I’d like to draw attention to four of the public responses to my recent blog on the “Orchestra Gap,” in which I observe among the younger members of major American orchestras “diminished motivation: as if the music fails to impel a commanding physical and emotional response.” Two of the responses are from senior orchestral musicians. The third is from a prominent music educator, the fourth from a conductor. I append them in full below. These are excerpts:
One of the orchestral musicians writes: “I have to agree that today’s American orchestral musicians (strings, primarily) lack engagement and involvement. . . . The top American orchestras feel that their ‘phone-it-in’ level of play is quite good enough for the job. . . . The BSO [Boston Symphony] has been like this for decades. . . . I fought this, myself, from my corner of the string section. I didn’t believe in it.”
The music educator writes: “I can tell you that in my training as a string player in the 80s and 90s, the biggest compliment one could give or get was ‘that’s so clean!’ Everyone listened to and wanted to sound like an engineered commercial recording. It only got worse. I think today’s string player accuracy–as playing machines, instrument operators–is without comparison in the history of music . . . No surprise that the current generation is incapable of lilting the second beat of a waltz.”
I hear this sort of testimony all the time, but always in private. Teachers of dance and theater say the same. The topic is perilous. It is no wonder that the conductor Kenneth Woods, with whom I participated in the podcast embedded above, felt impelled to preface our exchange as follows: “This is a pretty intense conversation about some challenging topics in orchestral life. The casual listener dropping in or out could be forgiven for taking something out of context and thinking either of us is begin unfair . . . We think it’s worthwhile to make clear that this is a discussion about how we create an orchestral culture where as many orchestral musicians as possible are able to express as much of their artistry and humanity as possible.”
A necessary question is: Are there remedies? And a necessary starting point is to acknowledge that people growing up in today’s world face unprecedented challenges to personal expression. Social media, cell phones, AI – all of it impels a moment-to-moment existence that’s anathema, both emotionally and intellectually, to sustained immersion in a Beethoven symphony. On top of that, and for the same reasons, cultural memory is shot – the younger you are, the less you’re likely to know about yesterday or the day before.
In my podcast with Ken, we ponder certain corrective strategies. We talk about instrumental pedagogy. We talk about the audition process. We wonder out loud about whether the study of historic recordings could play a bigger role – not only in classrooms, but (unthinkable thought) in rehearsals.
At the very end of the conversation, I found myself referencing the engaged orchestral musicians I cherish at Ken’s Colorado Mahlerfest and in Delta David Gier’s South Dakota Symphony (which you can see performing Mahler here). I share these further observations:
The members of both orchestras are self-selected. When musicians travel to Boulder or Sioux Falls to play the big symphonies of Mahler or Shostakovich, it’s not for the fee. They’ll tell you that it’s for the vibe. The players exude pride and excitement. In Europe, think of Ivan Fischer’s hand-picked Budapest Festival Orchestra, almost all of whose members are Hungarians. Or the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, with a summertime crop of motivated players from top ensembles. I’m not comparing these four orchestras in caliber; I’m comparing them in attitude.
As I’ve often written in this space, the nine core members of the South Dakota Symphony, comprising a string quartet and wind quintet, are the happiest musicians I have ever encountered in a professional American orchestra. They perform 100 times a year. They are basically self-governing. Their assignments include working with youngsters on Indian reservations throughout the state. For them, membership in an orchestra isn’t a gig. Rather, they are vital members of a cultural institution serving a distinctive community.
Decades ago, I briefly taught at the Manhattan School of Music. My students were enrolled in a two-year graduate-level sequence tailored to aspirant orchestral players. I shared historic recordings. I lectured on the history of the American orchestra. Most in the class participated without evident enthusiasm. A minority refused to countenance the reading and writing assignments (“That’s not what we’re here for”). Another minority, perhaps half a dozen, found the recordings and readings revelatory.
One day, Larry Tamburri visited my class. At the time, he was Executive Director of the New Jersey Symphony, where he had to a remarkable degree empowered the musicians as institutional partners. Larry drew two circles on the blackboard, one big and the other small. The small circle, he explained, described the traditional role of the orchestral musician: rehearsing, performing, and that’s it. The larger circle described the kind of musician he needed for his orchestra: a full participant in the life of an arts organization. My students remained silent. He’s telling you what I’ve been talking about for the last two months, I said. What do you think? A bassoonist raised his hand. What’s you’re talking about, he offered, is something we can think about later. Right now, our focus is how to excel as instrumentalists and how to win an audition.
Ken Woods has just posted a follow-up to our podcast here. One thing he talks about is how actors are trained to study and internalize a text, to understand the state of mind and back-story of the characters they enact. Musicians can learn from that practice, he suggests.
I here append the four comments referenced at the top of this blog:
From a prominent American music educator:
I can tell you that in my training as a string player in the 80s and 90s, the biggest compliment one could give or get was “that’s so clean!” Everyone listened to and wanted to sound like an engineered commercial recording. It only got worse. I think today’s string player accuracy–as playing machines, instrument operators–is without comparison in the history of music; clean and absolutely faithful to every detail of the score edition in front of them. (I was once thrown out of a lesson for trilling at a cadence in a Handel sonata. Not before my teacher scolded, “Great! now you are Handel!” He always demanded “absolute fidelity” to the score.) No surprise that the current generation is incapable of lilting the second beat of a waltz. It goes against their training. Fidelity to the written score has been drilled into every fiber of their being (that is not distracted by social media). The faster and cleaner the better. The score is not regarded as a guide but a dictator of the composers presumed intentions. (Never mind that many scores are far removed from the composer, surviving only in copyists hands and musicologists’ best guesses.)
From “James”:
I have to agree that today’s American orchestral musicians ( strings, primarily) lack engagement and involvement. This has been cultivated to a great degree because of the wrong-headed notion that movement in one’s playing is a distraction to one’s colleagues, and that it is for the conductor alone to provide “the dance”.
The Berliners would scoff at that.
What they don’t understand is that a withholding of a show of involvement too often translates to actual non-involvement and manifests itself in the sound and energy produced. The top American orchestras feel that their “phone-it-in” level of play is quite good enough for the job. They are right about that to some extent. But it is the “edge of the seat” quality in the performance that is rarely reached. Yes, the “good enough” level is higher than it’s ever been. But if colleagues are “teaching” the new hires that “this moving thing is just not what we do here”, then the enthusiasm they had upon entry gets quashed quite rapidly.
The BSO has been like this for decades. The string players have effectively worked this (obvious to the audience) physical withholding of engagement into their performing ethos. I fought this, myself, from my corner of the string section. I didn’t believe in it.
Audiences listen with their eyes perhaps as much as with their ears, and now maybe moreso in this era of visual overload. I once had a visiting conductor stop me as I was exiting the stage after a rehearsal to tell me that he appreciated my contribution to the music making and that he looked to me (specifically) quite often for reinforcement amongst the sea of tepid responses. It was the sole acknowledgement of my work in a 35 year career.
I have often thought that the first American orchestra to shed the shroud and Berlin-ize itself will have audiences flocking there.
From “Doublerdad”:
I am an orchestra musician in my 70’s but still working. I often feel like the last railroad lookout in the caboose…obsolete and irrelevant. It’s a long trend and Covid was the finishing blow.
From the conductor John Welsh:
When I was younger I soon discovered the difference between American and European orchestras as I was listening to comments from members of a major European orchestra (not the Berlin but an orchestra that I prefer over it). A group of string players (violinists even!) were discussing in a very positive and enthusiastic way their performance that evening. The comments were about how well the orchestra played and complimentary on their colleagues contribution to the effort. There might have been suggestions (NOT criticisms) on what could have been done differently but said in sincere interest of making the music better. In American orchestras (this is a gross generalization) what is said by many of the members is often despairingly said about other colleagues, the conductor or the job itself.
STYLE – it seems that in this country it is rarely taught! I once was doing a complete performance of the Vivaldi Seasons with a very up and coming violinist with New York management. The discussion of the difference in approach to Vivaldi versus Mozart or Beethoven came up. There wasn’t any reaction from the soloist so I asked what her prominent teacher had told her. The answer was that it had never been mentioned. Once in a conducting workshop the student was doing a Mendelssohn work and treating it as if it was Beethoven. I asked the student if there was any difference between a forte in different composer’s works. The answer was a forte is a forte. I was fortunate to have a teacher that not only discussed the conceptual differences between Bach and Debussy but gave me the technique utilized in the production of those different sounds. With those concepts I was able, after studying and observing conductors whose techniques fit different styles, to be flexible enough to utilize those different techniques to produce those different sounds from orchestras. I am thankful for that first teacher that wouldn’t allow me to play unless I understood what environmental effects brought about the music that those composers wrote.
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