Giving New Composers a Hearing

Groups like Speculum Musicae perform contemporary works

When Haydn wanted to hear his latest work, he needed only to stroll over to the Esterhaazy court orchestra, put the score on the stands and wait a while. Before long, the musicians would give the piece a vigorous tryout. What is more, as a servant of an 18th century prince, Haydn was expected to provide new compositions with regularity. Modern composers no longer have to wear livery, or write on demand, but neither are they assured of having their music performed. Soloists are often indifferent or even hostile; orchestras and opera companies rely mostly on time-tested classics to please their patrons.

In response, the peculiarly 20th century phenomenon of the new-music ensemble has sprung up. Such groups consist of virtuoso players who come together for one purpose: to give contemporary music a hearing. One of the best-known is Speculum Musicae (mirror of music), celebrating its tenth anniversary this year with a series of three concerts at Manhattan's Symphony Space.

"No other group has done so much of my music so well," says Composer Elliott Carter. "Often contemporary music is shown to its worst advantage, like an art exhibit that is displayed without lighting. The works tend to be done indifferently and not very persuasively."

On last week's program a commissioned work, Ausencias, by Venezuelan Alvaro Cordero-Saldivia, was forgettable. It is a busy, dense-textured work that seeks to combine elements of Afro-American music with academic compositional procedures--what the composer calls "a gradual unfolding of two musics that have a totally contrasting profile." Yet the whole proved less than the sum of its parts.

Far more expressive was John Harbison's Samuel Chapter (1978), for soprano and small ensemble. Composer Harbison presents an episode from the Old Testament's First Book of Samuel in a deliberately archaic way, lending his work an austere, ceremonial quality that suits the text well.

An arrangement for piano trio of Schoenberg's Verklaerte Nacht, made in 1932 by Eduard Steuermann, emphasized in its piano writing Schoenberg's debt to Brahms. The piece is mainly a curiosity, for the piano can hardly compensate in either weight of tone or sustaining power for the missing quartet of strings. Jon Deak's Sinister Tremors (1977), for clarinet, percussion and tape, is more theatrical than Speculum's customary fare; at one point, a table containing pie tins, boards, broken glass and other objects is knocked over, simulating an avalanche.

This frankly humorous melodrama about a terminally unlucky Klondike gold rusher has one foot in the music hall, the other in the concert hall. It was booed almost as lustily as it was applauded.

The ensemble began as the dream of a few close friends, most with Juilliard backgrounds, who had been freelancing around the new-music scene in New York City. "We would fantasize about the ideal group," Pianist Ursula Oppens told TIME'S Nancy Newman. "It would have infinite rehearsal time to prepare wonderful pieces and play them wonderfully." A pair of concerts at Manhattan's Public Theater early in 1971 and a six-week residency at Dartmouth that summer convinced them that there was a market for their dream. With the acquisition of a manager, Speculum was on its way.

If there is a consistent criticism, it is that the group's repertoire is too narrow, overly devoted to a group of academic composers--Carter, 72, Charles Wuorinen, 42, Donald Martino, 49--based in the Northeast. "It was the natural thing for us to do," insists Clarinetist Virgil Blackwell. "We live in the East, we come into contact with these composers." Speculum has begun exploring other styles--it has commissioned a work from Minimalist Steve Reich for next season--but still avoids music that requires extensive improvisation. It generally steers clear of "theater" pieces, which call on the musicians to act as well as play.

Speculum's predilection for one school has, however, had a beneficial effect. Composers complain that the second performance of a new work is harder to get than the first; pieces are often commissioned, played once and then forgotten. Although Speculum presents many premieres, it has also tried to give good music a chance to catch on. Certain pieces --Carter's A Mirror on Which to Dwell, Wuorinen's Speculum Speculi and Martino's Pulitzer-prizewinning Notturno--are played fairly frequently.

The influence of Speculum and ensembles like it--the Contemporary Chamber Ensemble and Da Capo Chamber Players--has been obvious. A decade ago, many professors were dismissing new music as a waste of time. Unorthodox techniques like multiphonics (the simultaneous production of more than one note on such normally single-toned instruments as the flute) or reaching into the piano to pluck its strings were considered irrelevant to Bach, Mozart and Brahms. Yet some of the teachers' most talented students were busy reading books like Bruno Bartolozzi's seminal New Sounds for Woodwind, published in 1967.

In 1964 Wuorinen, a kind of spiritual godfather to Speculum, observed: "New music is in fact not so difficult to perform as people think. The problems experienced by performers in dealing with it are the result of their having been trained in a tradition of no relevance to its performance requirements."

Today, contemporary music ensembles have proliferated in cities and on college campuses. A generation of young players has grown up for whom modern music and its demands hold few terrors. Not that they are getting rich performing it. Annual pay for Speculum members averages $2,500, despite the fact that they have spent up to 100 hours preparing a new piece. Rehearsals sometimes begin at 11 p.m., after the nine players in the group finish other freelance jobs. "The demands," Oppens admits, "are absolutely grueling." Carter observes that "it is hard to keep such an organization going. Each year is a struggle." Struggle or not, Speculum's sights are still set high. Says Blackwell: "We want to play 20th century music better than any other group."

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