By James Conlon
The following post is adapted from James Conlon’s Keynote Address at the symposium “Music, Censorship and Meaning in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union: Echoes and Consequences” on August 9, 2014 presented by the Ziering-Conlon Initiative at the Colburn school with the cooperation of the Orel Foundation.
Is it justified to speak of censorship in our country, which was founded on the principle of freedom of speech and whose history, with occasional deviations, has upheld the values flowing from it?
Strictly speaking, the answer would be no. The subject of my enquiry today is not any visible authorized body of censorship that affects what classical music is played or written, but a less visible factor that strongly influences performing arts institutions on their choices of what they produce.
This less tangible factor is the economic return or the popularity generated by a particular composition or composer; better known in everyday parlance as “box office appeal.”
Whereas overt official bodies of censorship have existed (whether governmental or religious, or offshoots of political opportunism or vigilantism) they have largely disappeared or have a diminished function, only to be surreptitiously replaced by very practical economic factors.
Most performing arts organizations are habitually faced with trying to calculate which works will do well at the box office, and which will not. Gradually those that do not sell adequately are performed less often. They become, so to speak, less popular. And then a vicious cycle comes into full play: the less well known a work, the more likely it will not be performed: the more rarely it is performed, the less known it will become.
For a piece of music to be played regularly, it must be popular. That is very a tidy construction, fulfilling both the Founding Fathers’ vision of democracy (the vote of the populace will rule) and our economic credo: the best product will sell the best. In other words, it is as American as apple pie.
But, viewed from the perspective of a performing artist, or a serious lover of classical music, it is simply unacceptable to confuse a work’s popularity with its inherent quality. Galileo’s vision of the universe was a minority opinion, for which he was condemned, but he was right. I refuse to believe that the works of Alban Berg, Leos Janacek and Benjamin Britten are intrinsically inferior to, for example Carl Orff.
As an insider, I see how choices of repertory are made across the spectrum of performing arts organizations in our country. Box office considerations have had, and continue to have, a profound effect on the dampening of our musical culture. There is no question that in times of economic difficulties, all institutions, intensifying their risk-averse impulses, will move toward the “tried and true,” responding to their perception of what the public will buy. Experiments, unfamiliar works, world premieres, outside-the-box projects, unknown composers–all are put on hold, sometimes indefinitely.
There is no malice. There is no authoritarian body judging the political, philosophic or religious validity or danger of a given piece of music and its suitability for performance. Is adherence to box office “values”” literally censorship? Absolutely not. Does such adherence have similar results? Absolutely yes.
The problem as I see it, is that the intrinsic values of pieces of music are now being judged by their commercial viability. The number of classical music lovers in the U.S. is already a small fraction of the population; but even those with more than a passing interest are influenced by a given piece’s “popularity” or salability. Lack of familiarity, a cumbersome title or even a work’s length become confused with quality.
A somewhat amusing example from one of my early experiences might serve as an illustration. More than three decades ago, I was making a program with the artistic administrator of one of America’s leading orchestras for a program that would also feature its very fine chorus. I proposed Benjamin Britten’s Cantata Misericordium, a work I love. After several days of reflection, the administrator contacted me and said it would be best if we did not include it on the program. Any work with the word “misery” would be a “downer” at the box office. I tried in vain to explain that Misericordium came from a Latin root meaning compassion or pity, that the cantata was a retelling of the parable of the Good Samaritan, and that there was nothing “miserable” about it. The cantata went unplayed–at least on that occasion.
The word “long” has become synonymous with boredom in many minds. One hears often: “I don’t like Wagner; it’s too long.” Or “I wouldn’t go to a performance of the Matthew Passion; it’s too long.” Cultural differences play a role in these perceptions. German audiences are generally more capable of sitting and concentrating at a concert or opera than we are (the word Sitzfleisch is testimony to this). In my years as Music Director of the Rotterdam Philharmonic, we presented the Matthew Passion every year on the Thursday and Friday preceding Easter to sold out houses; the audiences were filled by people who only went to a concert once a year. “Long” is not a value judgment in those two cases.
But unfamiliarity, either with a composer’s name or with a particular lesser-known work, is perhaps the leading culprit at the box office. The very presence of such a name on a program is deemed capable of emptying the house, even when it is shares the program with “big sellers” like Tchaikovsky or Beethoven. It takes no leap of imagination to understand why this is a major stumbling block in attempting to introduce the music of composers suppressed in Nazi Germany.
More as collateral damage than by design, the voice of many compositions is stifled by these phenomena. Although not censorship in any literal meaning of the word, the results are the same. The problem will intensify in the future, if this trend continues, because less familiar, will become unfamiliar, and unfamiliar will be unknown.
Wagner, Duke of Erl
September 29th, 2014By ANDREW POWELL
Published: September 29, 2014
ERL — Nothing tests funding for the musical arts like Der Ring des Nibelungen. Then again, nothing cements a support base so decisively. Take this Austrian village of 1,452 souls and several hundred brown cows, where the eighth Ring cycle in sixteen years turned smoothly Aug. 1, 2 and 3, literally around the clock. Here a tradition of community participation in the arts — rooted in four hundred years of staging the Passion of Jesus — has since 1998 combined with local business money, political will, creative determination and a realistic setting of priorities to endow and operate the three-week-long Tiroler Festspiele, at which Wagner’s music takes pride of place.
Gustav Kuhn, 69, conductor of all these Ring cycles, helped found the festival. Often lazily dubbed a “maverick” because he shapes his own calendar and seldom works with mainstream orchestras and opera companies, Kuhn in fact roams freely less than he builds. Beyond that support base, he and the festival have partnered with a religious order in Lucca (to house a training facility for singers and other artists, the Accademia di Montegral), with orchestra pools in Minsk (to procure players for Erl), with an artist manager in London (for vocal soloists) and with a design firm and the Col Legno record label in Vienna (for graphics, CDs and DVDs). Kuhn’s music-making is if anything conventional, in contrast to that of true mavericks like Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and it fits that fellow Salzburger Herbert von Karajan was once a mentor.
An iron crown of thorns separates the village’s two performance venues. It could easily double as a symbol for the circle of fire on Brünnhilde’s rock, but its purpose was to decorate Robert Schuller’s 1,500-seat Passions-Spielhaus (1959), a cream Corbusian curlicue erected for the sacred plays and now also used for the Ring. Fifty yards away stands proof of the Tiroler Festspiele’s success: a jagged black 862-seat Festspielhaus that would have been designed by Lockheed if Delugan Meissl had not arrived first. Just two years old, this was the venue for three Bruckner symphonies over the summer, and, being insulated, it has enabled a new winter extension of the festival. Grazing fields occupy the space fronting the two buildings down to the main road, which follows the Inn River as it races out of the Tyrol into Bavaria. Parking is at a walkable distance north of the cows.
Despite its curl, the Schuller hall is laudably plain, with bare floors and a wooden roof. It offers mellow natural acoustics and easy sightlines and would be ideal for Wagner’s tetralogy except for one detail: Jesus’ suffering and resurrection required no orchestra pit. The large Ring orchestra, then, sits on risers behind a scrim while the action takes place downstage. This repurposing is evidently blessed: our Aug. 2 Walküre storm began and ended in sync with a deafening downpour on the roof.
For the second time in the festival’s history, Wagner’s three Tage were performed within the space of 24 hours, Siegfried starting at 11 p.m. and Götterdämmerung ending at 4 p.m. The tight schedule fueled advance doubts about staying alert during the music. These proved unfounded, but expectations of audience camaraderie were likewise off the mark. Instead a quiet numbness prevailed during intermissions as people ate sausages, drank beer, lounged in lime-green deck chairs and generally conserved their energy. Attendance held up, even for the wee-hour Siegfried. Hotels for miles around, most of them small, and all full, knew to expect oddly timed guest comings and goings.
Jan Hax Halama’s feeble, box-based props offered a degree of unity through the cycle but little in the way of beauty or grandeur. Lurid lighting didn’t help, and at no time did the orchestra vanish from view. The action schemes, by Kuhn, worked best in intimate exchanges such as between Wotan and Fricka, Waltraute and Brünnhilde. Siegfried’s journeys made good use of the theater’s aisles, but it was alarming — notwithstanding the custom of local involvement in Erl’s Passion plays — to see preschoolers bear open-flame torches for fire scenes down the darkened aisle steps as fire-brigade members watched from the side doors, vital moments away from any devastating potential fall.
Musically there were rewards. Compared with recent Ring cycles in Bayreuth, Vienna and Munich, Kuhn’s leadership offered consistency (beyond Christian Thielemann), imagination (unlike Franz Welser-Möst) and propulsion (trouncing Kent Nagano). He astutely judged balances, given the orchestra’s recessed position. The winds of his mostly young, partly Byelorussian orchestra played eloquently and tirelessly. Thomas Gazheli sang an incisive, many-faced Rheingold Alberich and a vivid Wanderer. Vladimir Baykov’s Walküre Wotan would be an asset on any stage. Hermine Haselböck’s firm-voiced, elegant Fricka (in both operas) recalled the young Waltraud Meier, despite some forcing. The clarion-topped, warmly intoned Brünnhilde of Mona Somm set the seal on Gotterdammerung, of which Act II — and notably its Vengeance Trio, with Michael Kupfer’s manly coke-snorting Gunther and Andrea Silvestrelli’s worthy but woolly Hagen — emerged as the cycle’s strongest unit. Anne Schuldt made a persuasive visiting Waltraute.
Compromises included Johannes Chum’s sweet-toned but unsteady Loge and the willing but imprecise choristers in Götterdämmerung. Otherwise Erl’s realistic priorities took their heavy toll. The string sound: not fully cultivated, possibly reflecting limited rehearsal time or skill levels Kuhn could not improve. Principal roles inadequately taken: the Wälsung twins, the Hunding, the Walküre Brünnhilde (cruelly mis-assigned to a low-lying lyric voice) and the Siegfrieds in both operas (the first reduced to marking his way through Lachend erwachst du Wonnige mir, the second devoid of heroism). Characteristically undeterred, this valiant village mounts two more Ring cycles next summer. Moo!
Photo © 2014 Franz Neumayr
Related posts:
Kuhn Paces Bach Oratorio
Nazi Document Center Opens
Carydis Woos Bamberg
Arcanto: One Piece at a Time
Bumps and Bychkov at MPhil
Tags: Accademia di Montegral, Andrea Silvestrelli, Anne Schuldt, Col Legno, Commentary, Das Rheingold, Der Ring des Nibelungen, Die Walküre, Erl, Götterdämmerung, Gustav Kuhn, Hermine Haselböck, Jan Hax Halama, Johannes Chum, Michael Kupfer, Mona Somm, Review, Siegfried, Thomas Gazheli, Tiroler Festspiele, Vladimir Baykov
Posted in Munich Times | Comments Closed