At 10:55 PM 10/6/03 +1000, Michael Edwards wrote:
>Do players really up and leave just because they don't like being asked to
>do something the composer has written in a piece? You have to treat them
like
>delicate china lest they take offence at a reasonable request or suggestion?
Stories follow. These are not unusual, and please don't infer that this is
an issue with Vermont ensembles. These just happen to be two of my better
tales of performance woe, and I can tell them with a certain ghastly
pleasure now that time has passed. The ensembles will remain nameless.
===
Year: 1990.
Composition: ÿçuré (that's y-dieresis, c-cedille, u, r, e-acute)
Status: Commissioned as a celebratory piece for the orchestra's 25th
anniversary
The score and parts were submitted six months ahead to an orchestra of pro
and semi-pro players. There were no questions from the conductor. My wife &
I arrived after a Grand Canyon hike to a strange 'feel' on the day before
the premiere. The sponsor didn't invite me to stay with him, so we slept in
our hiking tent outside (fortunately we were able to use their shower). I
couldn't get a straight answer about the problems that morning at the dress
rehearsal, but did learn that during the first rehearsal, one performer
left for good and there followed a "food fight" as the others crumpled up
their parts and threw them at each other. At community lunch before the
afternoon performance, when we sat down at table, the performers stood up
and moved to another table. I had to set my own chairs for the change from
single to double chamber ensemble at intermission, and the performers
deliberately did not move out of the way. During the performance the first
violinist laughed out loud (you can hear it in the recording), and the
second oboe put down the instrument in the second measure and never picked
it up again. In audience terms, the piece was a success -- standing ovation
-- but most of the orchestra never spoke to me then or again.
Why? I still don't know the details. The music was too hard? Perhaps. This
was the conductor's first orchestral gig? Perhaps. But the months of work
I'd put into the 14-minute piece was rewarded with spite.
===
Year: 2001
Composition: Fuliginous Quadrant
Status: Commissioned for a 9/11 memorial concert
The score and parts were received well in advance, but a few weeks before
the concert, the director emailed me that the piano and cello parts were
too hard. The ensemble had a new pianist -- there were two others, both
retired, for whom I'd written for over 10 years, and who played brilliantly
-- so I decided I must have misjudged the new player's skills. I understood
what the cellist was looking for in changes (mostly areas moving too
quickly across non-neighboring strings), so I rewrote it. As for the piano
part, the best I could ascertain was that it was too athletic, so I thinned
it out. The piece was rewritten & resubmitted (PDFs, so no time lag) in a
fairly harrowing 48 hours. Another email from the director -- cello fine,
piano part still too hard. I re-wrote the piece overnight with only *one
note per hand*. The pianist refused again. The director caved. No, I wasn't
to contact her. The piece was not played.
Why? Again, I can't tell. By that point, the piano part was one of the
simplest I'd ever written for the ensemble. Was it a power play within the
ensemble? Possibly. But the work I'd put into the 4-minute piece (yes, just
4 minutes) was lost.
===
So why don't you hear these stories more often? Politics. Most composers do
not have the influence to come out blasting. They'll complain among their
colleagues, or on lists like this :) , but when one of them strays too far
in public -- as Lukas Foss did in the early 1970s in the American Musical
Quarterly [?] with his excoriation of the, what was it, Berlin Philharmonic
and its performance of one of his pieces -- they will be shunned.
Nope, nobody wants a troublesome composer. I even cringe when a reviewer
calls my work 'difficult'. ("Please," I think to myself, "don't use the
d-word; say interesting or even knotty, but not 'difficult'.")
Even in front of an ensemble that is wrecking our score, we remain
good-natured and helpful. We take sections aside and work with them,
encouraging and suggesting. We ignore wrong notes -- not because 'the
composer can't even hear them', but because there are other clams to
shell... or is that other corn to shuck? :)
Anyway, this is way off the topic of notation itself. Disaster stories are
fun, at least in retrospect.
Dennis
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