Bicentennial Bonanza

As the year 1876 approached, the Women's Centennial Committee, led by Philadelphia Socialite Mrs. Elizabeth Gillespie, raised substantial sums for a proper cultural salute. The committee boldly offered Richard Wagner $5,000 for an occasion piece. Wagner accepted, perhaps because he was going broke mounting the first Ring cycle. He also hoped "soon to be assured of the American visitors" at Bayreuth. The American festivities opened in Philadelphia, May 10, 1876, with the composer's Centennial March. The work, a turgid blend of bathos and pomposity, turned out to be one of Wagner's very worst.

The sound of the U.S. Bicentennial should be brighter, and it will certainly be native. Only a handful of European composers have been commissioned to write anniversary pieces. Most notable among them: Poland's Krzystof Penderecki, who is doing an opera based on Milton's Paradise Lost for Chicago's Lyric Opera. Right now there are several hundred American composers, some working up to 20 hours a day on music commissioned during and for the Bicentennial. The big names, like Aaron Copland, have been forced to turn down requests by the dozen. With millions available in grants and more money to come, the Bicentennial is the biggest bonanza for the American composer since Hollywood discovered the musical.

Baseball Cantata. U.S. concertgoers may not yet realize what they could be in for. Tired of the usual fare of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Bartok? How about a 90-minute multimedia work based on the Krazy Kat cartoon strip? Roger Reynolds, 40, is creating such a work at the University of California at San Diego. A baseball cantata based on Casey at the Bat? Pulitizer Prizewinner William Schuman, 64, is warming that one up. There has been comparatively little pressure on composers to wave the flag or concentrate on Americana, though Leonard Bernstein is setting to music poems by eight favorite writers, including Whitman and Poe. Dominick Argento and Vivian Fine are writing chamber operas respectively on Chekhov's monologue On the Harmfulness of Tobacco and Famous Women (Gertrude Stein, Isadora Duncan, Virginia Woolf). For a touch of Shakespeare, Alan Hovhaness and John Harbison are at work on operas based on Pericles and The Winter's Tale, though Harbison picked his play four years ago. Out in Seattle, the Eastern-inspired Hovhaness is also writing An Ode to the Cascade Mountains.

Many of these names are unfamiliar to the average concertgoer or record listener. Who, for instance, has heard of Stephen Douglas Burton, 32, of Kensington, Md.? Enough people, it turns out, to earn him no less than five commissions worth a total of $30,000 in fees. Burton, a protege of Germany's Hans Werner Henze and a skilled hand in a variety of contemporary stylings, has composed a symphony (Ariel), which the National Symphony will perform next season. He is also writing a trio of one-act operas, one of which will be based on Herman Melville's story Benito Cereno. In Wilmington, Ohio, Robert J. Haskins is writing an operatic version of The Bell-Tower, also by Melville--not a writer known for his racy plots.

Round Robin. Despite all this admirable planning, some projects will not be heard during the celebration. Composers are notoriously late delivering scores --usually because they are too busy supporting themselves by means other than composing. Also, many grants do not include performance guarantees.

One of the most important outcomes of the Bicentennial project, however, is the way different orchestras have joined to share the commissioning and guarantee wide audiences for the results. Example: John Cage, Elliott Carter, Leslie Bassett, Jacob Druckman, David Del Tredici and Morton Subotnick are writing works for, respectively, the Boston Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra, Chicago Symphony and Los Angeles Philharmonic. Each orchestra is committed to play not just the work it has commissioned but all other five works. A similar round robin will involve seven orchestras in Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Washington (the National).

The biggest investor in new Bicentennial music so far is the National Endowment for the Arts (a projected $2 million over a three-year period). The New York State Council on the Arts ($200,000, matched by $200,000 in private funds) has a performance guarantee for each of its 68 commissions. On a smaller scale, the Washington Performing Arts Society has $40,000 for works to be commissioned and performed by twelve young pianists.

In New York, the Rockefeller Foundation is not ordering up any new music, but it has launched something as commendable: a four-year, $4 million project to issue a 100-LP collection of American music from early times to the present. The archives of jazz, folk, pop and the classics will constitute about one-half of the set. When no recordings can be found for works of such composers as John Paine (1839-1906), Arthur Farwell (1872-1952), or possibly some of today's composers, new ones will be made. Says Howard Klein, director of the foundation's arts program: "It's 'Happy Birthday, America.' "

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