Dead vs. Living composers: 2014-2015 season

[piston]

I tracked down the repertoire for the twenty-one most important American orchestras during the 2014-15 season and, I confess, I was wrong in my criticism of the NYP's "conservative" programming on another thread... I guess that to sporadically listen to an orchestra's concerts on the radio can leave the wrong impression.

Out of 1,797 works programmed by these 21 orchestras (for 1, 2, 3 or 4 shows), 230 are works by living composers, for an average of 13 percent. The average year of composition for all works in 2014-15 is 1886 and the most frequently performed composers were Beethoven (317), Mozart (313), Tchaikovsky (260), Bach (176), Ravel (172), Brahms (162), Strauss (154), Stravinsky (125), Rachmaninov (124, and Prokofiev (104)."More than one out of 8 performances featured pieces by Beethoven or Mozart."

The most performed living composers were John Adams (35), Mason Bates (30), Jennifer Higdon (18), Christopher Rouse (16), Esa-Pekka Salonen (14) and Thomas Ades (14).

For "dead" composers, the repertoire mainly originates in Austria-Germany (38%), Russia (19%), France (10%), and the USA (10%); for living composers, it comes from the USA (55%), the UK (8%), Austria-Germany (7%), and Finland (5.5%).

The orchestras that significantly exceeded the 13 percent average for living composers are the L.A. Phil. (31 pieces out of 101 or 31%) and the NYP (35/129 or 27%). Minnesota (17%), Chicago (16%), Detroit (15%) were the other orchestras above the national average.

Seattle (13%), Pittsburgh (13%), Houston (12%), Philadelphia (11%), Cleveland (11%), Boston (11%), Milwaukee (11%) weren't far from it.

San Francisco (9%), St. Louis (8%), National (8%), San Diego (8%), Dallas (8%), Atlanta (7%), Cincinnati (7%), Baltimore (6%), Utah (1%) were well below that average.
https://www.bsomusic.org/stories/the-or ... abase.aspx

[John F]

Interesting stuff. Thanks for doing the work.

I try to keep up with more or less mainstream contemporary composers but have never heardof Mason Bates. So naturally I looked him up on Wikipedia and found he is "an American composer of symphonic music and DJ of electronic dance music." Doesn't sound like my kind of guy, but you never know. The NY Phil annals is/are down so I can't find out whether they've played any Bates; if they do, and the rest of the program interests me too, maybe I'll go.

[Lance]

I truly love these kinds of statistics ... we can learn much by these numbers. Fine job, Jacques!

[diegobueno]

Here is the Mason Bates Violin Concerto.

[karlhenning]

The most performed living composers were John Adams (35)

Even controversy is good for business. I suppose I should learn from the master . . . .

Cheers,
~k.

[jbuck919]

Here is the Mason Bates Violin Concerto.

Thanks, Mark. I enjoyed that very much. I could elaborate in my opinionated way, but will leave it at that.

[diegobueno]

Without giving it an 100% endorsement, I think the Mason Bates Violin Concerto is an attractive piece. Like many post-minimalist works, it deals with overlapping rhythmic patterns over which a developing melodic line is strung. The rhythms are compelling and colorfully scored. There's a rhythmic theme and a lyrical theme in the violin, as in most conventional concertos. I might wish for more development, more contrast. There's a moment at around the 9:30 mark in the video where the music comes to a point that cries out for a big change in mood, tonality, something. But instead the music just goes on as before. In the Bates compositional motel, themes check in, but they don't seem to check out.

But basically I like the piece.

[John F]

The concerto is OK. It kept reminding me of better music - Stravinsky in the first section, Berg in the second - and I don't hear a compelling individual style in any of it. But it isn't boring.

[IcedNote]

Good work, piston! Always interesting to see such things. I'm truly surprised Mason outdid Jennifer last season. No surprise to see Adams number one. It's only a matter of time before his son, Sam Adams, rises up the ranks -- he's just begun his new gig as composer-in-residence with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and has very close ties to the big symphonies in San Francisco, St Louis, and Los Angeles as well. Also doesn't hurt that his music is fresh, good, and accessible!

-G

[John F]

Sam Adams? Really and truly?

[diegobueno]

Brewer, patriot, composer, you name it.

[jbuck919]

Without giving it an 100% endorsement, I think the Mason Bates Violin Concerto is an attractive piece. Like many post-minimalist works, it deals with overlapping rhythmic patterns over which a developing melodic line is strung. The rhythms are compelling and colorfully scored. There's a rhythmic theme and a lyrical theme in the violin, as in most conventional concertos. I might wish for more development, more contrast. There's a moment at around the 9:30 mark in the video where the music comes to a point that cries out for a big change in mood, tonality, something. But instead the music just goes on as before. In the Bates compositional motel, themes check in, but they don't seem to check out.

But basically I like the piece.

Couldn't just leave my appreciation alone, could you, Mark? Excuse me, but there is a huge change in mood at about 9:40.

The piece is not boring, says John F, high praise indeed, since my standard comment for a piece of recently composed music is that it is "not awful." The reason the Bates piece may sound derivative of Stravinsky or Berg is that it is a continuation of a style of composition that never should have caved in to the prevalent specious neo-neo-Romanticism which glues me to my chair in the sense that I am so stupefied with boredom after hearing it that it I couldn't get up if I tried. The best works by many composers who were in general of some neo-Romantic bent are often, for some reason I don't understand, their violin concertos, a tradition traceable all the way back to Elgar. They find beauty without resorting to cliché, which may be the great compositional challenge of our time.

Here is another example, also a violin concerto. (I was tempted to post the Elliott Carter double concerto for harpsichord and piano with Charles Rosen, who considered it a masterpiece, as soloist, but for the present I won't stretch things that far.)

[diegobueno]

Couldn't just leave my appreciation alone, could you, Mark?

Excuse me, but it is you who is not leaving my appreciation alone. You can think whatever you want, but I think I have a right to express what I think on this forum.

[diegobueno]

Now the Sessions Violin Concerto is a very nice piece, but it was written 80 years ago and really has no bearing on what's being written today, or what "should" be written today. For that matter, neither does Elliott Carter's Double Concerto, another very nice piece, which today's composers are in no way obligated to emulate.

The fact is that it's 2015 and modernism is dead.

Today's composers are finding their own way to continue, and break from, the tradition of composition handed down by previous generations, and we older folks are powerless to demand that they continue the way our generation thinks they should continue. Bates' closest ancestor would be John Adams. That is the tradition that is being continued in this work.

It's true that violin concertos seem to sound more romantic that other pieces due to the sound of the instrument as it is played today, which suits the romantic repertory very well. But neo-romanticism, in the sense of literally imitating the 19th century concertos, is notably absent from Mason Bates' concerto. The orchestration is very sparse, in keeping with the modernist ideal of a transparent sound highlighted by individual colors. There is much percussion, much independent use of the piano, many novel sounds produced by the orchestral players, as one might expect from one who also works with electronics. I think the fact that he has also served as a DJ is only to his credit, in that it gives him insight to another side of the musical world that neither Barber, Britten, Schoenberg or Carter ever had.

[jbuck919]

The fact is that it's 2015 and modernism is dead.
...
Bates' closest ancestor would be John Adams. That is the tradition that is being continued in this work.

Really? What's dead is tonality, but composers have still been serving it on an increasingly tarnished platter for more than half a century. I'm not trying to tell any composer in which direction to go, but I have a general idea of where I am more likely as a strong listener to follow.

I hear nothing of Adams's minimalism in the Bates. In fact, I listened to the Adams violin concerto and, though it has its moments, I don't think overall it is very good, which is the way I feel about minimalism in general as a response to the challenge to the composers of our day. My remark about violin concertos in general, and I have no explanation for why they come across to me in this manner, should be taken to mean that they tend to be among the better or even best compositions of those who undertake them, though I have to make an exception for the Adams. In that sense, even though one work is atonal and the other is late tonal, I find more in common qualitatively between the Bates concerto and Sibelius's Violin Concerto than I do between the latter work and his Seventh Symphony.

[diegobueno]

Tonality will be dead as soon as nobody wants to hear tonal music. That hasn't happened yet, nor will it ever happen.

What is dead is the notion that you can mandate "progress", force composers to write one way or another. The current crop of composers is not ready to let go of tonality. They will hear it differently than their elders, precisely because of the experience of atonality.

[jbuck919]

Tonality will be dead as soon as nobody wants to hear tonal music. That hasn't happened yet, nor will it ever happen.

People will always, God willing, want to hear tonal music of the period when it produced the greatest music ever composed or likely ever to be composed. I assume you mean "want to hear tonal music" in a more contemporary context. Now who is suggesting that composers follow willy-nilly where art lead them rather than where the (relatively) paying audience is?

The current crop of composers is not ready to let go of tonality. They will hear it differently than their elders, precisely because of the experience of atonality.

You are dignifying the notion of hearing the old in light of the new beyond what it can bear. Concepts that apply to one artistic genre do not necessarily pertain to another.

[diegobueno]

John, I don't know what the heck you're talking about and I don't think you do either.

It just seems like you're operating under assumptions that are, well I can't really say what they are, but if they're what I think, they're irrelevant.