Japan’s top orchestra has no works next season by Asian composers
NewsAmid the New York Times’s current hysteria over alleged neglect of Asian musicians in the United States, one of our readers has checked out the coming season of the NHK Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo.
Not a single work by a composer from continental Asia.
None by American composers, either.
Now that’s discrimination.
Norman, you are missing the point. The issue here is NOT discrimination. The “problem” with NHK and many other admirable Japanese orchestras and music institutions is their conservatism. They scarcely program new or unknown music regardless of whether the composer is from Japan, Europe, America, or wherever. There was almost no symphonic “Western” art music written by Japanese composers pre-WW II, and most of them were or are modernists. Nor did there exist notable American symphonic music before Charles Ives, the iconoclast, who was unknown even in his home country before WW II.
Nonsense. There were many notable American composers and works before Ives and contemporary with him, including his teacher Horatio Parker whose Hora Novissima is a masterpiece.
No, no nonsense; read closely. I am not saying there were no American composers prior to Charles Ives, but there was no symphonic music that has entered the standard repertoire. (Hora Novissima, which may or may not be a masterpiece, is for voices and chamber orchestra, and I don’t think it is very frequently performed). There was Charles Griffes, a gifted composer, he composed Kublai Khan and The White Peacock in the 1910s, but that is hardly standard repertoire either. Anyway, Norman’s post is factually incorrect as the NHK does perform Barber and Gershwin this season!
… and yet some people commenting on SD will deny that classical music is still deeply rooted in Europe.
What would be of the orchestral repertoire without Adams, Bernstein, Gershwin, Tan Dun, John Williams and Copland?!!!
…almost exactly the same?
I think they urgently need to be told by some Americans what to perform in order for them to get over their internalized oppression.
…but only by an American who is white, male and middle class.
Not seeing any works by any living composers of any nationality. Very strange indeed
Not strange at all, Japanese classical music lovers are among the most discerning and discriminating (a word which used to be a compliment before it was debased) in the world. As noted here before, they rescued Legge and Newman’s Hugo Wolf Society by their subscriptions. Likewise the other depression era Society projects.
Alex Ross had a great article back in 2008 discussing the boom in Chinese music conservatory and new concert halls, and how at the same time, it was impossible to find performances of Chinese music — everything played was western.
The fact that a Japanese orchestra isn’t performing anything by a Japanese composer has more to do with how we universally judge orchestras on how well they play Beethoven, Brahms and Mahler. The same thing plays out in the United States. Even though most American classical music was written in the Western European tradition, playing Ives, Barber, Copland, etc. is still treated as a novelty that does nothing to further the reputation and brand of the orchestra.
For God’s sake, let orchestras programme what they like, and what they can draw audiences with. I trust NHK to know what they are doing.
This racial counting is getting a bit old, as is sex (“gender”) make-up of orchestras.
There are countless opportunities in Japan to hear Japanese, and probably other Asian, music. Here’s a thought: the audiences at NHK Symphony Orchestra are probably fans — not necessarily to the exclusion of all else — of western classical music. Note to nosy reader: leave them alone to enjoy it.
I, for one, would love to hear some serious classical piece by an Asian composer. Or African. Or Australian. Or some neglected and never played 19th century composer.
In fact, *anything* to mix up the stale, predictable, boring schedule that brings the same program every season, with slight variations.
Yes, yes, yes, the famous composers are famous for a reason, and their music is fantastic. That’s why we have heard them many times.
I have just returned from a long weekend at the Rossini Festival in Bad Wildbad? Barbiere? Over their dead body! They gave us Auber’s “Le Philtre” (first modern production), Garcia’s “I tre gobbi” (their own staging of 2019, which was the first modern production) and Rossini’s “Scala di Seta” and “Elisabetta”. Now, *that* is a program!
That’s nothing! Bayreuth does not perform any works by a woman composer, nor Asian composer, nor black composer. And none by any American composer. And not a single composer from South America or Eastern Europe…did I miss any group of composers?
Yes, the two composers who were active in Andorra: Bartolomeo Pandora and Achille Gutiero. Nobody performs their work outside the country.
Oh, I missed the contemporary composers. 🙂
It’s cultural appropriation! How dare they play Beethoven and Brahms!
That orchestra plays Beethoven and Brahms pretty well.
Barber and Gershwin are there. But, yes, very posh, risk averse programs.
Orchestras should program what audiences want—it’s always been this way. The idea that some composers have “had their time” or “reached their due date” is absolute nonsense. Shall art museums toss Monet and Picasso and Ma Yuan for someone living precisely because of who they are and not necessarily transcendent work?
There are hundreds of composers from even Beethoven’s tile whose music was lost to history because it just wasn’t all that remarkable. ArtisticDarwinism perhaps.
Meanwhile we are having debates not about the art forms but who participated in them. This is not an issue in Japan or China or Korea. It’s largely an English-speakers’ issue.
When programming caters to the niche categories and not the core, just watch the organization fail.
“But audiences are tired of Beethoven 9. They want more living composers.” No, Beethoven 9 has never gone out of style. What goes out of style? Pop music. Trends come and go—looks mean a lot in pop music (indeed, maybe more than the “music”).
There’s an idea today that because someone got a degree in composition or because they are writing music that they have a right to be programmed and performed, but that is not how it works. Write music people want to hear and you’ll find your way to the top. Just keep in mind, every year, every decade, every generation, there’s an exponential growth of competition and trusted and true works of art have reached the paramount top of timelessness.
If the music is so good, it will find a way. If composers need a platform, Mozart and numerous others created ensembles. We are living in a time when someone with no talent more than a few dance moves and nifty camera filter can become famous on TikTok.
“A mountain of variety as earth recedes.”
“Write music people want to hear and you’ll find your way to the top.”
If this were true, all orchestras would play film music and popsicals. Which means that soon the orchestras were no longer necessary since such things can be heard everywhere else and much cheaper or for free.
And then, there is new music being written which audiences love, players love, which is of a level of – say – Shostakovich or SIbelius, but which is hindered by the management layer, because they have been educated with the idea that contemporary music has to sound like this or that, mostly something of half a century ago. The biggest wall of destructive prejudice is not located with the players or audiences, but with the organizers.
For instance, Bacri’s violin concertos are brilliant and gripping new works, but are not spreading through music life, simply because programmers think it is too ‘outlandish’ and not following the aesthetics of ‘progress’ of the sixties:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=egMk0N5niUc
Perhaps it should be noted that in 1978, Chou Wen-chung established the Center for US-China Arts Exchange at Columbia University. Columbia became a focal point for training and establishing Chinese composers in the USA. Chen Yi, Zhou Long, Bright Sheng, and Tan Dun were among the Chinese composers that Chou Wen-chung taught and mentored at Columbia. For these and many other students, he was a model for how to integrate Eastern and Western traditions.
The articles in the NYT about Asian composers have been worthwhile. As Pinchas Zukerman’s recent comments illustrated, it is important that we examine our perceptions of Asian musicians in classical music.
I can see why Zukerman needs to rethink his attitudes, but why on earth should the rest of us?
The articles in the NYT about Asian musicians have been worthwhile. As Pinchas Zukerman’s recent comments illustrated, it is important that we examine our perceptions of Asian musicians in classical music.
Are they – or any other orchestra / ensemble – under an obligation to ensure that each season presents a broad repertoire? I would argue that festivals, such as the Proms, have this luxury. Orchestral seasons can be more artistically cohesive and marketable with a narrower focus, otherwise they risk appearing scattergun at best, directionless at worst. Inclusion at the expense of everything else fixes nothing yet guarantees tokenism.
Perhaps it is selected for a discriminating audience.
The program seems to be well balanced for an audience with good taste.
…..”Now that’s discrimination” ?!?…… NO! Just sober and tasteful programming for their audiences!!
Why should a Japanese orchestra play Chinese music? To please historically ignorant Western liberals?
It also seems no one has of yet pointed out that the 19th C American/English tuxedo has been chosen over the Haorihakama for Western concert attire in Japan.
“Casual wear is not the same as casual wear; one is always in style, the other goes out, in style”.
I would advocate wearing the oldfashioned tails and white tie for performers of classical music, to make sure that audiences understand that this oldfashioned music is still alive and kicking.
Some years ago I took a total flyer and bought a Philips LP of music by a composer I knew nothing about: Toshiro Mayuzumi, his Nirvana and Mandala Symphonies, played by … yes the NHK Symphony, and it is a very well played recording.
These symphonies are, shall we say, tough nuts to crack for a listener, and are what I call among the “oh dear we need an extra rehearsal for this” pieces. So as Kairos notes elsewhere in these comments, the issue with programming such modernist fare is less whether it is written by Asians, but rather just the fact that it is modernist, more expensive to rehearse (and pay for performance rights), and is at best tolerated by most audiences, and loved by very few. Result: neglect.
The Nirvana Symphony also calls for a style of singing which (uh-oh, I do not want to step in that steaming pile of dog doo that Zukerman did recently) I think would be difficult for a non-Japanese symphony chorus to master, so I would not expect to see many performances of Mayuzumi’s symphony on this side of the pond. But again, his “problem” as a composer from the standpoint of performances is that of being a modernist.
One of the many problems of modernism in music is that it was based on the idea that neither players nor audiences counted as part of a cultural whole. It was never about expression or communication, but of incrowd development. Because modernism was the product of progressive thinking, it looked down on anyone who did not like it as being ‘reactionary’.
I suspect they’ve tried Asian (and American) music and found that the audiences are not interested.