Weekly Listening: Concerto for Orchestra, "Jubilee Games" by Leonard Bernstein

I remember stumbling upon this piece during my undergrad and being quite surprised by what I heard. It really is not your typical Bernstein, and it is unclear if that is for better or for worse.

Give it a listen here, here, here, and here.

A Brief Overview of Bernstein

There is very that could be said here that is not already covered in far greater details with far greater accuracy somewhere else (like here). He is probably best known as the resident conductor of the New York Philharmonic for eleven years (1958 to 1969), and as a composer of such mainstream classics as West Side Story, Trouble in Tahiti, and On the Waterfront. He was a prolific educator, lecturer, and humanitarian, and unabashedly championed the next generation of musicians while uncovering and promoting the pieces that might otherwise have been lost (eg. Charles Ives' Symphony No. 2).

A bit about the piece

Jubilee Games is one of Bernstein's last pieces, written in 1986 for the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Israel Philharmonic, with a slight nod to Bartok's Concerto for Orchestra, also celebrating its 50th anniversary with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It is a four movement work for large orchestra and choir.

Decidedly, the first two movements are very un-Bernstein. They definitely pull much more from his more academic compositions such as his symphonies; definitely drawing on something much more Stravinsky-esque than previous works. However, the third and fourth movements easily pull back to a more familiar sound easily linked to Bernstein's Jeremiah Symphony (the third movement definitely recalls the 2nd of the latter).

The work as a whole has a really nice arc to it, and the magical lines that make up the final movement are made that much more sweet by the organized chaos that precedes it. It makes me a little sad that this work is not programmed as often as it is deserving, but is that not the case with most music?

Weekly Listening: Symphony No. 1 by Bohuslav Martinů

Not being much of a performer, Martinů was one of those composers that I just flat-out missed during my undergraduate studies. Several of his earlier chamber works would appear on some of my friends' recitals, but they never really registered as anything special and were often accompanied by complaints of the performers about how hard they were and how low the payoff ended up being.

This all changed in my masters when I was introduced to his orchestra music—namely his symphonies and concerti (it is ALL about his orchestral works!). Of these works, he often gets a lot of attention for his first piano concerto and his sixth symphony, albeit way after slogging through the importance of his chamber pieces. One of my more favorite pieces in this part of his output is actually his first symphony, which you can listen to here.

A Brief Overview of Martinu

Bohuslav Martinu was one of those composers who embraced a pretty typical trajectory of many early 20th Century composers. He was famously born at the top of a church tower in then-Czechoslovakia, and has stated that his residence in said tower drastically influenced his objectivity towards his own music. At the age of 16, he departed to Prague to study violin, and promptly earned expulsion. He "deputized with the Czech Philharmonic before playing three seasons as a full member," and then departed to Paris in 1923.

As was the case at the time, Martinu's existence was steeped in the influence of Igor Stravinsky, French Impressionism, and American Jazz idioms. He admittedly embraced the influence of the Russian prodigy, observing a severe change in Stravinsky's output from piece to piece due to inventive and unabashed experimentalism. Many of his pieces from this time reflect the culmination of these influences and include some of his most-performed works.

Upon the occupation of France by the Nazis in 1940, Martinu fled to the United States, where he received a sudden and warm embrace by many of the major musical forces on the East Coast, most prominently from Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony. It was in this period of his output that he began producing much larger works, including a symphony a year nearly every year in the early 40s, and some truly remarkable works like his Concerto for Two Pianos. Some typical elements found in his music during this time included musical chattering, focus on the construction of phrase over meter—typically resulting in atypical patterns within a written meter, strong references to Czech folksong, and more minor aspects such as the near-exclusive use of minor modes for pitch, and the heavy use of orchestral piano.

Boosey and Hawkes' Patrick Lambert makes the claim that Martinu's music was a pre-cursor to aleatory—I find them hard pressed to credibly back this up—but there is speculation that his compositions, if examined more readily and significantly in academia, might yield great insight into the trajectory of American music given his status as a composer and pedagogue for the better part of a decade.

A bit about the piece

This piece reminds me that there was a whole of cool stuff going on in the 40s and 50s that just get ignored by academics across the world. First off, this work basically hits you in the face to start with some masterfully orchestrated ascending strands that snap into a full-on presentation of a Czech lullaby. Its charm is in the delicate and deliberate colors that support a lesser-common metric presentation of a melody (I say lesser-common in the sense that the piece really is just in a constant compound meter in which the melodic contours do not readily fit).

His harmonic palette is pretty tame for the time, except for a wonderful flavor of blue notes that permeates the textures of the second movement and characterizes the melody of the third movement. By today's standards, it is not anything terribly different or new, but at the time standard harmonic convention was unconventional as it were (think of what was going on in the output of other compositional giants such as Bartok, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg). Later symphonies—most notably his sixth symphony—relied heavily on pitch saturation, depicting clearly Martinu's interest in planing 4th and 7ths instead of 3rds and 6ths as a way to create a larger sound with a more-complete harmonic resonance than was typical in more Germanic styles of composition.

What I find his works following this one is the apparent direct link to Martinu's famous falling accident. As described on many a website, Martinu took a "near-fatal fall off of an unprotected terrace." This accident resulted in "complete deafness in one ear for the remainder of his life.". More interesting, though, is that his letters indicate that he was not deaf, but was plagued by an incessant buzzing in one ear, a characteristic that apparently not only significantly influenced his output from that point on, but was audible pre-fall and only became louder post-fall, as was confirmed by several of his students over the years. It reminds me so much of Percy Grainger's piece, The Immovable Do, except that it was for EVERY piece after that moment, and not just the one piece written on that one instrument.

My thought is that the significance of most of Martinu's works written during and after World War II remain to be discovered, but for those interested in exploring a very different facet of a composer typically boiled down to a handful of early chamber works, this is the gateway to something extraordinary!

Things you really should not say to a composer....

It is always astounding what people are willing to say to composers. And what makes stuff it worse is that these statements are usually made by encouraging individuals who are attempting to offer their support, or from another composer who really should know better, like a teacher or musical peer. After receiving some of these comments first hand, I think it might be time to actually compile this list that has unintentionally bruised so many of us in this shark tank of an industry. It mostly consists of the ones I hear regularly and, yes, they all have a similar flavor, but man are they obnoxious!

Also, if it were not already clear, please accept this sentence as a hyperbole alert!

11. Pieces will be considered only if they have a high quality live recording, and have never received a performance before.

Maybe a weird one to start this list on. Admittedly, no one has ever said this to me in person, but it is a common thing that is published for various call for scores, competitions, and new music festivals. My question in response is always "why would I put in all of the work to get such a recording without planning to perform it?" Usually, if a piece has not been performed, there is no live recording of it... usually....

10. I love new music! I'm a huge fan of Bartok.

Yes, sure, in the grand scheme of things, Bartok is relatively new, and the term "new music" is deceptively vague, but why is this something that people say? Maybe this is just an issue I have with semantics, but my preference is to use the term "contemporary music," which is defined by context. If you look at it from that perspective, Bartok was long dead before I was born, thus making him not contemporary—at least not to me. More humorously, though, is that the people who usually make this comment are performers usually in the ballpark of my age group, so Bartok is no contemporary of theirs, either.

Additionally, if you repurpose this term to apply to other nouns, it becomes more ridiculous:
"I love new computers! I'm a huge fan of the Apple II!"
"I love new movies! I'm a huge fan of Casablanca!"
"I love new books! I'm a huge fan of Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy!"
"I love new architecture! I'm a huge fan of the Pyramids of Giza!"

Yep....

9. We decide on who to commission based on who other people commission.

I have heard this one about three times total in my life, so my guess is that it is not as common as most on this list. It does make sense in some capacity because it reduces risk for the commissioning body by considering composers who have a longer track record of successful commissions with professional contacts over people who only write for their friends. But at the same time, it is very much the retail paradox in that you need the experience to get the job, but you need the job to get the experience and thus are left with neither. This really should be a tertiary consideration, with the primary focus being on the quality of the music and the interactions with the composer.

8. What festival or program are you going to this summer?

Oh man! With my millions of dollars and ability to take off work for months at a time without significant consequences, which one am I NOT going to!? The comment that often comes after this is, "well, if you get the program paid for, then what's the problem?" For one, you are competing with hundreds of other composers for that funding. It is great if you can get a festival or program completely funded, but more often than not, money for travel and maintaining your existence while attending is not covered. And it still does not address the fact that you need to figure out how to pay rent while you are away, let alone continue to pay rent upon your return after not working for a chunk of the summer.

7. I don't know what I'm supposed to be listening to!

Admittedly, I have greater issue with this comment than most, but I still want to address it. A skilled composer has control over what is heard over all else in their music at any given point in time. Typically, lack of clear focus is a sign of a younger composer struggling with the balance of clarity versus their excessive amount of ideas. Where this comment gets me is when it implies that the other happenings in the music are not important. The response to this comment is "listen to all of it! It is ALL important!" Yes, if there is something in the music that is otherwise ignorable and not missed upon its removal, one does not need to listen to it, but if it is something intrinsically woven into the experience that is the piece, maybe try to listen to everything as a whole rather than just one part of it.

6. Your music would be more successful if you wrote what people want to listen to.

Yes, it would be. The implications of monetary income and fame as the only forms of success aside, if we all knew what would make our music more successful and could execute it, do you not think we would already be doing that? More often than not, we write what we want to listen to and hope that others can extrapolate that taste to something they want to experience.

5. This piece is so successful. Why isn't the rest of your output like this?

Gee, I have no clue.... A friend of mine actually had this comment made to him by a faculty member, prompting a response that went something like this: "Yeah, I usually strive for mediocrity but I guess I was way off the mark for this one." We always want to write our best piece, which is totally not possible all of the time. Additionally, you may have just told someone to write more music like a piece of theirs they do not particularly like.....

4. I encourage you to work with this person.

This one is maddening, and something I ran into often during my doctoral studies. If someone is a stellar performer and will undoubtedly be a huge boon for your career in some capacity, of course we should work with them! But what if that person does not want to work with us? What if they do not like our music, are not interested in pursuing the same goals we have, or require something prohibitive to enter into the relationship (eg. absurd payment, unbalanced workloads, or other unreasonable requirements not readily within your means)?

Again, this comment is usually made to identify who could be a beneficial collaborator and offer encouragement, but more often than not we already know or have otherwise attempted without success.

3. You should have continued your performance study.

This is a tricky one, because studying performance with an instrument is a HUGE learning tool for composition, allowing someone to gain insights into music that might otherwise be missed. The issue I take with this comment is that it sounds like you are being told not to give up your day job. Conversely, you may put your composition at risk by sacrificing the time you put into it by splitting it with an instrument. In actuality, a lot of composers should NOT be performing, since so many of us are awkward as all get out, lacking the charisma that allows for success.

What I have come across more times than not is that, while the composer/performer package can be immensely successful, they often do one of a few things: they only write for themselves (this is fine; Steve Reich did this for most of his active performing career), they only write music for their instrument (composer/pianists and composer/choral singers are especially guilty of this), or all of their music sounds like it was written for their instrument and then transcribed (again, composer/pianists are particularly guilty of this). All three of these are fine except for the inherent result of eliminating diversity in your musical portfolio.

By no means am I encouraging people to stop performing, but it is a bit annoying to get this comment when many of us actively opted to stop performing to focus more on our writing.

2. I wanted to do this, so I did.

Another unintentionally obnoxious comment I hear visiting composers say regularly is something like this, "Well, I really wanted to study with Luciano Berio, so I did." It negates circumstance and privilege, and implies that anyone can do the same things they did when they were of similar age. Even if one is on equal footing demographically, financially, and capability as the commenter, what often happens is that they forget that they hold degrees from Oberlin and Yale, and that they are presenting at University of Southern North Dakota at Hoople, which is a significant difference in available opportunities, and will drastically impact the evaluation of one's work for most of their career. Comments like this are one of my least favorite, and provides a nice segue to one of the worst...

1. Why don't you just [XYZ]?

This one gets me more than anything I have heard over the years, and the biggest culprits are music professors or visiting artists already established in their field. It implies ease of accomplishment, and unintentionally puts down the recipient of the comment since it is likely that they have not yet had this achievement, or has not been successful in their attempts.

Examples of this include (not void of hyperbole, but still very true examples):
"Why don't you just go study with John Adams?" Yes, I would love to study with the most prolific American composer ever, but I have not quite gotten around to it.
"Why don't you go to Aspen this summer?" Yes, I would love to spend my summer in one of the most competitive, unique, and hive mind-y musical atmospheres on the continent, but I would rather hang out at home and eat ramen.
"Why don't you send your music to the Kronos Quartet for them to play?" Admittedly, the Kronos Quartet DOES review everything that is submitted to them, though it is unlikely you would get an answer from them unless they happen to want to program your work. HOWEVER, it is not like the most successful chamber music enterprise in the world is completely off the radar and unknown to young composers....

What makes this comment particularly egregious is that it is typically made with the best intensions, attempting to encourage the pursuit of a lofty goal or desire that the commenter believes to be attainable. However, in the short term, it really just feels like a kick in the stomach while you are already down and struggling.