Category: Music

The Value of Regional Orchestras

Matthew Eilar2 Comments

The Wall Street Journal drama critic Terry Teachout has been making waves in the classical music internets for a provocative column questioning (in light of the Pasadena Symphony’s recent troubles) whether “regional orchestras” have any value in today’s musical world:

[T]his leads me to ask a tough question that nobody in the music business ever asks, at least not out loud: What, if anything, justifies the existence of a regional symphony orchestra in the 21st century? Many people still believe that an orchestra is a self-evidently essential part of what makes a city civilized. But is this true?..

Most, after all, offer a predictable mix of ultrafamiliar classics and soufflé-light pops programs. If I lived in a city with such an orchestra, would I attend its concerts? A century ago I would have said yes, because live performances were the only way to hear music you didn’t make yourself. But downloading and the iPod have made it possible to hear great music whenever and wherever you want. Is there any point in going to hear a pretty good live performance of a chestnut like Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, Elgar’s “Enigma” Variations” or the Schumann Piano Concerto, all of which figure prominently on Pasadena’s five subscription programs for the 2010-11 season? For a fast-growing number of Americans, the answer is no.

I speak as a devout believer in the power and permanence of Western classical music. But if I were the head of the Podunk Foundation and had to choose between funding the Podunk Philharmonic and a nonmusical group identical in quality to Palm Beach Dramaworks or the Nelson-Atkins Museum, I’d dump the orchestra in a heartbeat. The best regional theater companies and museums provide an aesthetic experience that cannot be duplicated by any other means. Not so third-tier orchestras. Their primary historic function has been rendered obsolete by technology, in much the same way that many of the historic functions of regional newspapers have been usurped by the web. You don’t have to buy a ticket to the Podunk Philharmonic to hear Beethoven’s Seventh any more than you have to buy the Podunk Times to figure out what movie to see on Saturday night.

Terry Teachout is a professional troll, but there have been many spirited defenses of America’s orchestras going around. Charles Noble, a violist with the Oregon symphony defends regional orchestras as a sort of musical farm league, allowing local players to get better and play classical music. Sound and Fury snarks that perhaps, if Teachout is satisfied with MP3s on iPods, he should forego art museums and theater in favor of coffee table books and DVDs. David Stabler, classical music critic for The Oregonian, writes that the communal experience of being in an auditorium and listening to a piece of music at the same time as hundreds of people is a rare experience in today’s world. I myself wondered if we should get rid of most of the NBA just because only a handful of teams could be champions.

Teachout’s argument makes me sad. I appreciate the local orchestras I’ve patronized throughout my life for both tangible and less tangible reasons. I find listening to music–just listening–very hard. A live orchestra provides a visual accompaniment to the music. It’s for this reason that I prefer YouTube videos of unfamiliar works to recordings where possible. If not, I use a score. I think it has to do with mirror neurons; by watching the musicians, I get to feel a little bit of what it feels like to directly manipulate the sound.

I also think that a reliance on recordings for the “quality” or “right” performance is a crutch that hurts music in the long term. The mentality that if you’re not going to hear (or produce) a perfect performance, then the whole thing is worthless runs counter to individual participation with music. Why participate in a community softball league if nobody is going to the world series? It’s a ridiculous standard that is not applied to any other part of community life, but this gets confused by the quality and ubiquity of recordings.

By coincidence, the same day that I read that Teachout article, I came across this BBC report on the Kimbanguist Symphony Orchestra, the only orchestra in the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has been making music for over 25 years, amid neverending war and strife. There’s a video in the report, and one can tell immediately that it’s not the highest quality orchestra in the world–exactly the kind of ensemble that Teachout questions. You can tell from the video that every member of the orchestra is dedicated to the mission of the ensemble–the music director describes how in the orchestra’s firs years of operations, there were only five violins for twelve violinists.

Not every regional orchestra has the problems of the Kimbanguist SO, but the root problems are universal: maintaining funding in uncertain economies without government support, growing an audience, balancing artistic ambition with financial considerations. Some of those questions only apply to the orchestras, while others apply to classical music as a whole. None of them can be solved with an iPod.

Proper Discord on Renee Fleming's Rock Album

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The unnamed author of the excellent classical music blog Proper Discord (added to blogroll) has a devastating critique of Renée Fleming’s new rock-covers album, Dark Hope up today. The punchlines:

In classical music, it’s the composer’s job to write the notes, the musician’s job to make a good sound, the engineer’s job to capture it and the producer’s job to let you know when everything is in the can.
In pop music, they all work together to create a sound. The notes themselves are simple, so the sound needs to be great. That hasn’t happened here, or, at least, it hasn’t been done well enough to make it work.
Covers like this are going to be compared to the originals, and the originals were all put together by people who knew how to make a band sound good.
It seems like everybody involved underestimated what it took to make a modern rock record, and it’s a shame, because the talent was there. It didn’t need to suck.

The Smiles – Hermosa EP

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  • The Smiles Hermosa EP. Self-released, May 28, 2010
  • This album is for: someone on the lookout for driving music, or a pick-me-up. Fans of the nü-Surf movement found in bands like Animal Collective, Fleet Foxes and Beach House.
  • This album is not for: People that like a little bite to their music. People looking for anything downtempo. Those who hate California (Oregonians, Coloradans).
  • Standout tracks: “Sun” “I Could Love You More”

The 6 song Hermosa EP represents a major step forward for the young Southern California-based band The Smiles. The song titles and album cover point to sun, the beach, summer, and a good time, and the band is firmly rooted in the classic sound of Southern California: Dick Dale, The Beach Boys, and their latter-day adherents Beach House, Fleet Foxes, and Animal Collective.

The EP is available to preview and stream from Bandcamp.

M.I.A. – Born Free

Matthew Eilar1 Comment

Like the rest of the world, I’ve been fascinated by Lynn Hirschberg’s New York Times Magazine profile of M.I.A. I can’t say that my opinion of her or her music has been much changed by the article; it was a hit piece–a very well written one at that– but I never really listened to her music for the politics.

I have been reconsidering her controversial music video for “Born Free,” however:

Hirshberg doesn’t think much of the video, calling it “politically naive” and calling attention to it’s violence. It’s obvious that the video is intended to shock, but I think the discussion has to be a little more nuanced than that.

You have to consider if you can appreciate the work of art, the video, independent of the aesthetic of it’s creator. It would be valid to dismiss the video as an exploitative offering by a political dilettante, especially considering the cartoonish governmental figures in the video, and the stylized violence. It undermines the sincerity of the video to know the extent of M.I.A.’s political involvement. At the same time, the video kind of works without knowing that context. It’s central conceit is to take paramilitary actions and images that we’ve become familiar with in the context of the war on terror, and apply them to a population that has never been targeted as such (“gingers”). It takes racial profiling to an abstraction. The message, if there is one, is that if targeting a population for their red hair seems senseless and counter to the mantra of “born free” that repeats in the background, why would you accept those actions for any other population? There’s a debate to be had about whether the video is honest or exploitative, but I think it’s unfair to call it “politically naive.”