Recent Pasts 20/21 Words Series - John Corigliano, Page 9

CORIGLIANO:

That's PR. That's all it is. If you hear an orchestra enough, you'll want to go hear them. Then when they come to New York, you'll all go hear it. And if you don't hear them at all, you won't.

Some orchestras have withdrawn from the union. The whole Seattle Symphony removed themselves so they can make records. And they have made lots of records. You see, there are ways of doing it. Records should be profit-sharing, if the record makes money. Nobody should be able to argue that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER FOUR:

Why are there so many recordings from Montreal?

CORIGLIANO:

Well, I don't know what the Montréal situation is, so...

AUDIENCE MEMBER FIVE:

It's terrible, they don't have a recording contract at the moment.

CORIGLIANO:

There are some Montréal groups that record that are not necessarily union bound. I know one of them - I Solisti de Montréal. They did my Second Symphony. But I've seen them work, and they work without a stop. They are just unbelievable. They take breaks after three hours of working, and they're so concentrated during that time. They don't look at clocks. They don't do anything but work. I know because I was at their recording session.

But the major symphony - no, I don't think so.

It's going to change. It's starting to change. Peter Gelb says that he's going to change something at the Met. He said, "We've got to have radio broadcasts. We've got to be able to do television again. Otherwise, we can't exist. So that's one of his major goals. And if he can break it there, that'll break it in many other places, because when a big place like that does it, it makes a difference.

There are big attempts being made. We're at a very interesting point. Everything is poised for change, right now. And we don't have any answers yet.

AUDIENCE MEMBER THREE:

There's another side to which I think things are also going a bit backwards in time. This summer I had the experience for the first time of directing an opera, and trying to do it very locally. That is, almost like a traveling circus. They were in a small town, and you had things that you could fold up and you could take it somewhere else, so I think there's also a move towards...

CORIGLIANO:

Yes, the good part - like these young people with their own websites - is in the smaller scale, and there's lots of activity. It's the very big monoliths that are having the problems. But the smaller ones are finding all sorts of ingenious ways to get out of it. Yes, there's a lot of optimism in this, but it's just going in a different direction.

AUDIENCE MEMBER SIX:

When you were speaking about the lack of a leading new musical personality, I was wondering if Wynton Marsalis might fit that role?

CORIGLIANO:

He fits it in jazz.

AUDIENCE MEMBER SIX:

Only jazz? He seems to spread himself out.

CORIGLIANO:

Well, he composes pieces, but I don't think that Wynton is interested in becoming the Leonard Bernstein. I think that he is interested in become the Leonard Bernstein of jazz. He's written a string quartet, and I know he's written other pieces, but I don't think that that's his major interest. I think he's a spokesperson for jazz, and I think that's great.

And jazz, by the way, is very similar to concert music, in terms of the problems it has. It's not a pop music field where a lot of money is earned. It's a rather difficult field, and jazz musicians need a lot of help. So he's affording them a lot of help, I think, in bringing them into the limelight.

AUDIENCE MEMBER SEVEN:

You started out by talking about the ossification of the repertoire and the spurning of the technology of amplification. But everything you've said since then certainly leads one to believe that the problems are economic and cultural. What you describe about the orchestral recording industry is certainly taking place across the board - in publishing, too. Nowadays, 98% of books published never sell more than 5,000 copies. So I feel very pessimistic hearing the future that you're describing. You know, everybody has his own website - which may be the new avenue - but where's the audience?

You can take the local radio station as an example of publicity. If you take away Ravel, Prokofiev, Shostakovich, they don't play any music of the last hundred years.

CORIGLIANO:

Okay, there are several things. One is that there are some low-budget recording companies - Naxos , specifically (I know this because I'm dealing with them). They sell 25,000 - even 35,000 - recordings of even contemporary pieces because of the way they sell. They sell it better. You walk into a store and you see it there.

AUDIENCE MEMBER SEVEN:

But what about royalties?

CORIGLIANO:

I don't care.

AUDIENCE MEMBER SEVEN:

How are the artists supposed to survive?

CORIGLIANO:

Think of that as public relations. It's a wonderful way to do things. I don't think of records as a money-making thing. I think of records as getting the music out so people can hear it. That's the first thing.

The second thing about these websites is how a lot of people - a lot of people visit them. I was in Beijing last year, and I was giving a lecture. So here I am in Beijing giving a lecture at the conservatory. I'd never been to China before. And a young woman raises her hand and she says, "I'm doing my doctoral thesis on your Second Symphony."

And I said, "Wow" - knowing 1) that it had not yet been published, nor 2) had it been recorded. But she had a recording and a score of it, and was doing her doctoral thesis on it. And I thought, "The internet is amazing."

How did she find out about it in the first place? And why? How did she get the music?...

I think we're seeing the breakdown of the way information is found. Even something like the New York Times is being replaced by internet news and blogs and so on, and it is really changing the way young people are thinking about getting information.

They don't think about it the way we used to, when we had to go to the paper or record, that we had to go to Columbia or Sony. They're just going online and finding their information.

AUDIENCE MEMBER SEVEN:

But how are young composers to support themselves if the symphony orchestras are disappearing and all you have is a website?

CORIGLIANO:

The same way I did when I was a young composer - find some kind of part-time job. [laughter] I mean I had to do the same thing. You think I was paid for composing? No!

If you want to make money any way as a composer, the symphony orchestra was never a place to go. You should write choral music and band music. That's the fact.

I know young composers who write choral music and band music. One of my students wrote a piece and he got 60 performances of it last year - all paying - from the bands. And he's living off of it comfortably. Because that's what he wants to do. And he's doing it with his own publishing company, his own website, and going to band conventions on his own and hawking his music, and now he's doing very well and making a living. I know several of them - three or four of my former students who are doing that.

But they have to have initiative. The thing is - you've got to find a way now. It's not, you know, it was never an easy path to be a composer. But you still have to be inventive and say: "Where can I go? How do I reach people?" And the fact is the tools you have in your home - that little computer and keyboard with the capability to go any place instantly - the tools are so superior to anything that we ever had in the history of mankind.

You really can be inventive and get your music out there, if you choose to do that. So, yes, I do think that replacement actually might even give us a better future. When I was a kid, the big powers only released the most famous composers. They didn't do anything else until Goddard Lieberson - president of Columbia Records from 1956-71 and 1973-75 - came along and did the American music series. They didn't do anything before that.

Now, you can go into a record store and buy some 22-year old composer's string quartet who you've never heard of. That could not have happened 20 years ago.

So the little is getting bigger. And the big is getting littler.

MAGNUSSEN:

On that positive note, thank you John, and thank you Michael, for joining me this afternoon. And thank you all for coming out.