Compose a letter to a major American music director (orchestra or opera) that you feel should change its programming in some way. You can decide what parameters you want to advocate for: more diversity (defined however you like), more living composers, more pieces of a specific genre, etc. Your advocacy must be based on the recent (last decade or so) programming history of that organization, and should provide well-researched justification for why you want these changes.
****Propose at least 5 specific pieces that could be swapped on next season’s program, and explain why.
Your paper should be formatted as a letter, and should introduce yourself and explain why you feel the organization should change their programming. You will be based on how well you incorporate actual data of the organization’s past programming, as well as well-informed criticism that takes into account contemporary op-eds or other writing that advocates for better representation in classical music.
- it is a respond from the professor : you to look at an existing organization’s 2019-2020 season, and advocate for changes to their program. So yes, this can be any kind of ensemble, but it should be one that is a well-known and well-funded and well-publicized major American ensemble with a fully-announced 2019-20 season. The easiest ones to find will be orchestras and or opera companies. It can be any city, not just New York. Your advocacy must be based on the recent (last decade or so) programming history of that organization, and should provide well-researched justification for why you want these changes. So if, for example, you were to choose the NY Philharmonic and try to advocate that they should program more Stravinsky, this would be a difficult challenge because 1) they play plenty of Stravinsky already, and 2) what justification would you provide that we need more Stravinsky at the expense of other underrepresented composers.
My ideal goal is for you to advocate for some kind of underrepresented group to get more compositions into mainstream American classical music tradition. This could be, for example, female composers, queer composers, living composers, composers of color, or recent immigrant composers (from non-European countries). Or you could advocate that there should be more world premieres, or cross-genre collaborations. And yes, you should be suggesting pieces from the 20th and 21st centuries, because after all this is a course on music of that time period, and also there are more options from those underrepresented groups from this era.
Take a look at the diversity suggestions on this website: https://www.composerdiversity.com/programmin
g. This can give you some ideas about what I am interested in reading. Above all, your suggestions should be based on well-researched data from the last few seasons (you can find this information online) as well as well-researched reasons for advocacy.
- you can any type of program belong to “Western classical music” as a broadly defined style and practice of music making that follows in the Western art tradition, using the standard genres (symphony, concerto, string quartet, sonata, opera, oratorio, fantasy, overture, etc.) and more or less standard acoustic instrumentation.
- make sure you need to included :
provide well-researched justification for why you want these changes
You will be based on how well you incorporate actual data of the organization’s past programming, as well as well-informed criticism that takes into account contemporary op-eds or other writing that advocates for better representation in classical music.
Sample Solution
