I recently got into a discussion with an instrumentalist who was playing in the “Rite of Spring” production I was conducting in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia.
This musician also plays in a small chamber orchestra which specializes in music of the 1700s and contemporary music for small ensembles. The conversation started as they often do when working on a masterpiece like the mammoth “Rite …” by Stravinsky, with general comments about how amazing the piece is and so forth. Then came the remark which was surprising for me: “It’s great to be playing such a huge piece of music!!”
I call this surprising because often a member of a string section might rather be playing Bach than a piece which Disney depicted with dinosaurs in the 1939 film, “Fantasia.”
I immediately said, “tell me more about that.”
“To start with, the intensity of so many people playing together is incredible!” (FYI this piece has about 90-100 musicians generally speaking.) “We have our small chamber group feeling, which is great, but it’s nothing like what happens when so many people are concentrating and collectively working together at that level. Also, the range of emotions in the big romantic 19th-century and 20th century works is off the charts. As much as I love Mozart and Bach, they just didn’t speak in those terms!”
I was struck by this, because of course as a conductor of usually large orchestras (on average between 65-80 musicians in the approximately 100 performances I do each year around the world) I feel this way, but hearing it from someone else made me decide to analyze it a bit. Is it just the size that matters? Is bigger really better? That felt like a fairly superficial equation. Looking backward in time two things happened in synchronicity. Artistic styles and historical eras of Western society progressed from what we call the Baroque to the Classical to the Romantic eras. These eras can be easily approximated as the first half of the 1700s for Baroque, the second half of the 1700s for Classical which then bleeds into the start of the 1800s, while most of the 1800s is the Romantic era.
What also happened during this time is that performances of instrumental music went from being a pastime of the royalty and nobility with private performances in their (large) homes, or music for use in the church, to public performances for everyone!
So the classical Mozart and Haydn were not content to rely on their ruling class or church employers for income, and began organizing bigger and bigger public concerts to earn both money and independence. The 19th century saw the development of municipal orchestras as a source of pride, playing concerts for anyone who wished to come, with music celebrating the human spirit in all its multi-layered glory, the same way the written and philosophical arts of the Romantic era embraced the individual and individuality. Music needed ever larger groups of musicians to express these ever larger emotions, hopes, and dreams of the populace. No longer relegated to the elegant palace dining rooms or church altars that Bach and Mozart frequented and the exclusivity and decorum such places demanded, audiences wanted to shout, clap, and stamp their feet to show their joy and excitement over the emotional experience of a concert, and wanted music which elicited clapping, cheering, and stamping.
So fascinatingly enough, there is a way in which the rise of “self expression” went hand in hand with the growth of an ever larger orchestra needed to express that in the art and entertainment of the day. I’m sure someone must have written a doctoral thesis on this, and if not, then if I ever go back to school, I will!
So why do I write about this particular topic for Traverse City? At the Traverse Symphony Orchestra, we are right now involved in plans for upcoming concerts of course, our “Swinging Holiday Pops” with the Jazz Orchestra and singers on Dec. 16-17, and one of my favorite programs of the season, “French Fantasy,” on Jan. 21 with the amazing cellist, Julian Schwarz as guest soloist. At the same time, we are planning for a major fundraiser on Jan. 27 in which I’ll be presenting a solo piano recital to benefit the orchestra.
Why so much work? Why so much effort on the part of so many? Why so many projects? Why not just take an easier path, and play small concerts with small ensembles? Well, anyone who asks that question has clearly not been part of a room when a piece by Tchaikovsky comes screaming to a conclusion, or Brahms brings you even closer to heaven with his orchestral hymns, or Beethoven (the ultimate product and emblem of the rise of the individual) makes all of us feel like we somehow count in the grand scheme of things.
It takes a lot of resources to play those big orchestra concerts with their big emotion-laden pieces, and guest soloists, etc., and all of our work goes to support that central piece of our mission statement. As much as we love and play music from those earlier, smaller eras, I fully believe the human spirit demands we put in the work to have those encounters that only the fully developed symphony orchestra can give.
When Elnora Milliken started the TSO in the ‘50s, she knew this. She could have been happy with getting a few friends together to play chamber music … she knew that wasn’t enough for her Traverse City. I do too. If you would like to support the work of the Traverse Symphony Orchestra, visit: TraverseSymphony.org/support