Modern Composer’s Work Is Unplayed in San Diego

On December 11, composer Elliott Carter turned 80. While he has never aspired to be America’s most popular composer, Carter is the most distinguished senior composer still active at his craft in this country. Twice he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for composition, and the other awards he has garnered over a fruitful career form a lengthy list.

In Europe’s major music centers and across the country, Carter’s 80th birthday has been marked with performances of his music. This fall, the San Francisco Symphony programmed two major Carter works, including the U.S. premiere of his Oboe Concerto; the San Franciscans took this concerto to Carnegie Hall earlier this month. The Houston Symphony presented Carter’s Piano Concerto in November, and the New York Philharmonic played his “Variations for Orchestra” on the composer’s birthday weekend. This month in Los Angeles, two concerts of chamber music honored the distinguished composer.

In San Diego, Carter and his 80th birthday went unnoticed. The local universities dropped the ball, no chamber music by Carter was organized by San Diego musicians, and the San Diego Symphony fired no salute. (An inquiry to the symphony’s librarian Nancy Fisch revealed that the local orchestra has never played a Carter composition.) To describe the situation in publicists’ hyperbole: America’s finest city turned a cold shoulder to America’s finest composer.

This matter might be excused as mere collective oversight were it not part of a distressing symptom of the local music scene, an increasing alienation from the mainstream of contemporary American music. On the surface, the activity of the many resident composers at UC San Diego and that university’s Center for Music Experiment would seem to contradict this assertion. In truth, UCSD’s leadership in that area has lessened considerably in recent years, and the remainder of the musical community has abandoned its responsibilities to new music, assuming that UCSD was somehow “covering that beat.”

Contrary to some cynics, San Diego has not always been a musical backwater. Twice the San Diego Opera has premiered American operas, Alva Henderson’s “Medea” in 1972 and Gian Carlo Menotti’s “La Loca” in 1979. And when Bernard Rands--another Pulitzer prize-winner--was the San Diego Symphony’s composer in residence, local audiences were privileged to hear several Rands premieres, including his 1984 “Suite: Le Tambourin.”

San Diego’s major musical institutions have lost the excitement and expectation of new music from the contemporary American mainstream. We have become dependant on visiting groups to keep us abreast. When the St. Louis Symphony played Civic Theatre in September, it brought Joan Tower’s “Silver Ladders,” a large work written and recently revised for that orchestra. It may have been good enough for Tennessee Williams, but in this arena, why should San Diego have to depend on the kindness of strangers?

Tunes for the Homeless. As members of San Diego’s homeless community queue up to get into Golden Hall for four days of holiday shelter on Dec. 23, 50 members of the San Diego Symphony will play for them--and for anyone else who is downtown at 3:30 p.m. that day--a free holiday concert. Dressed in their usual pops white coats, the symphony musicians, under the baton of bassist Mathew Garbutt, will perform in front of the concourse fountain in front of the hall.

“It’s our way of giving back something to the people of San Diego,” said symphony trumpeter Mark Bedell, who championed the idea suggested by Father Joe Carroll, director of the St. Vincent de Paul Center. “We’re hoping that Father Carroll will conduct one of the numbers,” said Bedell, who described the program as light, upbeat, and Christmasy.

“Music is a fundamental thing--you don’t have to be rich to need it or enjoy it,” said Bedell.

With the blessings of their respective unions, both the musicians and the stagehands are donating their time for the concert and its rehearsal. If it should rain, Bedell noted, the orchestra will set up just inside the Golden Hall lobby and open the doors to let the sound out.

Harpsichord Blues. Jennifer Paul, the former San Diego harpsichordist who played Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto with the San Diego Symphony over the weekend, regaled some of her local fans with tales of her adventures in bringing harpsichord music to the remote outposts of musical civilization. She has played recitals in unlikely places such as Maryville, Mo., and Grand Rapids, Minn. After much research, she located a pair of cities in China that could provide her with a harpsichord on which to perform. The city fathers of Tianjin, one of the cities with an available harpsichord, offered her a recital, but without pay and without providing her lodging. They could place a vehicle at her disposal, however.

“Oh great,” quipped Paul. “I can see it now--playing in China and sleeping in my car.”