Dean M. Estabrook wrote:
Unless, perhaps, one is trying to keep, say, a symphony orchestra in business. It may be that a line has to be walked between educating one's audience and providing enough literature within their comfort zone to keep them coming to concerts. It does no one any good to play Schoenberg to an empty house.
Well, many symphonies are teetering on the brink of extinction and they're still programming music by long-dead composers, so one would think that rather than try to more of the same only with more energy (which is proving to be their undoing) they would say to themselves "Wow, programming all this music by DEWM (dead European white males), maybe if we programmed music by living composers with occasional inclusion of music which everybody already knows already anyway we'd find a newer and more enthusiastic audience."
All the orchestras which have gone under in the past few years (San Diego, Louisiana) and all those who have teetered on the brink and may go under in the next few years have all followed Dean's suggestion.
It's the notion that Schoenberg (and other composers like him) is the only alternative to the classical/romantic literature which keeps many fine compositions off current orchestral programs.
There are many more composers over the past century than just Schoenberg. And audiences respond very favorably to many of them, if they're just given a chance to hear the music.
-- David H. Bailey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
