Posted by Klaus on March 16, 2002 at 11:53:11:
In Reply to: Re: gubmunt 'poser goes on tirade at concert posted by And this has what to on March 16, 2002 at 10:27:26:
I think it is your mind, that hereby has been demonstrated to have a not too wide scope. So you might not even be able to read this posting to its end far down this page.
One can agree with Joe S in this political and musical views. One can endorse the elegance of his written expressivity. I do neither. Yet I must say, that Joe touches the very roots of music seen in the contexts of our present and future societies.
If we reduced ourselves in this forum to post about which tubas to buy, which tubas that can be bought, lemonizing tubas, fingering tubas, warming up tubists, transporting tubas and tubists, buffing up tubas (and maybe even tubists), then we would reduce ourselves to a non-fertile tubistically-mutual picking of each others belly buttons.
What Joe discusses is the front side of the multigonal coin, which as one of its flip sides has the auditions-rat-race, that is a major topic on this board.
If no interesting music is composed each year for every orchestra, then the terminological entity of the word "orchestra" as we see it today in its multiple incarnations from the top-level (in quality and quantity = ## of members and list-length of potential subs and extras) metropolitan orchestras over regional pro orchestras to the tiniest amateur groups (often on the verge of abusing the orchestra term) will die. The prospects of the length of the agony might be a matter of discussion.
There might be a few museum-orchestras kept alive a bit longer, but they will die because the feeder line of lesser orchestras will no longer be there.
Ives, Stravinsky, Copland, Schönberg, Berg, Ravel, and many more great composers were considered pains in the ears of their contemptorary general public. But there were enough people with ears sufficiently open for the perspectives presented to let their music be carried on.
By principle I am against music being played in pro contexts for terapeutic reasons. We should not let music be played because the composer is a nice guy (and his rich dad being the main sponsor of the orchestra).
But we must give music written with heart and dedication (and out of a qualified level of education) a chance to be heard. There is no other way to judge, which compositions will have a future in the orchestral repertory. And hence to sum up a collective evaluation, whether it is worthwhile to keep up the not exactly cheap orchestral structures.
Unlike Joe I am not prepared to dismiss "government"-founded composers wholesale. I have heard a number of premiere performances. I have never been in doubt, which pieces would survive or not. By the after all limited span of my lifetime, I have been quite precise.
One aspect of that could be, that there are at least two sorts of government"-founded composers: those who compose because their level as scholars have earned them a conservatory/university job. And those who have been begged to take such a job, because they actually wrote real music.
I am sure I have left a lot of open ends in this posting, but I will do some math in form of an equation:
no music written to catch new interest = no orchestras in the long run = no tubists' jobs = no auditions to run for.
Of course there might be some spots within the bands of the armed forces, as those are a part of a respectable government scheme of upholding national traditions, hence national unity, of any given nation. But at least in my country the military tubists have a tendency to fight hard to beat the conservatory guys (a species, which most of them have belonged to themselves) in the orchestral auditions.
Klaus