Since filing a New York Times piece on the perilous state of American classical music 250 years since the nation’s founding, I’ve written five follow-up blogs and participated in a podcast with the conductor Kenneth Woods. The response has been voluminous and informative. The most telling responses have come from conductors and orchestral musicians. Practically without exception, they don’t buy the mantra “orchestras are better than ever.” Rather, they ponder and regret that something has gone wrong. The malaise in question takes many forms, including (I have written) “a disposition of diminished motivation afflicting our most prominent orchestras, as if the music fails to impel a commanding physical and emotional response.”
The weekends’s emails included one from a notable American conductor now in his seventies: William Henry Curry. He writes: “Don’t blame the conductors for the attitude of tenured players who are over-worked and no longer love music.” In fact, all of us – conductors, players, audiences – are victims in common of the Zeitgeist: a growing erasure of the arts is a function of the times in which we live.
The other day I stumbled upon a youtube link to a live Detroit Symphony performance of Mahler’s Fifth from 1959, when this big symphony still seemed new. The conductor was Paul Paray. I listened to the finale. It is the fastest version I’ve ever encountered – and also the most memorable.
For readers for whom Paray/Detroit (1952-1963) may be unknown – this was an orchestra considered by many the supreme “French orchestra” of its time with a style all its own: tactile diction, lean sonorities, limpid textures, brisk tempos, gunshot attacks. In frothy corners of the French repertoire, it was unapproachable. A prime sample of Paray/Detroit at full throttle is this blistering 1958 rendition of Berlioz’s Corsair Overture. In Germanic repertoire, Paray/Detroit is more an acquired taste.
A glance at the finale of Mahler’s Fifth explains why Paul Paray, of all people, would have thought to undertake this five-movement behemoth at a moment when few others were playing it. The music teems with cuckoo cries and childish gambols, with madcap fugatos and darting melodic feints, with prickly staccatisimos and vertiginous ascents – stacked atop one another. Its exuberance is partly a function of sustained foreground hyperactivity. In Paray’s performance, it’s all spectacularly articulate at breakneck speed.. And I might add that the famous Adagietto, coming right before, is remarkably impassioned. (Mischa Mischakoff, presiding over Paray’s strings, was previously concertmaster of Stokowski’s Philadelphia Orchestra and of Toscanini’s NBC Symphony, )
Among the many things that could be said about Paray’s feat, one crowning observation is that a style deeply acquired will prove applicable, and activating, even in music far afield. A supreme example is Yevgeny Mravinsky’s Leningrad Philharmonic (“The World’s Greatest Orchestra”), whose style and sonority were based in Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich – and yet proved irresistible in the symphonies of Anton Bruckner. But what clinches Paray’s achievement is the hunger of his musicians. They are at all times going for broke.
It occurred to me to ask AI how many concerts the Detroit Symphony typically played under Paul Paray. Answer: the season comprised multiple weekly performances of a given subscription program over a period of 24 to 30 weeks. During the 1970s, a 52-week contract was negotiated. That is one reason the Detroit Symphony under Paul Paray sounds hungrier than what we typically hear today.
Which brings me to the main topic of this essay: the Ford Foundation, which in 1966 initiated an $80.2 million infusion (about $830 million today) for orchestras. A central goal was to insure a “living wage” for orchestral musicians by assuring fulltime employment. The outcome was lengthened symphonic seasons, with contracts for 40 weeks and more. Certainly the musicians deserved the pay raise. They were accustomed to supplementing their salaried income with jobs of various kinds to the side. In retrospect, the Ford money should have been spent to pay musicians more per service. The unintended outcome was a crisis of concert supply outstripping demand. Ever since, orchestras have mainly engaged in fundraising and marketing. And musicians – to again cite William Henry Curry – have become “over-worked.” They “no longer love music.” The broadcasts of the 1930s and forties about which I redundantly write – from New York, from Boston, from Philadelphia, from Minneapolis – document a condition of hyper-engagement once a norm.
Here is some of what I wrote about the Ford Foundation grants in Classical Music in America:
“In combination with pressure from the ranks, the new money steeply increased the number of concerts. In 1960, full-time, twelve-month employment was unknown. By 1970-71, six orchestras had agreed to fifty-two-week contracts, and another five had contracts of forty-five weeks or more. This new frequency of performance was not audience-driven. It may be safely assumed that neither Beethoven nor Brahms, in music-obsessed Vienna, remotely envisioned a diet of three and four symphonic performances per orchestra per week – or up to 171 per year (the New York Philharmonic in 2000-2001) . . .
“Many who played in American orchestras now attained a respectable living wage for the first time. Whether they knew or admitted it, the victory was Pyrrhic. Scrambling to manufacture new “services” promised by new agreements, orchestras created new concerts that could not adequately be planned, prepared, sold, or assimilated. Many were underrehearsed summer programs, children’s programs, or pops programs, or exhausting ‘run-outs’ to high school auditoriums. Boredom and resentment were rife . . .
“Between 1960 and 2000, the New York Philharmonic’s budget grew from $2 million to $34 million, the Boston Symphony’s from $2 million to $55 million. In combination with precipitously rising costs, excess concerts dictated a new orchestral function: marketing . . . a dense scaffold of merchandising activity behind which many an orchestra plotted to standardize its produce. Burdened with an expanding gap between income and expenses, orchestras found themselves thick in the business of fund-raising; the Boston Symphony’s development staff grew from seventeen to twenty -nine in the final decades of the twentieth century. . . . “
Simply put, today’s big American orchestras give too many concerts. Supply outstrips demand. Compared to previous generations, symphonic musicians are run down. Their union representatives typically resist reducing the season. But that’s not the same as reducing the number of “services” an orchestra member performs. As I’ve many times written, the happiest musicians I’ve ever encountered in a professional American orchestra are the nine salaried members of the South Dakota Symphony, comprising a string quartet and woodwind quintet. They furnish 150 services annually, most of which are not symphonic concerts. Among other things, they travel to Indian reservations to teach and make music. And they are largely self-governing – another topic for another time.
The blogs in this series enumerate challenges large and small. The big picture, as drawn by the German sociologist Hartmut Rosa, is “social acceleration.” Every parameter of human existence is changing ever more rapidly. We’re increasingly condemned to live in the moment. We ever more rapidly forget the past. But symphonic performance thrives on style, lineage, and tradition. When the New York Philharmonic, in its program book, profiles a young violinist and asks: “What is your favorite music?”, when she replies: “Whatever I am playing at the moment,” that’s a red flag. The contributing factors, all highlighted in my podcast with Ken Woods, include the audition process, conservatory education, an ageing repertoire, and a failure to promote an American canon sufficient to generate an American style of performance. As Ken points out: when an actor prepares a role, they read about the play and the playwright. If the play is based in history, they read some history. Can today’s young musicians even play a Viennese waltz? Tscho Theissing says: no, not even in Vienna. A faceless “international style” reigns in the conservatory studio.
A story I’ve told before: Decades ago, I briefly taught at the Manhattan School of Music. My course, which proved abortive, was mandatory for graduate students in a two-year “Orchestral Performance” sequence. I shared historic recordings. I lectured on the institutional history of the orchestra. I assigned reading and writing. One day Larry Tamburri visited the class. At the time, he was Executive Director of the New Jersey Symphony. Larry drew two circles on the blackboard, one large and the other small. The small circle, he said, represented the traditional role of the orchestral musician. The big circle represented the enlarged role he wanted his musicians to undertake as full stakeholders in a cultural institution. He wanted them to do more than rehearse and perform. The class responded with a prolonged silence. I said: He’s telling you what I’ve been preaching for the last two months – what do you think? A bassoonist answered: “We are here to hone our instrumental skills and to learn how to win an audition. Everything else can wait.”
But it can’t. One way or another, orchestral musicians need to re-acquire a sense of agency. They need to “feel it.” They need to matter.
For more on the Ford Foundation orchestra grants and what went wrong, click here.
I wonder if your analysis does not apply to several other fields of artistic activities, if not social ones.
Or, equally fruitful, your analysis applies to the field of these orchestras, in a concrete and well-founded way, Hartmunt Rosa’s sociological analysis.
This is all so true, Joe. And let’s add the fact that after this period of orchestral growth – the 1960s — the decade of the ’70s brought about enormous changes in the way people were “entertained,” i.e. invention of the Sony Walkman, invention of the home VCR, the proliferation of cable and dish TV and the invention of the personal computer. So, too many concerts given to an increasingly diluted audience.
Certainly the establishment of the NEA in 1965 also contributed to the glut of orchestras and other arts organizations. I was looking at the Norwalk (CT) Symphony recently. Apparently there are four other orchestras within forty miles of Norwalk, including Stamford which is only ten miles away. Not sure why you need two orchestras within ten miles of one another. There can’t possibly be that many classical music lovers in southern Connecticut.
Thanks for this (and for the continuing series). In my many years as an arts reporter and critic at the Detroit Free Press, the burden of too much product was a constant. And bless you for the link to the Paray/Mahler, which was new to me. FWIW, if you haven’t heard it, this 1960 broadcast of the DSO playing Brandenburg 5 led by Paray, with soloists Glenn Gould, Mischa Mischakoff, and principal flute Albert Tipton is similarly instructive. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNSb-DV1-X0
One thing that struck me as odd, and later as objectively bad for the orchestra in the six months I played in the Milwaukee Symphony (my first audition-won position-1982) was that the Chicago Stmphony had a concert series in Milwaukee. One concert a month.
There were many local attendees to these concerts who did not patronize their own orchestra ‘s offerings. Why not wait for the finer orchestra ‘s concert, was the thought.
I felt that this was incredibly distructive to building an audience base in Milwaukee, really a fine orchestra in its own right. The Chicago Symphony even had an office in the same building to administer these concerts.
The series (begun early in the 20th Century to offer Milwaukee orchestra concerts) ended a few years after I won my position (1986), almost 20 years after the MS became a full fledged orchestra (in 1969).
Regarding the NEA’s contribution to orchestral expansion, at the peak of its support (1992) the Endowment was granting $330K per year to the topmost orchestras. (Close to $800K in today’s dollars)
Since then it has been whittled down to virtually nothing per year. The largest grant last year was apparently $40K.
So, all indicators of support have consistently been pointing in a downward direction for decades.
The long overdue culling of orchestras is going to start happening. And it will likely be precipitous.
The orchestras most able to survive had better start “feeling it” soon.
Regarding the overworked, no longer loving music malaise-ridden players in today’s orchestras, it has always appeared to me that the paradigm of inspiring conductor and consequently inspired playng (or not) has created a system that allows that malaise to come across on the stage.
The notion of a professional stage demeanor is absent. It has not been encouraged by teachers and mentors, either. It is allowed and accepted.
Ken mentions the stage actor preparing a role. I would take that comparison further and add that the stage actor puts his reputation on the line every one of those eight performances a week. He understands that he must dig deep into what he knows about the character and how to convincingly convey it to the audience on those nights he is just not into it. Perhaps he’s never liked the director’s blocking, or hates a particular phrase in his script, or has had a bad day. If he were to let his “tired of this play” malaise show in his performance he would never be offered great roles again.
But American orchestra musicians do not feel this sense of professional stage presence responsibility. You will hear them scoff at the idea that they need to “look” more involved. They feel that their routine level of play is high enough to convey the music to their audience. (They are not entirely wrong about that) If the conductor doesn’t inspire them to more engagement it is the fault of the baton.
And yet the conductor mentioned above says not to blame the baton-wielder.
The simple visual aid to the audience that shows “you mean it” could go a long way in dispelling the ” go ahead; make me play” attitude that has infected orchestras in this country. And mostly among the highest paid groups, too, one might observe. We do know that audiences listen with their eyes as much as with their ears.
Conductors want engaged orchestras. I know this for a fact. They don’t want orchestras that offer nothing more than default responses if not asked specifically for every little thing.
Seiji Ozawa said in an interview in Japan about American orchestras that they are like a department store. Everyrhing is there, but you have to ask or look for it yourself. And that the best European orchestra have more a sense that they can take responsibility for the music thenselves.
The employer/employee mindset solidified here amongst American orchestras.
You are absolutely correct to say the length of the season makes the player more tired of what they play. And then there’s what they play. Go to the websites of the orchestras: even for a high caliber group, something like half of what the orchestras play is rock/pop (which of course is remote from the symphony orchestra idiom) and live playing of film scores. It helps pay for the orchestra, but makes the highly trained players feel like hacks. They lose their sense of mission. Leonard Bernstein addressed the problem in a 1980 article included in his book “Findings”.
Wow I am so grateful for the link to Paul Paray’s Mahler 5! The sound isn’t great but the performance is. I have long been a devotee of his Mercury Living presence recordings – sounding so good and so bright and alive with his lively tempi. Good heavens, when I listen to this Mahler no wonder I am so bored with the likes of Rouvali and Dudamel and Nelsons in this piece. The DSO get through it really well considering that they cannot possibly have played it before (or it is very unlikely). They do a heck of a lot better than the contemporaneous effort on a visit to Carnegie Hall by the Houston Symphony under Barbirolli which is a real mess. Barbirolli was not, in my opinion, a great orchestral trainer and did his best work with “already very good” orchestras.
Paray’s biography is interesting and he faced great turmoil during WW2 because he was Jewish. Much like Tennstedt who as a teenager pulled bodies out after the firebombing of Dresden, Paray knew what life – and Mahler were about…………….
John, thanks for this. Paray wasn’t Jewish but his wife was. He courageously stood up for Jews in France during World War II. He was closely associated with the Israel Philharmonic. In my blog re: his Mahler 5, I originally added something more, comparing him to Charles Munch. Paray was mentioned as a candidate when the BSO trustees chose Munch to succeed Koussevitzky (see my blog of April 6). I suggested that Paray may have been a stronger choice. Certainly I have always preferred with recordings with DSO to Munch’s with BSO (eg, in Saint-Saens and Berlioz). But I realized I don’t know nearly enough to speculate — and took it out.
Well I am a massive Charles Munch fan and I think he did wonderful things in Boston. He and Paray were both terrific conductors though I have read that Paray was somewhat jealous of Munch, said some unfavorable things about him staying in Paris during the war (while Paray escaped to Monaco…………) and for which Paray had to later apologise. Hey – nobody’s perfect but Paray’s Chabrier disc for Mercury is very close to perfect and it’s easy to see why Mahler loved to conduct Espana!!