Contemporary Classical

Contemporary Classical

Historic NEA Funding Boost Expected

Last week, Democrats gave up their fight to block $70 billion in unrestricted war funding and on December 19, Congress sent the $556 billion omnibus spending bill to President Bush, who is expected to sign it.

Included in this bill is a historic increase in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.  Funding for the NEA will be increased by $20.144 million, or about 16%, to $144.706 million for FY08.  This is less than the $160 million appropriation proposed in the House version of the bill, but more than the Senate proposal of $133.412 million and more than the President’s requested $128.412 million, and it represents the largest increase in NEA funding since 1979, when funding was increased by $25.735 million (which itself followed an increase of $23.978 million in 1978).  The $144.706 million was actually $147 million before an across-the-board cut of 1.56%.  NEA funding still has not recovered from the massive $62.8 million cut to the 1996 budget, but has increased every year starting with the 2001 appropriations.

Within the NEA appropriation, the biggest funding increase is to the “American Masterpieces” initiative, which the NEA website says “is a major initiative to acquaint Americans with the best of their cultural and artistic legacy. Through American Masterpieces, the National Endowment for the Arts sponsors performances, exhibitions, tours, and educational programs across different art forms that reach large and small communities in all 50 states.”  The 2007 budget for this program was $5.911 million and it stands to nearly double to $13.289 million in 2008.

The League of American Orchestras is reporting that “Congressional Arts Caucus co-chairs Louise Slaughter (D-NY) and Chris Shays (R-CT) rallied House colleagues in support of the NEA, and Interior Appropriations Committee Chairman Norm Dicks (D-WA) championed NEA funding as a priority issue.”  Special thanks to LAO’s Heather Noonan for help in finding the details of the bill, which you can see here and here.

National Endowment for the Humanities funding will increase by just $3.602 million, in spite of an $18.895 million request in the House version of the bill.

by Galen H. Brown
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

That’s Earle, Brother

I missed this little diatribe from Bernard Holland in the Times.  Thanks to Carmen Tellez for bringing it to my attention:

Unpleasant truths were another topic brought back forcefully by a concert at the Kitchen in September, by the fine young group Either/Or. Here was a program of 1960s arrogance and self-absorption, with people like Cornelius Cardew, Christian Wolff and Earle Brown as the main offenders. Listening to a collection of composers sharing inside jokes and private messages in music that reeked of contempt for the public made me get down on my knees and give thanks that an era so damaging to music was over. It didn’t drive an intelligent public away from classical music by itself, but it helped.

by Jerry Bowles
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical, Critics

“What’s the problem?”

Gavin BorchertGavin Borchert, composer and the Seattle Weekly‘s classical music critic, has an interesting take in this week’s rag, on current calls for jazzing-up or otherwise “slumming” the concert experience. A couple cogent paragraphs:

A couple of things puzzle me. First, the classical concert experience is, in all essentials, identical to that of dance, theater, literary events, or for that matter—barring the munching of popcorn and cheering the fireball deaths of villains—movies. Go to the performance space, buy a ticket, sit down in rows, watch and listen, try not to disturb your fellow audience members. Yet it’s only in conjunction with concerts that you hear complaints about what a crushing burden this all is. Second, why is sitting quietly considered such an unendurable ordeal? Millions of people do it every night in front of their televisions.

[….]

So what have we learned? Well, maybe people behave the way they do at concerts not because it’s an artificial standard imposed by ironclad tradition but because the music sounds better that way. Maybe listeners feel classical music most deeply when they pay quiet attention to it. Maybe sometimes not clapping is OK, and we don’t need to rush in and obliterate every silence. Maybe true innovations in concert presentation—new ways of getting music and music lovers together—will be concerned not with questions of formal vs. informal, loose vs. uptight, but with what setting best allows music to work its magic.

by Steve Layton
Contemporary Classical

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Don’t know what’s happening on PBS in your town tonight, but here in the center of the universe, Channel 13 is bringing us Kurt Weill’s brilliant (and somewhat depressing for the Christmas season) “The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.”  Great cast includes Audra McDonald, Patti LuPone, John Doyle, and Anthony Dean Griffey.  Check your local listings.

by Jerry Bowles
Composers, Contemporary Classical, Deaths

“Ah What a chill, Ah what a wind…”

Paul Dirmeikis attended Stockhausen’s funeral on December 13, and has a report.

The family is already starting to slowly walk away. Some of us stay around the tomb, scattered between the neighbour tombs. Near the larger alley going down to the chapel, all members of Stockhausen’s family gathered together in a circle, holding their hands. Simon reads something. It’s around 4 pm. That’s it. One of the greatest composers of these last 50 years has just been buried. It’s a freezing afternoon in a distant German village. Fermata.

by Steve Layton
Classical Music, Contemporary Classical

Bad Vibes From Benaroya

The New York Times leads off its Sunday Arts Section tomorrow with one of those double-bylined investigative reports that spell trouble for somebody. It appears that all is not well with the Seattle Symphony. The article is not up online yet but here’s the lede:

Any dictionary will tell you that a symphony orchestra trades in harmony. Anyone who has spent much time around orchestras will tell you that the harmony often stops at the music’s edge; that tensions abound in a body of 100 or so high-strung thoroughbreds as a music director seeks to impose a single vision.

And to judge from alarmist reports coming from here over a dozen years or so, the Seattle Symphony Orchestra has carried disharmony to new heights, lurching from crisis to crisis…

That’s the good part. I’ll put up a link as soon as I find it.

UPDATE:  See comments for link.

by Jerry Bowles