Here are two articles--thought experiments--from Terry Teachout, the drama critic for the Wall Street Journal.
The first one asks us to consider a world without regional orchestras (i.e., the kind I play with all the time). Are these entities still relevant? A source of civic pride, perhaps? Or should they go the way that most regional newspapers went in the wake of the Internet?
The second one calls for a moratorium on masterworks, including Handel's Messiah, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, and every impressionist painting ever.
Both of these thought experiments have me losing a lot of money as a freelance musician! I do think his points are worth considering a little more deeply, however. Should regional orchestras be abolished? I don't think so. Should the be restructured in such a way that they're more flexible, resilient, and useful? Definitely. The Midland-Odessa Symphony and Chorale, an orchestra I played with for a few years, has a nice model, I think. The orchestra consists of a small core of players--something like 4-4-3-3-2 in the strings, pairs of winds and brass (something like that--I don't remember the numbers exactly). The principal string players comprise a resident string quartet; the principal winds, a wind quintet; the principal brass players, a brass quintet. They can hire more people to supplement their core if they're performing a larger work. They do several pops concerts a year in an old hangar that's been converted. The atmosphere is very loose, and there's a bar in the back. People get a glass of wine, wander around the hall and take in the music. Masterworks concerts are more traditional performances, and typically take place at a big local church.
I certainly agree with the second "experiment," too. Beethoven's fifth is great and all, but why does no one seem to perform his second symphony? What about the symphonies of Franz Berwald? I think they're great, and I'll probably never, ever play one of them. I do my best to pull from my store of lesser-known works when I'm looking for a CD to play, and I've certainly bought things on a whim just to hear what they sound like. (I bought several discs of Karol Szymanowski's music, having never heard any of it, simply because I thought his name was cool. Turns out I really like a lot of it!)
The first one asks us to consider a world without regional orchestras (i.e., the kind I play with all the time). Are these entities still relevant? A source of civic pride, perhaps? Or should they go the way that most regional newspapers went in the wake of the Internet?
The second one calls for a moratorium on masterworks, including Handel's Messiah, Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, and every impressionist painting ever.
Both of these thought experiments have me losing a lot of money as a freelance musician! I do think his points are worth considering a little more deeply, however. Should regional orchestras be abolished? I don't think so. Should the be restructured in such a way that they're more flexible, resilient, and useful? Definitely. The Midland-Odessa Symphony and Chorale, an orchestra I played with for a few years, has a nice model, I think. The orchestra consists of a small core of players--something like 4-4-3-3-2 in the strings, pairs of winds and brass (something like that--I don't remember the numbers exactly). The principal string players comprise a resident string quartet; the principal winds, a wind quintet; the principal brass players, a brass quintet. They can hire more people to supplement their core if they're performing a larger work. They do several pops concerts a year in an old hangar that's been converted. The atmosphere is very loose, and there's a bar in the back. People get a glass of wine, wander around the hall and take in the music. Masterworks concerts are more traditional performances, and typically take place at a big local church.
I certainly agree with the second "experiment," too. Beethoven's fifth is great and all, but why does no one seem to perform his second symphony? What about the symphonies of Franz Berwald? I think they're great, and I'll probably never, ever play one of them. I do my best to pull from my store of lesser-known works when I'm looking for a CD to play, and I've certainly bought things on a whim just to hear what they sound like. (I bought several discs of Karol Szymanowski's music, having never heard any of it, simply because I thought his name was cool. Turns out I really like a lot of it!)