4-9 August 1979 .4111 • ■ ■ • 111■■• Mb. • OMNI/ MENI AlMr11MIL = = publishes the following composers: Girolamo Arrigo* Oliver Knussen Jean Barraque* David Koblitz Bruno Bartolozzi* Bruno Maderna* Arrigo Benvenuti* William Thomas McKinley Eubie Blake John Stewart McLennan Ran Blake Charles Mingus Roger Bourland George Perle Sylvano Bussotti* Tibor Pusztai John Carisi George Russell Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco* Arnold Schoenberg Robert DiDomenica Gunther Schuller Lucia Dlugoszewski Reginald Smith-Brindle* Dennis Eberhard Edward Steuermann Franco Evangelisti* David Stock Primous Fountain Andrew Thomas Jimmy Giuffre Alec Wilder Daniel Godfrey *In the catalogue of Aldo Bruzzichelli Editore of Florence, Italy represented exclusively in North America by Margun. Write for catalogue and information: MARGUN MUSIC INC. 167 Dudley Road Newton Centre, MA 02159 617 / 332-6398 Tanglewood The Berkshire Music Center Gunther Schuller, Artistic Director Joseph Silverstein, Chairman of the Faculty Aaron Copland, Chairman of the Faculty Emeritus John Oliver, Head of Vocal Music Activities Gilbert Kalish, Head of Keyboard Activities Dennis Helmrich, Head Vocal Coach Daniel R. Gustin, Administrator Richard Ortner, Assistant Administrator Harry Shapiro, Orchestra Manager James Whitaker, Chief Coordinator John Newton, Sound Engineer Douglas Whitaker, Stage Manager Jacquelyn Donnelly, Secretary to the Faculty Carol Woodworth, Secretary to the Faculty Elizabeth Burnett, Librarian Theodora Drapos, Assistant Librarian Bruce Creditor, Orchestra Librarian Festival of Contemporary Music presented in cooperation with The Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard Fellowship Program Contemporary Music Activities Gunther Schuller, Director Theodore Antoniou, Assistant Director Ralph Shapey, Paul Zukofsky, Oily Wilson, William Thomas McKinley, Yehudi Wyner, Guest Teachers The Berkshire Music Center is maintained for advanced study in music. Sponsored by the Boston Symphony Orchestra Seiji Ozawa, Music Director Thomas W. Morris, General Manager Festival of Contemporary Music The Composer in the Performer's World We hear so often that performers and cultural responsibility. composers have become alienated from We must not forget that the stakes are each other or that performers have high in the performance industry. There become alienated from contemporary is much fame and money to be earned, music. I think that what has really been and there is tremendous competition happening is that "brand-name" per- for both. Performers no longer pit them- formers and their followers among young selves against a musical task. Instead, concert artists are becoming alienated they pit themselves against other per- from music. Not only contemporary formers. Because of this, the musical music. All music. works themselves must be familiar. Viewed What we used to characterize as "the this way, musical works are like the music business" has become a per- figure eight and the other school figures formance industry. The media-led cult used in ice skating competitions. They of personality has played a large part in are played less because they are in- this development. It is the performer's teresting in themselves than because face on the cover of Time magazine. they provide a way to rank the per- And so it follows that music is viewed as formers. an extension of the personality of the What happens to composers living in performer. It should not be surprising a world where works of music have lost that performers and conductors start their value? Where the music of the past looking at things this way, too, that they lies in bondage to performance? Where start thinking of musical works as vehi- most of the music of the present dies in cles for their ego trips. the first performance, if it is performed Of course, artists have always had a at all? good deal of ego strength. But it is one Ned Rorem once wrote that "Doers thing to identify with the composer, to and makers move in quite separate .. feel that you achieve greatness as an orbits. Players face out, composers, in." interpreter insofar as you realize the I'm sure that this is true. As I have sug- composer's intentions. It's something gested, many players face out—toward else again to see a musical work primarily the public and away from music. But it is as a vehicle for your performance. The equally true that composers face in— difference is the difference between away from the public and toward their character and personality. own world of music. When personality is king, then being Composers do not choose isolation, successful simply means having a repu- but rather have it thrust upon them. If tation as a winner. Our most successful our composers have often preferred not conductors and performers are the only to view their musical offerings as vehi- ones who have the power to effect change cles of emotional communication, one —to expand and enrich our musical reason may be the one that painter culture by adding to the repertory. Un- Robert Motherwell has suggested: that fortunately, they do not view success as as members of our society as a whole, something that carries with it a sense of composers, along with other artists, have Tanglewood shared in that society's decreasing ca- posers, I will not even attempt to name pacity for giving and receiving passion. the important composers who are still If our composers have allowed the living. cerebral structure of their music to be I am convinced that our century will dominant, they may have done so partly eventually prove to be one of the great because as members of university com- musical centuries. Our choices as per- munities, they live in an environment formers and listeners seem to me to be where intellect is valued highly. equally clear. Either we award ourselves If our composers have increasingly the privilege of coming to know the great become composers' composers rather musical creations of our own century, or than creators for the public at large, we leave these works to be discovered by they have often done so because their future generations. colleagues seem to be the only people —Paul Fromm, Director who are still excited about music as an Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard ongoing art form. Varese once said, "Contrary to general belief, an artist is never ahead of his time, but most people are far behind theirs." Varese's comment was recently echoed by Andrew Porter, writing in The New Yorker: "To the charge that many composers are out of touch with the public can be added another: that the public is out of touch with many of its best composers." The point here is that the public is out of touch not just with advanced musical experimentation; that could be expected in any era. No, the public and most performers are out of touch with the twentieth -century classics—works of proven substance and great beauty. With twenty years yet to go, our century has already produced a body of music that would be the pride of any century. I can easily name twelve great twentieth-cen- tury masters from among composers who are already dead—Debussy, Mahler, Strauss, Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartok, Schoen- berg, Berg, Weben, Varese, Ives, Hinde- mith. As I live in a society that believes that only dead composers are good com- 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 Dane Orchestra Lawrence Welk Ivan Davis Marian McPartland Whittemore and Lowe Denver Symphony Orchestra Earl Wild Hal ciwTn. Festival of Contemporary Music Contemporary Music at Tanglewood New music—whether the fashion- has become an annual institution within able name is 'contemporary' music or the framework of the larger Berkshire `avant-garde' music—has been a cen- Festival at Tanglewood. tral concern of the Berkshire Music The Contemporary Festival serves two Center since its inception. Koussevitzky primary purposes. Obviously one of its saw to that, and from the early days of goals is to present annually as broad a Tanglewood under the leadership of cross-section of new works—orchestral Aaron Copland to the present, a wide and chamber—as six days of concerts range of twentieth-century literature, will permit. Equally important as a guid- from 'established classics' to the 'newest' ing principle is the notion that the innovations, has been a consistent feature young performers who come to Tangle- of the Tanglewood experience. There is wood to study and learn shall have a hardly a major or lesser composer whose significant contact with the new music music hasn't been performed at Tangle- of their generation and of the recent wood, who hasn't studied here or taught past. For many of them it turns out to be here. The list of Tanglewood composer/ their first contact and many a proponent alumni is a Who's Who— American and of new music has had his or her first international—of twentieth-century music. experiences with such repertory here at Young composers of advanced ac- Tanglewood. We see new music, what- complishments come here to study pri- ever its persuasion, not as something cut vately with the composer-in-residence off from the literature of the past and (Ralph Shapey in 1979) or with myself. In segregated from ordinary professional addition various guest composers hold life, but as part of the ongoing continuum forth, three times a week, at seminars of musical history and as an integral part designed to complement and amplify of a musician's commitment to his art the private studies.