovers – the people most vitally interested in music as part of contemporary culture – to show up for your concerts?

It doesn’t have to be thus. There’s a tremendous repertoire of ambitious, listener friendly American and other contemporary music (past, present, and with support, future) that refutes that pinched, narrow and ultimately self-defeating notion. The OSO has even played some of it, again in single-digit percentages each season.

The Oregonians who patronize even classic theater and dance institutions like the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and Oregon Ballet Theater would never tolerate programming that so dismissively turns its back on works of our own time and our own creative community. Today, Portland Center Stage, the city’s closest theatrical analogue to the OSO, announced its next season. The ten-play schedule includes two living West Coast playwrights, Seattle’s Elizabeth Heffron, and the Bay Area’s Adam Bock. Crucially, they both workshopped their new works at PCS’s admirable Just Add Water Festival. The Oregon Symphony has no such artistic American incubation program. It does pay for an artist in residence, a German cellist who plays music (with the OSO at least) by defunct Europeans. PCS actually does include one of those on its schedule — English guy named Shakespeare. Two of the three members of Fiddler on the Roof’s creative team have died in recent  years, but every other playwright on the schedule is alive and American: Katori Hall (“The Mountaintop”); David Henry Hwang (“Chinglish”); Second City’s Peter Gwinn and Bobby Mort (“Twist Your Dickens”); David Sedaris (“The Santaland Diaries”); Jason Robert Brown (“The Last Five Years”) and Steven Cheslik-deMeyer, Tim Maner and Alan Stevens Hewitt (“Lizzie: The Musical”).

The audiences of Brahms and Beethoven’s time heard mostly works by Brahms and Beethoven and their contemporaries. To a lesser extent, but much greater than Oregon’s, so do today’s classical music audiences in Seattle and LA, whose philharmonic’s recently announced 2013-14 season contains about 10 premieres or other 21st century works, including several by California composers and the long-running Green Umbrella new music series and the return of the amazing Minimalist Jukebox Festival of late 20th and 21st century sounds. The San Francisco Symphony’s just announced schedule includes several premieres (including a couple by long time SF resident Mason Bates, renowned for his fusions of club/DJ sounds and classical music), a local composer residency, and more. The same goes for Marin Alsop, late of Eugene, now bringing her future-oriented vision of American-grown  music to Baltimore and beyond.

Given this disparity, why should the audiences of today’s Oregon’s classical music institutions tolerate our institutions’ rejection of the music of our time and place?

The answer is: they don’t. They stop coming, or never start. Eventually, that indifference will kill the OSO and any other classical institution that fails to meaningfully engage in the creative culture of its own time and place.

When so many younger American listeners feel that classical music has nothing to say to them, that it’s irrelevant to their world, and therefore they stay away in droves, programming like this will not build a new audience, nor will it foment the creation of a new repertoire that could speak to 21st century Americans. Combine that wonderful but non-contemporary music with archaic 19th century performance rituals, intimidating atmosphere, and all the rest, and is it any wonder that so many music lovers don’t believe classical music is for them?

I know that not-for-the-rest-of-us attitude is not true, by the way, though that’s the message these Paleo-programs send. The fine musicians of the symphony and its administrators do want everyone to hear this music as much as we do, and for the same reasons — because we love it. Oregon Symphony concerts strike me as among the less stuffy of those I’ve attended around the country — judged by the extremely narrow standards of the classical music world, at least. I fervently believe that classical music is for everyone, and it’s for today, and tomorrow. But you wouldn’t know it from retrograde programming like this.

When people really cared about contemporary composers: Beethoven's funeral.

When people cared about contemporary composers: Beethoven’s funeral.

Cheating the Future

Our conservative classical institutions’ audience members (the ones who are left) and even some of the musicians will defend these choices, because they’re the ones who are getting exactly what they want: beautifully played old European music by dead composers. I love that music, too, and spend a lot of my days and nights listening to it. But it doesn’t follow that dominating the Schnitzer stage with it is what’s best for Oregon or even, in the long run, classical music itself. We will hear defenses of the status quo because they’re the ones most likely to care enough about classical music to read sites like this. Like our political leaders, they’re just kicking classical music’s audience and relevance crisis down the road, hoping to avoid the impending collapse till after they retire. We will not hear from vast number of potential audience members who I believe would love to hear classical music if it spoke to their time and place and culture — not 19th century Vienna’s. That’s who’s missing from this conversation, and from the seats at classical concerts.

Like other conservative institutions, our backward gazing classical music institutions cheat the future (whether it’s education, the environment, or in this case, the future of classical music) by pandering to the easy pleasures of the present (tax breaks for the wealthy, endless 19th century Euro-repertoire because that’s what the conservative audience wants) instead of investing in the future, whether it’s support for schools or Oregon composers, doing the hard work of pursuing new audiences and new voices rather than following the standard 19th century European playbook. If those of us who love classical music can sometimes seem frustrated by such regressive programming, it’s because we see the future of something we loved being threatened — and seasons like this are slowly going to help kill it.

It’s a good thing this stultifying philosophy didn’t rule in Beethoven’s time, or Brahms’s, or else we’d have much less of their music. Fortunately, the music directors of their era thought contemporary audiences should hear the music of contemporary composers. I wish we could say the same about Oregon’s now.

The OSO schedule and others like it make it painfully obvious how backward-looking many of our major classical arts institutions have become –and as a result how culturally irrelevant they’ve grown since Cliburn’s heyday. The next question is why, and what that means for those who want to see a vibrant living classical music culture in Oregon. We’ll be discussing the reasons why in the next installment of this series on ArtsWatch, stimulated by the spring flowering of new music represented by March Music Moderne, the Music Today Festival, and other promising signs that classical music isn’t just for the dead and European. And we’ll even have thoughts from OSO music director Kalmar and Portland Opera’s Mattaliano, from interviews conducted last year.

I also expect that these issues will arise at Thursday’s opening party/performance/panel discussion for March Music Moderne, which will include a symphony board member. I hope we can all learn more about why Oregon’s programming is so rigidly retro, and what, if anything, can be done about it. I’ll try to incorporate some of that discussion in our next installment. (And if you haven’t read our last one — especially the many thoughtful comments — you’ll find many of these issues are already on the table there.) And then, we’ll lay off the saurian institutions and look to where some hope for Oregon classical music actually beckons. You just won’t find it in our major institutions’ schedules.

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