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The Artistry of the Wind Band

Panel Discussion on Programming

Editor’s Note: This is a transcription made by Timothy Reynish of the discussion on criteria for planning programs which took place at the 11th WASBE Conference in Sweden. The transciption has been edited and abridged by Tim Reynish and Leon Bly. Tim notes that his microphone was unable to pick up everyone’s comments. Thus anyone who was present and wishes to supplement the materials here should send their contributions to the WASBE Newsletter editor, Leon Bly.

Craig Kirchhoff, Chairperson

What we are going to do today is to revisit some of the things we have done in the past. Back in San Luis Obispo, we had a session called The Quest for Quality Repertoire, the intersection of aesthetic criteria and personal taste. In Lucerne, the session was called The Art of Programming. In a sense what we would like to do is to continue that discussion.

I would like to introduce and thank my colleagues — at the end of the table Tim Reynish from England, Odd Lysebo from Norway and Bobby Adams from the United States. What I would like to do is to provide a framework for discussion that both you and they can react to, and the idea is that we would like to encourage open dialogue as we continue through this process.

First, may I make a few observations on programming that I have come to conclude over the years. One is probably at least equal to anything else that we do, that our programs are truly reflective of our depth as musicians and our philosophy about music making. There is that old saying: “We are what we eat”, and in a sense “we are what we play”. The other thing that I have noticed the longer I do this is that the task of programming does not get any easier. We certainly have more repertoire to choose from than we had ten years ago, but the task of artistically building a program is still a great challenge.

For the sake of the conversation, I would like to talk about two things — the craft of programming and then the artistry of programming. For me, the craft of programming in its simplest sense is knowledge of the repertoire. I think with the craft of programming that there are very definite expectations that we have to live up to. The very obvious expectation is that we have to continue attending workshops, we have to continue going to symposiums, to learn more about that music which directly influences our teaching and conducting. I think there are some less obvious responsibilities that are extremely important to this process. Maybe one of the less obvious responsibilities is that all of us have to stay close to great music; we have to continue to attend concerts by great ensembles and by great artists, and for some of us that is very difficult because we may not live close to metropolitan areas. But we live in an era where we have available to us wonderful recordings and DVDs of great artist making great music, and I think that perspective of being close to great music is something that is very important in this process of programming.

[Another] thing is that we need to continue listening to and investigating music that is indirectly related to what we do; in other words, listening to the great choral music, listening to the great orchestral music, listening to any great music. I think that if one knows — and I could come up with one or two hundred examples — the Vespers of Rachmaninov, or if you’ve listened to the piece Sparrows by Joseph Schwantner, or if you’ve listened to The Lark Ascending of Vaughan Williams, the effect of those pieces has to imprint on what we believe about music and therefore how we program.

[One] thing which maybe is less obvious is that all of us have to continue to read about our art. For me, the simplest thing is maybe that Sunday edition of the New York Times. Here I’m reading about what is happening in the great centers in the world of music. I can keep up with all that is happening outside of our individual discipline.

There are two beliefs that are very important to me as I go about this business of programming. My favorite quote is by Herbert Blomstedt, who said that “Music is revelation”, meaning that music has something to say, and perhaps more importantly and more poignantly, music has something to reveal. For me, that points me to very distinct questions.

The first question is: what is it that we are trying to express, to communicate to our audience with each piece? But more importantly, the task of today is what is it that we are trying to communicate to our audience through an entire program? What emotional space or perhaps even intellectual space do we want to leave our audience in at the end of our concerts? So I would propose to you that the artistry, not the craft, the artistry is manifested through the architecture or structure of our programs.

I want to read something to you from the March 2003 WASBE Newsletter. These are the words of Karl Amadeus Hartman. He was reflecting about feelings that were very important to him and were the basis of his Symphony No 1, which was written in 1933. These are words expressing feelings about the difficulties of the artist in Germany in the 1930s.

"I sit and look upon all the sorrows of the world and upon all oppression and shame. I see the working of battle, pestilence, tyranny. I see murders and prisoners. I observe the slights and degradation cast by arrogant people upon the poor, all the meanness and agony without end. I sit and look out upon, and see and hear."

Now this is an obvious example, but for a discussion, I think it is a very important one. The question is for me, what is the revelation? What he is trying to communicate? I would propose that artistic programming is programming that will enhance, and project those feelings that Hartman is trying to communicate. On the opposite side of the coin, depending upon how we structure a program, what comes prior to that piece, what comes after that piece, will either enhance it or will diffuse it. Thus, how we set the program up, how we “architect” the program has a great deal in determining the communication of what that composer intended.

The other belief that keeps motivating me to think very carefully about programming is that I believe very strongly that live music requires three things, the composer, the performer, and most important for me, it requires some kind of emotional response from the audience. So for me that has great implications for the music that I select, great implications for how I rehearse, and of course for how I program.

One last thing that I want to say before I pass the mantle to my colleagues here is to mention a beautiful quote by Eric Stokes. He said:

"Music is for the people, for all of us, the dumb, the deaf, the dogs and jays, the quick, the hand-clappers, dancing moon-watchers, brainy puzzlers, abstracted whistlers, finger snapping time keepers.... The land of music is everyone's nation. Her tune, his beat, your drum, one song, one vote. Composers are called to serve the people not themselves, and performers are called to serve by presenting composers' works in distinctive ways, and the people are invoked to witness the service which is celebration, celebration of our time spun being, the inevitable dance of sound-spelled life."

I would take this just one step further and put the caveat that in addition to the performers’ responsibility of presenting distinctive interpretations is distinctive programming, artistic programming, so that again the message is clearly communicated.

Odd Terje Lysebo

It is always very difficult to speak after Craig because I believe so much in what he is saying. He says so many nice things about programming, and I really am very concerned about programming. I speak now as a Norwegian conductor, as a European conductor, and I speak from the Norwegian tradition and maybe the European tradition, which is a bit different than the American tradition. I also speak from thirty years of programming contemporary music, a lot of contemporary music.

I had a very lengthy speech in Lucerne about this, so I will not repeat everything that I said there, but the most important thing for me is the art. To program is an art; it is not a science. [I], the conductor, have to be an artist; I have to be a musician, and I have to believe in what I am doing. I have to believe in the music; I must say something. If I do not have anything to say, than I should shut up

When a young man or girl comes up to me and asks, “Do you think I should be a musicians? I am not quite sure if I should be a musician,” I say to them [that] it is very clear. “If you are not sure, you shouldn’t be a musician.” So my point is that you have to know what you are doing, and you have to believe in the music. You do not have to say “I think the audience will like it, and that’s why I play it.” My opinion is that I play it because I have something to say with the music, and I believe in it. It is great music for me, and that is why I like to play it.

Of course, not everything is great, but if it is not, and I have nothing to say about it, than I shouldn’t play it. It always goes back to me as a conductor. In Lucerne, I was very concerned about training the audience. We must not give the audience only what they want but also what we know that they need. That’s very important for me. You can say that we need money and have to take care of education; we have to play educational and pedagogic music. OK, but if its only pedagogic or educational, why should we then play it? There is also very nice pedagogic music made by artists through which young children can say something to the audience. That is most important, because we need the audience, we have to take care of the audience, but the audience will not be there if we don’t have anything to say to them.

Many orchestral audiences don’t like contemporary music. I have been to many concerts by … the New York Philharmonic or the Chicago Symphony [with] a contemporary piece at the beginning, and the hall is not very crowded. After the contemporary work, there is probably a Mozart symphony or piano concerto, and a lot of people enter the hall between the numbers and listen to the next piece. Why? They are not trained. We should start with training our audiences, with the people who go to school band concerts, elementary band concert, and maybe in twently years people [will not be] afraid of contemporary music in the symphony orchestra [hall].

You have probably heard the story about Arnold Schoenberg, who lived in New York for a time. A friend arranged a concert with his music. He came up to Schoenberg after the concert and was very concerned. “I am so sorry there were only fourteern people at the concert. I am so ashamed,” he said. Whereupon Schoenberg replied, “Fourteen people! Are there fourteen people in the world who would like to listen to my music? I am very happy.”

That is what some great composers are thinking, and we should also think that maybe if we have something to say, we do not always have to say it to everybody. If what we say is important, people [will] talk to each other, and we will eventually have contact with more and more people.

We must consider what we are putting together in a concert. In Norway, we have that big problem that people think that the band should play a little of everything in one concert, and the pieces kill each other. We must be very careful so that even if we play only two numbers on a concert that these two can live together and not kill each other. I have a tendency to play too much in a concert because I have too much to say. But if I speak too much, people will not listen. My main point is that we must look at programming as an art. We must be artists not only in playing the music but also in programming it, and we must train our audiences.

Warren Benson; who is a great composer, said once “There’s only one reason to take the instrument out of the case, and that is to make beautiful songs.” That we should do even if we play contemporary music. If we have something to say, people will listen.

Bobby Adams

As you know, this is an incredibly broad topic. As you hear these different thoughts, your mind runs from corner to corner with things that you want to say, and they are said by others, and you jump to the next part. I try to approach everything that is important to me from … the fundamental. I believe that one of the first considerations is the music — is it “art” music, or is it music that is not art? Art music has a separate function. The second thing is how important is art in the lives of humans? To me, it is as important as life and death; it’s a fundamental need of humans. Julian Johnson wrote in his fairly new book, Who Needs Classical Music, that art shares the role with man. Man has the need to be more than what he/she is. There is a fundamental striving to be more, and art is about the same thing. It’s about being more. Art is a way in which we express that need to be more.

If we are dealing with art, then there is more in the composition than what is on the page.You all have heard the Mahler quote that “what is important about music is not what is on the page, it is what is beneath the page.” To me, all of the study and practice involving technique and knowledge has the purpose that when you get to Art Music you have then the knowledge and skills to start the probing needed to unlock what is in the music below the surface. I believe that that which is there is what John Dewey says is experience. Every composition, every art composition, has embodied in it by the composer an experience that has to be re-created to be experienced to its fullest possibility.

Marcel Proust, the great French novelist, also talks about this, saying that each art composition is indeed a universe to itself. What you experience if you internalize and probe out all of George Washington Bridge is that the experience that is there does not exist anywhere else, nor will it ever exist anywhere else. When I experience that, I want the players in my ensemble more than anything else to experience that which I know is there.

When we take that to the [concert] stage, we are trying to communicate [the experience] to the audience…. If we are successful, and they are open to it, [we’ll communicate it]. However, the burden is upon us as performers. I’ve told my players, even in the middle of a concert, to do more. It is our job. We’ve got to get the message to the audience.

I have to admit that I have a problem with the idea that band is fun. Band is not fun, nor does it need to be. [My band rehearses] five hours a week. The players have all those other hours to have fun. They come to rehearsals to experience things that change their lives.

I live in Florida. I used to live on the West Coast, and there was the great Mollender, the wirewalker. His quote was that “living is walking the wire. Everything else is waiting.” But I don’t believe he would ever be up in the air 200 feet above the ground on the edge of life itself thinking, “Wow, this is fun.” It cannot be more than what it is, and what it is is life, and what art is to the artist is life. No matter what the programming is, it has to have something to say. What can it say if it is not attached to the reality of human experience on this planet, sometimes laughing, sometimes crying, sometimes sad. All these different things are part of the human condition, and when those pieces relate to that, they are fulfilling a fundamental need.

My wife is an oboist, and we went with a group to visit the Lorée factory in France. Here were all these people, including Wayne Rapier and other professionals of the highest level, trying out the instruments. My wife comes running in to Wayne and says “Man, the F sharp is a little stuffy.” The amount of examining for perfection in that instrument is as high as I could discriminate. However, when I go to hear other people’s ensemble, it often sounds like breaking glass. Where is the perfection that we demand of individual instruments? To get the full experience of our music, it has to be played very well, and the intonation is what helps bring that forth. If it is not in tune, you don’t get the whole potential of what is there.

In programming, I don’t play anything that I don’t have a mad love affair with. If I don’t love a piece before I start, I don’t play it. There are only so many pieces that you can play during your life. I’m not going to waste time playing something if I don’t think I can follow it up. I think the players will love what I love, and I think the audience will love what I love. When you put your concert together, you recognise that each individual player has needs, the ensemble has needs, the audience has needs, the conductor has needs. You as the leader are tending to those needs when you enter into the process of putting those pieces together for a programme. If it is good music, it will all fit.

Timothy Reynish

[In the CD library at this Conference,] there are one hundred discs, based mainly around WASBE composers or music that is being played this week. I would like to mention a few of those composers whose music I wish we were playing this week.

First there is Bernard van Beurden; some of you may remember his great Mass which was played in Valencia. We have played nothing of his since then. There is a fantastic concerto for soprano saxophone and wind ensemble and a concerto for bassoon. There are at least three good concertos for bassoon and wind ensemble by Bernard van Beurden, Eric Ewazen, and the Finnish composer Lehto.

Csaba Deak is a stalwart member of WASBE, and we hoped to perform his work for choir and wind orchestra, Memento Mare. There will be a performance of his Recollection. If you do not know it, please listen to his great Clarinet Concerto. We should play more of his music.

Daron Hagen is a composer worth listening to. He wrote an opera for CBDNA, Bandana, which met with a lot of criticism. I watched a video of it last November, and found it very powerful and dramatic. I wondered how many of the critics had been to a contemporary opera in the last ten years.

There is a German composer, Richard Heller, a writer on a massive scale, whose works are so huge that they are difficult to program. Jukka-Pekka Lehto and Linkola, both from Finland, are very strong composers. Marco Pütz is here with us, and I think his music at different levels is terrific, especially for the large-scale community bands. There are many works by Dana Wilson, who joined WASBE recently. These are composers whose works are not commercial, who perhaps do not have an active publisher to promote them, and some of their music is in the Conference library.

The original title for this session was Compromise, and you may wonder why I suggested this topic. We probably compromise too much in our own programming. My colleagues have eloquently insisted that we love the music that we play, but we owe it to composers of integrity to respect their music, even perhaps if it compromises our own artistic standards.

I think the performances so far in the Conference have been very strong. Yesterday there was a performance of Wind in the Willows, and one of our colleagues was irate at having to listen to what he called “film music” and wanted to boo. “If you can boo the Rite of Spring, you should be able to boo anything else,” he claimed. He didn’t boo, but he walked out of one or two lighter concerts early, he didn’t hear the rest of the program. Then last night I met a guy who said, “Wasn’t that concert of Jim Croft’s terrible? All that modern music! It set the wind band movement back ten years.” My wife said “What do you mean? I expect you loved the afternoon concert of lighter music.” He said, “Yes, I want to broadcast that concert.” We got talking over a couple of beers, and he said “You’re very honest. I’m very honest. I hate this modern crap.” However, he stayed to listen to it and formed his judgement from experience and of course from his prejudices.

That is the dilemma with WASBE. We cover such a wide range of interests, and I wish we did not fight each other. There is just so much music, for entertainment, for education, and its our job simply to lead. I think what has come out of these conversations is that we have to put out neck on the block and say “you know me; this is my belief.” What is important is that you must write about this Conference and say, “Well, that I enjoyed; this is community band music suitable for my group. It might be film music, it might be traditional or avant garde, but I loved it, and it could be very useful.”

My late mother went to a concert when she was about 88. We played Philip Wilby’s Sinfonia Sacra, which is quite avant garde, with players moving in and out, percussion and brass echoing each other and fighting against the woodwind, Messiaen-like chorales. It is really quite modern. She loved the theatricality of it, and I think that that is what I was talking about two of three days ago — belief and confidence. The performance must be good enough, as we heard last night with Florida State. Whatever one thought about the emotional side of that concert — Jim Croft’s last as Director — these were committed performances of terrific integrity. There were people weeping at the end of David Del Tredici’s In Time of War. It has taken us five years to get that written. It’s David’s first piece for wind ensemble. I hope that he will write more. Maybe he will write better pieces, maybe worse. It does not matter. Out of twenty new pieces, if we get one masterpiece, we are doing really well. It’s the emotional response from players and audience that I am looking for.

Odd is right. We must look after the audience, but at this stage, we must risk playing to a few. I remember my music master telling us that he had studied with Hindemith on a summer course. At the start, there were forty people, and Hindemith was so mean that on the next day there were about thirty, and he was even meaner. The next day he had only twenty, and by Wednesday there were six, and Hindemith came in and said “Good Morning, now we start working”.

We talk about programming. We say we must play Sousa. We have to get an audience. I wrote a piece for [the WASBE Newsletter] some time ago about Haydn complaining about a small audience for a celebrity concert in London. I don’t think that matters too much; it’s the presentation and integrity of what we are doing. We are creating a repertoire for the future. What is important is how you see WASBE helping you as a professional in your professional life and growth. Out of all this repertoire, should we have the repertoire discs that we circulate around because we believe in that music?

I’ll very quickly tell you how the bands and their programs were selected for this Conference. They were selected blind. We had no idea what bands had applied, and we selected them on the basis of the discs and tapes that they sent in. Then we sent them four discs of music that we thought might interest them. Some of that music has been taken up in concerts or in repertoire sessions. Odd Terje Lysebo immediately wanted to play some of the more interesting contemporary music, for instance a great piece by Robin Holloway. The commissioner of this piece said, “I want a symphony like Mahler.” Robin wrote a twenty-five minute piece, Entrance; Carousing; Embarcation, which is admittedly difficult. The commissioner complained, “This is too long and too difficult!” Holloway protested that Mahler is like that. The work has hardly been played in the last ten years since Jerry Junkin did a workshop in Manchester in 1991. It is an extraordinary piece. String players, pianists and non-wind players love it, and maybe its time will come for wind orchestras in the next decade.

Craig Kirchhoff

We have time for comments or questions and interaction, which I think is the most important part of this session.,

Keith Kinder

I think its interesting to come to WASBE to hear new music, but I think it is important not only to make culture but to preserve culture as well. It is important to keep playing those important standard works that we have.

Bobby Adams

I don’t disagree with that. If those pieces are valuable, then it’s part of our mission to do that.

Craig Kirchhoff

I think its curious that some time ago the Grainger gem Ye Banks and Braes of Bonny Doon was on the verge of being taken out of print. Fred Fennell in his own singular way crusaded for the piece to get it back in print. As Keith mentioned, I do feel a very strong obligation to be committed not only to what is new but also to honor the past, which is why at the CBDNA convention in Minneapolis, I felt very committed to realizing a performance of Hill Song No 2. I felt very strongly about being committed to Hammersmith. Those are masterpieces that I believe we cannot forget along this pathway. Once again, it’s a matter of honoring the past while looking at the future, but there has to be that balance.

Dennis Johnson

Odd or Bobby touched on this. You talked about one piece killing another. Could we discuss that further?

Odd Terje Lysebo

I think I brought it up. What I mean is … if I play a great contemporary piece like Warren Benson’s Symphony No 2: Lost Songs and after that I play Hello Dolly, then I kill Benson’s [symphony]. I find that happening in many programs. We have seen it in this Conference earlier with encores that in my opinion have ruined the whole concert. At a good restaurant, the chef is an artist and knows what to serve after the meals.

John O’Reilly

I went to the Berlin Philharmonic last week and heard the Berg Violin Concerto. They concluded the concert with the Overture to Die Fledermaus. For me, that was great programming — a breath of fresh air to hear that [following] a fabulous contemporary piece. I don’t know if I would do Hello Dolly after a contemporary piece, but I don’t think you need to feel compelled to do all of one style.

Timothy Reynish

Yes, Hello Dolly! Those of you who were in Boston will remember an extraordinary program, with Phillip Wilby’s Firestar, two movements of a Hungarian work, the world premiere of Richard Rodney Bennett’s Morning Music, Hello Dolly choreographed with the piccolos, songs from Franz Lehar, and an overture by Wagner. The promotion agent for Chesters, which published the Wilby, was sitting there with his head in his hands. He had never heard [such programming].

Craig Kirchhoff

Jack Stamp wrote a piece called Past Time. It is what it is, a brilliant little piece, enormous craft, and if you know baseball and if you know that cultural setting and what that means, the piece is wonderful music that would be very inappropriate and not appreciated in a certain setting. I think that is what we are talking about. I think that there are pieces of repertoire which simply do not work in a certain milieu of other pieces. I had an interesting conversation with Michael Daugherty, whose music I love. I was recording Desi and trying to get a decision from Michael as to whether a particular note should be F sharp or F natural. This was just before the CBDNA Conference in Columbus, and the program for that conference was a brass piece by Massaino, Karel Husa conducting his Concerto for Wind Ensemble, and on the second half, Robert Shaw conducting Hindemith’s Apararebit and Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms. Michael was adamant about trying to convince me that I should program Bizarro on that same concert. I told Michael that I didn’t think that would work; it would not serve the piece and would not fit in to that program. I am not saying Bizarro is not a good piece, but what I was saying was that in juxtaposition to those other pieces, it would not serve the purpose of the entire program.

I think that is what Dennis is trying to get to and that’s where the artistry comes in. That is where taste comes in, and that is also where the risk comes in. I don’t know who said this, but it’s a great expression. I love it. Cannibals prefer those with no spines, meaning that we have to be ready to take risks and to stand up for what we believe in. I think one of the risks that all of us have to take is that if you believe passionately about a piece, and you work with great integrity to perform that piece with distinction, then you have to believe that it is a risk that the audience will be engaged by that piece. That is the risk with which we are charged to take.

Warren Benson said that every time a composer puts a note down on paper, there is a risk that someone will not like it. Some will not appreciate it, but it is the risk that artists must take.

Bobby Adams

[This is] fundamental. It doesn’t matter what kind of group you’re standing in front of; you are assuming a leadership role, and therefore everything that you do responds to a real moral need in your group and yourself. I believe in the fundamental need [my students] have to be educated musically They have to play the music from [all] styles and periods. [For the wind band,] transcriptions are the only way to do it. Especially young players and students at the undergraduate level have to perform transcriptions. I think we have the responsibility to ensure that transcriptions are good. I just think that since [transcriptions are a] fundamental need in education, there should be no debate about [them].

Timothy Reynish

Gunther Schuller is on record as wanting to make an arrangement of the Eroica Symphony. Gary Hill did a fascinating program for the CBDNA Conference which began with a Stokowski arrangement of a Bach Chorale Prelude. I would like to see Johan de Meij, who is a great scorer, do one or two pieces. He already has made a transcription of Shostakovich’s Jazz Suite, and perhaps he should be commissioned to do other major works. Our problem is that a lot of the arrangements that are in our libraries are so very old fashioned. They are not great arrangements. Perhaps this is a way forward to tackle the gaps in our repertoire.