Making
Music More Beautiful
Composers Institute brings would-be Beethovens to boot camp
By John Habich, Star Tribune Staff Writer
From March 9-14, 2002, eight composers from around the country came to Minnesota to participate in the Forum and the Minnesota Orchestra's first Composer Institute. The Minneapolis Star Tribune was there to capture it, and the following story is reprinted with that publication's kind permission.
(Star Tribune, March 14, 2002) Gordon Beeferman, 25, heard the first movement of his First Symphony for the first time Wednesday afternoon.
He
mounted the stage at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, but not to take a
bow. Instead, he was barraged with kudos and criticisms from Minnesota
Orchestra musicians.
"If you write a whole movement of tremolo, someone is either going to drop dead or kill you," said cellist Janet Horvath with a big smile.
Beeferman, of New York City, is one of eight American music-writers chosen from almost 150 applicants to participate in an exhaustive six-day Composer Institute with the Minnesota Orchestra that ends today.
The musical boot camp, unique in the United States, entailed more than the usual orchestral run-throughs. It involved seminars about copyrighting, licensing and public speaking; sessions about how to write grant applications and deal with unions and contracts, and workshops on how to write better for particular instruments.
"Musicians spend hour after hour in practice rooms, but nobody ever teaches them how to stride onstage and bow appropriately," said Bob Neu, the orchestra's general manager.
"Nobody else, to my knowledge, has ever done anything like this," said Linda Hoeschler, executive director of the American Composers Forum, based in St. Paul. One of the nation's leading service organizations for composers, it cosponsored the program with the Minnesota Orchestra, in cooperation with the American Music Center in New York City.
Two hundred years ago, it was not so difficult for composers to hear their own music. Most European courts had orchestras, and aristocrats bestowed frequent commissions.
What's now called classical was the popular music of the day.
Today orchestras depend not only on wealthy patrons but also on ticket sales. Because audiences grew wary of contemporary music over the past century as it grew more difficult to hum, orchestras perform old music way more frequently than new compositions. The Minnesota Orchestra does only 10 or 12 new pieces a year, said Neu.
The Composers Institute provides the chance for its participants to hear their lush, onrushing notes performed by a first-class band. "The musicians bring the same level of preparation to the work as they do to Mozart or Mahler," said associate conductor Giancarlo Guerrero, who led some of the rehearsals.
"We usually don't get this much interaction with composers," said cellist Horvath. "Normally there's none. If the composer is able to be there with us, we may have a couple of minutes to grab them during intermission if there's something we want to discuss. This is a wonderful opportunity for all of us."
The Composers Institute is a beefed-up version of the orchestra's "Perfect Pitch" readings, which began as a service for Minnesota composers only, then went regional. Hoeschler and Aaron Jay Kernis, the orchestra's new-music adviser, decided to take it national this year, and Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Kernis added the bells and whistles: the training in what he called "the boilerplate information they generally don't have when they leave school."
The upgraded program costs $25,000 to $30,000, said Gwen Pappas, the orchestra's director of public affairs, but that figure does not include administrative or orchestra time.
None of the eight chosen composers is from Minnesota, although many local ACF members signed up to audit the seminars for free. "It's a good refresher course," said Chris Gable of Minneapolis.
Kernis made the final selection. "Style was not an issue," he said. "I look for unique voices, composers who have good initial skill writing for the orchestra, but mostly for that spark and talent."
Knowing the score
Beeferman
met Wednesday morning to go over his score with Guerrero. They sang snippets
to each other and rattled out portions of the symphony's propulsive syncopated
rhythms in unison.
"You want this espressivo?" Guerrero asked.
"No," said Beeferman, "just these little flashes of espressivo coming through this mechanical texture." He likened the first movement to an approaching train that flashes past in a lucid, detailed instant. Guerrero wrote "train" on his score.
The maestro eyed the string parts. "They're going to be changing three strings here - at that speed!" he said. "Are you a string player?"
"No," said Beeferman.
"Neither am I," said Guerrero. "That's why I ask."
Toward the end of their tête-à-tête, Guerrero said, "What I like is that this takes away the guesswork, because in the end, it's your message. When I tackle Brahms or Beethoven, I always have to do some guessing."
Before their music was played Wednesday afternoon, Beeferman and Michael Gatonska of Connecticut presented brief remarks about their works to the audience of several dozen at the rehearsal, which was free and open to the public. Each piece was allotted 45 minutes - enough to do only two of the three movements in Beeferman's symphony. The scope of rehearsals must accord with union contracts.
Afterward the composers faced the players for a give-and-take about how to make various parts more distinctly audible; how to put the notes on the page so they'd be easier to read, and so forth.
Before he could take a nap in preparation for a potluck supper at the offices of the American Composers Forum, Beeferman had a one-on-one with Kernis.
"It's tricky to get rhythmic continuity and yet a sense of dislocation," Kernis said. In sum, he found the piece "beautifully paced, effective and energizing," but he cautioned against too much repetition of melodic fragments.
For Beeferman, the whole experience was "very, very frightening," he said at day's end. "I wrote this piece almost five years ago, and for five years, I had a particular idea how the piece sounds. Now to hear how it actually sounds is shocking."
"It clarifies in my mind how does this piece work. Some parts work really well, some don't work so well. You don't know until you hear it."
-- John Habich is at jhabich@startribune.com
Copyright 2002 Star Tribune. Republished here with the permission of the Star Tribune. No further republication or redistribution is permitted without the express approval of the Star Tribune.