The Problem with Premiere-Hunting
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of “premieres,” and why they are often over-valued by performers and ensembles. Sure, they sound fancy in an artist bio (e.g. “So-and-so has premiered works on eight continents…”), and they can contribute to the perceived legacy of a performer. We must support the creation of new works; I am an active performer of new music myself, and enjoy premiering works and supporting my composer colleagues. But the reality is that many (most?) premieres occur in the presence of a small number of people, mostly colleagues, followed by a long period of time (forever?) during which the work is not performed. What’s more important for a piece of music is actually what happens after the premiere. The culture of “premiere-hunting” among performers leads us down a road that, paradoxically, can be stifling for new music and composers themselves.
In light of my own experiences in new music, I present here several thoughts about premieres and new music in the form of four pieces of advice for performers:
1. Only ask a piece to be written for you if you have plans to perform it.
Performers often want NEW pieces and they want them by a deadline, but rarely do they guarantee to composers that they will play the piece. Some performers have no shame in asking every composer they know for a piece (after all, one of them might turn out to be BIG someday), but then end up letting the works collect dust on their shelf for months or years. And when that performer’s koto/bass viol/sousaphone trio never programs it, who will? Composers are spending large quantities of time to turn out several pieces a year for free for performers, and then end up feeling grateful to get more than one performance out of the work. Honestly, it’s insulting.
But it’s not like this situation is anything new. Benny Goodman famously paid Milhaud only $750 for a clarinet concerto in 1941 (after talking him down from his asking price of $1000), demanded that he have sole performance rights for three years, and that it be rushed to completion by an upcoming deadline. And what happened in the end? He never played it. It had “too many notes.” You have to wonder if Goodman might have received a better piece had Milhaud not been overworked and underpaid!
If you ask a composer for a piece, it’s only fair to have plans for premiering the work and allow enough preparation time for a solid performance. Try to program it on several performances, not just one. Even better: pay them, if you can afford it. Even a token of a couple hundred dollars communicates that you value not just being the first one to perform a work, but the work itself, and the artistry that went into it.
2. It’s not the premiere that’s valuable — it’s the collaboration.
I’ve seen performers hold a call for scores for a specific instrumental combination, and demand that the works have never been performed before. This seems really egotistical to me. You’re expecting a serious composer to take many hours of their life to write a new piece for free, specifically for your group, without actually being able to contact or work with you during its creation, and with no guarantee that it will even be chosen for performance?
What actually happens is that you will get a lot of submissions from student and amateur composers who are willing to do it “for fun” or “for the experience,” or on the off chance they might win something and it will help out their career. A few of these pieces might be good if you’re lucky. You might even have the good fortune that a really great composer has a piece lying around that fits the requirements, and it happens to have been unperformed for some reason. Realistically though, your choices may end up being fairly limited, forcing you to settle for an okay piece when there are plenty of amazing, already-written works for your ensemble out there.
If you really want a premiere so bad, find a composer you like and commission them. These days, composers are so hard up that sometimes you can call it a “commission” even if you don’t pay them! It makes it sound like money changed hands though, so you and the composer both sound prestigious. It’s a win-win.
By commissioning a composer, you have the opportunity to collaborate, and collaboration is really the most exciting part about a premiere anyway. By working directly with a composer, you have the opportunity to influence the actual music. In collaborations, I’ve done all of the following:
- helped composers to determine the most idiomatic ways to express their ideas for the clarinet, to make them more accessible to others in the future
- assisted in finding the best way to notate extended techniques
- improvised sounds or melodies that made their way into the resulting piece
- corrected typos or mistakes in draft versions of the score
It’s great to have a passion for new music, but focusing on the premiere while ignoring the collaboration is kind of like planning your own wedding without taking the time to get to know your fiancé. A collaboration can result in a work that’s not only an expression of your personality and specific talents as a performer, but that’s been thoroughly vetted and is ready to be performed by the next player or ensemble.
3. Respect the honor of being the “second performer.”
Speaking of “the next player or ensemble” after a premiere, let’s talk about what I like to call being the “second performer.”
My quintet, the Madera Wind Quintet, held a call for scores last year. We debated restricting it to works that had not previously been performed, but ended up leaving the call open. It’s good we did, because our favorite five works out of the 130-plus submissions were all pieces that had already been performed. In most cases, the works had been performed only once or by one group.
It’s no mystery why the works we chose had all been performed before. First, they were written for actual people, rather than by a composer sitting alone at a computer desk following an idea and emerging with a finished product thinking, “okay, who can I get to play this?” To give a couple examples from our call, Philip Wharton worked with the Borealis Wind Quintet on his Quintet, and Peter Nickol’s Ultramarine was written for the London Myriad Ensemble, who contacted us themselves to let us know how excited they were that we were recording it.
It can indeed be so thrilling as a composer or premiering performer to discover that a piece “has legs.” I couldn’t be more excited about my quintet’s upcoming CD Five at Play, because it may well give “legs” to some great pieces of music. We started with six excellent but largely unknown works for wind quintet (five from the call and one commission) and gave them several performances and recorded them, in the hopes that these pieces will get picked up by other groups and become part of a 21st-century wind quintet repertoire. Several other quintets have already shown interest in our project, and the CD isn’t even out yet. If we had limited our call to only premieres, the quality and impact of our project would have been much more limited.
To me, it’s not the first performance that’s important, it’s how big of an impact a piece has on how many people. Which brings me to my next point.
4. Focus on the music, not yourself.
If we’re all honest with ourselves, we know that there’s tons of already-written music out there, even new music — heck, even 21st-century music! — that’s amazing. That deserves to be played. That deserves to be better known, and taught to our students. If you have the choice between premiering a work that might be second-rate, or programming a piece that wasn’t written for you but may well be one of the better works from its decade, consider not just your legacy but the legacy of the music itself in making that decision.
Are you recycling someone else’s leftovers by being the “second performer”? Far from it. You are taking a leadership role in the formation of a canon. Not a singular canon, necessarily, but a collection of new works that could be considered representative, groundbreaking, or musically superlative in a certain style or genre. That, and also, you are making a composer very happy — both honorable endeavors in which you should take much pride.
If performers fall into the trap of constant premiere-hunting, we decline a role in helping to shape a body of work that may continue to be performed generations from now. If we don’t help to define the “best” music of our time, who will? Organizations with the money to sponsor composers-in-residence, perhaps. University professors who have to develop a curriculum for music history courses and new music ensembles. Composers themselves, by accepting each other’s works to conferences. If performers constantly shirk this responsibility in pursuit of the premiere-as-ego-boost, I believe we risk further fragmentation and irrelevance of new music–after all, we have the power to be its greatest advocates.
Premiering new works is a noble endeavor, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. Finding a programming balance between composer collaborations and second (or third, or fourth…) performances of recently-written pieces can do much to encourage vitality and cohesion in the new music community.
My bottom line is this:
If you’re into new music, great, go support a composer. Just don’t always make them write you something new.
Comments
This is a whole new perspective for me! I have never looked at it like this and a music major, this will be a great way to educate my future students in their attitude towards not only playing music, but towards the composers as well! Also, with your cd, please email me at the order form because I would love to hear your ensemble!!
Rachel – this is awesome. You rock.
GREAT article! I hope this gets out to many, many people in the classical music world. As a composer, I’ve felt this way for a long time, but often felt powerless to voice it. Thanks for doing it for us!
Certain performers are willing to do my stuff as
repertoire.
It’s difficult to overestimate the value of that.
As a composer premieres are nice, but often we spend a LOT of time writing a piece — much more than the performers do learning it. To have it only performed once is frustrating and not effective use of time.
Love this article!
HI, I’m a composer in my Doctorate at Rice. Thank you for writing this, this is amazingly wonderful to read and I enjoy that you have created this “advice column” for new performers.
Thanks so much!!
Great post, Rachel! You are spot-on with everything you say here. As a composer, I’d just like to add one more observation that supports your points — Composers love premieres as much as performers do, it’s true. But there is nothing like getting multiple performances of a piece to boost not only a composer’s credibility, but his/her self-esteem as well. It tells the composer, “Yes, you’re music is good enough that it deserves to be performed more than once.” While that may seem like a small, nearly inconsequential thing, it is the best kind of encouragement and validation a composer can receive. And a happy composer is one who is more likely to be in a healthy enough head space to continue to create great new music.
Excellent article, very persuasively written! I’ll add that even when a piece has been premiered, there are still many regional, country and continent premieres. A U.S.-based performer, for example, can seek out pieces from other countries/regions and get to do the U.S. premiere or the North American premiere.
Terrific post! As a composer, I generally don’t write works for people who ask for them casually; as you point out, it’s rather insulting, and I compose so slowly that I can’t afford to waste time on a piece that might not be performed. And I couldn’t agree more about the importance of giving works repeat performances (an added advantage of that situation is that, with the piece already written, you don’t have to worry about the composer – ahem – missing the completion deadline and giving you the work too close to the performance).
One tiny quibble, however: if no money changes hands, you haven’t “commissioned” a piece, you’ve “requested” it (this is what I put in the score and programme notes in those cases).
As a composer working on my doctorate, I say “word!” It is so much harder to get a second performance than a first, and it is sometimes frustrating to put in so much effort to write a piece that will only be heard once, all too often in a slightly rushed and under-rehearsed performance. Sometimes it’s the subsequent performances that really give a piece a chance to develop a life of its own. Multiple performances by the same or different artists also help the music become part of a conversation rather than an isolated, atomic event. I agree with what several other composers have said here.
Great article! Thank you! Another interesting point I’ve heard a performer make is that the premiere often creates a particular performance practice and that subsequent performers think that THAT must be the only correct way of playing the piece. First of all, some premieres don’t go all that well and may not actually present the piece in its best light. Secondly, that might not be the only interpretation, even if the piece was played well. So, as a second performer you get to challenge the ‘tradition’ automatically started by the person who premiered the piece. There is still a lot of room for YOU in that piece even if it wasn’t written for you, and the composer might be delighted with your version.
I LOVE this article; thank you so much for writing this (from the performer’s perspective) and I plan on posting this article so my other composer and performer friends can read this. However, I have a slight disagreement on how the word “commission” is used: I truly think a composer should be paid for their commission (via money or barter system or something) instead of saying they were commissioned when they weren’t paid anything. These days, I’ve noticed many composers slapping on the word “commission” on most things they write for musicians when they weren’t paid anything. It hurts the composer in a couple of ways: it contributes to resume inflation AND it devalues the composer’s worth (hey…the last time I commissioned Composer X, I paid her $10, but it looks like she will work for free!). Have composers done this to themselves? Yes they have. All I’m asking is, at least throw in a pizza if you’re commissioning a composer. 🙂
If you really want a premiere so bad, find a composer you like and commission them. These days, composers are so hard up that sometimes you can call it a “commission” even if you don’t pay them! It makes it sound like money changed hands though, so you and the composer both sound prestigious. It’s a win-win.
Hi Rachel, thank you very much for your post! I’m a composer finishing a doctorate at the University of Michigan. Your post represents, for me, nothing less than a paradigm shift in how I think about the dissemination of my own works, making me want to try an approach that favours second performances instead of premieres. While premieres ultimately will always be important as a kind of “getting out of the gates” moment for a given work, your observations about the subsequent life of a work lead me to believe that I can and should advocate for this on behalf of my compositions. This would go a long way to resolving the consistent frustration I feel with regard to the many pieces I have that have only been played once. I also really appreciate your calling out as arrogant the calls for “pieces never before played” since I have long felt it to be a complete waste of time to write a piece specifically for a competition without any guarantee of performance. I applaud your ensemble’s open call for scores and I hope others will follow suit. One small quibble I have, is your point that commissions need not be remunerated to be called commissions. While this is true, I believe—as I’m sure you can understand—that it is important for a composer to be remunerated for their work. All too often in any given concert the composer is the person who has put the most time in on the project but is, ironically, the least remunerated. We don’t all need to be paid at CLC rates, but I think that composers should be paid something, be it in cash or in kind. For instance, in the past performers have shared a part of their payment for playing in a given festival with composers whom they commissioned for that particular concert. This way, the composer’s work is valued beyond it’s aesthetics and this helps contribute to the creator’s material well-being, surely a desirable outcome for anyone who works so hard. This point aside, however, I greatly appreciate what you have written and I hope it resonates far and wide. For my part, I will certainly be reposting on Facebook and recommending to friends. Many thanks!
Excellent article! I wish all performers were as thoughtful about the process if creating & performing music. Your comments regarding second performances of pieces are especially welcome! Thank you for sharing these thoughts!
Thank you Rachel for this great article that supports the music moving forward into the future and composers who are in a quite precarious position these days.
As a composer it is difficult enough to get commissions to write new music but if there were more interest among the orchestras and groups to play already performed “new” music that would go a long way towards fostering a true legacy. The future of classical music is certainly in jeopardy and helping define what is valuable and worth playing again and again would go a long way to preserving the rich heritage of new classical music.
Absolutely right, premieres are overrrated. As a composer, I attach much more value to the very rare instances when a work of mine went on tour and was thus allowed to gradually ripen, open up like a flower, deepening the relationship between it and the players, reaching more audiences… so thank you for this article and spread the word!
Very important perspectives on the new music scene. Ass Matt says above, it’s a composers thing also. Our world is about creating new stuff = getting more things premiered.
But the world doesn’t really need new music, it needs better performances. Where the musicians have had enough time to live with the music, to get to know it and to love it. And this is rarely the case at premieres, I have never heard such a premiere – not for my own work, neither for my collegues. I don’t blame the musicians, it is just how deadlines work.
Thanks for your comments, all!
@ Anna, great point about second performances as a way to contribute a new interpretation. Also, I know many composers are left with a less-than-satisfactory recording after a premiere, but have to use it for their website and applications for festivals because it’s the only one they’ve got.
@ Tawnie & others – so many people have so many different definitions of “commissioning” these days that I don’t even know what it means anymore. Maybe I’ll ask the SoundNotion guys when I’m a guest on their new music talk show tomorrow!
This is an excellent article. Congratulations, Rachel!
Good article and I totally agree. Part of commisioning a work is also the promotion after your performances, to get it performed by other players, to get the composer (if he is unknown) better known by other players.
Nowadays youtube and soundcloud are also great helps in this, you can record the music and promote.
Also the more performances, the more money goes to your composer for these performances.
Great article! One other thing to think about is arrangements. If you love a piece by a composer, but it’s for a different instrumentation, why not ask if they’d be willing to arrange it for you? You get to “premiere” that version of the work, and you also get to bring a piece you love before an audience that probably would not otherwise hear it. I have had some very rewarding experiences arranging my pieces for other ensembles — it’s fun to get to revisit and re-conceptualize an older piece, and it’s a great way to be able to give a group something “new” (to them) that you might not otherwise have time or the resources to write.
Fantastic article! Thank you for writing this.
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