and Changes in the
Suburban Environment for New Music, 2009
by Leonard J. Lehrman,
Critic-at-Large
The New Music Connoisseur, v. 17 #2, p. 15-16
Leonard Bernstein and
David Diamond each asked Jack Beeson if he was sure he wasn't Jewish, or gay,
respectively, because, they each said, he was "attractive, intelligent, and
creative." The implications are left to the reader: Jack happens to be
straight, and a Quaker, having been born in 1921 and raised in Muncie, Indiana,
America's "Middletown," sometimes earning him the sobriquet "typical American
composer."
How Operas are
Created by Composers and Librettists : The Life of Jack Beeson, American Opera
Composer, is the title of his 544-page memoir, with 16 photos, printed in
the US, published in 2008 by Edwin Mellen Press in Wales, Ontario, and Lewiston
NY (near the Canadian border), and still unreviewed by any major media. Its
skimpy 4-page index is missing numerous important names mentioned in the text,
among them Marc Blitzstein, Harold Blumenfeld, Pierre Boulez, Shirlee Emmons,
Eugene Green, Marilyn Horne, Judith Liegner, Madeleine Marshall, Andre Obey,
Kyriena Siloti, William Strickland, Joan Sutherland. Rich in stories about the
creative process and creative personalities (like Bela Bartók, Brenda Lewis,
Anton Coppola, and Sheldon Harnick), which everyone should want to read, it has
been endorsed in blurbs by Julius Rudel and (former Beeson student) John
Kander. It does not have a bibliography, which was disappointing, as I'd
especially looked forward to reading what the author might say about the long
interview I did with him, published by Opera Monthly, July-Aug. 1994, pp.
16-28, of which I remember him going out and purchasing every copy he could
find(!).
PAGE 15
I had the honor of receiving
the first signed copy of the book from the com-poser himself, at the Juilliard
premiere of his 1999 Juilliard commission The Daring Young Man on the Flying
Trapeze, Nov. 19, 2008. The date of that premiere is not included in the
book; neither is the Aug. 7, 1996 premiere I played at Heckscher Park of his Two
Diversions for Piano. But 38 premiere dates are, in Appendix B, his 17-page list of 156
Musical Works: 11 solo & chamber works, 50 for chorus, 9 for orchestra, 2
for band, 74 for solo voice(s), and 10 operas. Appendix A is a 14-page listing
of the complete repertoire of the 1943-1958 Columbia Opera Workshop, in which
he played a major role, often assistant conducting, from 1945 on, though he
neglects to include himself in that capacity in the 1951 production of the
Pulitzer Prize-winning (yet virtually unheard since) Giants in the Earth by Douglas Moore, to
whom Jack was very close, having very nearly married his daughter.
I take the liberty of
calling Beeson by his first name, as a friend of my family even before I was
born: the woman he did marry, Nora Sigerist, was (and still is) a close friend
of my mother's - from their graduate school days at Columbia. In the 1960s,
Jack became something of a role model for many of us, especially regarding the
Vietnam War: he had been a conscientious objector in World War II; and he was
(and still is) one of the most capable, know-ledgeable, and well-connected
people in all of American music, especially opera, having mastered the many
different talents, as well as the nuts and bolts, needed to work in that genre.
In a diary entry of June
15, 1961, quoted in his Opera Quarterly article of Spring 1986,
reprinted in the autobiography, p. 313-14, he expresses it beautifully:
The trouble is that most
"serious" composers have gained their good reputations among other composers
via their instrumental compositions. Most of them have little knowledge of the
voice and even less affection for it, not to mention their lack of knowledge
about English word setting ... and really nobody ever stops to think that it is
only in the opera house that an audience is subjected to two or three hours of
one composer's music, and that this circumstance requires a broader musical
palette than that proper for a symphony or a chamber work.
In
a recent phone conversation, he elaborated by recalling how Douglas Moore
modestly said that composers with second-rate techniques, overall, could in
fact acquire the skills to create great operas, and have done so. (Think
Donizetti, Mascagni, Gounod...) But so many composers who write brilliant
instrumental music think they can write opera, without having taken the trouble
to learn the very different set of skills needed. This is of course not
uncommon in the field. Please see my remarks on my late teacher Leon Kirchner,
who blamed everyone else for his own shortcomings in opera.
I
vividly remember how that was standard operating procedure for Sarah Caldwell,
too. But Jack is different. He blames no one but circumstance for the neglect
of most of his works, except his relatively popular one-act Hello Out There, and his masterpiece, Lizzie
Borden, which has had numerous productions, and revivals, in the U.S. and Germany.
As a mentor for
hundreds of students at Columbia, and a sane voice on so many important music
com-mittees, from the Ditson Fund to the Pulitzer Prize, he deserves more. I
want to credit him for having helped solve the quandary the Blitzstein Estate,
Bernard Malamud and I found ourselves in when I completed an opera based on Malamud
left unfinished by Blitzstein: Jack sent us to Bob Holton at Belwin Mills, who
told us how the contract should be written. I also want to credit Jack for
having advised me on a particular passage in the development of Vanzetti's Aria
in my completion of Blitzstein's Sacco and Vanzetti, and for also having
advised me to get a contract from Blitzstein's Estate before going further,
which I did. He also wrote me a fascinating letter on the
question of whether to orchestrate the work in a style "south of the Alps" or
"north of the Alps," i.e. with or without harp.
Most
importantly, having just read through the vocal score of it, I want everyone to
know that his very first opera, Jonah, is eminently deserving
of pro-duction. Written in 1948-50, and fourth prize winner of the 1951 La
Scala com-petition, it is the only one of his operas not yet produced. Based on
a play by Paul Goodman, it is full of Jewish humor, much like the Noah play The
Flowering Peach by Clifford Odets which became Richard Rod-gers' and Martin
Charnin's Two by Two. Fans of Billy Budd and Peter Grimes will love the sea and
sailors' music of Act II. Like Wozzeck, Madama Butterfly, Hannah, Our Town, and a number of other
three-act operas, this one can be performed in two acts, and probably should
be. An excerpt program - perhaps at Columbia's Miller Theatre? - should include
the scene of Jonah's wife and daughter from Act I (pp. 23-25); his monologue
based on the Psalms (pp. 103-105), and the mocking chorus (pp. 129-138) from Act II;
and the final chorus, monologue and final duet with the angel (pp. 212-219,
232-241) from Act III. And then
Juilliard or Manhattan should really do the whole thing, while the composer is
still alive!
NYSCA and the Radio
In the space remaining for this column,
let us note a few recent developments affecting the new music scene: WQXR is
now the property of WNYC, and with wqxr.com becoming wqxr.org, moving from 96.3
to 105.9 FM, metropolitan NY now has 3 listener-supported stations, including
WBAI, some board members of which recently sent out a survey asking listeners
if they preferred reggae, hip-hop, or "European classical music," as
if American "classical music" did not exist. (See the editorial in
this issue.) The new WQXR signal no longer reaches Suffolk County. And a major
source of funding for the arts in Nassau County, the NYSCA decentralization
grants, have, despite protests, for the first time been turned over to an
agency outside the county: the Huntington Arts Council (HAC).
With HAC administering both Nassau
and Suffolk, one would think that Nassau artists could apply for support of
activities in Suffolk, and vice versa; but that is not happening, at least not
yet. A phone call of inquiry to NYSCA was courteously returned by NYSCA
Executive Director Heather Hitchens herself, who explained, and followed up
with an email memo, that the Long Island Arts Council (LIAC) at Freeport was to
be faulted. They had some years ago taken over the administration of the grants
from the Nassau County Office of Cultural Development (now defunct, and not on
the agenda to be revived, according to County Executive Tom Suozzi - I asked
him directly, and he told me point-blank). Their board, she wrote, had appeared
"ineffective and unable to understand and respond to NYSCA's
concerns," and did "not seem to be on top [of] trends and needs in
the area." The arts grants co-ordinator who had been hired by them had been
"too part-time," and "the growing ethnic populations" had
not been adequately represented, in NYSCA's opinion.
On
March 4, 2009, LIAC's annual Arts Awards Reception featured a performance of Chalk
Marks on the Sidewalk by Langston Hughes & Elie Siegmeister (the 12th of
41 concerts honoring his 2009 centennial, in North America, Asia and Europe),
the same piece featured at the Oct. 22nd opening banquet of Hofstra's
Conference on Suburban Diversity, which the song celebrates in its multi-ethnic
mix: "Carmencita loves Patrick. Patrick loves Si-Lan Chen.... If everybody loved
everybody, we'd all be happy then!" Photos of the event show the presence of
numerous people of color.
In
1989-91 I produced a monthly program on WBAI called "Music of All the
Americas." I programmed works exalting diversity by Marc Blitzstein, Elie
Siegmeister, David Amram, several Native Americans, and the African Americans
Ulysses Kay, Leslie Adams, William Grant Still. Yet it was taken off the air by
the African American program director at the time, who called the show
"too European." Is this
what we've come to now?
How,
one must ask, can we staunch the decline of classical music attendance in
general, and attract more young people into concert halls, unless radio
stations and other media play our music?