classicalmusic/comments/2xycvk/potentiallyoffensivemusicyoungcomposers/cp4s2si
First post is part 1, second is part 2 of link
I guess CC has a thing against Reddit?
I think there is a lot of blame to go around. I think the person who wrote the letter, while I can understand they were upset and why, should have given the NYYS a chance to respond, to make the person understand the point of the piece, that it wasn’t some stupid kid putting that music out there for the shock value, but part of a reasoned piece against oppression, but by doing it anonymously they basically didn’t allow any kind of dialog or understanding and in sense ended up not letting other people hear it, to decide for themselves.
The NYYS is a bit disingenuous as well, that piece was turned over 6 months ago, had been in rehearsal, and several of the musicians recognized the snippet as what it was and brought it up, it was discussed, so how come suddenly no one knew that was in there? I also think that they could have after seeing the complaint realized there was an issue, and instead of not programming the piece, work with the composer to have better program notes, so people could understand the context.
The kid is also at fault, he has some of the arrogance of youth, so to speak,that many young artists have, they see life in black and white and have this idea that ‘art speaks for itself’…when it doesn’t necessarily. There was a controversy many years ago when an artist had a painting of the Madonna at a Brooklyn museum that had some sort of animal droppings on it, Giuliani went berserk, tried to cut funding to the museum, tried to get it shut down as 'offensive to Catholics" and the like…it turned out the artist did not mean it to be offensive, quite the opposite, I think he was Nigerian and the symbolism was actually meant to be a positive one, but he never explained it.
I am not surprised the NYYS board acted like this, having been around it in past years, the board and the executive leadership don’t always do things the way you would expect,there are always tangled politics, and knee jerk reactions like this happened more than a few times over the years, blow ups, you name it, and the way this was handled I suspect reflects the way the group operates. Don’t get me wrong, the NYYS is an incredible organization, they provide one heck of a musical opportunity for those in it (put it this way, I would rather spend money and go to a NYYS performance on most days then the NY Phil, the kids give their all), and the fact that it is tuition free for that kind of opportunity is amazing) but like any arts organization they also have weaknesses, and I think in this case it demonstrated one of them, the knee jerk reaction.
And remember that in nonprofits, the Board and the Executive leadership are different entities, the latter being beholden to the for former. There are many parts to an organization–the board, the administration, the musical leadership.
I’m not sure why the students were practicing the piece for months without ever being brought into a discussion about what it meant–seriously, music isn’t just athleticism; it’s a wonder to me that the musical leadership wasn’t more on top of the piece (the content of which would have likely made a terrific object lesson before all of this blew up.)
For what it’s worth, members of my family heard the piece in the one performance it got; even being very knowledgeable of WWII they did not recognize the 90 sec usage of the Nazi party theme. The conductor along with most of the students, many of them, didn’t recognize it either; they can’t be faulted for that. The musicians that did recognize casually discussed it with Tarm, not the management. There was no undercurrent, at all, in the NYY about this. NYY management cannot work with the composer if he won’t offer any more information than the program note he provided. None of us are privy to the terms of Tarm’s contract with NYY; it’s entirely possible that he violated the terms of this contract by his lack of transparency.
The reddit post that @SpiritManager tried to link can be found by going to the reddit website and doing a search for “student’s perspective nyys”. If’s a post from one of the NYYS musicians that I think does offer a perspective that’s useful to know.
But @compmom offers good advice in suggesting that we resist the impulse to decide who is right and who is wrong, and instead try to focus on what we can learn. In some sense, I think the NYYS administration and Jonas are both “right” when one views the situation through their respective lenses.
Jonas wrote a piece of music that he wanted to have interpreted by the listeners, rather than having him dictate the meaning. We can debate whether that’s the “right” or “wrong” way to present a piece of music, but I’m willing to respect his choice as the composer.
However, by inserting a quotation from the Horst Wessel Lied, and making the choice not to explain its context or meaning, he put the NYYS in an impossible position once the quotation was recognized. Faced with having a youth orchestra performing the Nazi anthem, initially unaware and then, when recognized, with no explanation or context, I think the board and administration really had no choice but to pull the piece from the concert.
I expect that Jonas will find another orchestra to play this composition, as he is a talented composer who has had other works performed. (And, at this point, the piece certainly has received enough publicity.) As for the NYYS, I expect they will be more attentive to setting expectations up front with the composers whose work they commission in the future, including the expectation that the composer explain his/her work. It’s well within their right to set groundrules - if a composer doesn’t wish to comply with the groundrules, he/she doesn’t have to enter the competition.
In the meantime, I find the effort to assign blame, either to Jonas or to the NYYS, to be counterproductive.
The Reddit discussion is quite interesting–thanks.
CC probably considers Reddit to be a private blog post and the TOS is not to post links to private blog sites.
According to what my son heard or read, the composer came and spoke to the students, but simply told them that they could interpret the piece as they wished–he apparently didn’t tell the whole group that it had quotations in it.
My son also raised the issue of the ethics of using excerpts of other pieces without revealing that you had done so. I assume there is no copyright issue with these particular excerpts, but I still think it’s an issue.
I also just think there is an inherent inconsistency between telling people that they should interpret the music “for itself” and the insertion of musical quotations that have powerful connotations.
By the way, listening to the music now wouldn’t really help much, because now we know what the “program” was supposed to be, so we’ll probably all discern it. But lots of people didn’t when they didn’t know.
There was probably no copyright issue if the excerpts are in the common domain, but you’re right it certainly does raise ethical questions when quotations appear in a piece without attribution. I also agree with you about the inconsistency in telling people “this could be about Pokemon or whatever you want it to be” when the hidden-in-plain-sight quotations are very much fraught with meaning.
I read the student’s perspective on reddit, and also scrolled through the comments. The student is not supportive of Tarm at all, but the letter from a composer who received a past commission from NYYS is deeply critical of NYYS’s decision. Many viewpoints and they all have some truth.
Right- it’s a complicated issue with many grey areas.
I agree, these are complicated, when dealing with the emotions, whether it is discomfort or fear, or passion , it creates tough situations. This is not exactly new, composers back in the good old days were beholden to the rich folks who were their patrons, and for example, Mozart ran into more than a bit of trouble politically with the marriage of figaro, so this is nothing new. It is hard, because you would like art to be unhindered, want it to exist in a bubble where artistic expression is all, but there is a real world, too, where for example you have music or art that might please the artist, but turns off those who view or listen to it (it has been a fundamental problems of orchestras, who switched from ticket sales to patronage and subsidies in large part because they wanted freedom from ‘the tyranny of the audience’).
I think the composer thought he wasn’t going to force his views on the audience, let them come to their own decisions, but also forgot that the fundamental nature of music, especially when you choose music that is familiar in writing your own, is that in a sense you are forcing things on the audience, since they have to listen to it. To the composer, the Horst Wessel song was a snippet to represent oppression, to someone listening to it in the audience, it was being forced to listen to something that represented a lot more than oppression to them, and both are right.
Hopefully NYYS will use this as a learning experience with future works, have the composer go over the piece with someone and make sure that everything is covered.
Hey, it got classical music on the front page (or close) for a few minutes, so that’s something.
Almost as good as the time when Page 6 of the NY Post (gossip collumn), had a blind piece about an 80 year old conductor, who was in shanghai for a performance and sent an e-mail to his mistress, telling her to wait for him in his hotel room in the buff…but accidentally sent it to all his e-mail contacts whoops…