Modern ≠ Innovative

An article by a fine music commentator recently included a gripe that a number of visiting orchestras weren’t being innovative in their programming, given that they weren’t including any music written after 1945. I was taken aback by that remark — what’s ‘innovative’ about programming recent music?

Programming recent music means just that: programming recent music. A lot of organizations, including major symphony orchestras, do it all the time and thus I can’t see anything particularly innovative about it. Perhaps it might be admirable, or desirable, or responsible, or supportive, or in some cases even foolhardy. But it just isn’t innovative, unless we insist on extremely strict, etymologically-derived word definitions: innovation comes from Innovate, which contains the root nova — i.e., “new”. Therefore the word can be defined as “partaking of the new.” Perhaps that’s the meaning of the word as used by the commentator. But I doubt it. To most of us, innovative tends to refer to actions which are unprecedented, uncommon, or which do things in a manner not previously experienced. In other words, the “new” refers to the actions, and not to the things being presented. The majority of the major orchestras do program recent compositions; many of them feature composer-in-residence programs, modern-music series, endowed commissions, and the like.

Now that isn’t to say that orchestras aren’t innovative in all kinds of ways. It wasn’t really all that long ago that the idea of orchestras giving concerts of movie music — often including a screening of the movie in question — represented new thinking. Or “meet the composer” series, such as the SF Symphony’s recent in-residence program with George Benjamin. Today’s orchestras offer quite broad musical palettes, but you might never know that from some of the griping you hear. A major civic orchestra is obliged to serve a large constituency, so it needs to offer something for everybody.

I remember a program from last season at the SFS that, to me, exemplified concert programming at its best. We had three items on the menu: Sibelius Symphony No. 4, hardly a regular repertory item, but an important and deeply compelling piece of music. That was followed by the premiere of Mason Bates’s The B-sides, a fresh and intriguing blend of contemporary DJ techniques with a modern orchestra. The second half was devoted to a currently-hot pianist in an audience-pleasing rendition of a warhorse piano concerto. Even had I left at intermission I would have considered the evening to have been a fine one; I bet that others could have arrived after intermission with equal satisfaction.

This reminds me that concert programs in the past were much longer than ours. One look at those subscription concerts of Mozart’s, or Haydn’s programs for the Hanover Square Rooms, tells us that people came to stay for a while. The performing spaces weren’t set up like ours; usually there would be a main room with moveable chairs, and an anteroom that served as a socializing area. Presumably folks wandered between the two rooms — the Viennese Classical practice of opening a symphony with a slow introduction served as a call-to-attention to the socializers in the anteroom. I get the distinct impression that you weren’t necessarily expected to plop down in your seat and stay there.

Under such circumstances, concert promoters needed to include a wide variety of stuff. It was all recent, in many cases freshly composed for that very concert. As a result the bill of fare was varied by genre: symphony, concerto, chamber music, opera arias, scenas (self-contained non-staged operatic scenes), solo turns that might include improvisation. Innovation consisted of coming up with radically successful new pieces, or perhaps promoting a particularly hot performer and/or composer. The Haydn-Solomon concerts in London during 1790s were all-star affairs featuring the biggest names in music of the day — in fact, the opening concerts of 1791 had to be delayed due to problems with performers getting out of France, what with the troubles and all.

Returning to the subject at hand: I discussed recent music on concert programs on a number of occasions during my stint as “San Francisco Classical Music Examiner” on Examiner.com. I remember the reaction of one particular web site — I forget its name — that focuses on picking apart classical music commentary. (What a dreadful premise for a web site.) Clearly contemporary music of all sorts was a sizzling hot button for the author of the site. The coverage was blistering, sarcastic, dripping with disdain. My article had suggested that innovation in concert programming wasn’t necessarily limited to giving premieres, but had a wider implication. However, my definition of innovation wasn’t, well, innovative enough for the author, and so my article was subjected to a thoroughgoing drubbing.

But I stand by my notion that innovation does not necessarily equal recent or new music. Innovative programming can, of course, include new music. But it can also include older stuff that doesn’t get programmed, or doing things in a radically different manner. I agree wholeheartedly that yet another traversal of a warhorse concerto, played by the wunderkind du jour (how’s that for mixed languages?), is not innovative. But then again, there are a lot of folks out there who want to hear said wunderkind play said warhorse, and who are willing to pay top dollar for the privilege. So program it, by all means. Because I’m not a music critic, I have no problem with hearing a repertory staple yet again; I don’t go to anywhere near as many concerts as does a music critic.

But — and this is an important point forgotten by a lot of critics — the general public doesn’t go to that many concerts, either. Whereas a jaded music critic might blanch at the thought of hearing the Tchaikovsky B-flat for the umpty-millionth time, it may be only the second or third time in the past decade for Mr. and Mrs. Average there in Row L, center.

Yes, I’m wandering off into the slightly different topic of whether concert-saturated music critics are the best judges of concert programming. But the idea leads back to that original commentator’s assessment of orchestral programs lacking innovation because they did not include music written after 1945. One can’t keep from wondering if that is a matter of concern only to that commentator, and is of little interest to the vast bulk of the concert-going public. That public, in fact, has been known to respond quite warmly to innovation in programming — but not necessarily to post-1945 music.

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