Dear Chris Wilke, Your message resonates! It's true! I'm sorry you haven't yet reached full career stride--maybe Nazareth College is too small though Rochester NY is a cultural powerhouse.
I've seen with my own eyes the hostility/disdain in the faces of local classical music establishment folks, and initially thought it was because they knew I am an unworthy relatively unskilled dilettante. It may actually be due to the possibility that early music potentially has more popular appeal than their favored hackneyed 19th century (not yet fully tested by time) warhorses. EM is simpler, more accessible to folks. In 2007, a new local State Univ. music chair from Texas, concerned about the lack of lute exposure for his students, wanted me to play lute with a university singer. Only one out of dozens of singers in his dept. expressed any interest at all, perhaps because she is from Vancouver, Canada. After corresponding and planning with her for a year, we met at an event and she expressed disdain for "Early Music" and a preference for 19th/20th c. opera, and never followed up on the lute song idea, dashing my hopes (She was the prettiest woman in the dept.) I suspect this could be the result of peer pressure against EM. Herd instinct seems hugely important in the music world. I hope it wasn't because I told her I was working on some pieces recently dug up at an ancestral Neanderthal cave dwelling. But the turf issue may go beyond this to the problem of the difficulty of plucked strings. It seems Music Dept. chairs favor their own instruments and neglect/deemphasize others. In one private University, the entire guitar program, which has the largest number of instrumental students in the entire music dept. (25 classic guitar students!), was ignored or given short shrift by the brass winds and voice loving directors when several outstanding student artists were selected for last June's gala event. Not a single guitar student was featured. Maybe guitar plunking wasn't considered loud enough for the event. On another occasion years ago, a spectacular visiting guitar prof. from Humboldt State Univ. was initially refused the paltry 300 buck fee normally given for an hour-long recital. The local guitar chief had to beg the music dept. chairman for this honorarium and remind the chair what an insult this denial would be to the visiting prof. He got the fee after I embarrassed the chair by offering to pay for it myself as a local lute nut not directly connected with the University. One of the biggest parts of the music dept. at the local state Univ. is "symphonic band." Sounds like an oxymoron. No place for a guitar or lute. Every high school has a marching band in football/violence crazed America, so there is a huge pool of flute, tuba, trumpet, drum, woodwind students from which to select new University matriculants. I was the only kid at my high school interested in classical guitar and I have heard of only rare high schools nowadays providing classic guitar instruction of any kind. The big Univ where I chose to attend college had no guitar program at all--Instead I briefly sang in its Russian Liturgical Choir. Gospodi! Please help Chris and Hugo! Mark Seifert From: Christopher Wilke <[email protected]> To: gary <[email protected]>; lutelist <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, August 3, 2013 7:12 AM Subject: [LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness In America, I haven't found any lack of interest in lute or early music from the broader public. Many people who are intimidated by perceived ritual and stuffy atmosphere of standard classical concerts are drawn in by the look and sound of early instruments. Some marketers have recognized this: early music is quite well represented in classical music station playlists. (I've just been invited to give a one hour interview/lute performance on our local public radio station here in Rochester, for example.) My own solo concerts and performances by the student early music ensembles I've directed have drawn healthy crowds. This is good, but there are larger issues. The problem is lack of support - if not outright hostility - from the "mainstream" classical music establishment. While my perception of what I and other early music performers do is that we play classical music, many, many "official" classical musicians do not share this view. Indeed, at colleges where I was employed, significant public response was ultimately detrimental as it drew the flagrant ire of at least two tenured professors with great influence in the departments. Both of these professors actively petitioned against having any early music performance activities at their respective colleges, ostensibly on the grounds that it distracted students from giving full attention to the "real" program of instruction. (One of the professors had the gaul to tell me to my face, "You're not a real ensemble because you don't play in parts." WTF? The majority of what we performed was renaissance polyphony!) I think they were afraid we were making them look bad. Concerts were not free to the public; box office receipts showed that we were bringing in actual revenue. And maybe, just maybe, my esteemed senior colleagues were jealous also of the fact that students were learning and having fun. Oh well, those professors are still there doing the same old thing and I am still struggling very much to find work years later. Good for them. Chris Dr. Christopher Wilke D.M.A. Lutenist, Guitarist and Composer [1]http://www.christopherwilke.com/ ----- Original Message ----- From: gary <[2][email protected]> To: lutelist <[3][email protected]> Cc: Sent: Saturday, August 3, 2013 4:06 AM Subject: [LUTE] Re: general public Lute awareness I got into early music 'cause I hate crowds. My jazz performances were attracting too many people. Of course, you heard about the lutenist who won the lottery. When asked what he was going to do with his winnings, he said, "I'm going to work 'til they run out." Early music, like jazz and chamber music, is a niche market. Upon being asked how one can make money in music, Henry Mancini said, "If you want to make money in music, go into band uniforms." Gary On 2013-08-02 05:17, [1][4][email protected] wrote: > I have done the same for a small baroque orchestra at the University > of Sao Paulo, USP, > with little gain as well. The group has a lute and a theorbo in it. > Any hints are welcome. > We have thought everything from flash-mobs to pairing music with food, > theater, baroque dance, text, whatever... > So far our biggest hits have been opera and baroque dance, costly > events which we cannot do on a regular basis > due to budget size. > Ernesto Ett > 11-99 242120 4 > 11-28376692 > > > > On 31.07.2013, at 22:46, Bruno Correia <[2][5][email protected]> wrote: > > Dear members of the list, > > I have been at pains trying to raise interest in our beloved > instrument down here in Brazil. I've given speeches, played solo and > chamber concerts... but despite all efforts the general public and > also > the musicians (professionals or amateurs) simply don't get turned on. > It is a sad fact that the lute and the early music performance > practice did not reach the University here. So we don't exist > academically speaking. > > Would anybody be willing to list some strategies that could be used > to > help disseminate the lute and its repertoire? > -- > Bruno Correia > > Pesquisador autonomo da pratica e interpretac,ao > historicamente informada no alaude e teorba. > Doutor em Praticas Interpretativas pela > Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro. > > -- > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > [3][6]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:[7][email protected] 2. mailto:[8][email protected] 3. [9]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. http://www.christopherwilke.com/ 2. mailto:[email protected] 3. mailto:[email protected] 4. mailto:[email protected] 5. mailto:[email protected] 6. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html 7. mailto:[email protected] 8. mailto:[email protected] 9. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
