By Garrett Schumann, July 2014 Participant
D.M.A.'15, University of Michigan
It is hard to overstate the importance of orchestral music to composers, both historically and at present. For many, the orchestra represents the ultimate arena of musical creation, as well as a guardian for most of Western Music’s masterworks. Even today, amid doubtful clamoring that Contemporary and Classical Music may not have anything meaningful left to express, the orchestra retains its prize status among composers who both cherish and covet the opportunity to write for the ensemble.
The magnetic hold the orchestra possesses over living composers is particularly evident in the sphere of student composers, like me. To us, access is the biggest issue surrounding orchestras, such that orchestral readings or performances are often the most valuable bargaining chips when it comes to choosing a school at which to study. My school, the University of Michigan, used this exact carrot to woo me; and, there are other schools that offer similar experiences to their composition students. But, if you do not attend one of these institutions, your opportunities to work with orchestras are extremely limited.
Now, the market for alternative, non-school-affiliated, orchestral readings has grown tremendously in the last few years as more and more orchestras - such as the Indianapolis, Milwaukee and New Jersey Symphonies - are running competitions and calls-for-scores targeting student works. However, this new abundance is a little illusory: many require a recording of submitted works in order to receive consideration and they are extremely competitive.
Even in this arena, students who can work with their school’s orchestra retain an advantage because they are more likely to have extant recordings of their orchestral music and have more experience with preparing scores and parts for orchestras, which is often a decisive factor in the scenarios described above. The PARMA PrimaVista program does a lot to help even this playing field: no longer must one attend a school that makes their orchestra available to composition students in order to get a quality performance of one’s orchestral music.
To be fair, as I awoke early in the morning of my PrimaVista reading, I was skeptical that the experience would even take place. A lot of technology is involved, and I have been around long enough to know even PowerPoint can be hard to trust when it is go-time, not to mention an ISDN line connecting you to a concert hall halfway across the world in Europe. As the hour unfolded, the technology, especially that ISDN line, was problematic, but not enough to negate the meaning and import of the whole event.
First of all, I was amazed that, in one hour, the orchestra was able to get my piece, "Kharybdis", up to virtually the same level as Michigan’s University Symphony Orchestra, which premiered an earlier version of "Kharybdis" in 2012. The University Symphony had two weeks to work on my piece, but also had to juggle the rehearsal of seven other student orchestral works in that time. The orchestra used by PrimaVista, on the other hand, is a group that has been playing together for a very long time, and, like a good basketball team, was able to work out kinks with an ease and professionalism that blew me away.
I was also impressed at how my physical absence seemed not to affect the quality of the reading. Honestly, I worried about this the most leading up to the PrimaVista session because I have always worked with orchestras in person. However, PARMA has conceived a great system where, in between run-throughs, the orchestra’s concertmaster pops online to give feedback and take the composer’s comments. Thanks to this interpersonal connection, it was very easy to communicate with the conductor, and the reading ran incredibly smoothly, with no apparent hiccups related to my being an ocean away.
Before my session started, PARMA’s CEO Bob Lord explained the concept of the PrimaVista service to me as a sort of first-blush, possibly rough-around-the-edges, reading session built on efficiency. Beyond the timeframe, my experience betrayed these qualities in full: the orchestra played my piece well and with pride. I was overwhelmed by the respect with which the orchestra’s conductor and players responded to and performed my piece, which they had never seen before and will likely never look at again. I know from my own experience, and that of my colleagues and mentors, that such considerate interactions between orchestras and composers are not the norm.
It is my understanding that, since my PrimaVista reading, PARMA has addressed the technological issues I experienced. If this is the case, and I have no reason to think it is not, I cannot recommend this service enough to any composer who has orchestral music they cannot get performed. True, it is not cheap, but one PrimaVista reading does not cost as much as a Masters degree where you may or may not have access to an orchestral performance of analogous quality.
In a paradigmatic sense, I find the transformative potential of the PrimaVista service very intriguing. For example, I would not be surprised if composition departments at schools without orchestras, or at schools where an orchestra is not made available to them, start to use PARMA’s PrimaVista program to supplement what they already offer their students. Moreover, I can even imagine established composers using PrimaVista readings to workshop ideas. After all, rehearsal time is a tightly regulated and limited resource in the world of professional orchestras. Perhaps, in the PrimaVista Program, PARMA has given composers an opportunity to experiment with and perfect their orchestral works before they hand the score to the commissioning conductor.
