Spectacle: Mimeographed Music
WHAT’S NEW? Both here and elsewhere, the significant avant-garde music of our time is banished like a villain who destroys the cozy rapport between audience and orchestra.
By performing so little contemporary music, today’s orchestras are discouraging young composers from writing for the medium. If this continues over the years, the existing works for orchestra will be so unrepresentative of the entire musical literature that orchestras will have planned their own obsolescence.
No one is asking the dignified “Old Lady of Locust Street” to transform herself into a hipster. But she does have the duty to take an occasional peek at what’s going on in the world of music today. It is doubly important for the Orchestra to provide Philadelphians with a survey of the contemporary scene because they, unlike New Yorkers, cannot supplement their musical diet with a never-ending stream of visiting orchestras and festivals.
Where are the greats of the 20th century? Ives, that delightful yet prophetic American composer from the turn of the century, showed up only twice in programs over the past decade. Works by Stravinsky have been performed 18 times and by Bartok 15 times — the barest of minimums. Hindemith has been represented only nine times and Schoenberg only thrice. And it has not been easy to find performances of works by Schoenberg’s two major pupils, Webern and Berg.
It is also interesting to note that Ormandy himself has conducted Stravinsky ten times, Hindemith five and Schoenberg only once. He obviously is ready to turn his baton over to guest conductors whenever these names appear on the program.
Prokofiev and Shostakovich, whose works are widely popular, crop up a total of 37 times, whereas the name of Vaughan Williams, who wrote nine symphonies and many other orchestral pieces, appears only three times. The music of his fellow patriot, Benjamin Britten, easily the most important Englishman of this generation, has been performed four times (only twice before this season). The French and Latin Americans of this century are rarely given a hearing. Milhaud, despite the large body of music he wrote for orchestra, has been represented only twice. One work by Villa-Lobos has been performed but none by Chavez, although Ormandy has given the world premiere this season of a harp concerto by the most impressive of the young Latins, Alberto Ginastera.
In selecting works from the current generation of composers to spotlight, Ormandy seems to use whim or political fancy instead of artistic judgment. There is no other way to explain the fact that six compositions by the Bryn Athyn hynmalist, Richard Yardumian, have received world premieres at the Academy in the last ten years while works by the leading Europeans, including Stockhausen, Boulez, Nono and Dallapiccola go untouched.
