In Sunday's Spotlight section, my column is about my recent trip to New York City to attend the National Endowment for the Arts classical music/opera institute. We covered lots of issues during the 10 days, and I wanted to at least touch on some of them in digest form. Some I'm sure I'll be pursuing for future stories, and others I just wanted to pass along.
Plus, I wasn't going to let you get away without me rhapsodizing about my list of all the Broadway shows I saw. More on that at the end of the post. First, about the music:
DIMINISHING SUPPORT?
Essentially, we're coming off an era in which there was unprecedented broad financial support for the arts from government and foundations. The Ford Foundation alone, with its historic gifts to orchestras in the 1960s, was almost singlehandedly responsible for creating a new "musician class" in which players in medium-sized cities were actually able to make decent livings. This was a major point emphasized by the institute's co-director, Joseph Horowitz, who wrote the book "Classical Music in America." (Some people say, in fact, that there are too many orchestras playing in venues that are too large -- creating an oversupply of product.) Now foundations like Ford are shifting priorities away from classical music. To survive in the future, orchestras will have to find more individuals to support them rather than institutions.
COMPARISON WITH VISUAL ARTS
Andras Szanto, another of the institute's co-directors, has an extensive visual-arts background. (He helps run a Web site titled Artworldsalon.) He pointed out one day that there are four groups that are basically able to make a go of it as visual artists:
- A small percentage of successful commercial artists whose works command decent prices.
- Young people who do it for a while.
- Wealthy people who are able to afford to do it.
- Academics who straddle the line between working artists and the Academy.
Each of these groups come with their own disadvantages: commercialism, ignorance, snobbery, the stodginess of tenure. Szanto suggested that these categories could be adapted to classical musicians as well.
A NATIONAL STYLE?
Horowitz asked: Why didn't the United States develop its own national style in terms of classical music? Our repertoire today consists of mostly a European influence. If you'd told Americans a hundred years ago that this would be the case -- that when people today went to hear orchestras play that they'd still mostly be listening to European composers -- they would have been surprised.
This is especially true when it comes to opera. Yes, there are English language operas that are performed. But the vast number are still European, and they're still from the "Long 19th Century." A possible recent culprit: Supertitles made it much easier for people to enjoy operas in other languages. On one hand, supertitles increased audiences -- but they killed the chance for English-language opera to really take hold.
SPECIAL SPEAKERS
One of the highlights of the institute was getting to hear noted musicologists speak, including Elaine Sisman and Karen Henson of Columbia University, who talked to us about the structure of Mahler's 4th Symphony and the history of opera, respectively, and Judy Clurman, the director of choral activities at Juilliard and Audra McDonald's former vocal coach. ("I used to get on her so much!" Clurman said of McDonald.) For our singing lesson, we learned the parts to "Somewhere" from "West Side Story," which we went on to see on Broadway.
WRITING GROUPS
It's one thing to talk about writing, and it's another thing to actually do it. We broke into writing groups and rotated through three different instructors for three different deadline assignments. In my case, I wrote for Joe Horowitz; Justin Davidson, classical music critic for New York magazine; and Dan Wakin, classical music reporter for the New York Times. It was a privilege to have my copy shredded by such distinguished editors!
FIELD TRIPS
We visited WNYC radio, the New York Times, New York City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera and Carnegie Hall for tours and chats with various personages. Most entertaining: the Carnegie Hall tour, where we learned that many of the performers over the years have been incredibly nervous just before going onstage.
BLOGS
We talked a lot about blogs, of course, which is fitting, since you're reading one right now. Anya Grundmann, the third co-director of the institute, is in charge of the impressive music site at National Public Radio, and she filled us in on a lot of the cool projects that her staff has been working on. (You should check out a series titled Tiny Desk Concerts, in which musicians are captured on video conducting extremely informal concerts at the NPR offices. What a great idea!) A significant number of the institute participants were classical music bloggers. (An example is Zach Carstensen, who runs a very fine blog for Seattle called The Gathering Note). Blogs have exploded in popularity, no question about it. We met Jeremy Denk, a pianist with a popular personal blog, and Alex Ross, the New Yorker's classical music critic, who just moved his blog under the umbrella of his magazine.
IMPACT OF TECHNOLOGY
Speaking of Ross, one thing he talked about was the fact that classical music has been dramatically affected by technology. Most of the time people listen to music by themselves, whether it's in their living rooms or car, and they tend to treat a concert experience as if they're still having that solitary experience. In other words, people tend to have individual reactions to a performance. It's rarer to have an electric, communal concert experience.
SACRALIZATION
This is a biggie, and one I plan to address in a future story. Somewhere along the way, classical music became sacralized -- in other words, people turned it into something sacred. That's how we ended up with all these rituals for a "proper" listening experience, whether it be holding our applause between movements or demanding that pieces be played a certain way because "that's how it's done." (Technology has had a huge influence here, too, because recordings of certain performance practices tend to be so dominant that they quash other ways of doing things.) In addition, advances in recording technology allow individual notes to be replaced in a track so that there never need be a mistake. As our ears grow ever more conditioned to "perfect" playing, we become less tolerant of live music that takes risks.
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PHOTOS
In front of the New York Times.
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In a private concert for us at WNYC, pianist Jeremy Denk played the Ives Piano Sonata No. 1.
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Vocal coach Judy Clurman teaching us how to sing.
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The group in front of Carnegie Hall. We heard pianist Murray Perahia perform Chopin's Etude in C-sharp Minor.
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New Yorker classical music critic Alex Ross.
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For our last night, we went to Le Poussin Rouge, a trendy new spot in New York's Greenwich Village to hear small musical groups. (There's a two-drink minimum!)
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MY BROADWAY LIST
Now, finally, I'll share my Broadway experiences:
"The Understudy": A new play by Teresa Rebeck starring Justin Kirk of "Weeds" and Mark-Paul Gosselaar playing a second-tier action-movie star (which was kind of funny because he really IS a second-tier action-movie star). Pleasant but not too memorable.
"West Side Story": The Broadway revival. Nice choreography and acting, but the singing was only so-so. (And the amplification system was terrible.)
"Next to Normal": I saw this wonderful musical Off-Broadway, and I wanted to see the Broadway version. Alice Ripley is, as they say in "title of show," simply "fierce." Powerful, profound, moving, emotional -- a significant experience.
"Broke-Ology": Nathan Louis Jackson's play about a struggling African-American family was refreshingly complex.
"Finian's Rainbow": I just had to see this revival, because I was in this show in high school. (I played the Second Sharecropper.) What a strong production: bright, cheery, tuneful, perfectly scaled, sweetly imagined. Kate Baldwin, as the melodious Sharon, delivered the most exquisite version of "How Are Things In Glocca Morra" I've ever heard. A gem. I loved it.
"Fela!": A contemporary musical about the life of Fela Anikulapo-Kuti, the groundbreaking African composer and performer. I saw this blend of jazz, funk and African rhythm and harmonies at a preview performance, and the version I saw had a work ahead of it in terms of crafting a coherent, emotional life story. But the dancing was wonderful.
"Billy Elliot: The Musical": This is the hard-to-get-ticket on Broadway these days, and I lucked out by scoring two prime orchestra seats at the box office a few days before the performance. The staging of this show is sheer artistry -- from the finesse of the choreography, which integrated simultaneous storylines in a way I've never quite seen before, to the explosive dancing, and of course the gob-smack emotional impact of the storyline. Very, very sweet.
"Toxic Avenger: The Musical": Every time I go to New York I vow to seek out a weird musical -- and I found my match in this musical adaptation of the movie cult classic about a New Jersey schmo who falls in a vat of toxic waste and turns into an unlikely superhero. Never before have I sat THIS close at a show -- second row -- and I could see every stringy green bit of hair on the head of the "hero." The songs were just so-so, but the staging and energy were formidable.
What a great experience (especially the shredding experience)! Re why an American style has not emerged: long version would be 10 doctoral dissertations. Short version: living composers both in the U.S. and Europe in the 20th century lost the audience in at least two ways: 1) dumbing down of the audience as a result of failures in the education systems and the rise of pop music; 2) the turning toward the intellectual and the experimental on the part of the composers. The music is not accessible on a first hearing like a McDonalds jingle or a Hannah Montana song. However, this does not translate to a lack of American style--it just means that very few people have heard the various American styles that have emerged (including minimalism and post-minimalism (Terry Riley and John Adams resp.)). Further, there are a number of American composers (besides Riley and Adams) who were leaders in Western composition in the 20th c. including Elliott Carter and Milton Babbitt.
For local music criticism, see Music Critic Fresno.
Interesting points, George. Do you foresee a swing in the pendulum in contemporary composition from an emphasis on the intellectual to an emphasis on accessibility/emotion? And here's something I've often wondered as well: There's been lots of research into music and the brain. I'm wondering if what scientists have learned in terms of the appeal of certain musical experiences will impact contemporary composers.
Composers moving toward the emotional and away from the intellectual has already happened. Seems to me that where composers are headed is away from the heady and romantically emotional toward the entertaining. After all, in America, music is entertainment more than it is anything else. That's why "Beatles meet Fresno Phil" sells a lot of tickets--it's entertaining (I guess--it's apostasy to me). However, the richness that I experience with music has little to do with entertainment and everything to do with the abstract realization of a broad array of human experience and creativity.
On a side note--the fact that composers have moved toward an emotional connection with the audience is not a wildly popular public move. Since the early 20th century, composers work largely in an ivory tower, and the public doesn't even know they exist unless they are writing movie scores.
Finally, any scientific formula that defines the appeal of a given melody in meaurable terms is way out of bounds and should be destroyed immediately.
I saw the Understudy too.. And i thought it was hilarious.. and Mark-Paul Gosselaar is a television star... I'm not sure he's done action movies.. I loved the understudy!!
For the first time ever. There so much I want to say, I'm not even going to post because I could write a book on why I think classical music is in the position it is in at the moment.
just a few words that provoke many thoughts in my mind about this subject:
Venezuela
Gustavo Dudamel
Beatles are not good for classical music
Oh, I can't help myself. I'll be quick and not stay on my high horse too long.
a quick thought.
In the world of "my orchestra kid plays better than yours", Venezuela is KICKING OUR ASS RIGHT NOW. Yes, Venezuela.
Maybe we need to look a bit at what they're doing with music and the arts.
I have strong opinions on where I think classical music needs to go in this country, and it does not include having "light classical" concerts just to sell more tickets.
I admit I sound a bit old and stodgy for someone who plays rock and roll on a violin, but its where I stand.
I'd love to hear more, Patrick.
What frustrates me about arts education is that it seems so many Americans are resigned to our system being underfunded. They hear about young wonders like Dudamel and the Venezuelan philosophy that nurtured him and say, "Well, that's great for them, but we just can't afford it." It's this resignation to diminished expectations that really scares me in this country.
As for light classical concerts and Beatles gimmicks, I'm not as opposed as you -- part of me thinks that if it pays the bills, it has its uses -- but I also think there's a danger at creating an "anti classical music" sentiment among certain patrons. They'll go to a concert if it has a pop/rock connection, but woe to a program that actually explores the richness of the symphonic form.
On a positive note, the Fresno Philharmonic is holding a family concert this Friday night called "Tchaikovsky Discovers America." During the day, the Phil is bringing in a bunch of schools for special performances. Just think of the connections that will be made.
Heya Mr. Munro, I've been enjoying your New York stories both in print and in the blog here. You bring up all kinds of interesting questions about the Arts.
First off, I just wanna toss some qualifiers into your paragraph about which groups of people can make The Arts work for them. (I believe it applies whether you are an actor, painter, musician, or whatever).
You listed the dangers of each group respectively:
" commercialism, ignorance, snobbery, the stodginess of tenure"-----just wanted to emphasize that these are possible pitfalls rather than inevitable fates. I know you didn't mean they were; I'm just sayin'.
One thing I've learned along the way is that creative people need to be very creative, not just in their Art, but in how they order their life in order to allow their Art to exist.Whether you are a student, a teacher, a bricklayer or one of the lucky few who can finance their life completely from their Art, one has to be very creative in how they set up their lives so that there is time, funding and an audience for one's work.----hard stuff indeed without a long-list of financial helpers, whether it's the King of France, a government grant or the paying public.
Secondly----Classical Music.
It is such a terribly foreign language to most people. The more one is familiar with the language, the more one can 'dig it.' School music programs are not what they once were. Kids do not know this language. This is why I applaud any and all efforts that the Fresno Phil and other groups have done to involve and intrigue kids. Cliche', but true: they are our future.
I know I didn't even touch upon the Europe-centric/19th C.-centric nature of most classical programming, but maybe if classical music was a integral part of our culture, it might foster more local composers, etc.
Hello Donald.
I just wanted to say thanks for sharing with us tonight, at Fresno Pacific. It was interesting to hear about your job, and get a little peek into the world of writing reviews. What a great blessing it must be to get paid for writing about what you love.
Thanks for the scoop on all the Broadway shows you saw. It was good to know just some of what's out there. I too am a fan of musical theater, and am planning to teach drama to high school students when I graduate from FPU, but regrettably have never been to a Broadway show, or New York. I will be looking foreward to reading your reviews, so I can "see" the vicariously through you.
Hi Maureen, thanks for the comment! I enjoyed talking to your Fresno Pacific class.
I encourage you to check out some more local theater and let me know what you think on this blog.
I don't have a problem with underfunding art. Do it on your own time. No one gives a crap. We need scientists and engineers, not wankers.
as they say: lmao.
Donald, I just wanted to say what a great post you put up, touching on a few ideas but really summing up one thought well.
I felt like I shared a bit in your experience of New York.
Thanks again for posting this one up, it was much needed.
Donald: I'm "cutting" this one out, "framing" it and putting it up in my studio. Very New-York-Times-ish/clear representation of the power of music, it's international positive effects, and our humble Fresno Bee Arts Rep. Thank you for the complete (in a nutshell) educational documentation of this fabulous trip; enjoyed the photos, virtual travel experience and critiques. Superb.