The Price of Progress/Bold Pronouncement LO12679

Ray Evans Harrell (mcore@soho.ios.com)
Mon, 24 Feb 1997 02:37:41 -0800

Replying to LO12673 --

To the List:

Leon Conrad wrote an excellent reply and for that reason I will struggle
in my own way to answer. What I would like, as well, is an application of
the "principles" of the art to business and the Artistic business
principles to the flexible work force that has been given so much good
press lately for their successes.

It is my contention that the arts have been a flexible work force for
almost 100 years and that they have come to the place of 98 out of every
100 graduates failing to make a living at their work. I am wondering out
loud if that is the plight of the "flexible" workers in tomorrow's society
as well. As for the first section I refer to my post Tue, 04 Feb 1997
Organizational Artistry LO12348 for my discussion of the structure of
artistic principles. For the second it will hopefully come out in the
future posts.

Leon Conrad wrote:
> Ray Harrell wrote:
> > "... what is missed is how incredible the skill at both thinking and
> > writing was in the 18th century. Not only are our musicians less literate
> > but that 18th century audience knew if he was faking it."

> Leon Conrad wrote:
> Whoa! You refer to composers and performers in the same sentence and I am
> not sure where you draw the line, but ... why did 18th Century audiences
> prefer Salieri and countless other now 'minor' composers to Mozart? How
> come Gay's Beggar's Opera outdid Handel's, whereas it is hardly heard
> today, and considered less of a work?

Actually most composers are still performers. Sometimes one wishes that
they weren't but they feel the same about pure performers. Gay was the
first composer of English musical theater, considered the Father of
musical theater while Handel really didn't care much for the stage. I
think of it much in the old "formal structuralist" (classical) vs. the
organ evolution (romantic) fake battle that has raged through Western
musical history even into the present. As I have pointed out it also
rages in the language as well. Salieri is a very interesting case.
Salieri was a great court musician, businessman, the greatest voice
teacher of his day and Beethoven's composition teacher. He developed the
musical climate of his day with the hand of a Master. He was also of an
aesthetic that is out of style today. His use of orchestration was superb
and theoretical, his harmony on the other hand was traditional. (see
LO12348) Mozart was a great performer and had been taught virtually from
birth. All of them, within the context of what anthropologist Edward T.
Hall in "The Dance of Life" calls the rhythm of a time and place, sang,
played and composed as naturally as they breathed IMHO.

Leon Conrad continued:
> If you are referring to composers, would you really call Schnittke,
> Messiaen, twhistle, Nyman (to name but a few) less literate than their
> 18thC. counterparts .... and would you call the rare performers who manage
> to perform with something for want of a better term that I'll call 'line'
> (legato, no down beats, even in staccatto, modernistic music) ... those
> people who make you want to dance and/or weep when you hear them play ...
> any different from the castrati and virtuosi who took Europe and the New
> World by storm in the 18th C?

I was referring to the musical life of America and not Europe where art is
considered a worthwhile profession. As for the composers you named, they
are lights in a vastly larger world than the 18th and 19th centuries. At
the beginning of the 20th century there were 1600 opera houses in the
state of Iowa, today there are 1 and 1/2. The historian Lawrence Levine
in his book tracing the history of what he refers to as High Brow/Low Brow
performance notes that at the turn of the 20th century you could hear the
entire musical art of Europe in NYCity on one night. Today in Paris there
are sometimes as many Art performances in one night as there are in almost
all of America on one night Art music. Times have changed. Very few
composers can improvise in chromatic harmony and many of them cannot
analyze it either. At the end of the 19th century this was the realm of
every conservatory trained musician, today it is arcane and is taught not
to every student but only to composers. This makes the performers
illiterate in what they are performing. As for the audiences, they weep
easily and are confused by Strauss and Wagner. The Schnittke, Messiaen,
Birdwhistle and Nyman (I don't know him either) are rarely performed here.
My own company has performed many new American works in repertory in the
last six years but the depth of the market for consistent new works is
very thin here. This used to be the realm of the ardent amateur (remember
Emp. Maria Theresa who Dominico Scarlatti wrote the "essercisi" for or all
of those dedications of Faure in his songs), today the ardent amateur
plays golf and the market for fun.

Leon Conrad continued:

> I am reminded of a story about Stravinsky and his violin concerto - I
> forget which of the world class violinists it was who premiered it at the
> time, but the story goes that after he had looked through the manuscript,
> he went to Stravinsky and said, 'Maestro, this is unplayable'. Stravinsky
> smiled and replied, 'I know. What I am after is the sound of somebody
> trying to play it.'

Don't get me wrong, today's performers are by and large more capable at
performing much of the music of the past and some of the present music
then say Leopold Auer, the greatest violinist of his day who refused to
learn the Tschaikovski concerto that is played by high school students
now. This is due not to a greater musician or an evolution of technique
but to a simple familiarity. When the problems are solved the pedagogy
becomes clear and what seemed incredibly complex is met in a different
manner. A manner of a cultural gestalt that makes the whole instrument of
the musician more available. Also as I mentioned above, in the U.S. the
performers you hear are 2 out of every 100 who graduate from professional
performing arts schools. On that level of competition they should be
competent. Unfortunately that does not speak for a general level of
competence.

In the 19th century people who treasured and carried traditions like Auer
did, were much more complex then those who brook new ground at times.
Their responsibilities to the tradition were greater. Like a great
Shakespearean, there are those who can say the words and there are great
artists who are afraid to because they know what they mean. My position
is that there are fewer who know what all of those notes mean today then
there were in the 19th century. Besides we are much too self
congratulatory in this day and age and the audiences are dying off for the
lack of relevancy that comes from literate understanding.

Leon Conrad continued:
> I don't know what the first performance sounded like. Nowadays it is
> played 'note perfect'.

Listen to everyone else try to sing the Berg songs and then listen to
Fischer-Dieskau show the stylistic connection to the great music of the
past in those songs that were considered so disjunct and outrageous. Great
art makes sense to the people who have solved the problems. Do I hear
John Warfield on "complexity" here?

Leon Conrad continued:
> It was the same with the four-minute mile. People said 'it can't be done',
> but as soon as the concept was envisaged, all that needed to happen was
> for the possibility that was inherent in it to materialise - and for the
> event to be allowed to be made manifest.

I agree,

Leon Conrad continued:
> The artists, thinkers, philosophers who are ahead of the thinking of the
> age in which they live are the people who challenge our thinking and help
> us progress as a human race. Art and philosophy (and scientific discovery,
> for that matter) are but metaphors that enable us to understand the
> complex things called the self, the world we live in and just where we fit
> in to that world a tiny bit better - if we use that knowledge with
> respect.

I think of this in another way. To me I believe the muse is in the
present. The composers, and other artists, listen and mirror the present
(truth) solving the technical problems in an evolution of values (beauty).
There are many examples of works that were simply too close to the
vulnerability of the audiences, their pains and their anger, and so they
were rejected initially. We are having the same issue today in Physics
around the non-sensible structures of the discoveries. These are ignored
by and large except where they are needed to run a technological marvel.
My daughter's math in the 8th grade is the same math I was taught in
college. This is slowly bringing the general population around to what
these new understandings of reality are saying. In art, you have this
same need for education. My premise is that few audiences understand most
of the art of the late 19th and early 20th century at the beginning of the
21st. This retardation in a time of technological speed up is new. Even
in the industrial era when the split began, there were audiences for new
artistic ideas. Today those audiences don't have the tools to understand
old art much less the new. They encase their meaning in the word
entertainment which gives them other reasons for attending something they
think is good for them but that they are bored by.

Leon Conrad continued:
> And here lies the crux of the matter ... progress is fine if it is managed
> with responsibility. Each person will find the route to their own progress
> in a different way. All who do so are likely to benefit the whole of the
> human race. Some will see the potential of machines and computers. Some
> will be content with finding fulfillment in a time-honoured agricultural
> life (whether they choose to use the advancements of modern technology or
> not). Most of us will have a variety of ways in which we seek to become
> whole. Maybe it is the values that power this process of progress that
> will make the difference - maybe progress for progress' sake matters
> little.

I tend to think of this like a good relationship. If you don't work at it
daily, it won't last long.

Leon Conrad continued: (snip)

> I would say that consultants are like artists - we need artists to stretch
> and chllenge us. They need people to challenge. We are interdependent.
> Different needs arise in different ages. Our ability to adapt sees us
> through. That is one of the reasons why learning and analysis are so
> fundamental to us - our survival depends on our ability to learn and
> analyse. Through the quality of our cooperation and the effectiveness of
> our communication we can achieve transcendence of the dualistic
> 'dispensible - indispensible' frame of existence and reach something that
> is 'inavaluable' to all concerned - a true 'performance' in which
> performer, listener, conductor, composer, (even outsider - now there's a
> challenge!), come together in an integrated act that manifests a bit of
> the potential we were previously unaware of _ which will be different for
> each of us - that will then work as a catalyst for change in each of us -
> when we let it.

I think I agree, but would add that change and sophistication even in food
won't happen if you always eat fast food. Wine tasting is helped by an
understanding of where you sense it on the tongue. These people who know
this rarely drink to get drunk. Chromatic harmony is a hell of lot harder
than wine tasting.


Leon quoted me:
> >"This tremendous lack creates a problem in skill and erudition in
> >composers, performing artists and audiences. They should be the model of
> >a LO but unfortunately they often are starving and struggle simply to
> >exist."

Leon Conrad continued:
> Starving and struggle for existence are sometimes the greatest catalysts
> for liberated creative breakthroughs. We need the quiet reflective times
> of low challenge as well as the times of hard challenge that stretch us
> physically, morally and spiritually. An interesting idea to follow would
> be what things to work on to enable consistency in progress and
> development across these periods of high/low challenge.

Tell that to my kid who wants a nice set of sneakers and jeans. We have
plenty of challenge in our work, we don't need to starve physically to
experience that. This particular (particle theory) idea is set to rest by
the tremendous amount of very high class music written for the voice by
the composers in the old Soviet composer's union. Their output in song
repertoire alone has been to the rest of the world as the Metropolitan
Opera budget is to all of the opera companies in the U.S. and Canada.
Bigger! John Warfield says in his examination of "Complexity" that an
organization cannot function without the "Time, Resources and Access"
necessary to do the job. I don't see any one else doing it for free.

Thanks for the reply and the discussion, please continue.

Ray Evans Harrell, artistic director
The Magic Circle Chamber Opera of New York
mcore@soho.ios.com

-- 

Ray Evans Harrell <mcore@soho.ios.com>

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