31 July — 4 August 1982
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Tang °d 31 July — 4 August 1982 Tanglewood The Berkshire Music Center Gunther Schuller, Artistic Director (on sabbatical) Maurice Abravanel, Acting Artistic Director Joseph Silverstein, Chairman of the Faculty Aaron Copland, Chairman of the Faculty Emeritus John Oliver, Head of Vocal Music Activities Gustav Meier, Head Coach, Conducting Activities Gilbert Kalish, Head of Chamber Music Activities Dennis Helmrich, Head Vocal Coach Daniel R. Gustin, Administrative Director Richard Ortner, Administrator Jacquelyn R. Donnelly, Administrative Assistant Harry Shapiro, Orchestra Manager James Whitaker, Chief Coordinator Jean Scarrow, Vocal Activities Coordinator John Newton, Sound Engineer Marshall Burlingame, Orchestra Librarian Douglas Whitaker, Stage Manager Carol Woodworth, Secretary to the Faculty Karen Leopardi, Secretary Monica Schmelzinger, Secretary Elizabeth Burnett, Librarian Theodora Drapos, Assistant Librarian Festival of Contemporary Music presented in cooperation with The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard Fellowship Program Contemporary Music Activities Luciano Berio, Acting Director & Composer-in-Residence Theodore Antoniou, Assistant Director Arthur Berger, Robert Morris, William Thomas McKinley, Yehudi Wyner, Guest Teachers The Berkshire Music Center is maintained for advanced study in music and sponsored by the Boston Symphony Orchestra Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Thomas W. Morris, General Manager References furnished on request Aspen Music School and Peter Duchin Zubin Mehta Festival Bill Evans Milwaukee Symphony Dickran Atamian Ferrante and Teicher Orchestra Burt Bacharach Gold and Fizdale Eugene Ormandy David Bar-Illan John Green Seiji Ozawa Berkshire Music Center Hollywood Bowl Philadelphia Orchestra and Festival Dick Hyman Andre Previn Leonard Bernstein Interlochen Arts Academy Ravinia Festival Jorge Bolet and National Music Camp Rostal and Schaefer Boston Pops Orchestra Jose Iturbi St. Louis Philharmonic Boston Symphony Orchestra Byron Janis Gunther Schuller Brevard Music Center Tedd Joselson George Shearing Dave Brubeck Kansas City Philharmonic Bobby Short Chicago Symphony Orchestra Orchestra Georg Solti Cincinnati Symphony Ruth Laredo Claudette Sorel Orchestra Liberace Michael Tilson Thomas Aaron Copland Los Angeles Philharmonic Beveridge Webster Jeanne-Marie Darre Orchestra Lawrence Welk Ivan Davis Marian McPartland Whittemore and Lowe Denver Symphony Orchestra Earl Wild Baldwin® Festival of Contemporary Music Reflections of a Patron of Music I was recently seventy-five. This year work destined to become classic would the Fromm Music Foundation is cele- ever resemble the classic works that brating its thirtieth anniversary, and the preceded it. tenth in its affiliation with Harvard Uni- I never imagined then that in 1959 I versity. In observing these-anniversaries, would meet Stravinsky in America and, I cannot resist the temptation to in- in that year, sponsor the American dulge in some memories of my musical premiere of Threni. experiences of the past as well as in some When I arrived in the United States thoughts about my participation in the as an immigrant in 1938, I found the musical life of the present. peculiarly American rift between artistic I grew up in Kitzingen, a small Bavarian values and commercial values far more town in Germany. My formal education, troubling than the relatively simpler if one can call it that, ended at the age of schism between old and new in Europe. sixteen when I began working in Frankfurt- I became particularly concerned about am-Main. There I came into contact the anomalous position of composers in with a great variety of music of the a society which was not only musically past and the present. In those days conservative, but also insistent that music Bartok, Berg, Hindemith, Krenek, Mil- make its own way in the marketplace as haud, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Webern if it were a commodity of some kind. were the younger-generation composers. Although their creativity is the source of American composers, even those of the music and musical culture, composers stature of Ives, Copland, and Sessions, were excluded from giving direction to were unknown to us. Then, as today, musical life, from influencing the musical the general public met contemporary taste of the public. music with either total apathy or vocif- For years I pondered these problems erous protest. Even before I had heard and finally, after I had achieved economic any contemporary music, I was aware security, I was ready to put my ideas into of what was happening in the visual and action. That's how in 1952 the Fromm literary arts. I never wavered in my Music Foundation came into existence. belief that, at a time when painters and Now, thirty years later, I am more than writers were expressing themselves co- ever convinced that the stagnation in gently in the idioms of their own time, our organized musical life can be over- composers would be content with the come only if our conductors and per- musical language of the past. The turning formers familiarize serious listeners with point which, musically speaking, brought the most significant music written in the me into the twentieth century came in last fifty years, thus leading them up to 1927. I heard Stravinsky's Rite of Spring better understanding and greater ap- for the first time. This was music unlike preciation of the music of our time. any I had known. Its impact made me Regardless of prevailing attitudes, my understand what the Spanish painter, faith in the creativity of contemporary Juan Gris, meant when he said that no composers has never flagged. Works of Festival of Contemporary Music enduring quality and often great beauty alive. By vocation and by culture I often are being written in our midst, and new find myself suggesting changes and talents continue to emerge and grow. transformations because I assume that Our choices are clear: either we award musical (and non-musical) things are ourselves the privilege of coming to always part of a process, of a "formation," know the important musical creations of rather than of a form. However, as a our own century, or we leave these last-moment "acting director" for the works to be discovered by future Contemporary Music Festival, I wouldn't generations. know which changes to suggest. Or perhaps there is only one change I —Paul Fromm, Director would like to suggest. It would be inter- Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard esting to make the impressive audiences at Tanglewood more aware of the passionate and skillful dedication given by the musicians of the Berkshire Music Center to the music of this century. This would perhaps raise some useful questions in the minds of the listeners, allowing them to make a fundamental step toward a deeper understanding of music by hearing it in progress, and hearing it again. In the Berkshire Music Center there is such a Contemporary Music concentration of impressive musical at Tanglewood ingredients and such an intelligent continuity among them (from the BSO I feel at home at Tanglewood. I came to the students, from the staff to the here first as a student and then, in 1960, faculty, from nature to the Fromm as composer-in-residence. I remember Foundation) that no matter how and my staying at Seranak where, under the when you combine them, they will whimpering but iron protection of Olga always produce something very meaning- Koussevitzky, I completed Circles, my ful for today's music. "Fromm piece," which was performed If the organization of culture is, as it during the Contemporary Music Festival seems, an expression of social organization, of that same summer. Being back after I feel that the Tanglewood microcosmos so many years I am assaulted, of course, could also be seen as an experimental by many musical memories—but I have place which is mirroring an ideal no feeling of nostalgia. One of the musical "society" where music is not astonishing facts about Tanglewood is necessarily a commodity mainly char- that it always manages to be the same acterized by standards of performance, but it is at the same time always new and but an intellectual instrument for ex- Tanglewood pressive discoveries. In fact, one of the the launching pad of his very remarkable most impressive aspects of this Two- creative and technical gifts. There are Months-Long Musical Republic is the all those gifted young composers work- continuity and harmony within its in- ing with me, grateful, as I am, to the habitants and their different skills. This Berkshire Music Center for being the continuity and harmony, which encom- way it is. And there are, finally, inside passes an astonishing plurality of in- of me, the most affectionate thoughts in terests and aims, would be difficult to my memory of Olga Koussevitzky. find elsewhere in the "outside world," especially in the centuries-old musical —Luciano Berio, institutions that are too often inclined Acting Director of Contemporary Music to segment and label rather than to Activities & Composer-in-Residence relate and connect. Berkshire Music Center This year's Contemporary Music Festival program was planned long before I decided to come to Tanglewood; there- fore, my contribution is necessarily limited. Among the composers repre- sented, there is Milhaud, whose output from 1913 to 1933 should be better known. (Incidentally, Milhaud's Death of a Tyrant is the first modern work I ever heard in performance. It was October 1945, in Milan, just after the end of the war against Fascism. I will never forget the impact of those shouting voices and screaming instruments in this short work that develops those astonish- ing visions Milhaud had already in 1913, with his "interludes" of Les Choephores for speaking chorus and percussion.) There is Kagel: because of his irony and his explorations into parody, I feel he is one of the most important and anti-rhetorical presences in today's music. There is Costinescu: he was a student of mine at Juilliard, and I heard the first whispers of his Musical Seminar in 1970.