American Mavericks Festival

VISIONARIES PIONEERS ICONOCLASTS A LOOK AT 20TH-CENTURY MUSIC IN THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY EDITED BY SUSAN KEY AND LARRY ROTHE PUBLISHED IN COOPERATION WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF CaLIFORNIA PRESS The San Francisco Symphony TO PHYLLIS WAttIs— San Francisco, California FRIEND OF THE SAN FRANCISCO SYMPHONY, CHAMPION OF NEW AND UNUSUAL MUSIC, All inquiries about the sales and distribution of this volume should be directed to the University of California Press. BENEFACTOR OF THE AMERICAN MAVERICKS FESTIVAL, FREE SPIRIT, CATALYST, AND MUSE. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England ©2001 by The San Francisco Symphony ISBN 0-520-23304-2 (cloth) Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ANSI / NISO Z390.48-1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). Printed in Canada Designed by i4 Design, Sausalito, California Back cover: Detail from score of Earle Brown’s Cross Sections and Color Fields. 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 v Contents vii From the Editors When Michael Tilson Thomas announced that he intended to devote three weeks in June 2000 to a survey of some of the 20th century’s most radical American composers, those of us associated with the San Francisco Symphony held our breaths. The Symphony has never apologized for its commitment to new music, but American orchestras have to deal with economic realities. For the San Francisco Symphony, as for its siblings across the country, the guiding principle of programming has always been balance. It’s what the box office demands. Twentieth-century radical American composers are not good box office. That is the conventional wisdom—at least it was until June 2000, when the American Mavericks festival reminded us that there is no conventional wisdom in art. In ten concerts that attracted both long-time concertgoers and those who had never set foot in Davies Symphony Hall, the American Mavericks festival showcased twenty-two composers, all of them part of a tradition that is both notorious and elusive. In the following pages, we hope to introduce them as artists in their own right, and as members of a complex social and cultural system, a system that was not so much a movement as it is a state of mind. For if the mavericks have one thing in common, it is the almost naïvely pure belief that art can provide a key to the world. Twenty-two individual composers do not represent the entire spectrum of American maverick music, but we hope to give readers a better sense of both the circumstances that shaped this tradition and the creative visions that emerged from it. Much of what follows may be familiar to audiences who attended the festival concerts, for the chapters dealing specifically with the maverick composers are based on program notes and essays written for the festival. We have recast these in an effort to illustrate and underscore the sweep of radical music in America, from the turn of one century to the turn of another. Those who authored the original notes and essays provided pointed and illuminating commentary on the music; here we have attempted to translate that commentary into an introductory history of the subject. We owe any success in this attempt to the authors, who gave us such good raw material; if we have missed the mark, we bear the responsibility. Two long-time observers of maverick American music, Alan Rich and Michael Broyles, have provided new introductions to the subject. Michael Tilson Thomas, a champion of this music since the beginning of his career, offers a concluding assessment. The maverick approach to music-making makes extra demands on performers, and performers, more than any others, provide genuinely unique insights into the music: not as it exists on the page, but as a living process. To that end, we have incorporated San Francisco Symphony musicians’ and guest artists’ reactions to the music. We are grateful for their willingness to reflect on their experiences with this challenging—at times daunting—body of work. viii from the editors ix Without the support of Phyllis Wattis, a major supporter of the San Francisco Symphony Preface for more than two decades, there would have been no American Mavericks festival—and no book such as this one, which is dedicated to her in recognition of her generosity and vision and spirit. BY LUKAS FOSS At 94, she keeps exploring the world through art and supporting the art she loves. “I like strong music,” she has said, “different, quirky music” and “anything with new twists in it.” American What you will find in the following pages can help break down the stereotypes often connected Mavericks and Phyllis Wattis—the perfection of the match continues to amaze. to new music. Yes: All artists have to be mavericks and follow their own paths; they have to be This book represents the collaboration of many colleagues, but our debt to some is so obstinate, and have faith in the impossible, which is the creative process. As to stereotypes: We keep great that we must mention them here. San Francisco Symphony Executive Director Brent Assink separating “emotional” and “intellectual,” as if you have either one or the other. Wrong! You have is a long-time advocate of new music, and this book is his brainchild. Director of Artistic Planning to have both in the arts. The same applies to “serious” and “humorous.” The more serious and Gregg Gleasner, who worked with Michael Tilson Thomas in creating the festival programming, daring the artist, the more you will find humor in the work. Without humor, the art is solemn, supported us with his enthusiasm throughout this project. Renée Harcourt and Janet Mumford, which is not serious enough. You find humor combined with tragedy in the great mavericks such the book’s designers, transfigured raw words and images into art. Katherine Cummins, Managing as Shakespeare, Beckett, Kafka, Ives, and Cage. You also find an unending curiosity, a wish to keep Editor of the San Francisco Symphony’s program book, provided the sharpest of copy-editing learning. Goya, age 89, wrote: “I am still learning.” That is the way I feel when I compose. eyes and minds. Our greatest debt of gratitude is to Michael Tilson Thomas. In conceiving the American Mavericks festival, and in carrying it through so spectacularly against all expectations, The wish to learn: that is one thing shared by all the composers whose stories fill this book. he takes his place with the visionaries and pioneers (if not iconoclasts) whose work is celebrated in this book. Enjoy! Keep learning! S.K. L.R. San Francisco, August 2001 Lukas Foss 1 THE AMERICAN MAVERICK TRADITION chapter one BY ALAN RICH THE AMERICAN MAVERICK TRADITION 3 “Music was born free, and to win freedom is its destiny.” Ferruccio Busoni That “open range” in Sam Maverick’s time must have been a lively expanse, in more ways than just topographically. On these same wide-open spaces honored in poem and song, the As long as America has endured, there have been Mavericks in the land. Moses American arts staked out their figurative claims. In a limitless terrain, extending coast-to-coast, Maverick, of Netherlands ancestry, arrived in the New World on the Mayflower, free of artificial barriers—or, at least, any barriers that the willpower of American creativity couldn’t with the new bride he had selected from among the fellow passengers. The overleap—the generations of free spirits that invented and then defined American uniqueness Mavericks settled around Boston, where there is still a Maverick Square, which— found their grazing land. Henry David Thoreau flourished on that range, in mind if not always by accident or design—happens to be a safe harbor for a cluster of small art galleries that preserve the maverick (lower case, this time) spirit. in body. Walt Whitman gave it its yawp. Frederick Remington’s canvases captured its color and its vastness. Its music was an eclectic mix. There were the hymns, dances, and folk tunes that had That spirit seems to have been born, or at least named, some two centuries after stowed away on the immigrants’ ships from Europe and the slave ships from Africa, and which the landing of the ancestral Mavericks. The descendant who cast the longest had flourished in America’s bracing air. shadow, Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803–1870), linked his fate to the hundreds But there was also more serious stuff. By 1842, say, the year the New York Philharmonic of kindred unfettered spirits of his time, rode westward from New England to was founded, the masterworks of the great European composers—Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, seek his fortune, settled near San Antonio in the county that now bears his Mendelssohn—were already established in major cities. New York had seen Mozart’s Don Giovanni name, became a cattle rancher and, from the evidence, played a pretty good as early as 1826. As American cities grew and a culture-supporting aristocracy sought to emulate hand of poker. One day Sam Maverick won a herd of cattle in a poker game. For Europe’s metropolitan amenities by building opera houses and concert halls, a certain cautious reasons still unclear, he decided not to brand them but to let them roam free on interest also developed around the possibility of implanting a made-in-America “serious” musical the open range—to become, as we use the term today, “mavericks.” culture as well into this virgin and receptive American soil.

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