jwilzewske: cultural policy

Showing posts with label cultural policy. Show all posts

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Irish New Music: Back to the Future—‘Folk music’ Elements in ‘Art music’

M usic—the natural words in the natural order. Through that formula we go back to the people.
Music will keep out temporary ideas, for music is the nations’ clothing of what is ancient and deathless.”
— W.B. Yeats, Letter to Lady Gregory, 08-FEB-1937.

New music in Ireland is neither an attempt to move away from traditional music nor a deliberate construction upon previous works. The ‘Irishness’ of recent chamber music compositions is as idiosyncratic as the Irish counties and their distinct cultures and histories. I recently had an opportunity to explore the Contemporary Music Centre in Dublin, in preparation for travel to Ireland later this year. The Contemporary Music Centre is funded by the Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, and also receives funding from the Ireland Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism and the Irish Music Rights Organisation (IMRO).

The diversity is phenomenal—throughout the musical genres really but especially so among chamber music idioms that the CMC-member composers represent. Some contemporary composers are clearly serial or atonal. Others among them are much more lyrical and tonal. Bodley especially inclines to settings of Irish poetry—which is especially appealing to a foreign visitor like me who craves the cultural ‘situatedness’ of compositions like Bodley’s. It is not inward-looking or insular; instead, this music just feels intensely, well, ‘Irish’.

S ee everything through music! Those chords yet to resound in you—they swim like fish in all the rivers of the world. You love their playful surge, their shadows flickering deep within you.”
— Susan Connolly.

The act of composing classical music is, I suppose, ultimately an assertion of creativity—a cairn placed by the composer as a marker of her/his—our—existence, against the fact of our mortality. Chamber music is inherently ‘serious’ as well as intimate, regardless of the humor or other emotions it may convey. But, over the years, informal Irish folk idioms—gatherings of friends, the clairseach—have been transformed into concert pieces. So one question as I listen to the output of these Irish composers of new music is, is there now a trend ‘back to the future’—reverting to more informal folk music themes and smaller orchestrations, chamber ensemble pieces?

With some difficulty, it could be so—and Bodley and other composers in the CMC stable do it regularly. Boydell, too, in his earlier years—String Quartet, Op. 31, for example. But there’s no business model for it (the ‘stick’). And, to be honest, the Gaelic tradition in literature and the arts does incline toward epic proportions anyhow (the ‘carrot’). So when we have Irish composers writing new music for small ensembles, it’s clearly done as a labor of love.

Boydell passed away in NOV-2000. Along with fellow composer, Frederick May, he founded the Music Association of Ireland in 1948. Much of Boydell’s writing bears the influence of Bartók. Not that his work is entirely derivative of European traditions; it is not. But his avoiding incorporating Irish folk tune themes into his compositions is conspicuous, compared to other composers of Irish new music. Here’s a clip from his String Quartet No. 2, performed by Vanbrugh Quartet [Gregory Ellis (vn), Elizabeth Charleson (vn), Simon Aspell (va), Christopher Marwood (vc)].

[40-sec clip, Boydell String Quartet No. 2, Vanbrugh Quartet, 0.5MB MP3]

I n the 1940s and early 1950s I was considered (in the Irish context) a very ‘modern’ composer. Now, about forty years later, my music could possibly be considered rather old-fashioned. This is largely due to a firm belief in artistic honesty: creating sounds that I like personally and refusing to follow fashions that might be more acceptable to the critics of the time.”
— Brian Boydell, 1996.

John Gibson was born in Dublin in 1951 and currently lives in Cork. His training/development included stints with Stockhausen and Lutoslawski. To date, he has five CDs released. Here’s a clip from his piece Sliabh Luachra, performed by Johnny McCarthy (trad fl) with the Crawford Piano Trio [Adrian Petcu (vn), Iosef Calef (vc), Jan Cáp (pf)].

[40-sec clip, Gibson Sliabh Luachra, Crawford Piano Trio with J. McCarthy, 0.6MB MP3]

F or he had gone alone into the island
And brought back the whole thing.
The house throbbed like his full violin.”
— Seamus Heaney.

Seóirse Bodley was born in Dublin in 1933. His writing has been prolific and varied, ranging from avant-garde to Irish traditional music. Among other things, he’s a founder of Aosdána, Ireland’s government-sponsored academy of creative artists. Here’s a clip from his String Quartet No. 2, performed by Degani String Quartet [Alan Smale (vn), Elizabeth Leonard (vn), Padraig O’Connor (va), David James (vc)].

[40-sec clip, Bodley String Quartet No. 2, Degani Quartet, 0.7MB MP3]

and a clip of his String Quartet No. 3, performed by the Vogler Quartet.

[40-sec clip, Bodley String Quartet No. 3, Vogler Quartet, 0.9MB MP3]

I s iomaí sort ceoil atá ann, mar adúirt an fear a raibh an trúmpa maide aige.”
[There are many different sorts of music, as the man with the wooden trumpet said.]
— Seóirse Bodley.

In summary, there are many novel and exciting new chamber music works being written and performed here. I look forward very much to my next visit to Ireland. Maybe you, too, will have a chance to visit sometime soon. Meanwhile, browse what’s on CMC’s website (they have a wonderful Calendar of Events and other features), order yourself some of the CDs and scores, and enjoy!

Tuesday, November 21, 2006

Virtuosic Bassoon: Craving Irrational Exuberance

“The future of classical music lies solely in the hands of musicians who really, really love it, and who live to perform the masterworks of all periods.”
  — Nadina Mackie Jackson
“The debates, before and since, over the issue of our money standard have mirrored the deliberations on the manner in which we have chosen to govern ourselves, and, perhaps more fundamentally, debates on the basic values that should govern our society. For, at root, money is the lubricant that enables a society to organize itself to achieve economic progress. The ability to store the fruits of one’s labor for future consumption is necessary for the accumulation of capital, the spread of technological advances and, as a consequence, rising standards of living… But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy? We as central bankers need not be concerned if a collapsing financial asset bubble does not threaten to impair the real economy, its production, jobs, and price stability.”
  — Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Board Chairman, lecture at American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, 05-DEC-1996
« ...manie à la perfection....l’instrument se rélève tout au long du récital très proche de la voix »
  — Réjean Beaucage, La Scena Musical, DEC-2004

DSM: Do you think classical musicians tend to be more meticulous, more conformist, more submissive to authority, more self-sacrificial, more possessive, more empathetic, more disposed to think that others “take them for granted”, more hypochondriacal … more Enneagram 2-ish … than other kinds of musicians, and more than people in general?

CMT: What have you been reading?! That’s the most inflammatory bullshit I’ve heard in quite awhile!

DSM: Oh, nothing in print. Just an acquaintance—someone who honestly thought she was reaching out to me, to visit about my interests and friends. I suppose she was merely floating a bit of the horrible misconceptions about classical music that exist among non-musically-inclined Americans. Compound that with her deep personal interest in Myers-Briggs and Enneagram analysis of personality types and you get the picture.

CMT: Well, the personal attributes that you need to master anything in life include a very high level of self-discipline. There’re other eccentricities that’re empirically associated with giftedness and intense focus on solitary activity—practicing your instrument or devoting yourself to composition for prolonged periods are by no means unique in that way. Where do you suppose these popular, idiotic prejudices come from anyway?

DSM: Who knows! Probably more important that we draw attention to musicians whose extrovertedness and exuberance and charm are so obvious and universal that they can blow away stupid prejudices and maybe enlighten a few people. Icons of why we do what we do!

CMT: You know, Nadina Mackie Jackson is probably, for me, the most brilliant, shining example of an icon in this way. Humble beginnings in northern BC to chamber music wizardess. Utterly mind-blowing performances and recordings.

DSM: And her rapport with her audiences! I attended one of her concerts in Ottawa a couple of years ago and, as she accepted the audience’s ovation, she triumphantly one-handedly pumps her bassoon up and down above her head—she does a trotting victory “lap” in her elegant black gown, and strides off the stage, beaming, waving. Looked like an Olympic athlete upon receiving the gold medal. The crowd went wild! They went positively wild, just as fans would do in any world-class sport. How often do you see an icon like that in classical music? How many classical artists have you ever seen evoke such a heart-pounding response in an audience?!

CMT: Yes, Nadina is very special in her ability to do that! Not unique, thankfully, but truly exceptional! I’ve seen pianist David Deveau produce a similar response in a Boston-area recital last year. So, yes, there are artists who do this—whose personalities are exuberant enough to do this routinely. And, you’re right, it’s phenomenal when it happens, phenomenal to be part of it. Charismatic’s probably the wrong word. But it’s like they’ve cast a spell. The audience is enthralled by the artist and the music. There’s a synchrony of thought and feeling, a collective sense of humanity, of history and the human condition, in the air—it’s quite a singular experience, and it lingers with every person who is caught up in it. It moves you, makes you want more. And I don’t think these artists and composers fit into any particular Enneagram-typeable category!

DSM: Nadina began her career at the University of British Columbia and studied at the Curtis Insitute of Music in Philadelphia with Bernard Garfield and Sol Schoenbach, graduating in 1981. She plays and records with the Aradia Ensumble. She’s also performed with Handel & Haydn Society of Boston, Ensemble Caprisce, and Tafelmusic. Her sustained notes catapult into frenetic motion—she is very acrobatic. Her expressive leaps between registers compel you to follow. Like listening to a riveting speaker—it’s theatre and chamber music combined.

CMT: The ongoing flow of melody emanating from Nadina on-stage reveals a surprising range of moods and expressive shadings of which I never thought the bassoon to be capable.

DSM: I most like the pieces with meatier musical content and the strong performance style. The rich tone and adventurous style—quite a contrast to many bassoonists, who can be thin, pinched and lacking in warmth.

CMT: We have to hear, the audience must hear, and most of all the musicians must hear, the music. That emphasis on hearing, and a response in the musicians’ playing, is central to Nadina Mackie Jackson’s conception of performance. Her sense of balance and respect for the individual player prevents her work from becoming self-referential, no matter how virtuosic it is.

DSM: And why is the supply of this vivacious chamber music commodity so scarce and volatile? In finance—overseeing the monetary policy of almost all countries—you have a central bank, a federal reserve bank or monetary authority, which is responsible for the monetary policy of the country, or for a confederation of them such as the European Union. The central bank’s primary responsibility is to maintain the stability of the currency and money supply, but more active duties include managing interest rates on credit, and acting as a lender-of-last-resort to the banking sector during times of financial crisis.

CMT: The central bank also tends to have supervisory powers to ensure that banks and organizations don’t behave recklessly or fraudulently. In most countries, the central bank is state-controlled and has little or no autonomy, which allows for the government intervening directly in monetary policy. An ‘independent central bank’ is designed to minimize or preclude government interference—like the U.S. Federal Reserve, the Bank of England (since 1997), the Reserve Bank of India, the Bank of Japan, the Bank of Canada, the Reserve Bank of Australia and the European Central Bank. You’re thinking of some syllogism like the following: money:chamber_music :: central_bank:chamber_music_bank ?

DSM: Just a thought. I acknowledge that it’s got some worrisome implications. ‘Centralized anything’ is worrisome. But, on the other hand, we’re talking about public cultural infrastructure. Privatization and free-market infrastructure in other domains have been pretty unsatisfactory so far. And you have to admit that the U.S. NEA has had a tough row to hoe in terms of budget and appropriations in recent years—you have to admit that entities like NEA are only one part of a solution [to arts financing]. Other countries’ government arts endowments also have a tough time, with large fluctuations from year to year. I’m just wondering what other concepts there are out there, that would help to insure the solvency and stability of chamber music and classical music in general.

Saturday, October 21, 2006

Niches & Long-Tailed Culture

CMT: Jacob Hale Russell, in the Wall Street Journal, October 14, 2006, Page P1, has a thought-provoking and disturbing essay on the growing tension in philanthropy— ‘Hunger vs. the Arts’, as he calls it. Today's philanthropists prefer to fight disease and poverty instead of—not in addition to or balanced with—supporting cultural causes. It's a rising concern for many potential donors to the arts: “We get the ‘ask’ from every charity and non-profit. What is the justification for donating to chamber music when the money could help stamp out malaria?”

DSM: The issue has been a factor in philanthropy for a long time. But it’s more prominent now as some of the world's wealthiest people have directed large gifts recently to address humanitarian crises—think, for example, of Warren Buffett’s $30 billion donation to causes like AIDS and tuberculosis initiatives through the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. And this type of donation symbolically sets the agenda for other donors: it defines what’s fashionable, what’s “in”. But if people insist that spending on cultural activities is only morally acceptable after all hunger and homelessness and illness have been solved, the community will be much the poorer for it. A diversity of experience is fundamental to a stable and vibrant society, and you must not hold that dignity and diversity of experience hostage to the bottomless pit of human suffering. The world will always have malaria, disasters will continue happening, children will continue to be homeless and hungry and die. Those have been a part of the human condition since time immemorial. What’s new is the implication we see more and more in the U.S.—the implication that those humanitarian needs trump all others; that somehow other values are morally inferior, comparatively speaking; and that giving to other causes is somehow not as commendable as a gift to mitigate hunger or poverty or disease.

CMT: I agree with your notion of diversity of cultural experience as a common good or a utility. It's up a notch or two on Maslow’s triangle, admittedly. But cultural experiences are essential for both personal and community development, and for the maintenance of a free and humane civil society. You get a sense of this when you witness the re-emergence of the arts after genocide or civil conflict or natural catastrophes—Rwanda in the late Nineties or today, for example. The arts and sport and so on—they spontaneously reappear soon after destructive events, in part because they are addressing an elemental human need. The dignity you refer to—it isn’t so far up Maslow’s triangle at all. So the arts should be regarded as a public right, not unlike basic health services or education. By the way, it’s characterized that way in the enabling legislation of public arts subsidies and governmental agencies and NGOs. In other words, earlier generations’ public leaders held the same beliefs as the two of us have just been discussing, and they enacted laws and policies based on those beliefs. But we need more than restoring or re-examining the public ‘right’ to the arts, or support of the arts as a public good or utility by the government. We need to get private donors and philanthropists to think of the arts in this same way. It is a ‘public good’ and it adds value to the fabric of the community, every bit as much as, say, a new community soccer complex for kids' athletics.

DSM: In this era of the "long tail" new-economy business and cultural pluralism, we should also look at segments of cultural life that happen not to have big market share. Not everything is as popular as kids' soccer or Mozart. If we don’t do this, cultural policy regresses to nothing but a coercive and “colonizing” popularity contest—whether it is a high-brow elitist popularity or a low-brow, mass-market, lowest-common-denominator popularity. There is today a sort of unhealthy detent or pseudo-peace found in hi-tech democracies—North America and Europe, anyhow; the places we two have direct experience with. Is this cultural pseudo-peace not a de facto type of imperialism or exceptionalism? Today, the nonprofit sector remains a creative, vibrant and unique feature of American life, with thousands of organizations, both large and small, working together to create a better world. Unlike its commercial for-profit counterpart, the public good, rather than personal gain, is at the core of its activities. And any effort to address issues within the nonprofit sector must take into account the sector’s diversity and complexity and avoid the unintended consequence of stifling its vitality. Further, any policy changes must be aimed at strengthening the great American traditions of giving to, volunteering in—and serving as leaders, directors and trustees of—our charitable organizations, including chamber and classical music organizations. You have to have more diversity; you have to engage the strength of the constituencies in the long tail. To get back to Jacob Hale Russell's WSJ essay, I think that an exceptionalism that privileges a few dimensions of human experience (disease, poverty, health, hunger, housing, social exclusion) and disenfranchises other dimensions (culture, arts, sport) undervalues the contributions to human dignity and to cultural sensitivity and peace and understanding and other benefits that are associated with the arts in civil society. It drives toward a monoculture—not enough species, nothing but corn in the fields, nothing but white pines in the forest, not healthy. Do you think so too?

CMT: Yes. As some donors have diverted their giving to other humanitarian social causes, arts organizations have continued, I think, to depend overly much on their traditional base, people who deeply interested in the arts and old money and wealthy philanthropists—bigger donations from fewer donors. As more of the traditional donors allocate more of their giving (or in some cases all of it) to humanitarian causes, arts groups need to enlist the support of the next generation. The Boston Symphony Orchestra has done this reasonably well. Under Peter Brooke, the BSO has overtly tried to appeal to new donor types. It's brought in more celebrities, put on glamorous gala benefits, created task forces to target executives in specific industries including life sciences and investment banking, and positioned itself as an organization that is strategically related to the city's economic development. In February, the BSO invited doctors to an afternoon reception and private chamber-music performance before an evening concert. It was the third event organized by a committee of doctors that includes Robert Mayer, a trustee who's also an oncologist at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a dean of admissions for Harvard Medical School. At the reception, about 100 physicians talked with each other and with other attendees/guests about trends in healthcare, as much as they did about the afternoon's lecture on Schoenberg's music. Dr. Mayer says they're following up with the guests to encourage them to subscribe or donate. I’m not sure how many chamber music presenters (as opposed to standing chamber orchestras) have things like done this. But it seems like a promising avenue to try.

DSM: It isn’t that old money has to be substituted with new money. It’s really has to do with diversity and sustainability—and cultivating additional new donors whose larger numbers and whose diverse motivations will diminish the organizations’ cashflow variability and “lumpiness”. There is nothing you are going to do that will stem the tide of fashion—whatever the traditional large donors elect to do, patterned after the Gates or Buffet or not. You are still going to seek the big gifts and endowments and so on from the deep pockets, as always. But offering more product, more programs and series, and more experience types to more diverse audiences and donor constituencies—is one way for chamber music presenters to reduce their vulnerability.

CMT: The vulnerability isn’t just the dependency upon a handful of big private donors. The National Endowment for the Arts' budget is $124.4 million this year, down 23% from 1995. And state funding has fallen 27% from 2001 to 2006 according to Americans for the Arts. The vulnerability is the tandem dependency on flagging public-sector funding.

DSM: So what we need, probably, is more corporate sponsorship. And corporate donors are being more parsimonious about their giving—many prefer to support branded programming these days, where they are the exclusive sponsor and can leverage the promotional aspect of that. They prefer to sponsor a particular concert or series, rather than give a contribution to the chamber organization’s general fund, where it gets mingled with the contributions of several dozen other companies in the community. They’re disinclined to give when the gift is a “me too” gesture; they want exclusivity and the visibility that goes with it. We didn’t see this as often 10 years ago.

CMT: One of the challenges for arts groups is to convince potential donors of the benefit that their gift will deliver. If you're a healthcare institution, you show the donor a sick child who was helped, and it's easy. Selling donors on the cultural benefits of chamber music is a lot harder, more abstract. For prospective donors who are business leaders concerned with economic growth of the community, you need to show them objective facts about the relation of your programs to hiring and retention in their industry, in addition to softer things—cultural amenities that enhance the the community’s rank as a desirable place to live and work. Arts & Economic Prosperity: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts Organizations and Their Audiences, released in 2002, reveals that America's nonprofit arts industry generates $134 billion in economic activity every year, including $24.4 billion in Federal, state, and local tax revenues. The $134 billion total includes $53.2 billion in spending by arts organizations and $80.8 billion in event-related spending by arts audiences. The $53.2 billion represents a 45 percent increase (from $36.8 billion) since 1992, when Americans for the Arts last studied spending by arts organizations. The $134 billion in total economic activity has a significant national impact, generating the following:

4.9 million full-time equivalent jobs
$89 billion in household income
$6.6 billion in local government tax revenues
$7.3 billion in state government tax revenues
$10.5 billion in Federal income tax revenues

DSM: Those facts are helpful. But to grow those numbers, and specifically to grow them with new corporate donations and groups of individuals, I believe you need to expand the diversity of the programs. There's always fear among classical music artistic directors and executive directors, about the risk of offending their traditional donors by diverging too much from the frequently-played parts of the canon. To please one or a few individuals is to alienate 10 times as many others—who would have found a more diverse repertoire (or specific portions of it) more exciting—more intellectually or emotionally engaging, more stylish, more “cool”. To survive and thrive, chamber music presenters—all classical music organizations, really—need to be producing programming for the “long tail”, and adjust the pricing and marketing of each of the program lines or series to match the needs and capabilities and preferences of the “niche” in the long tail that that audience segment has.

Concerning these cultural policy and arts marketing and long-tail topics we’re exploring, here are a few of the online sources that I like:

To be an artist is to suffer for your art—to be a bit tortured, at least by questions and doubts. The questions about relative value never let up—Is it beautiful? Is it moving? Is it relevant? Here are some books on different dimensions of that, and how to communicate about value with donors and with cultural policy-makers: