The sound of change:
America's symphonies
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For America's 1,100
symphony orchestras, these are
turbulent times. Never have
there been more of them
playing so often and so
innovative a selection of
programs. Yet they are
confronting a seething cultural
climate and a continuing
financial plight. This article is
the first of three on the
fast -changing state of U.S.
orchestras today.
by Jacquin Sanders
Newsweek Feature Service
Symphony Hall, USA, is not
what it used to be.
The old image of a dusty
museum of music is gone. So is
that Prussian father-figure, the
conductor, ruling as if by
Divine Right over his miserably
paid and thoroughly cowed
musicians. And so, most of all,
are the overrich, overdressed
and musically undereducated
audiences.
The symphony has become
a movement. No longer
confined to a small segment of
the population in a handful of
major cities, it is spreading all
across the country and
everywhere it is seeking to
become an integral part of the
community.
IN FACT, the U.S. is fairly
bursting with symphony
orchestras. There are now more
than 1,100 of them and fully
28 are classified as "major"
orchestras with yearly budgets
in excess-some way in
excess-of $1 million.
This huge diversification
comes as a surprise to many
Americans and an amazement
to foreigners. It also runs
counter to every national
trend.
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While nearly everything
else-from professional sports
to electronics to the
panty-hose industry-has been
merging and consolidating,
hundreds of new symphonies
have come into being in the
past decade, even as the old
established orchestras were
growing bigger, better and
more traveled.
WHAT'S MORE, unlike a
number of other enterprises,
the nation's symphony
orchestras have made it with
only miniscule aid from the
federal government. And
despite chronic financial
troubles, they have managed a
steady lengthening of their
seasons and a steady rise in the
salaries of their musicians.
It is a pattern. At one
extreme, the Pittsburgh'
Symphony, now the most
heavily endowed in the
country with $22 million,
plays as many road
engagements as it can manage
away from its home at the
Heinz Hall for the Performing
Arts. At the other, the
86-member Cedar Rapids
(Iowa) Symphony splits into
small groups which play some
50 concerts every year in local
schools.
This is missionary work and
it's necessary because to much
of the public symphony music
retains its old "carriage trade"
image. To an extent, the image
is justified.
IN A "PROFILE" of its
audience, the San Francisco
Symphony discovered that
one-half were in the
$ 1 5 ,000-and-over income
bracket, that 4 in every 5 were
college-educated and that 26
per cent drove Cadillacs,
Lincolns or Chryslers. More
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ominously, 50 per cent of the
audience were more than 45
years old.
Still, young people all
around the country are being
pushed, prodded and
sometimes nearly pulverized by
exposure to symphonic music.
Most orchestras give special
"youth concerts" with the
conductor explaining along
with the music. Open
rehearsals, where the audience
feels no compulsion to dress
up, are also common.
The Los Angeles
Philharmonic puts on
"mini-marathons" at the
Hollywood Bowl-admission
$1. The Jackson (Miss.)
Symphony has "brown bag"
concerts during the lunch hour.
Seattle Symphony's conductor,
Milton Katims, thinks of
everything: he even has
containers of free cough drops
in the lobby-so his audience is
not disturbed by the inevitable
coughers.
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Symphony Hall, USA. . .not what it used to be.
TheSt. Louis
Symphony-the country's
second oldest (after New
York)-tries constantly to draw
people who would not
ordinarily attend concerts.
Associate conductor Leonard
Slatkin wrote an orchestral
composition around Poe's
"The Raven"-and imported
native St. Louisan Vincent
Price to narrate the poem as
the orchestra played.
ONCE THE "NEW"
audience is lured inside the
concert hall, another quandary
develops. Does the conductor
play what he knows most
audiences like and expect-old
war-horses like the
Tchaikovsky Sixth, the more
accessible Beethoven, anything
by Ravel? Or does he give the
customers what he thinks"they
ought to like-pioneer musical
innovation like Alban Berg,
Arnold Schoenberg, Anton von
Webern or their contemporary
and still more difficult
followers, Charles Wuorinen,
George Crumb, Eric Salzman?
Perhaps the easiest way out
is to play "Jesus Christ
Superstar," as the Denver
Symphony did recently-to a
packed house. Or to inaugurate
something like "Dallasound"-
(it
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sometimes played by the Dallas
Symphony.
The solution, of course, is
to give everybody something
they like. But since the
heaviest contributors to
symphony drives are mainly
old guard in their musical
tastes, the war-horses remain
well exercised.
Among those who disagree
is Pierre Boulez, the new
conductor and music director
of the New York Philharmonic.
Succeeding the passionate but
predictable conducting of
Leonard Bernstein, Boulez is
dedicated to revolutionizing
concert music.
"I must abandon the past,"
says Boulez. "There's got to be
more to concerts than cheering
audiences. The great adventure
to music is to make things
different."
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' 113 No. 11th
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1971