Music for Nothing: The Cost of Composing

POETS are not required to write epics to establish prestige for themselves, nor must painters do frescoes. Serious composers, on the other hand, are expected as a matter of course to demonstrate their skill with the symphony orchestra, for they cannot hope to build much of a reputation for themselves purely on the basis of songs, chamber music, or instrumental solos. Now there are very few of them indeed who are not stimulated by the challenge of an intermediary of some hundred players. But as Théophile Gautier remarked long ago, “Music is one of the most expensive noises,” and composers are never more aware of this than when the manpower they wish to command increases.

In one of the most striking passages of his Memoirs, Hector Berlioz recalled, over a century ago, a dream of a movement for a symphony. Upon rising, he went to his table to begin it; then he reflected, “If I write this part I shall let myself be carried on to write the rest. The natural tendency of my mind to expand the material is sure to make it very long I may perhaps spend three or four months exclusively upon it . . . and my income will suffer. ... I shall be weak enough to allow my copyist to copy it out, and thus immediately incur a debt. . . .” Such thoughts induced him to put down his pen until the following night, when the “obstinate symphony again presented itself.” He awoke in “a state of feverish agitation,” but the previous night’s reflections restrained him and he forced himself to eradicate the musical idea from his mind.

It would seem, on the surface of things, highly improbable for a composer of any talent at all to have a comparable experience in the midst of the American prosperity that prompted the Wall Street Journal’s startling headline of 1951: “$45 Million-a-Year Receipts of The ‘Long-Haired’ Events Surpasses Baseball Gate.” Despite canned music, or perhaps because of it, our concert audiences are constantly growing at an astonishing rate. In addition to hundreds of college and community orchestras, we now have some twenty “major” symphonies — societies, namely, ranging from those with a budget just over $100,000 a year to those which merely declare this sum as an annual deficit. How can composers fail to benefit?

Unfortunately, the musical boom itself blinds us to the fact that certain areas are totally bypassed by it. The public has spent well over $3 million on Toscanini’s RCA Victor recording of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But everything connected with serious music does not profit thereby or enjoy benefits remotely comparable. An American composer carries from a performance of his music by a major symphony the exhilarating memory of his conception brought to life. Yet he also, with surprisingly few exceptions, retains a formidable souvenir of financial debt or deficit.

Laymen often find this hard to believe, because of the publicity or glamour that may surround the event, even when audiences are apathetic or resistant. Novelty has always struggled so for acceptance that we are accustomed to the awkward pantomime of a conductor turning to acknowledge tentative applause, and we are used to the sight of embarrassed listeners trying to be more cordial when they realize the composer is in the house. Will he bow from a box, will he have to miss the last measures to rush backstage and be ushered onto the platform, or will he be required to walk from a seat in the center of the hall fast enough to shake the conductor’s hand before the applause has subsided?

Whatever the reception may be, it is enough of a compliment to an American composer to be played by a major symphony at all. If it devotes but an hour or two of rehearsal to him it may be spending a few thousand dollars worth of its time. Moreover, surveys of the National Music Council reveal that only about 7 to 8 per cent of all the works played by our major symphonies are by native Americans. When we consider that this percentage includes composers no longer living (among them Gershwin, whose music is as basic to the repertory as Tchaikovsky’s) as well as established contemporaries, we see how little room is left either for new talents or for those whose virtues become known slowly over the years and who are so common now that one French critic states a good case for calling some composers “young” at fifty.

To ESTIMATE the price paid for the privilege of an orchestral performance, we must go back to the time when a composition has been finished. In the first place, multiple copies of the full score will be needed to send around to conductors, who may allow them to gather dust without ever returning them or even sending a rejection note. If a composer has a prospect of performance without peddling his score, he must still have extra copies: for the conductor, perhaps an assistant conductor, a potential reviewer from a music journal, the copyist of the parts, and a prospective publisher.

Since photostats are costly, he writes his final version, with added difficulty, on transparent paper from which blueprint companies make black-on-white reproductions. Unlike the architect, he has no draftsman to labor over the fragile thin sheets, yet he might well profit from the draftsman’s skill, since he uses ruler or T square for alignment and must apply ink opaquely to get good copies. The price of duplicates varies with certain factors. A Wagnerian penchant for vast instrumental resources necessitates increasing the average 15-inch page height. Duration is another condition, but a short rapid work may occupy more pages than a long slow one, since there may be more notes in the one than in the other.

Orchestral works over fifteen minutes long have less chance of performance, but even if the duration is only fifteen minutes, duplicates of the score may easily cost $10 or more each, and five of them must be ordered. This expenditure is minor next to that for the parts. The inherent difficulties of new music are such that it is important to avoid further obstacles of purely mechanical nature. To this end composers seek out expert copyists, who usually charge according to union scale. Parts must be legible at a distance of a couple of feet. Page-turns must be planned where a player has his hands free — namely, where the composer provides for him to he silent. If he stays silent for long, he needs cues to follow what the others are playing so that he may be ready when he has to re-enter. Above all, parts must be accurate. One has only to witness the tantrums of conductors who spend costly rehearsal time tracking down errors to realize the importance of this. Performances have been canceled owing to faulty parts, especially when the composer is not present to correct them.

The process for reproducing scores is also used for duplicating parts. (All first violins play from copies of one part, all second violins from copies of another, and so forth.) The fee for copying on transparent paper is higher than that for copying on ordinary paper. But in terms of total expenditure it is worth a composer’s while to make a relatively small extra investment and be able to have duplicates even of those parts for which only single copies are needed at a performance, since he hopes that someday two or more orchestras may want his piece at the same time.

For a 15-minute work the copying bill for the parts may be between $300 and $500. Parts may be extracted abroad at considerable saving, provided enough time can be allowed; or in exceptional cases a composer may know a competent copyist of semiprofessional standing whose rates are modest. At the other extreme is the luxury of having a score, as well as the parts, copied professionally, though even the most affluent composer usually prefers to do his own score as an autograph for posterity.

Now to what extent does the impressive rendering of a composer’s music by a major symphony pay for his expenses? For members of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, receipts for each performance cannot be cited, because of its blanket licensing introduced in l944. According to this plan, any orchestra, by paying a yearly fee determined by its status, may have the rights to the entire ASCAP catalogue. ASCAP in turn pays each composer according to an involved point system. Payments are prorated, so that if his performances dwindle one year, his receipts do not take a corresponding dip. But there is an enormous disparity in income between composers high up on the ladder and those near the bottom. Orchestras, which at first welcomed blanket licensing for simplifying their bookkeeping, find that they now pay for renting, parts from a publisher what they formerly paid for performing rights plus rental. But blanket licensing is such a good solution that ASCAP’s rival collecting society, Broadcast Music, Incorporated, with its subsidiary, the American Composers Alliance, is trying to negotiate it for its members.

For rights and rental of a 15-minute work not covered by blanket licensing the average composer may expect a major symphony under good conditions to pay from $50 to $75. As in other fields, there is no uniformity. A world première brings better terms in some cases than in others. Larger fees may be exacted from what are known in the trade as “name" orchestras (some half dozen of them). Different publishers bargain differently. There is also the question of what constitutes a performance, since a work is usually repeated tire next day for another set of subscribers. Orchestras like to regard playing a work as a single performance even after repetition before a third or fourth audience in succession. Collecting societies and publishers try to get a fraction of the initial fee for each repetition. But this demand is not always willingly met, although no TV station would assume it could repeat a telecast without additional payment.

Many composers do not belong to collecting societies, since membership is limited. An orchestra, however, does not necessarily pay a performance fee if it is not billed, and some young men are so elated just to hear their music that it seems its own compensation. There have been cases of their learning quite by accident that anything was due them. With a prospect of an orchestral performance an unaffiliated composer does well to turn to a publisher, who will handle rental material and collect fees even when he does not publish a work.

After a publisher takes his customary 50 per cent for this service, a composer may receive as little as $25 for his performance by a major symphony! If the full fee reverts to him, at best it may pay for the duplicates of his score. Furthermore, the orchestra is often in a city other than the one in which he dwells, and there will be travel and hotel expenses. He must attend rehearsals not only to correct mistakes in the parts but also to guide the conductor’s interpretation of his score. Rehearsals may consume several days of his week, even if very few hours are devoted to him, since often he must await his turn while other works are being prepared.

Attending the concert is not simply a vanity. Besides being expected to bow, the composer views his total accomplishment objectively for the first time, and his future progress will depend on his own estimate of his success. If the concert is broadcast, he will have his work recorded off the air (at a further cost of at least $25 for a tape and acetate discs) to study it further, as well as to play it for colleagues, publishers, and others who may benefit him. When there is no broadcast, the intensive efforts of many people arc sadly dissipated in a quarter of an hour, since the musicians’ union does not allow a recording to be made in the hall.

What of the composer in America so bold as to fill a larger canvas — the composer of a 45-minute symphony? (A modest duration in terms of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or Mahler’s “heavenly length.”) A conductor regards it as missionary work to spend so much time on any but the most celebrated composers, and the fee does not rise proportionately with duration. It is apt to be the same as for a half-hour symphony — $100 under good conditions. After putting such effort into the work, the orchestra may take it along to its subscription concerts in other cities. Though the management may balk at paying for local repetitions, it readily pays for those in other cities on a diminishing scale. A typical fee for a pair of local concerts and three out of town for a 45-minute work is $300. If a publisher acts as agent, the composer receives $150. But in terms of the above estimate for a 15-minute work he will have spent from $900 to $1500 on the parts alone! Other expenses also increase with length.

WHEN blamed for these losses, orchestras point to their own struggle for survival. Moreover, their fees, they reasonably claim, are computed on the assumption that a composer will ultimately be remunerated after various groups have played his music over the years. But here is the rub. In Germany, after public approval or just a succès d’estime in Hamburg, a work is promptly taken up by societies in Munich, Mannheim, and other cities. In America there is no incentive to play most genuinely serious music of native composers unless to give a “world première.” The 45-minute symphony as a failure arouses no interest. But even if it is widely praised in the cities in which it is played on tour, their resident orchestras will see no point to repeating it the next season, and its news value may be exhausted elsewhere in the country, too. This attitude is most discouraging not only to our young composers, but to our established ones as well.

Since such premium is put on first performance, it may be argued, why should orchestras not assume more of the composer’s initial outlay? In terms of the huge deficits of orchestras, the added loss would be insignificant. A pianist, after all, learns a concerto to play with many orchestras, yet he may receive up to $3000 for a single pair of concerts. The answer is painfully obvious. With a soloist, people are turned away from the box office, whereas with new music there is the risk of losing a subscriber. Orchestras may also point to the rewards received by the occasional composer who is in demand. But what American could hope for the terms Shostakovich commanded when he was in favor here — in 1944, for example, when CBS, by paying $10,000 for the New York Philharmonic-Symphony’s American première of his Eighth Symphony over its network, beat all other bids? Nor do our serious composers get offers from Europe like the $25,000 that went to Stravinsky in 1951 for the world première of his opera, The Rake’s Progress (plus his conducting services), in Venice.

How are we to expect Europe to fuss over our composers when we make no fuss over them ourselves? Our pride over free enterprise restrains us. In 1954 a House committee, rejecting proposed federal aid to the arts, reported, “Young American artistic talent will overcome the hardships it encounters, just as outstanding engineering, medical and related talent surmounts the obstacles in its way to success.” What opportunities for serious American composers exist in anywhere near the abundance of those for engineers and physicians? As a matter of fact, many prizes are available to the young composer, but with half a dozen of these behind him, he may find very few goals indeed once he passes his thirtieth birthday, and he may never be heard of again.

It becomes more and more difficult for him to build up a reputation in any way resembling those ol certain composers now over fifty years of age who profited from the private patronage that went out with the 1920s and from the still more vital patronage of Kousscvitzky in the 1930s. It is hard to imagine what the present state of American music would be if this conductor had not appeared on our horizon.

Patronage, to IK* sure, survives somewhat in the impersonal guise of the foundation. Such laudable institutions as the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge foundation and the very active Fromm Foundation, a relative newcomer to the field, are devoted chiefly to commissioning chamber music. Orchestral commissions are harder to come by. The foundation established by the late Koussevitzky, perpetuating his name and his good works, naturally favors the orchestral genre. But nothing in this domain surpassed the spectacular commissioning program launched in 1954 by the Louisville Orchestra — forty-six commissions annually of $1200 each under a three-year Rockefeller Foundation grant. Louisville was picked because it had set its own example of commissioning a few works each season.

Even the few composers who are capable of offering themselves as prestige to publishers and collecting societies in return for substantial stipends are happy to receive commissions. A commission means much more, however, to the average composer, who has almost no other way of earning for his creative work what his copyist gets merely for the routine labor of extracting the parts. But there are too few commissions to go around. To be assured an income, most composers therefore have recourse to teaching, which takes much time and energy away from their primary activity. With increasing numbers of composers on university faculties, more and more contemporary music is played on our campuses. College orchestras are rarely equal to the most advanced new music, and professionals are often brought in. Either way, financial benefits are meager, since institutions of learning are customarily offered reduced performance fees.

THE reader may wonder why no mention has been made of compensation from publishing and recording. The reason is simply that a work rarely appears in print before its composer has achieved some recognition at concerts, and an orchestral work has virtually no chance of commercial recording until it is absorbed somewhat into the repertory — except in occasional instances where there is special subsidy. The serious American composer cannot leap to the top overnight like the young novelist who suddenly finds himself with a best seller that is seized by TV, Hollywood, and a book club. The composer climbs slowly and arduously on his own financial resources. When he is finally published, even with the same 10 per cent royalty that writers get, he may not hope for much return, since the sale of scores in general is limited. Moreover, his publisher owns 50 per cent of his performance rights, whereas a playwright retains these rights and yields only the permission to print his play.

As for recording, the most distinguished American does superbly with a sale of 10,000. Let us say his long-playing record — virtually a “best seller" — is strained to its maximum of about an hour’s music. After the publisher’s 50 per cent, his share is only $750, since the royalty is a quarter of a cent per minute. (The average “good” sale is more like 3000, and it may take several years to reach this.) It is a curious side light that if the conductor’s tempo is too fast, the playing time is reduced and thus the royalty, too.

Many things are to be gained from recording, such as dissemination of a work over the air and radio royalties that accrue from this. But these royalties are much lower for the average composer than for the few with high rating in collecting societies. By contrast, the BBC, which plays numerous British works on its Third Programme, makes no distinction of rank in its payments.

In general, government subsidy creates more favorable conditions for composers abroad. But other factors contribute, as well. Thus, in France the Société d’ Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique (ASCAP’s counterpart) sends a collector to deduct 8 per cent of the receipts of every concert, whether new music is played or not. Living composers profit from performances of Bach, Mozart, and others who are in public domain by now. The tender child (contemporary music) is abetted by the stronger (standard repertory).

In America, however, we tend to penalize new music for not earning its way, as any composer will affirm who has ever been questioned by the Bureau of Internal Revenue. He is told that since his composing is a losing proposition year after year, it must be classified as a hobby. The tax collector may even confide that he has a similar hobby — electrical equipment with which he tinkers on Sundays. But he would never think of deducting his expenses. A composer who teaches at a university must use all his powers of persuasion to establish that copying costs and the like constitute a legitimate professional deduction since his job and increments depend on his output.

It is doubtful whether the bureaucrats of Beethoven’s day would have treated him with any more enlightenment. We know, for example, that when Beethoven sought custody of his nephew his lawyer advised him that if he described himself as conductor rather than as composer he would impress the court more. But composers then at least enjoyed the advantage of programs drawn mainly from the music currently written. Today they face formidable competition from towering masterpieces of the past, a circumscribed number of which are scheduled over and over again to solve problems of limited rehearsal time. A new work is not only, as I have said, often doomed to a single hearing for which a composer receives the ridiculous sum of $25 after months of labor and over $500 of expenses, but it must also, on the strength of quick preparation by a conductor and one chance alone, survive comparison with standard pieces that have achieved polished readings and made themselves intelligible to listeners as a result of many repetitions over the years.

Government subsidy, advocated by a few of our statesmen for some time now, could do much to improve this condition by allocating funds for rehearsing American music. (From its earliest years London’s Royal Philharmonic has put aside money for preparing new works.) This music could then be repeated more often and be better prepared. Composers would be compensated by accumulated performance fees. Hearing and rehearing the music under the best conditions, audiences would be more likely to take to it. In the end, however, it is the interested listener who is arbiter, and propagation of this species may be the answer to the present emergency of musical creativity in America. The interested listener demands stimulating programs and realizes that if we are ever to produce a Bach or Beethoven on our soil our best native talent must be encouraged, even though what it produces may not always conform with our preferences or meet our severest standards.