Symphony of Dissonance

A blast at orchestra musicians raises rancor in the ranks

Today's U.S. orchestra musicians are better trained, more accomplished, better paid and more widely applauded than ever before. Hence, as they sit onstage performing the masterworks of music history, it follows that they must be serenely happy. Right? Wrong, says Composer-Conductor Gunther Schuller. Symphonic players are "embittered, disgruntled, bored" and "have come to hate music," Schuller maintains. Traveling around the country as a guest conductor, he finds not joy but "apathy and cynicism" abounding in orchestral ranks; despite their high technical competence, the musicians have no "spiritual identification" with the scores they play.

What has gone wrong? Schuller, former president of the New England Conservatory of Music, parcels out the blame in three directions. The musicians' union, or at least the union mentality of the players, has fostered a grudging, clock-watching approach to rehearsing and performing, he says; jet-age music directors have left their orchestras in an artistic lurch while pursuing second and third careers elsewhere; managements and boards of trustees have run the show with the box office uppermost in their minds. "Out of sheer ignorance or arrogance, many boards have time and again made lamentable decisions," argues Schuller. "We should have obligatory training courses for prospective trustees."

Schuller, who has previously made these charges from the lecture platform, summed them up in an article in the June issue of High Fidelity magazine. No sooner did the issue appear than the Conductors' Guild of the American Symphony Orchestra League quickly scheduled a panel discussion at the league's annual conference, then getting under way in New York City. But instead of clashing with Schuller's views, the four panelists frequently harmonized as closely as a barbershop quartet. "Several of his observations about labor-management relations are right on target," said Donald Engle, former manager of the Philadelphia Orchestra. Added Irma Lazarus, a member of the Cincinnati Symphony board: "I was moved by Schuller's article. There's an enormous amount of truth in it."

If other orchestral sources around the country are moved, it is mostly to outrage. "Schuller is a fantastic composer and musician," says Irving Bush, trumpeter with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, "but he is an absolutely atrocious conductor. When someone can't conduct at all, of course the musicians are going to be bored." Frank Miller, principal cellist of the Chicago Symphony, defends unionization by recalling the way things were before the union had clout: "Every year, 30 or 40 people were fired for such things as inattentiveness to a particular note." Some musicians concede, however, that the modern union contract, which often guarantees 52 weeks of employment, creates a debilitating schedule. Says a New York Philharmonic string player: "If you're into the 40th week of the season and some conductor arrives fresh as a daisy, you can't expect 110 overworked people to have the same gleam in the eye that he does."

Joseph Silverstein, concertmaster of the Boston Symphony, has appeared as a guest conductor with 15 orchestras this season. His experiences have convinced him that "the standard and intensity of performance in American orchestras have never been at a higher level." Silverstein is philosophical about the absenteeism of music directors. While many conductors might prefer to work closely with a single orchestra, he says, they bow to "pressure to maintain international visibility for record sales."

Boston Symphony Trustee Vernon Alden, a former associate dean of the Harvard Business School, agrees with Schuller that boards of trustees must be knowledgeable; but Alden is thinking of such areas as finance, administration and marketing, as much as he is of Beethoven and Mahler. As for giving trustees musical training, the doyenne of arts patronage in Los Angeles, Mrs. Dorothy ("Buff') Chandler, thinks it "would only make things worse." Says Mrs. Chandler, whose connection with the Los Angeles Philharmonic goes back to 1943: "Businessmen would not have time for musical training, and the board would eventually be filled with second-rate musicians who never made it. Then the meddling would just be terrible."

The debate so far has borne out at least one of Schuller's observations. Musicians, management and trustees, he wrote need to develop "a respectful, serious, substantive dialogue rather than yell at each other from entrenched positions." To which the objects of Schuller's somewhat overstated indictment might reply: Mediator, mediate thyself.

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