The Monday, March 22nd Philadelphia Inquirer contains commentaries about
the 100th anniversary season of the Philadelphia Orchestra which I think
reflects several areas under debate on this List.
CRITICISM:
Bernard Jacobsen, a music critic and former program annotator and
musicologist for the orchestra, under the sub headline '"Newish" works are
nothing new for Philadelphia' is critical of the plans for the recently
announced season.
In essence, Mr. Jacobsen's notes the season is not as bold as appearances,
nor as audiences (and subscriber's) fear. "The season will be stuffed with
such pieces - many of them audience favorites by now - as Bela Bartok's
Concerto for Orchestra, Debussy's La Mer ... Even Arnold Schoenberg
and Anton Webern, high priests (in some ears) of the cacophonous, are
represented only by thoroughly approachable works that predate their
conversion to the knotty serial technique."
He goes on. "Modern, after all, need not mean alien. Composers today
are writing works accessible to the general listener, and two such works
that have triumphed around the world - Henryk Gorecki's lugubrious Symphony
No. 3 and H.K. Gruber's wildly entertaining Frankenstein!! - make welcome
first appearances on the 1999-2000 schedule. It is vital that audiences
make the acquaintance of such pieces, and also of pieces that pose a
modicum of difficulty to the first-time listener, if audiences are not
to decline into the sort of passive, habit-dominated concertgoing that
relegates a great art to the status of mere entertainment."
He states that Muti better represented this attitude, takes as
representative the 1989/90 season, and compares it to the recently
announced programs for the 1999/2000 season:
1999/2000 1989/90 Muti season
works by living composers 8 14
works from the last 50 years 17 20
world premiers 2 (2) 5 (3)
Philadelphia Orchestra premiers 12 15
works Philadelphia composers 2 5
() PO commissions
Certainly the way this upcoming season is being advertised on the local
radio is, "Come here the nice sounding, entertaining music." Subscriptions
in Philadelphia are falling.
Jacobsen continues: "It is now in the cards that the subscription rate
come September will fall below 50 percent for the first time in many years.
If that happens, it will be in reaction to a season made up largely of 80
year-old war-horses, in which not one of the 62 works hitherto commissioned
and premiered by the Philadelphia Orchestra is to be heard. The statement
being made is not, "This is what we brought into being" but "This is what
we watched from the sidelines." It that really the way to celebrate a
glorious legacy?"
ORCHESTRA VIEW:
Paul Horsley, current program annotator and musicologist of the
Philadelphia Orchestra, under the sub headline 'Season dedicated to a
century of memorable music' responds that this upcoming season consists "..
wholly of music from 'it's' century."
"Here at the orchestra, we all bent over backwards to avoid the label
"20th-century music," for fear that its negative connotations of
squeak-blatt cacophony would terrify the faithful. Some Philadelphians
were frightened anyway, and the headlines in the Inquirer didn't help.
"In all this commotion, an essential point is being overlooked. The
orchestra's ambition in its centennial season, which happens to coincide
with the end of the century and millennium, is in fact larger and more
subversive than anyone might have imagined. Our goal, quite simply, is
to redefine 20th century music.
"Let me explain what I mean. Sawallisch and his artistic committee had
to choose from one of two approaches. The most obvious angle would have
been to build a season that paid dutiful lip-service to every school and
"ism" of the century, with representative works from various trends of
dodecaphonism, impressionism, '20s expressionism, '30s neoclassicism, 60's
avant-garde, minimalism and so forth. Music history 101.
"The other approach, more interesting and more gutsy, is to take a point
of view and stick to it...
"...it turns out that for the past 100 years the Philadelphia Orchestra
presented an astonishing amount of the very music that is most likely to
last into the next century."
Finally,
"All of these are music of the 20th century - and that is the orchestra's
point. Our wandering century was not just about cacophony and dissonance
and expressionist angst. It was about music that an average listener can
hear and enjoy and understand. This is the century that the Philadelphians
celebrate, and it seems more relevant now that ever before."
I think these two positions are at the heart of much of what I have read
on this list about disappearing CM record sections, orchestra management
decisions, etc. One view to help listeners grow and better appreciate
music, another; 'how to survive until tomorrow so give them what they
want'.
For me, music is both an intellectual as well as an emotional experience,
and the intellectual can be more challenging. It takes me more listening
practice, but often to very great satisfaction both intellectually and
emotionally. There is much music I listen to today, that I once would have
turned away from. I believe my listening ability has been improved hearing
music at concerts I would not have chosen, but much has also been from
leaving on a radio station when I haven't been particularly interested, and
finding something interesting.
So, I very much agree with Mr. Jacobsen's view that audiences must be
challenged if the art of music is to be more than 'mere entertainment'.
And it seems to me the musical Phillies are more worried about money (e.g.
subscriptions, etc.) and correcting Muti's programming efforts than with
developing an audience. If I represent many listeners, this does not bode
well for classical music. Where will the new audiences come from? How will
audiences for new music be developed? How will those of us who do enjoy a
wide range of music be exposed to what is new? Or, are we list members
already dinosaurs?
"Tom Connor" <[log in to unmask]>
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