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You’ve Come A Long Way, Baby

Sunday, July 11th, 2010

Via my good friend Kate Holzemer (and the several hundred other musicians who seem to be passing this around on Facebook) I’m pleased to link you to this classic Time Magazine article from 1966 on the fab new trend of, well, um…

…oh, just read it:

Lady musicians are having a heyday. The Cleveland Orchestra now has 11, the San Francisco 17, the Houston 25 and the American Symphony 44. Trombonist Betty Glover, 43, adds class to the brass of the Cincinnati Symphony; Helen Taylor, 24, plays a mean English horn for the Houston Symphony. The rare bird in the Los Angeles aviary is Barbara Winters, 28, who, to produce the needed penetrating sounds from her oboe, must pit her trim 120 lbs. against male fellow oboists who average a burly-chested 200 Ibs. To maintain the exceptional breath control necessary to control her contrary instrument, Winters swims and works out daily at a gym. “It leaves me almost no time for social life,” she says. “I’d hate to think what I would do if I were married.”

Oh, good lord. My parents always told me that the ’60s were all about equality and progressive thinking. Guess not…

Orin O’Brien, 31, the newest member of the New York Philharmonic, scurried into Philharmonic Hall one rainy night last week and, ignoring the musicians’ locker room, got dressed in a washroom… Miss O’Brien, who is as curvy as the double bass she plays, does not mind. On tour, the men make up for it by falling all over themselves to carry her bags, and save her a seat on the bus.

As curvy as the bass she…? Wow. I’ll have to try that one out on our new female bass player and see what she thinks of the compliment. Though I think I’ll be sure to try it at something slightly greater than arm’s length. (Ms. O’Brien is still plying her trade with the NY Phil, by the way.)

As casually offensive as the author’s language seems today, the really bad stuff is all from male musicians who clearly think they’re being reasonable and acting in the best interests of working women.

Lady-Killer Zubin Mehta, 30, who appreciates a well-turned ankle as much as a well-played musical phrase, has different reasons. He has enforced a limit of 16 women in his Los Angeles Philharmonic, because “a woman’s life in the orchestra is not as long as a man’s; she is just not as good at 60 as a man is at 60…” Most musicians agree that women are all right in their place—just as long as that place is not the first desk, a position that gives them authority over the other players in their section. When that happens, egos get bruised… The majority of conductors avoid such problems by refusing to promote women to the first desk.

Ugly, ugly, ugly. And once again, this was in 1966, not 1926! No one’s ever accused symphony orchestras of being on the cutting edge of anything, but I’ll admit, this article took me aback. I was born a decade after it was written, and I’ve literally never met a musician who admitted to believing that women were anything but the absolute equal of men on the concert stage. (I have met more than a few who still seemed to think that making unsolicited passes at the attractive ones was somehow okay, but that’s a different issue. There are creeps in every line of work.)

For the record, the first female musician appointed to the Minnesota Orchestra (nee Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra) was Australian violinist Jenny Cullen, hired by the MSO’s second music director, Henri Verbrugghen, in 1923. And I’m sure that the men of the MSO reacted to the hire in a completely calm and professional manner…

…or not.

She got the job only because she was having an affair with the boss. At least, that’s what the men said — even though the boss was fond of saying she looked like “a shy vegetable.” They alleged that [Cullen] had violated immigration laws and union rules… They threatened to shut down the season.

Sigh. Shoulda seen that coming, I guess. I can, at least, report firsthand that no such sexist garbage attended the hiring of our Ms. Hicks as the orchestra’s first female staff conductor several years back. In fact, if memory serves, her selection from an impressive crop of finalists (all the rest of them male) took about ten seconds of deliberation for those of us on her audition committee. (Yes, I was on Sarah’s audition committee. Funny how life works.)

The Time article makes note of the Boston Symphony’s innovative use of screens to hide the gender of auditioning candidates from those passing judgment. It was, of course, exactly those screens that eventually allowed women to become the nearly equal (by numbers) force that they are in today’s music world. By the looks of things, they’ll outnumber us Y-chromosomers on the concert stage within a generation or two. And when they do, well… I can only hope they’ll treat us a heck of a lot more kindly than we’ve treated them over the years.

Posted in orchestra culture, women in music | 3 Comments »

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Or, as we’d say on this side of the Atlantic, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

Throughout my conducting career I’ve faced the dreaded “How is it being a woman in a male-dominated field?” question, and my customary reply is that 1) I choose not to make a big deal of it and 2) musicians are fine with anyone on the podium as long as they are prepared and competent.

My reasoning lies in my belief that we largely create our own realities; if I choose to ignore the potential minefield of the woman-as-authority-figure model, and assume that others will as well, that’s the way it will be. If I act like it’s no big deal, everyone else feels like it’s no big deal. Classic group psychology.

On the other hand, if I ever became hyper-conscious of long-held assumptions about gender and leadership, it would probably cause me some anxiety, which would then affect both my work and relationship with the ensemble or organization in question.

In terms of the inroads women have made in the conducting field, to paraphrase – we’ve come a long way, baby. But as far as we’ve come, there are constant reminders of the underlying discomforts that still exist.

Case in point; the recent firing or conductor/Baroque specialist Emmanuelle Haïm. Slated to conduct a run of Mozart’s Idomeneo at the Opéra de Paris, she was dismissed and replaced by Philippe Hui two days before opening night. What ensued was a she-said/they-said unusual in the music world in that the Orchestra made a public statement in response to Haïm’s declaration. Haïm claimed that the musicians were unwilling to work with her to achieve a different (Baroque) aesthetic. The orchestra countered that they were disappointed in the lack of precision in both musical ideas and in conducting style/gestures, and that all they care for is the quality of a performance.

A vote of no confidence from an orchestra is rather extraordinary. In her defense, neither a contracted rehearsal period nor musicians unaccustomed to the very particular technical and musical needs of historically informed performance is conducive to an amicable work environment. In the orchestra’s defense, Haïm is a self-taught conductor who, while generally highly regarded for her musical expertise in the Baroque repertoire, is admittedly not a technically adept conductor.

The situation is fully outlined in this article from Le Monde; for the non-Francophones, a translation of most of the article here.

What struck me about this commotion is the inclusion of an obvious fact that the author of the article decided to add at the end of a paragraph (I’m using Charles T. Downey’s translation from Ionarts):

The orchestra, “called out” by Mme Haïm, broke its customary silence — a very rare thing — by the means of the commission elected by the musicians, which declared on January 22: “The musicians were delighted to try a Baroque approach, [but] there was great disappointment in the lack of precision as well of musical ideas in the conducting style.” In other words, the orchestra, which wanted only “to guarantee the excellence of the performances,” denounced a lack of competence, for this production, of one of the few woman conductors in the world. (emphasis mine)

We don’t need to be reminded that there are not a whole lot of female conductors in the world. Anyone not living under a rock is aware of this. So, assuming that the goal was not simply an unnecessary statement of the obvious, I can only infer that this phrase was added as some sort of snide insinuation.

Yes, I’ll admit, I’m probably more sensitive to gender slights than your average male conductor. It’s simply a matter of experience; I’ve been on the receiving end of backhanded commentary and dealt with interactions fraught with undercurrents of chauvinism countless times. Again, as I said earlier, my response is to completely ignore it, and when one ignores it, one at least has the possibility of neutralizing an unfriendly environment.

But when publicly presented in international media, it seems gratuitously provocative (a conductor declared incompetent – and she’s a WOMAN!). And let me be clear here; it’s the author of the article that rankles me. I know nothing about the actual situation and can only assume a conductor would be ousted only because a production was in serious jeopardy and was artistically compromised.

I strive to dispel any notion that my gender marks my work. In fact, most of the time I pay it no heed (yes, even in the four-inch heels). And, again, when one endeavors to disregard traditional societal norms, with enough time one can establish new norms. Media insinuations like this one merely do a disservice to the very real work we’ve undertaken to eradicate those boundaries and assumptions.

Just when you think we’ve made progress, all you need to do is scratch the surface to discover the underlying bias. Plus ça change… (and do read down through all the comments; the vitriol is extraordinary.)

Posted in music and psychology, the business of music, the media, women in music | 2 Comments »

I’m not a witch, I’m your wife

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

(Yes, cinephiles, that is indeed a “Princess Bride” reference)

While Sam and the Orchestra have been occupied with the Composer Institute this week, I’ve been preoccupied with Humperdinck…well, actually, this Humperdinck.

I’m always surprised how well-known Hansel and Gretel is – not because of the piece itself, which is beautiful – but because of the exposure many seem to have had as children (it is, after all, a “fairytale opera”). It’s a funny matter of personal experience, I suppose – for many, H&G; is their first contact with opera; for me, it was Samson et Dalila, but I guess that makes sense for a 7-year-old obsessed with Placido Domingo (I don’t think Humperdinck is really his bag). In the interim decades, I’ve heard H&G; quite a few times but never studied it (except for the omnipresent Prelude and Dream Pantomime, both of which I’ve done over a half-dozen times).

So, as I hadn’t been around for any of the previous iterations of this production with the Orchestra, my first real involvement with the complete work came this past summer, when I initially delved into the score.

One of the most fascinating discoveries I’ve made in the score is how unsympathetic a character the Mother is (yes, yes, I’ve pondered musical stuff too – don’t get me started about use of percussion in the Witch’s Ride and how triplets in the tambourine intimate magical/evil). But, wow, this woman is painted as such an unsympathetic character; her first entrance is marked with hysterics; she knocks over the jug of milk herself and takes it out on Hansel and Gretel; then in a typically manic-depressive switch she has suicidal thoughts while falling asleep at the kitchen table after she chases the kids out of the house; she has no idea how dangerous the woods are or that there’s a hungry ogress or that witches ride broomsticks (why does Father know all these things??); and in the happy reunion at the end she merely has a single line (“Children, dear”) while Father has quite a few lines – and the kids, quite tellingly, call him first (“Father, Mother!” – although maybe I’m simply reading too much into that?).

Our “Mother”, Lola Watson, and I shared a few laughs at our first rehearsal about how mentally unbalanced the character seems, and the possibility (as some have interpreted) that the Mother is the Witch. While that seems a little far-fetched in context of the opera, I wonder what a feminist fairytale scholar’s take on that notion would be? A tantalizing alternative to ponder as I peruse the score this morning for the umpteenth time.

In any case, I’m delighted to be taking a break from operaland to attend the Future Classics concert tonight – the next 6 days holds nearly 23 hours of staging/orchestra/sitzprobe/full-run rehearsals for H&G;!

Posted in opera, score study, women in music | 3 Comments »

Late September Brevia

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

I’m in the home stretch of my move – house was finally packed Tuesday night, movers arrived Wednesday morning just as I was leaving for Philly, and now I’m in Washington DC between a rehearsal and performance for a show with Ben Folds and the National Symphony Orchestra. I’m driving home after the show to a now-empty house in Richmond as my husband plays his final concerts as Principal Horn of the Richmond Symphony.

I other news: it seems like every year that there’s an article like this about women in the conducting field. I’ve kind of stopped reading them because they always say the same thing; we’ve made inroads (cue JoAnn Falletta and Marin Alsop), but it’s still hard out there for a chick, orchestras are conservative in nature and change moves at a glacial pace, etc etc. It always bugs me that the finger is pointed at orchestras as bastions of old-school conservatism; look at the fact that there are only thirteen female CEO’s of this country’s 500 largest publicly traded companies.

Speaking of Marin Alsop, the Baltimore Symphony opens their regular subscription season with my friends Time for Three. They are absolutely fantastic, and great guys, to boot.

And speaking of conductors, I leave you with a virtual tour of the posh backstage pad of New York Philharmonic music director Alan Gilbert.

Posted in conductors and conducting, contemporary culture, women in music | 1 Comment »

Ask An Expert: Pecking Orders & Patriarchy

Friday, March 27th, 2009

We always seem to get good new Ask An Expert questions right after we perform a set of Inside the Classics shows, and this month is no exception. Mark Mironer starts us off with a classic “If A>B, and X>Y, then when is X>B?” conundrum…

Q: Ok, so first violin is generally more prestigious (and difficult) than second violin, and being a “titled” player is more prestigious (and difficult) than being non-titled. So, is it better to be a titled second violinist than a non-titled first violinist? How does the pecking order work?

A great question with no clear answer beyond personal preference, I’d say. It’s true that the Principal Second Violin will almost always make a bit more money than a section player in the firsts. (Emphasis on “a bit.” Except for the very most prominent players in the orchestra, titled players don’t make nearly as much overscale as you might imagine.)

But playing second violin can be a hard and thankless job. They play fewer melodies and more backing textures than any other instrument group in the orchestra, and that can really mess with your playing technique if you’re not careful. So for many violinists, being in charge of a section is less important than being challenged every day by first violin parts, which can be wickedly difficult. Case in point: this past year, our orchestra’s longtime Principal Second, Vali Phillips, voluntarily moved into a section chair in the firsts. He seems quite happy, and while his replacement at the head of the seconds, the estimable Gina DiBello, now technically outranks him, it certainly doesn’t mean that my admiration of Vali’s skills has diminished in the slightest.

So I guess what it comes down to is finding the right balance between the challenge of playing your instrument and the challenge of leadership. There’s no single answer that works for everyone.

Moving on, Ruth Ann Marks has a question about a different sort of orchestral hierarchy:

Q: On New Year’s Day I watched two televised concerts: one by the New York Philharmonic and one by the Vienna Philharmonic. I was struck by the gender difference between the two groups as I did not see any women musicians playing in the VPO! (However, I believe that the VPO actually has at least one (?) official female member.) From the internet I have gleaned that the reason for the VPO’s lack of female musicians relates to their assumption that men produce a unique quality of sound. What is your take on this? I find this argument contrary to my experience listening to the Minnesota Orchestra; when Jorja Fleezanis is concert master, I feel that the MN Orchestra is at its best. (And Sarah Kwak is pretty amazing too!)

(Yes. Yes, she is.) Without getting too deep into the specifics of the Vienna situation (you can read the whole sorry history of their continuing exclusion of women elsewhere,) I think it’s safe to say that every musician I know would laugh at the outmoded and absurd idea that an all-male orchestra is in any way preferable. Yes, the Vienna Phil is one of the world’s great orchestras, and has nearly no female players. But the Berlin Phil is at least Vienna’s equal, and they’ve got tons of women in their ranks. (As does nearly every other great orchestra in the Western world.) The one just has no connection to the other.

Interestingly, it was this argument that women were incapable of performing at a high enough level to be admitted to major orchestras that led, in part, to the process of “screened” auditions that so many orchestras (especially in America) now use. If women couldn’t compete at a man’s level, went the theory, then there should be no harm in having the orchestra make it’s hiring decisions without being able to see the candidates. Not surprisingly, it was around this time that women started to be hired in abundance.

The Minnesota Orchestra is currently made up of 2/3 men and 1/3 women, which actually surprised me when I counted, because I thought it would be closer to 50/50. (Our orchestra admitted its first female member, violinist Jenny Cullen, way back in 1923, much to the dismay of many of the men in the orchestra at the time.) Our violin sections are overwhelmingly female, and our cello section has a solid majority of women as well. So from the audience, our band probably appears to have fewer men than we actually do. But brass sections are nearly always dominated by men, as are bass sections. (We’ll be getting a new female bass player in the fall, our first since I’ve been in the orchestra.) And oddly, our viola section is overwhelmingly male, which is quite unusual, and I don’t really have an explanation for it, except to say that it’s definitely not that way on purpose.

In any case, Ruth is certainly right that Jorja Fleezanis and Sarah Kwak stand as living refutations of the notion that women lack the qualities necessary to play in, or lead, an orchestra. And eventually, even the Vienna Phil will get over themselves and join the modern world…

Posted in ask an expert, inside the orchestra, women in music | 6 Comments »

Cutting room floor: The Other Mozart

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

It’s been a busy couple of days of script-polishing; writing our “Inside the Classics” shows is a multi-month process that begins with an initial brainstorming meeting, goes on to choosing musical examples, and proceeds with drafting, redrafting and redrafting again. With our upcoming Mozart show, there was just so much to say (it’s pretty difficult to reduce the essence of Mozart down to 45 minutes!) that inevitably a few really important points had to be left out.

I have to confess that I have a soft spot for Maria Anna “Nannerl” Mozart (as well as Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann). Nannerl was the older Mozart sibling and one half of the brother-sister act that toured the capitals of Europe to tremendous acclaim. History has it that she was a brilliant pianist, with a talent “scarcely inferior to her brother’s”; in fact, as late as 1765 (when she was 14), she had top billing in their concert advertisements.

But all good things must come to an end, or at least they do for a young woman in polite 18th century society, where it would be improper for a girl of marriageable age to be performing in public. In 1769, at the age of 18, Nannerl was forbidden from further concertizing and remained in Salzburg as brother Wolfgang continued his triumphal trajectory. Leopold, ever the controlling father, rejected suitor after suitor; Nannerl did not marry until 33 and settled in St. Gilgen with her husband, children and step-children. Years later, after her husband’s death, she returned to Salzburg to live modestly as a piano teacher.

There’s a quiet tragedy in Nannerl’s story – but I always wonder if I see it as such through 21st century lenses. After all, in Nannerl’s world, it was all that could be expected. It was probably extraordinary enough that she lived the childhood of a traveling musical prodigy (and that’s certainly what she was). Who knows how her talents would have developed if she had been allowed to continue her musical career?

It all touches home for me. I’ve written several posts on my take on being a woman in my particular field; it’s hard enough navigating the minefields of gender in the 21st century, much less the 18th. Change comes slowly; I’m reminded of the fact that women did not have the right to vote until 1920 – only a (long) lifetime ago.

And I think of the writings of Rousseau:

“The Education of women should always be relative to men. To please, to be useful to us, to make us love and esteem them, to educate us when young and to take care of us when grown up, to advise, to console us, to render our lives easy and agreeable–these are the duties of women at all time and what they should be taught in their infancy.”

And:

“Women, in general, possess no artistic sensibility…nor genius. They can acquire a knowledge…of anything through hard work. But the celestial fire that emblazens and ignites the soul, the inspiration that consumes and devours…,these sublime ecstasies that reside in the depths of the heart are always lacking in [women's artistic endeavors].”

Nannerl would have been fighting a losing battle.

Posted in cutting room floor, women in music | Comments Off

Saying Something Nice

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

As everyone knows, the Cities are swarming with Republicans this week, and the whole metro has taken on a strange feel. Cities don’t come much more liberal than ours, so playing host to the biggest GOP gathering of the year feels slightly off-kilter. I wasn’t going to blog about it at all, partly because it has nothing to do with music, but mostly because my mother taught me that if I didn’t have anything nice to say, etc. etc.

Two things changed my mind. First off, I got stopped on the street in downtown Minneapolis today by a bearded guy who was very enthusiastic about my work. At first, I assumed he was a fan of the orchestra (I’m continually amazed by how many people in Minnesota can pick individual members of the orchestra out of a crowd,) but when he started asking me questions about Keith Olbermann, I stopped him, and gently asked, “Sorry, but who do you think I am?”

As it turns out, I apparently look a lot like NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd, who has been getting a fair amount of national airtime in recent weeks. If only Sarah looked like Chris Matthews, we might be able to arrange to get Inside the Classics some exposure on MSNBC… (Insert your own joke about fewer people watching MSNBC than attending our concerts.)

Secondly, it occurred to me that I actually do have something nice to say. Regardless of what you may think of the current administration and its approach to governance, I’ve always been quite taken with the fact that we have a Secretary of State who can play piano at something approaching a professional level.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfSYwJuq3Vg]
Dvorak Piano Quintet, split in two for some reason

Condoleezza Rice is actually something of an amazing woman on a lot of levels (if you’re interested in a fascinating, completely nonpartisan look at her and the rest of the Bush brain trust, check out James Mann’s excellent book, Rise of the Vulcans,) but it’s the piano playing that really gives me pause. Not that she plays, you understand – I know a lot of adults who still play music for fun – but that she plays awfully well. She plays like a woman who still puts in a couple of hours practice on a daily basis, and I can’t imagine where she ever finds the time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ytj-I28nt8]
…part two.

So there: an RNC blog post that didn’t mention Sarah Palin’s daughter, John McCain’s age, or the protesters who decided that the proper way to show their displeasure with the GOP was to smash the front window of Macy’s. Do I win a prize?

Posted in music and politics, women in music | Comments Off

Depends how you look at it

Monday, May 5th, 2008

Doing a bit of traveling this week, and although I do some work while flying, what I really enjoy when airborne is perusing gossip magazines (as I’ve said before, I’m a huge (HUGE) pop culture junkie). So, I’ve been catching up with the whole Miley Cyrus brouhaha, which I find utterly fascinating.

First things first. Here is the “offending”photo:

I don’t want to belabor the point, as the mainstream press has taken care of that (last weekend it seemed like CNN updated the story every 7 minutes). But as a basis of comparison, observe below a shot of Ms. Cyrus from the Teen’s Choice awards a few months back:

I frankly think she’s exposing more skin in the latter shot, and I find the Vanity Fair photo rather ethereal and much prettier.

The larger point, I think, is that Cyrus’s Disney handlers realized, much too late, that the more mature image presented by the Vanity Fair cover might alienate her largely tween audience (or, more likely, their parents).

We live in an increasingly visual world, and it is no surprise that the music world is so image-driven. Now, lest you think that image issues are strictly a pop music phenomenon, observe the below:

Violinist Sarah Chang’s first album cover. Compare to this:

Chang’s latest release. Is the image appropriate? Sure, it’s an attractive shot of Chang. Does it have anything to do with the music? Well, I guess she’s holding a violin, and there are falling leaves…(“Autumn”?)

Image certainly carries weight in the classical scene, and probably has for longer than we care to admit. (Think of Franz Liszt, the 19th century piano virtuoso/composer whose rock star good looks and charismatic stage presence made the ladies swoon.) Cyrus’s photo reminded me of another rather controversial picture, this one of violinist Lara St. John:

St. John’s first album cover. Some people cried pornography; St. John maintains that she was expressing how nothing came between her and her music (echoes of Brooke Shields ?). What’s certain is that the image generated a lot of press, which I’m sure boosted album sales and helped launch her career. (In St. John’s defense, that would have been the beginning and end of it if she didn’t have the goods to back it up – she’s a fine violinist with a thriving career.)

The image game is a tough one, and it always feels like women come under more scrutiny than men. On one hand, we are expected to present an attractive image of ourselves; on the other, if that image is deemed to “cross the line”, our talent is put to doubt because we are thought to be relying on our feminine wiles. And that line keeps shifting, drifting with political and cultural winds.

I know I spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out what to wear on the podium; women don’t have “uniforms” in the way that men do, so I can’t just slap on a tuxedo and call it a night. How do I maintain both my femininity and sense of style while still remaining “appropriate”? The only certainty for me are my 4-inch heels; whatever you think of them, I love them, because they make me tall. And it’s great to cut an imposing figure on the podium.

Posted in the business of music, women in music | 1 Comment »

Cutting Room Floor: Behind Every Great Composer…

Monday, April 21st, 2008

The music world is full of behind-the-scenes figures without whom none of us on stage would have a prayer of making a living at what we do. These devoted music fans contribute the money that keeps us going, and some of them contribute countless hours of their time, as well. Some are board members of orchestras big and small; some devote their free time to helping keep organizations like Minnesota’s Schubert Club aloft; and a select few go their own way, commissioning new works, finding and paying musicians to play them, and generally carving out a small niche in the music world that would otherwise not exist.

Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, was one of this last group. Born in Chicago in 1864, she would become one of the most influential figures in the then-developing American music scene, and while her name wouldn’t ring a bell with the vast majority of musicians and music fans today, composers and musicians across the 20th century musical landscape (including Aaron Copland) owe her a debt of gratitude.

That such a prominent patron of the arts in the early 20th century could have been a woman might seem surprising, given the societal restrictions of the period. But a quick glance back through Western musical history reveals that an inordinately large number of patrons of the arts have been women, and this remains the case today. (Just off the top of my head, I could name nine or ten women who are major powers on the Minnesota Orchestra’s board. I’m refraining because many of them are famously averse to public recognition for their charitable works, wanting only the music and an occasional conversation with Osmo in return for their tireless efforts.)

Sprague Coolidge’s contributions to music were many, but she may be best remembered for having started the rural summer festival in the Berkshire mountains of western Massachusetts that would later become known as Tanglewood. The Boston Symphony’s idyllic summer home, to which listeners from around the world flock each July and August to hear grand symphonies while lying on a vast lawn sipping wine, began as an outgrowth of Sprague Coolidge’s Berkshire Music Festival.

She was most passionate about chamber music, that connoisseur’s genre so often ignored by the general public, and in her adult life, she commissioned some of the great works of the era: Bartok’s 5th string quartet, Anton Webern’s lone quartet, two quartets by Arnold Schoenberg, and (you knew this was coming) Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring. (While our Inside the Classics concerts next week will be focusing on the orchestral version of Copland’s masterpiece, remember that it began its life as a ballet score, to be played by just 13 musicians in an orchestra pit. At it’s core, Appalachian Spring is a work of chamber music.)

Sprague Coolidge’s role as a patron of the arts was a delicate one at times. In 1919, she famously held a competition for composers to create a new sonata for the viola, one of her favorite instruments (and mine, obviously.) Several prominent composers entered works, and eventually, the jury deadlocked between two distinctive pieces. One was by the eminent Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch (his Grand Suite for viola,); the other was by Sprague Coolidge’s neighbor, a British-born composer and violist named Rebecca Clarke. Aching for her friend, but mindful of the necessity of not allowing her competition to be sullied by accusations of favoritism, Sprague Coolidge broke the tie in Bloch’s favor. (Both the Clarke sonata and the Bloch suite have since become standard repertoire for violists.)

Many of those responsible for music’s creation and preservation toil in obscurity, and as I said, many of them wouldn’t have it any other way. (To be honest, it’s likely I’d never have heard of Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge were it not for the fact that my connections to Western Massachusetts run particularly deep.) So it’s somewhat apropos that you won’t be hearing anything about the woman who commissioned Aaron Copland to write a ballet for Martha Graham in our concerts next week. Her name doesn’t appear on the score, and even hardcore Copland fans frequently assume that it was Graham herself who paid for Appalachian Spring to be written.

But without her, 20th century music would have been quite different. She understood the importance of encouraging innovation, even if she didn’t always like what she heard. Her perspective on the importance of new music is one that all of us in the music world would do well to remember: “My plea for modern music is not that we should like it, nor necessarily that we should even understand it, but that we should exhibit it as a significant human document.”

Posted in composers, cutting room floor, women in music | 3 Comments »

What makes a leader?

Friday, February 15th, 2008

A recent article in the Sacramento Bee caught my attention not just because it was profiling a woman conductor, Laura Jackson (whom I’ve met – she’s a lovely person and fine musician), but for a quote towards the end from Jesse Rosen, president of the League of American Orchestras. Jesse is quoted as saying: “There has been a movement away from top-down, authoritarian leadership… to a more collaborative and more participatory kind of structure, a structure where the leader is now more of a facilitator and nurturer.”

It’s an interesting assertion. When one imagines a conductor, it’s hard not to conjure up images of the authoritarian white-haired maestro wielding his baton like a dictator on the podium. It’s an image that’s been instilled into the popular psyche, an image that was largely accurate until not so many generations ago.

Women have been on the conducting scene for awhile, and it’s not longer so unusual to see us on the podium, although I have certainly stood in front of several orchestra who have told me I was their first female conductor. I think, at this point in history, we can safely assert that from a musical standpoint, you will find no difference because of gender – women and men can both attain the highest level of musicianship. Although perhaps the most subjective concept in the world, I really find musicianship to be, in an odd way, empirical. Most musicians will tell you they know a good musician instinctively, and will respect their viewpoint even if they disagree with it, because they understand the knowledge and skill behind it.

So if it’s not musicianship that separates the genders, then what? Clearly, the answer is leadership style, which is what I think Jesse Rosen was alluding to in that quote above.

I’m often asked to make presentations to various groups and organizations such as the AAUW, and part of my speech focuses on the widely divergent leadership styles of men and women. (And before I dive into this, let me say that these are certainly generalization!) Men tend to make more authoritarian leaders and are more likely to engage in strictly top-down management. Apply this to the conducting field, and it makes a great deal of sense, at least by the old model – whatever the conductor says goes, no questions asked, no room for leeway. The conductor has a vision, the orchestra is simply there to put that vision into sound.

Women tend to have a more consensus-based leadership style. This is not to say that we go around trying to get people to agree with our viewpoint – it is more the sense that we welcome discussion and participation. I call the process the “buy-in”; in my view, my job as a leader is to make everyone understand where I’m coming from musically, to accept it as a group goal, and to find ways to reach this goal together. I have a very strong sense that the players in front of me are not just there to support my musical vision; they are active participants in a group effort in which we all strive to reach a common, agreed-upon musical goal.

I was recently guest conducting an orchestra, and late in the rehearsal process, after we had gone over a piece several times, I asked, “Any questions in this? Any concerns?”. The ensemble looked a little baffled at first – clearly, they had not been asked this before. All I wanted to know was, I’m comfortable with where this piece is, is there any spot that one of you may be uncomfortable with? After a few moments of silence, a clarinetist asked to rehearse a tricky entrance again and the basses asked for a cue in a particular spot, which I was happy to do. After rehearsal a brass player came up to tell me that they had rarely if ever had the opportunity to speak up in rehearsal to address any issues that were left unrehearsed. And, not coincidentally, I was the first woman to have conducted them.

I think women, as a whole, take a more holistic view of the world, and I certainly think this colors our view of leadership. There are certainly those out there who don’t believe women can exercise leadership or authority, but I dwell on that as little as possible. I think it’s important to acknowledge that men and women make different leaders (an interesting idea, particularly given what’s happening in politics these days!), but as I like to say, different is not better or worse, just different. And to think how much less strife there would be in the world if we could all understand that…

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