Nobody loves Asian composers, says NY Times
NewsIn the third part of its polemical series on the undervaluing of Asian musicians in America, the paper comes up with a factoid that ‘works by Asian composers make up only about 2 percent of American orchestral performances planned for the coming season.’
Dear, oh dear.
And how many by African composers are included? Or Middle Eastern? Or Polynesian?
Symphony orchestras are rooted in the western polyphonic tradition. They may visit other cultures but that’s not their prime mission.
Judging their output by numbers and an assumption of prejudice, as the NY Times has been doing is at once perverse, distorted and politically motivated. It has nothing to do with the art form on which orchestras are founded.
Read all about it here.
More crude sh*t stirring. That’s all it is.
take this ny times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/23/arts/music/23empe.html
i went and if a white guy wrote this it would be racist.
One rule for them….
Pontificating activists. No wonder the people have zero trust in the modern media. They are losing out to podcasting anyway.
You found a fascistic podcast? That where you get your anti-Bolshevik basis? Note to SSF: the Bolsheviks are OVER.
I think that Bright Sheng and Unsuk Chin are the two most outstanding artists here, the first in terms of classical music, the second in terms of sonic art. Sheng is indeed, as he says, 100% West and 100% East and that means a fruitful transgression of boundaries and limitations, proving that cultures are transparant for the talented.
Putting such people in racial or cultural boxes is ridiculous and damaging.
Sheng’s opera ‘Dream of the Red Chamber’ is a brilliant amalgam of different cultures, forming a personal and expressive synthesis, a kind of ‘modern Puccini’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAWPQQY8ibE
Tan Dun?
I think he is quite superficial, lacking musical substance. Comparing him with Sheng brings this to light quite drastically.
I recently discovered 2 living, fantastic Chinese composers. Totally different from each other.
The first is Tan Dun, although I imagine the more conservative types on here won’t be into his music. The other one is Qigang Chen. I heard a premiere of a new piece by him 2 years ago, incredible; definitely a genius, and will be part of the greats once people get to know his work.
I did not know about Chen, here he is, a genuine romantic, with music close to film music:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Rj3tPJsYSc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNj94i4RYhk
This is a more serious work but it consists mainly of well-made decoration:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeEkZpjTQLE
Welcome to a happy club. I have been listening to Tan Dun’s music for over 25 years.
The NYT just moves from one “oppressed” group to another. One wonders who is next on their victims of oppression list. Maybe Islamic Transgender violinists in Zionist occupied territories. At this rate they will run out of victims by the end of the year. But one should never underestimate the talent embedded in that glorious newspaper. The covered up Stalin’s mass murder of the kulaks in the 1930s and minimized the geocide of those white privilege Jews in during WWII. So they have a lot to make up for!
Covered up? Their Moscow correspondent was on Stalin’s payroll! They colluded.
Islamic Transgender violinists in Zionist occupied territories are a suppressed minority indeed. There is one, and she was forced by her husband to avoid the augmented fourth in her scale practicing which reminded him of maquam.
Pravda lives!!
Anybody going to mention Biden’s serious cognitive decline? Didn’t think so. Have to cover up for the dear leader after it’s new name-sake.
Why are you so obsessed with Bolsheviks and their apparatus? Are you a refugee from Stalinist Russia?
Your frame of reference is as outdated as your ideas.
Norman’s point seems to be since we exclude works by other groups, underrepresentation of Asian composers is part of an acceptable norm in the Classical Music industry. It seems Polynesian, Middle-Eastern, African, and Asian composers couldn’t possibly contribute to “the western polyphonic tradition.” You’re kind of proving the NY Times’ premise, sir.
No “anon”, it is actually you who are “kind of” misinterpreting the point of the post. The point as I understand it is that counting percentages of racial representation in any art form is senseless and divisive – therefore it is indeed harmful to the art form and to humanity in general.
Norman’s point is more accurately that at this moment in history, non-Western composers or composers of genealoigcally non-Western backgrounds continue to make up a *relatively* small proportion of the total number of composers writing in the Western tradition, so we shouldn’t be shocked if the proportion of pieces performed written by composers of these backgrounds reflects that statistic if pieces are chosen for performance more or less meritocratically. He’s not making a claim about how things ought to be, how the landscape will change as time goes on and more people of differing backgrounds get involved, or what kind of music is ‘better’, whatever that would mean.
I do agree with Mr. Lebrecht on this one. Yes, western symphony orchestras are based on western classical music’s foundation. They are criticised-rightly-for not scheduling and performing music by many composers of many racial or ethnic heritage, particularly those who wrote for the western symphony orchestra. This is another aspect of the sad tendency of staid, ‘safe’, dull programming which seems to be inflicted upon too many audiences and orchestra subscribers.
Mea culpa, mea culpa, me a mexican cowboy.
“Asian composers make up only about 2 percent of American orchestral performances”
Congratulations, they are already OVER-represented!
Asian-American classical composers make up far LESS than 2 % of American classical composers.
Proof: The NYT article only managed to highlight 5 Asian-American composers. And these 5 would not appear on anyone’s list of Top Ten American composers alive today. They are far less well-known (and IMHO, far less talented) than anyone’s list of the Top Ten American composers.
Now, let’s get to the substance:
Why do certain composers get pigeon-holed as “ethnic” composers, while others don’t?
Those composers who (generally) co-opt/steal/appropriate/plagiarize/borrow folk melodies from (albeit their own native) cultures, and then repackage them in Western techniques of 12 tone or minimalism or serialism or whatever-the-latest-academic-trend-is, and tries to pass them off as “original” are not much appreciated.
We, the audience, are not stupid. We know it when we hear it.
Sometimes it works, like for Bartok, sometimes it fails miserably, like in Strauss’s Auf Italianisch in which he unwittingly plagiarized “Funiculi Funicula” a contemporary jingle believing naively that it was a Neapolitan folk tune.
Nothing to see here. Move on.
The Strauss work under question would be “Aus Italien.” And another way of characterizing his use of “Funiculì, funiculà” would be that he wittingly utilized what he (Strauss) thought was a folk song but found out the hard way that it was a popular song protected by copyright. And glad to know that Bartók succeeded where Strauss failed, but I fail to understand the overall point made by such a comparison.
Wow, what a storm in a teacup. Norman, have you actually read the NY Times article at all? It includes interviews with four composers of Asian descent, who reflect on their careers in an interesting manner. Nothing is bitter, whining or controversial, although your clickbait headline and over-reactive post suggest something else. And when you write, “Symphony orchestras are rooted in the Western polyphonic tradition. They may visit other cultures but that’s not their prime mission”, it tells more about your prejudices than about anything else. After all, all four interviewed composers are cosmopolitan composers living abroad and, among other things, trained in the “Western” polyphonic tradition!
Also not quite sure why you single out Ms Chin as she is not the author of the article, and just one of the four interviewed composers. But since you do so, let’s quote a fragment of what she says: “I believe in multiple identities and think that without curiosity, any musical style or culture atrophies and risks becoming a museum: Art has always thrived when there has been cross-fertilization. At the same time, one should be wary of the danger of exoticism I think that a contemporary composer needs to study different cultures, traditions and genres, but make use of those influences in a selective, historically conscious and self-critical manner.” All four interviews are similarly level-headed, and no one says anything controversial.
Norman is the guy who skips directly to the comments section, no need to read, he already knows what he thinks on the topic.
And what has “Pravda” had to say about quotas in some American elite universities on the admission of Asian students?
Sound of crickets.
The New York Times still employs Sarah Jeong — first on its editorial board, now as an opinion columnist — who called white people “goblins” and also wrote, “Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.”
Sarah Jeong has made countless racist statements, including: “Dumb*ss f**king white people marking up the internet with their opinions like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.”
The New York Times promotes racism. Stop reading it and subscribing to it.
Can the NYT explain why orchestras weren’t performing symphonic works by Asian composers in the 1880s?
That might explain something.
The NYT might also want to peruse the recent programming of major orchestras in China, Japan, and Korea. Indeed, there’s a lot of old Beethoven.
Comment from 2021, reddit medley:
“Someone wrote it,” they said. “If it’s been written, it must be programmed and played, not because for artistic merit or popular demand, No, by rules of inclusion. Beethoven is over. Mozart is for pre-2020 weddings. Bach? Look at him. No one has anything in common with that guy. 22 kids? Could he control himself?
Brahms had too much time to aim for his perfection—definition of having privilege. Two decades writing one symphony? Was he getting help from Clara and taking all the credit? Shostakovich was not really living in any fear. That is probably made up to boost his backstory. The Soviet Union KGB stories are just Hollywood boogeyman characters”.
Takemitsu is one of my favorite composers. Not because of who he was, but what he wrote. Same for Bright Sheng.
We mustn’t forget the influence Debussy had on Takemitsu early on. Yet consider Debussy’s inspirations from Eastern lands he had never visited; how beautifully the world spins.
Give everyone a chance.
Indeed, Debussy got his ‘eastern inspirations’ from the world fairs which showed visiting Javanese and Birmese ensembles and reading about it and looking at Japanese prints which got very popular by the end of the 19th century. Also he never visited Spain, never closely studied Spanish folk music, but his imagination conjured it up faithfully in Iberia.
A whole lotta Asian orchestras are not programming Asian composers. Damn racists. Why are they prioritizing white composers?
A whole lotta Asian soloists are not playing Asian composers either. Why Lang Lang and Yo Yo devote albums to Bach and not Bright Sheng is beyond me.
Boycott racist Asians.
You are missing the point. This here is NOT about discrimination or racism. The “problem” with many admirable Asian “Western-style” orchestras is their conservatism. The reasons are complex but the fact is that they scarcely perform new or unknown music regardless of whether the composer is from Japan, Europe, America, or wherever. And there was almost no symphonic “Western” art music written by Asian composers pre-WW II, and most of them were or are modernists. As for Lang Lang and Yo-Yo Ma (who is actually US American), both of them have performed new pieces by Bright Sheng and other contemporary composers from Asia and beyond.
Perhaps those orchestras want to sell tickets, allowing the members of the orchestras to be paid. Just a thought.
Many deliver the product they think customers will buy. They may or may not be correct about the buying public’s tastes, of course!
The NYT has a series called “5 Minutes to Appreciate ——-“, the works selected in that series represent less than 2% of Asian composers.
For shame.
I can say with confidence that the NYT classical music staff is less than 2% (ooooohh, let me take a wild stab, 0%???) Asians.
If you have only 5 minutes to appreciate it, nothing will come out of that exercise. Speeddating art does not work, art – real art – is always slow, like real love is.
Norman, what you are doing is othering international classical musicians of Asian descent. You write: “Symphony orchestras are rooted in the western polyphonic tradition. They may visit other cultures but that’s not their prime mission.” That is wrong in so many ways: 1) there is lots of “Western” classical symphonic music that is not primarily polyphonic, whereas there are many non-European traditional musical cultures (from the Caucasus, sub-Saharan Africa, and many other parts of the world) that are highly polyphonic. 2) The Asian composers quoted in the NY Times article have lived and worked in the US or Europe for several decades. All of them are trained in the tradition of “Western” classical art music first and foremost. Symphony orchestras performing their music are not “visiting other cultures”, as you seem to insinuate. Instead, they are programming composers who have their individual qualities, which are different from each other, and they may not even have been influenced by the traditional music of their native countries. Whether it is little that their music makes up to 2 per cent of American orchestral performances can indeed very much be debated. I think it is not little since the ratio for contemporary music in symphonic programming is anyway tiny. But apart from that, there is nothing flawed and certainly nothing “perverse, distorted” in this NY Times article.
There is a significant component of new music often overlooked: it has to be commissioned. By whom? Well, that opens many avenues. I cannot speak for others, but once the process of commissioning composers begins, it becomes a trend. One need not stick solely with composers of their native country. It’s a big world. One 9f my new projects for 2022-23-24 will be a work for piano, orchestra and chorus by Farhad Poupel, an Iranian based composer. It may we’ll be the desire and determination of individual artists, ensembles and orchestra to cultivate new music by many composers from different countries. Noticeably, once it starts, the trend expands. It is only a matter of time. Music evolves over time, often through generations.
When will these stupid identity politics be over so we can just get on with life as PEOPLE?
Really disappointed in this article, which Mr. Lebrecht seems content to comment on without having actually read or thought about, as well as the vast majority of this comment section.
Norman, I don’t get why you have to twist the premise of the NYT article. Nowhere did it say that Asian composers aren’t loved or liked. It just asked 5 composers of Asian descent to share their own personal experiences in the field including ups and downs, nothing more.
All of the interviewees preached the universality of music over cultural and language barriers- isn’t that something that you longed for in your previous complaints the NYT series?
I did mean: “Spot on!” to what Violin Fairy writes. (I used the ‘Reply to’ function but for some reason it is presented as an isolated comment rather than a reply).
Spot on!