13.8 The modern orchestra

- Sampler (1970-80) If the digital synthesizer is in fact a computer, then any sound, when digitised, can be stored in it. So why not record the piano, harp, cimbalom, or flute tone-by-tone and then play them on the keys? This turned out to be difficult in practice, although some amazingly good results were obtained. On YouTube there are two versions of the almost impossibly difficult three Etudes of Béla Bartók, one played by the midi-clavier and one by a pianist. Hear for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KNPx4jyLsI and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2E058Ep99Y

Another example is the Hauptwerk project, in which the most famous organs of Europe are being recorded tone-by-tone and can be played back through a sampler built in the form of a console and pedal of a real pipe organ. The result is quite astonishing.

This option of transforming the sampler into a real instrument can be of practical value, because with a keyboard player a composer has a lot of extra sounds at his disposition. Personally, I have had good results with the harp, the cimbalom and the piano (I prefer the honky-tonk version because it is sharper and more characteristic than the somewhat ‘dull’ MIDI piano).

But, as said before, any sound can be imported into the sampler. The device also has its own processing options, such as filters, pitch shifter, time shifter, and so on. In the 1980s, samplers came on the market as hybrid synthesizers but they had their limitations in RAM storage capacity and hard disk size. Since 2010, we refer to them as music workstations and storage capacity is no longer an issue.

13.8 THE MODERN ORCHESTRA The use of electronic tools has immensely enriched the sound possibilities of the traditional ensemble for new music: - the use of the sampler and synthesizer, played by a pianist who has familiarised himself with these instruments; - sounds can be recorded live and played back after an x number of seconds and colour, direction, pitch and tempo can be altered live; - the ensemble is enriched with sound files that are pre-recorded in the studio. These are often pre-recorded sounds of the same instruments as on the stage, but can in principle be any sound. (See, for example, the use of archival sounds of political persona and events in Zimmerman’s Requiem für einen jungen Dichter, Chapter VI, 6); - instruments are connected to electronic circuits, giving all sounds a fixed or variable colouration;

In addition: - by using loudspeakers, both direction and volume can become factors. Direction may be a composable parameter, but volume is also important: the lack of a ‘big’ sound, which can fill a concert hall and embrace the audience as an orchestra does, can be compensated for by using high-quality loudspeakers. One should be careful not to use loudspeakers that are designed to produce a high volume continuously but usually fail in producing the full range of the spectrum.

Such loudspeakers ‘flatten’ the music and are ‘in your face’; they are not suitable for classical music.

We must realise that Young Music will never make more than an occasional appearance in the orchestra repertoire. As time goes by, orchestras are coming increasingly like specialised ensembles such as the ones for performing Baroque music. Theses ensembles cover the Renaissance and Baroque periods, occasionally extending into the Classical period. The repertoire of an orchestra starts with the Classical period, going on to include the composers discussed in this book in Chapter III, Paris and Chapter IV, the Satz, and perhaps occasionally some Young Music. But then who takes care of the music discussed in Chapters II, V, VI and VII? We need a modern orchestra. I propose for each Western country to have at least one modern orchestra. It should consist of the following basic formation: 2 flutes (also a piccolo, alto flute and at least one bass flute), 2 oboes (also alt oboe), 3 clarinets (also in A and E and one also bass clarinet), 1 bass clarinet (also contrabass clarinet), 2 saxophones (together sopranino, soprano, alto, baritone, contrabass sax), 1 bassoon (also contrabassoon), brass wind instruments (1 of each), at least 3 percussionists (drums and mallets), 1 harp, 2 keyboard players (piano and synthesizer), 1 player/operator of electronic tools, 1 technician (for both sound and visuals), 2 violins, 1 viola, 1 cello, 1 double bass, 1 conductor.

In some countries there have indeed been initiatives to that effect. Germany has its Ensemble Modern (Frankfurt am Rhein), Musikfabrik (Cologne) and Ensemble Recherche (Freiburg am Breisgau), Austria has its Klangforum Wien (Vienna), France has the Ensemble Intercontemporain (Paris), England the London Sinfonietta (London), and in Amsterdam, although heavily cut in recent years, the Asko/Schönberg Ensemble has managed to survive. There are more ensembles, many more even, but most of them are struggling with insufficient structural funding and quite often with limited public interest as well, which means less political support. Everywhere, especially in the U.S.A., concert promoters of new music spend most of their time trying to raise money and

finding out how to fill out grant application forms in a totally politically correct way to obtain at least some public funding. Good and motivated people burn up after a number of years because they can no longer stand the slow-moving bureaucracy and the institutionalised mistrust of anything that is not considered politically advantageous. In the Netherlands this process is in full swing. The interest group Kunsten96 estimates the loss of subsidies in the field of new music since 2011 at some 50 %. And then there is the rising populism in politics, with a view on art that is often nothing but electorally sanctioned amateurism; it all means that contemporary music is in dire straits (writing in 2019).

There is something the world of ensembles can do, though: organise themselves better and coordinate their aims at the European level. Artistic management must realise that much Young Music is speculative by design, intended to explore revolutionary but also extreme concepts in order to transform art music into a highly abstract and anti-romantic world of sound. Unfortunately, a logical step, that of communicating with a potential, paying audience was considered irrelevant in the 1950s and 1960s.194 Now the time has come to judge the legacy of the first five decades on other merits than only their revolutionary achievements. Re-establishing and expanding a connection with an audience is of vital importance, for composers too. Maybe the era of Young Music has come to an end, an era characterised by abundant government subsidies and the institutionalisation of contemporary music in forms of academism.

In my hometown, the Rotterdam concert hall De Doelen and the ensemble for new music the DoelenEnsemble together set up a subscription system, which resulted in some 700 subscribers. The repertoire is broad and modern dance and visuals are also involved. This collaboration resulted in an increase of audience attendance of 250-300 per cent. Evidently, this was also a financial boost to the system.

It is both hard and very easy to speculate about the future, so let’s not go there. What we can do is draw some conclusions from tendencies of the past fifty years there are certainly of interest for the future.

Commercial music, driven by manipulative formulas and the glamour of individual artists, stands opposite the arts, where the product comes first. But within art music there is also a clear distinction: music from the past, with the concomitant faits divers about the lives of the

194The listener was supposed to ascend, the artist was never supposed to descend, was the feeling. Unfortunately, no one knew what to do if the audience refused to be elevated.

composers (lending them a bit of glamour too) has usually become the vehicle for star conductors and soloists. In brochures, orchestras promote their concerts with superlatives about the soloists and conductors, including glamour photos. The concert programmes contain few, if any, surprises: the pieces form the canon of classical music are seen as a vehicle for the careers of the stars. It is a world in which living composers have no place. Within the limited space allocated to new music we eventually discern two groups: one of composers who use a broadly formulated shared language in which composers do beautiful things, and one of composers with whom the creative process starts by creating a logo: an inalienable, individual, and limited formula that is developed with great consistency. The first group is called conservative, the second progressive, but what’s in a name, nowadays? Which is a better work: Shostakovich’s 2nd Piano Concerto, Bernstein’s West Side Story or Stockhausen’s Gruppen? Comparing these three works, which all premièred in the same year is pointless. All we can say is that the 2nd Piano Concerto is a masterful example of high-quality music for the masses in the tradition of Chopin, and that Gruppen is a spectacular exploration of the full possibilities of the total chromaticism of the Young Music. West Side Story is a brilliant hybrid of the finest American song writing, big band music and Mahler and produced some of the most beloved classical music of the twentieth century. The future will further develop along these lines.