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"The Academy's Pulitzer" - by Gary Giddins


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From http://www.villagevoice.com

by Gary Giddins

The Academy's Pulitzer

Why Jazz and Pop Don't Make the Cut

April 30 - May 6, 2003

giddins.jpg

John Adams takes a stand. (photo: Hiroyuki Ito)

On April 9, the Times ran a surprising story by Anne Midgette, "Dissonant Thoughts on the Music Pulitzers," in which John Adams, who had received the award for On the Transmigration of Souls, expressed astonishment at winning, and ambivalence bordering on contempt. The prize, he said, has "lost much of the prestige it still carries in other fields," because "most of the country's greatest musical minds" are ignored, "often in favor of academy composers." He singled out the Pulitzer's neglect of mavericks, composer-performers, and "especially" the "great jazz composers." His point was not surprising; that a recipient made it was. He had said aloud what countless American composers grumble privately every year, most of them shy of going public and courting accusations of sour grapes.

In 1967, when Edward Albee won a makeup Pulitzer for A Delicate Balance, he said that friends urged him to refuse it; in 1963, the drama jury had chosen to present no award rather than acknowledge Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf. In effect, Albee argued that his dissent would have more meaning as a winner. As he went on to win more Pulitzers, if he contested them at all, he kept it quiet. Adams took a nervy stand, opening himself to allegations of biting the hand that massaged him. Not many winners have publicly questioned the process since Sinclair Lewis spurned the prize in 1926 (as well he should, Arrowsmith having beaten The Great Gatsby, though that wasn't his reason). And Adams loosened other lips. John Corigliano, the 2001 winner, told Midgette, "The Pulitzer was originally intended to be for a work that is going to last, to mean something to the world. It changed into another kind of award completely: by composers for composers"—mired, he added, in a pool of rotating jurors.

The Pulitzer Prizes, launched with a fourth of Joseph Pulitzer's $2 million bequest to create the Columbia University School of Journalism, began presenting laurels in journalism and literature in 1917. The music prize was instituted in 1943, the year of Ellington's Black, Brown and Beige; the prize, however, went to William Schuman's A Free Song, a respectable choice by an important composer who was already a magnet for prizes. In the jazz world, the Pulitzer is shrugged off as just another establishment club (from the Grammys to the Kennedy Center Honors) that routinely ignores composers working in the idiom that most consistently and articulately proclaims "America" to the rest of the world. Yet many civilians are amazed to learn that in its 60 years, the Pulitzer has never acknowledged a single figure in popular music and only once gave the nod to a jazz work—Wynton Marsalis's Blood on the Fields, in 1997. Gunther Schuller and Mel Powell have also won, but for pieces entirely unconnected to their jazz work.

The most celebrated pas de deux between the Pulitzers and jazz occurred in 1965, when the jury unanimously voted to override the standard rule of honoring a single work premiered the previous year, in order to hail Duke Ellington for his lifetime achievement. The jury, to its dismay, was overruled by the advisory board, which chose to present no award that year. A Pulitzer spokesman later argued that the single-work rule could not be broken; but if they had wanted to make things right at the time, they could have given it to Ellington the next year for the premiere of his masterpiece, Far East Suite—or for several subsequent suites debuted before his death in 1974.

Yet had the advisory board acknowledged any of those works, it would have done little more than apply a Band-Aid to a triple bypass. The real problem went to the heart of Pulitzer politics: It was the rule itself. The jury that desired to honor Ellington understood something about indigenous American music—it is different; it plays a different game. The board would look foolish giving it to one new song by Bob Dylan or one typical concert by Sonny Rollins. The congregate achievement is almost always what counts. Lester Young was a great composer not because of his riff tunes, but because he created a new and inspired canvas in American music; as instantly recognizable as an Aaron Copland ballet, Young's canvas was as amorphous as Leaves of Grass, his every improvisation another leaf, some greener than others, all part of one visionary achievement. It is easy to retrospectively find jazz compositions that ought to have been recognized within the constraints of the Pulitzer rulebook, but to say that A Love Supreme is eligible, and not the composer's lifework, is to force jazz to conform to the very 19th-century Eurocentric model it supplanted. Similarly, Irving Berlin or Woody Guthrie's songbooks are not only more popular than Pulitzer compositions, they also come far closer to answering Corigliano's call for "work that is going to last, to mean something to the world."

The Pulitzer is not averse to Band-Aids. It has a separate category called Special Awards and Citations, which has, in 73 years of occasional prize-giving, acknowledged three pop or jazz figures: Scott Joplin in 1976 (59 years after his death), George Gershwin in 1998 (61 years after his death), and Duke Ellington in 1999 (25 years after his death). The Ellington presentation was made "in recognition of his musical genius, which evoked aesthetically the principles of democracy through the medium of jazz and thus made an indelible contribution to art and culture." In short, it was a lifetime achievement award. And that's the right idea. The trick is to present the award while the recipient is breathing, and in the Music category proper, not in a remedial "duh" division. Ironically, on the one occasion when the board approved a jazz award, the jury played a shell game with its chief edict, recognizing a 1997 "premiere" at Yale University, although the work had been recorded in 1995.

Adams, in listing a few non-winners for the Times, mentioned John Cage, Morton Feldman, Harry Partch, Conlon Nancarrow, Steve Reich, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Thelonious Monk, and Laurie Anderson, as well as the general category of "great jazz composers." He would like to impose a more radical sensibility on a historically conservative institution. (Consider fiction: Laughing Boy beat The Sound and the Fury and A Farewell to Arms; Years of Grace beat As I Lay Dying, The Maltese Falcon, and Flowering Judas; Now in November beat Tender Is the Night and Appointment in Samarra; and the board could find no worthy fiction at all in the years For Whom the Bell Tolls, Native Son, The Hamlet, The Adventures of Augie March, V, Idiots First, Losing Battles, and Gravity's Rainbow were eligible.) But the issue as it regards jazz is no longer about radical or conservative views of culture; the influence, constancy, and genius of American music is denied nowhere—and none of it is represented in the Pulitzer rolls.

Does it matter? Of course it does. Owing to its long history and the press's psychic investment in the journalistic (and primary) wing of its prize-giving, the Pulitzer has a visibility and cachet beyond other cultural awards. The Times doesn't phone recipients of National Book Awards or American Music Center Letters of Distinction for human-interest reports on how they felt when they heard their names called. The Pulitzer, like it or not, is America's big award, a kind of sanctioning. Only rank stubbornness can rationalize prolonging a slight that should have been rectified decades ago.

A couple of weeks after the Pulitzers were handed out, the AMC awarded its Letters of Distinction to George Crumb, the Voice's Kyle Gann (a distinguished composer as well as a critic), Steve Reich, Wayne Shorter, and the late music publisher Ronald Freed. Shorter is the ringer in this group, but not among previous AMC recipients, who include—in addition to most of Adams's mavericks and many who've won Pulitzers—Randy Weston, Max Roach, Modern Jazz Quartet, Dizzy Gillespie (posthumously), Muhal Richard Abrams, Cecil Taylor, and Ornette Coleman. All but Gillespie and most of the MJQ are living, and it's hard to imagine anyone questioning the appropriateness of awarding any of them Pulitzers. There are others deserving of consideration, including Rollins, Dylan, Benny Carter, George Russell, B.B. King, Lee Konitz, Henry Threadgill, Abbey Lincoln, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Andrew Hill, Jim Hall, Chuck Berry, Roy Haynes, Pete Seeger, James Brown, and David Murray.

Should the Pulitzer board decide to rejigger its rule book or expand its grasp, it would have to overcome the embarrassment of an awfully interesting mea culpa, something on the order of "The Pulitzer Prize in Music has decided to accept the reality of American music and will no longer dismiss out of hand all composers who swing or sanction improvisation." But the real difficulty would be administrative. The divides among jazz and pop and the academy remain so vast that in selecting its jurors in any given year, the committee will have virtually decided which area to favor; word would have to be leaked that the barriers have come down, because few non-academics submit nominations. Put a couple of jazz people on the jury and the dice are loaded for jazz. Still, better to switch loaded dice from one year to the next than to use—as is now the case—the same pair every year.

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List of Pulitzer Prize Winners in Music, 1943-2002

1943: William Schuman (b. 1910). Secular Cantata No. 2: A Free Song for full chorus of mixed voices, with accompaniment of orchestra.

1944: Howard Hanson (1896-1981). Symphony no. 4, op. 34.

1945: Aaron Copland (1900-1990). Appalachian Spring.

1946: Leo Sowerby (1895-1968). The Canticle of the Sun.

1947: Charles Ives (1874-1954). Symphony no. 3.

1948: Walter Piston (1894-1976). Symphony no. 3

1949: Virgil Thomson (1896-1989). Louisiana Story. (Score for a documentary film.)

1950: Gian-Carlo Menotti (b. 1911). The Consul. (Opera.)

1951: Douglas Moore (1893-1969). Giants in the Earth. (Opera.)

1952: Gail Kubik (1914-1984). Symphony Concertante.

1953: Not awarded.

1954: Quincy Porter (1897-1966). Concerto Concertante for Two Pianos and Orchestra.

1955: Gian-Carlo Menotti (b. 1911). The Saint of Bleecker Street. (Opera in three acts.)

1956: Ernst Toch (1887-1964). Symphony no. 3.

1957: Norman Dello Joio (b. 1913). Meditations on Ecclesiastes.

1958: Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Vanessa. (Opera.)

1959: John La Montaine (b. 1920). Concerto for Piano and Orchestra, op. 9.

1960: Elliott Carter (b. 1908). Second String Quartet.

1961: Walter Piston (1894-1976). Symphony no. 7.

1962: Robert Ward (b. 1917). The Crucible. (Opera.)

1963: Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Piano Concerto no. 1, op. 38.

1964: Not awarded.

1965: Not awarded.

1966: Leslie Bassett (b. 1923). Variations for Orchestra.

1967: Leon Kirchner (b. 1919). Quartet no. 3 for strings and electronic tape.

1968: George Crumb (b. 1929). Echoes of Time and the River.

1969: Karel Husa (b. 1921). String Quartet no. 3.

1970: Charles Wuorinen (b. 1938). Time's Encomium.

1971: Mario Davidovsky (b. 1934). Synchronisms no. 6.

1972: Jacob Druckman (1928-1996). Windows.

1973: Elliott Carter (b. 1908). String quartet no. 3.

1974: Donald Martino (b. 1931). Notturno.

1975: Dominick Argento (b. 1927). From the Diary of Virginia Woolf.

1976: Ned Rorem (b. 1923). Air Music.

1977: Richard Wernick (b. 1934). Visions of Terror and Wonder.

1978: Michael Colgrass (b. 1932). Deja Vu for Percussion and Orchestra.

1979: Joseph Schwantner (b. 1943). Aftertones of Infinity.

1980: David Del Tredici (b. 1937). In Memory of a Summer Day.

1981: Not awarded.

1982: Roger Sessions (1896-1985). Concerto for Orchestra.

1983: Ellen Zwilich (b. 1939). Three Movements for Orchestra. (Symphony no. 1.)

1984: Bernard Rands (b. 1934). Canti del Sole.

1985: Stephen Albert (1941-1992). Symphony RiverRun.

1986: George Perle (b. 1915). Wind Quintet no. 4, for flute, oboe, clarinet, horn, and bassoon.

1987: John Harbison (b. 1938). The Flight into Egypt.

1988: William Bolcom (b. 1938). 12 New Etudes for Piano.

1989: Roger Reynolds (b. 1934). Whispers Out of Time.

1990: Mel D. Powell (1923-1998). Duplicates: A Concerto.

1991: Shulamit Ran (b. 1947). Symphony.

1992: Wayne Peterson (b. 1927). The Face of the Night.

1993: Christopher Rouse (b. 1949). Trombone Concerto.

1994: Gunther Schuller (b. 1925). Of Reminiscences and Reflections.

1995: Morton Gould (1931-1996). Stringmusic.

1996: George Walker (b. 1922). Lilacs for soprano and orchestra.

1997: Wynton Marsalis (b. 1961). Blood on the Fields. Oratorio.

1998: Aaron Jay Kernis (b. 1960). String Quartet No. 2, Musica Instrumentalis

1999: Melinda Wagner. Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion.

2000: Lewis Spratlan. Life is a Dream, opera in three acts: ACT II, Concert Version.

2001: John Corigliano. Symphony No. 2 for String Orchestra.

2002: Henry Brant. "Ice Field"

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Glad you liked it, perhaps others did as well. By the way, of the works listed above, I think these are the ones that I own recordings of. The best ones (IMHO), are the Ives, Toch(!), Barber, Sessions(!), Rouse, and Schuller works...

1944: Howard Hanson (1896-1981). Symphony no. 4, op. 34.

1945: Aaron Copland (1900-1990). Appalachian Spring.

1947: Charles Ives (1874-1954). Symphony no. 3.

1948: Walter Piston (1894-1976). Symphony no. 3

1956: Ernst Toch (1887-1964). Symphony no. 3.

1961: Walter Piston (1894-1976). Symphony no. 7.

1963: Samuel Barber (1910-1981). Piano Concerto no. 1, op. 38.

1969: Karel Husa (b. 1921). String Quartet no. 3.

1982: Roger Sessions (1896-1985). Concerto for Orchestra.

1983: Ellen Zwilich (b. 1939). Three Movements for Orchestra. (Symphony no. 1.)

1993: Christopher Rouse (b. 1949). Trombone Concerto.

1994: Gunther Schuller (b. 1925). Of Reminiscences and Reflections.

Edited by Rooster_Ties
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I'll hafta look through the list, and get back to you, A.B. - many of these are pretty obscure, and I'm not sure the Pulitzer really goes to the best work or best composer each year. (Duh, that was the point of the story, to some degree.)

I'm 5 minutes late to a rehearsal - I'll post something else here to this thread in the next day or two... Gotta run!!!

Edited by Rooster_Ties
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OK, it's late, so I'm doing this all off the top of my head. But here's a few works specifically by some of the composers mentioned above (but not the works that won the Pulitzer), that I think are quite good, IMHO...

[*]William Schuman (b. 1910) - Most of his symphonies are pretty good - quite a bit of meat on the bone (usually, but not always), but not totally far out either. Not my all-time favorite, but worth having none the less. (Schuman is best known for his orchestration of Charles Ives' "Variations on America", which was originally just for church organ.)

[*]Howard Hanson (1896-1981) - Definitely a relatively conservative neo-romantic, but a pretty good one. I like his piano concerto quite a bit. It's tuneful, and a couple of the movements are kinda fun.

[*]Aaron Copland (1900-1990) - I'll have to look up the details, but much to many people's surprise, Copland tried his hand at Serialism in the late 50's!! There's a disc of chamber works of his from this period, including a piano quintet, and a couple works for string quartet. Not at all what you expect when you hear the name Copland, but somehow - even when he's being Serial, he still sounds a little bit like Copland, strangely enough.

[*]Charles Ives (1874-1954) - What's not to like??!!! Get anything and everything you can by Ives. In particular, his solo-piano works are simply divine, especially his two piano sonatas. There is a newly reconstructed piano concerto by Ives, that was only ever first performed just a couple years ago. It has been recorded, but hasn't been released yet, on Naxos (as part of their amazing American Composers series). When it comes out (this Fall I think), by all means get it. I've heard it performed live, and it's amazing!!!

[*]Walter Piston (1894-1976) - I like most of the Piston I've heard. I don't love all of it, but I do like all of it. I can easily recomend a recent Naxos disc of chamber works, including his quintet for flute plus strings (f, v, v, viola, cello).

[*]Virgil Thomson (1896-1989) - He was originally from Kansas City. Don't have much, but what I've heard reminds me of Copland. A little too 'nice' for my ears, but good if you like that sort of thing.

[*]Gian-Carlo Menotti (b. 1911) - Samual Barber's life-long 'partner', if you know what I mean. I don't have much by Menotti, but he does have a nice violin concerto, if I remember right.

[*]Ernst Toch (1887-1964) - Can't say enough good things about Toch, a composer I only just discovered for the first time a couple years ago. There are two discs of his symphonies on CPO, and several discs of his string quartets too. Complex but not too busy, all at the same time. One of my current favorites.

[*]Samuel Barber (1910-1981) - Nobody knows Barber's 2nd symphony (only a few recordings have been done), but it's a masterpiece. Written during WWII, Barber had the score and all the parts destroyed a few years later (in the early 50's), but a set of parts were found in the late 80's, and finally it was recorded and released. There's a good and inexpensive recording on Naxos, and another one on Chandos. Barber's violin and piano concertos are great too.

[*]Elliott Carter (b. 1908) - I don't have very much Carter, but I need to do something about that. What I have I like, but I couldn't even begin to remember what I have by him.

[*]Roger Sessions (1896-1985) - my favorite Serial composer after Schoenberg and Berg. (Actually, I probably like Sessions a bit more than either Schoenberg or Berg, sometimes anyway.) Most of his CD's are out of print, but if you can find his symphonies 6, 7, & 9 (recorded by the American Composers Orchestra), it'll change your life - if you like that sort of thing.

I'll add to this list tomorrow. It's getting late, and I don't have the energy now to do the more recent composers from the list above. Many of them I don't really know that, but I few I do. Check back again, and I'll have more...

OK, one more... John Corigliano's first symphony is a winner.

Edited by Rooster_Ties
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Thanks Rooster Ties!

I have a few of the composers on your list. I agree with your statement about Ives. I've been a huge fan of his since I first heard his Three Places in New England (I think that's the title) back when I was in college.

It's neat that you mention Howard Hanson. I've got a bunch of those Mercury Living Presence reissues. I've got all the Hanson's in the series. They are some of my favorites. One favorite of mine from that series is the first volume of Music for Quiet Listening.

I'll put your suggestions down for future purchases.

Thanks!

:rsmile:

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I agree with your statement about Ives. I've been a huge fan of his since I first heard his Three Places in New England (I think that's the title) back when I was in college.

Me too!! Same thing - I heard that middle movement of "Three Places...", and I was hooked -- the one with the multiple marching-band tunes going on at the same time. I used to focus on Ives' orchestral works mostly, and (at the time), I didn't go as much for solo-piano things.

Then I heard Ives' "Concord Sonata" performed live, and I was totally blown away. Although his orchestral work is unquestionably important, I can't help but think (now) that his piano works are equally important, and are of a depth that I haven't found in many other composers.

There are two relatively inexpensive Ives' solo-piano releases that are well worth picking up...

B000001K3W.01._PE_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg and B000001K6S.01._PE_SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Charles Ives: Piano Music (Vox Classical - #5089, 2CD's for $11.00)

Charles Ives Works For Piano (Vox Classical - #3034, 3CD's for $16.00)

VOX is an inexpensive label - and most of their recordings are from the 70's. Both of these are excelent ways to dig into Ives solo-piano works. (You should be able to find either or both of these at at the CD store in your town that has the best classical section.) There is some overlap between the two, in terms of the works recorded - and if you were only going to get one, I'd get the 3-disc set to start with.

Edited by Rooster_Ties
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Thanks again, Rooster!

I haven't really explored Ives' piano music. I'll pick up some of those Vox sets. I've got some of their other releases and they are fine. Cheap cds are a good thing!

I'm a fan of his symphonies too. I really like his first one. I know it's not as advanced as his later ones, but I just love hearing it.

Yeah, the marching band thing did it for me too. I loved dissonance, but Ives took it to a whole new level for me. My teacher told us a story about when Ives was a boy. In his town they would have band contests, but when the different bands were riding into town on their wagons. They would be playing. From the town, Ives could here the different bands playing different tunes, and my professor said that is how he came up with that approach.

:rsmile:

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Apropos John Corigliano. He was my Music Director when I ran a New York radio station in the early 1960s. One day, he included John Cage's Cartridge Music in the morning concert, which he programmed. For those who may not be familiar with this piece, it consists of wired phonograph cartridges being pulled across the floor, producing a sound that only the most vivid of imaginations might find remotely reminiscent of music.

The phones lit up as people called to find out when out transmitter would be fixed--they thought we were off the air. I told John that, Cage being an acknowledged composer, it was ok to program such works as Cartridge Music, but not in the morning and not without some kind of explanation.

John told me that he had been thinking of quitting, because he wanted to get unemployment compensation and write a piano concerto. Would I please fire him?

I agreed to do that, and when the unemployment office turned him down, he appealed and I agreed to speak for him at a hearing. We cited" irreconcilable artistic differences," and John's unemployment was approved. A couple of years later, he sent me an LP of his piano concerto.

BTW, shortly after John left, we took on a new assistant (glorified file clerk, actually) in the music department. She loved works like Cartridge Music--her name was Yoko Ono.

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Wow, what great stories, Christiern!!! Can you share any other rememberences of John (Corigliano ;) ) and/or Yoko??

A.B. - I too love Ives' early symphonies, #1 is great, and I especially love #2 - which I seem to find more in every time I hear it. Ives' first two symphonies aren't all that weird (er, um, I mean 'advanced' ;) ), but they are just quirky enough to keep one guessing a bit, even after many repeated listens.

Naxos has new recordings of most of Ives' orchestral output (some are already out, others are yet to be released). And in each case, they are from new 'critical editions' of the scores, by perhaps the #1 Ives scholar in the country, John Sinclair.

I might also mention that Naxos is planning to release a disc of the complete works of Carl Ruggles, who is every bit as incredible as Ives, IMHO. Ruggles didn't write much (only enough music to fill one 79-minute CD, approximately), but what he did write (or at least his very few orchestral works) rival anything Ives wrote. They were contemporaries, and became friends after both composed their last works. The Naxos "Ruggles" disc won't be out for another year or so, but it should be one of the highlights of their fantastic "American Composers" series.

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Wow, what great stories, Christiern!!! Can you share any other rememberences of John (Corigliano ;) ) and/or Yoko??

Well, there was the time John asked me if he could have a day off to prepare a special dinner at his house. Someone had given him a bottle or two of Dom Perignon and he had been saving them for a special occasions.

That special occasion was a dinner to which he had invited a group of friends/colleagues, including Leonard Bernstein, Thomas Schippers, and Michael Tilson Thomas. The day after the dinner, I asked him how it had gone, but he didn't want to talk about it. I finally got it out of him, however: he had spent the whole day cooking and setting up a festive dinner table. The guests arrived, the food was on the table, and John ceremoniously popped the cork on the old Dom. Unfortunately, the cork flew out, hit a chandelier above the table, shattered it, and rained a shower of glass onto the food. They ended up going to a restaurant.

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