Orchestra Leader Research Articles

Socializing Aesthetics and `Selling Like Gangbusters'

If Cultural Studies has contributed anything to aesthetics in recent decades, it has been a sense of political immediacy: matters of style, taste, and judgement are now unquestionably matters of power. Organizational research on aesthetics does not reflect this development. For almost twenty-five years Cultural Studies and organizational research have had parallel interests in the study of culture, symbolism, ritual, and so on. Critical perspectives on power and ideology have had currency for both fields, but organizational researchers have not reflected these topics in discussions of taste, style, and aesthetics. After reviewing aesthetics as a paradigm of cultural research in organizations, this article suggests some consequences of marginalizing the concern with power and aesthetics in Cultural Studies. The discussion is grounded in an ethnography of a Chicago-based entertainment firm. In the business of producing live entertainment for Fortune 500 clients, the company's roots extended deep into American vaude-ville traditions. The aesthetic knowledge of musical style and entertainer traditions formed the basis of this company's practice. Data is drawn from interviews with theatrical agents, producers, orchestra leaders and performers. Mapping the recuperation of vaudeville into corporate settings suggests the radically contextual nature of aesthetic practice.

Sheet Music Special Issues: Formats and Functions

The appearance of standard sheet music issue from first half of this century, especially that of a popular song, is familiar to both musicians and general public. Typically, item is either a single sheet folded into a folio to yield four pages, or a folio with a half-sheet inserted to yield six pages.(1) In either case, item generally begins with an illustrated title page often printed in more than color.(2) The inner pages present score, consisting of a separate staff for melody with lyrics printed below it, a piano accompaniment, and chord diagrams or symbols usually intended for ukulele, but sometimes for tenor banjo or guitar. A copyright infringement warning is often printed in fold, and advertisements for other items offered by publisher frequently occupy last page. This format is so familiar that description may, at first, seem unnecessary. Sheet music enjoyed wide distribution during first half of this century, and this fact has given it an enduring presence in homes, as well as in libraries and archives. As is frequently case, however, such seeming simplicity is deceptive, for in addition to printing popular songs in this customary format, sheet music publishers also produced a variety of special issues for specific purposes, most frequently encountered of these being copy. This essay describes formats and functions of some of these special issues, drawing its documentation in part from an archive of business papers of Jerome H. Remick Company, one of largest and most powerful firms of Tin Pan Alley, and once employer of a fifteen-year-old song plugger named George Gershwin.(3) From letters Remick's sales representatives in Chicago and Detroit sent to New York, and from those home-office responses they occasionally retained, it is clear that standard sheet music issue was called either an original copy, or simply--and more frequently--an original. The term appears often in Remick's correspondence, salesmen routinely placing orders for thousands of copies in this format. From these letters surmises that professional copy was a promotional issue for complimentary distribution within music business. The quantities ordered suggest further that these professional copies were produced inexpensively. Both these conjectures are supported by documentary evidence. By close of nineteenth century, promotional function of professional copy was apparently well established. Theodore Dreiser provided a clear explanation of its role in 1898: Usually first copies of song printed are what are called copies, for which thinnest kind of newspaper is used. Probably five thousand of these are struck off, all intended for free distribution among singing profession on stage. If professional people, on hearing song played for them in publisher's parlors think well of it, publisher's hopes rise. It is then his policy to print possibly a thousand regular copies of song, and these are sent out to the trade, which is mercantile term for all small stores throughout country which handle sheet music.(4) As twentieth century progressed, song plugging found other venues in addition to publishers' parlors and small music stores, greatly expanding distribution of professional copies. A record of this expansion is preserved in succeeding editions of a book entitled How to Publish Your Own Music Successfully, written by Jack Gordon.(5) Across nearly five decades of social and technological change, in addition to music stores and professional singers, Gordon gradually includes music departments in dime stores and department stores, music jobbers, syndicates, recording companies, piano roll manufacturers, band and orchestra leaders, theaters, and radio stations in his lists of potential recipients of professional copies. …

Organizations in Changing Environments: The Case of East German Symphony Orchestras

Portions of the research reported here were supported by the Max Planck Institute for Bildungsforschung and by the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. We thank Larissa Kowal-Wolk, Erin Lehman, and Rebecca Roters for their collaboration on the project; Jay Tucker for help in translating and coding research materials; and Ben Dattner, Adam Galinsky, and Tuck Pescosolido for assistance in library research and data analysis. Helpful comments on this paper were provided by Judith Blau, Hannah Bruckner, Thomas Ertman, Paul DiMaggio, Connie Gersick, Stephan Liebfried, Andy Molinsky, Francie Ostrower, Charles Perrow, Klaus JOrgen Peter, and Aage Sorensen. Assistance in enumerating the population of orchestras and in gaining access to those selected for the research was provided by the American Federation of Musicians (AFM), the American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL), the Arts Council of Great Britain (ACGB), the European Conference of Symphony Orchestras (ECSO), the International Conference of Symphony and Opera Musicians (ICSOM), and the Regional Orchestra Players Association (ROPA). We give special thanks to Kenneth Baird (ACGB), Brad Buckley (ICSOM), Rosemary Estes (ROPA), Catherine French (ASOL), Ken Haas (Boston Symphony Orchestra), and Lew Waldeck (AFM). Two periods of radical political-economic change in the former East Germany illuminate dynamics of organization-environment relationships that generally are hidden from view. Historical, qualitative, and survey data from a longitudinal comparative study of 78 orchestras in four nations show that the contexts of East German orchestras changed significantly when the socialist regime took power after World War 11, and then again in 1990 when that regime fell. Socialist rule only modestly affected orchestras' institutional features, however; they continued to reflect centuries-old German musical traditions. The collapse of socialism in 1990, by contrast, provoked differentiation among orchestras-some adapted successfully to the new political-economic context, but others floundered. Successful adaptation was found to be a joint function of an orchestra's prior strength as an organization and the kinds of leadership initiatives taken by orchestra leaders and players. Overall, the findings suggest that the size and character of environmental effects depend on the degree to which contextual changes alter (a) the strength of the link between organizational actions and resources obtained (resource contingency) and (b) organizations' latitude to manage their own affairs (operational autonomy).

Computer-Mediated Communication as a Teaching Tool

AbstractToday’s students are encountering unconventional classrooms and methodologies and are being exposed to current and emerging technologies. Many of these technologies, such as networks, e-mail, telecommuting, online databases, and electronic bulletin boards, suggest that there is a need to prepare students and workers for human-to-machine interaction as well as for face-to-face communication. Additionally, the role of the teacher may take on more of the aspects of the “orchestra leader” than the “drum major” in order to coordinate the many electronic teaching tools that are available. The present study was undertaken to observe the effects of using computer-mediated communication (CMC) and appropriate groupware as a teaching tool. Effects on the students, the structure of the classroom, and interpersonal interactions were considered. Results indicate that the use of CMC can have a positive effect on students and interpersonal interaction, but that the implementation of this technology must be approp...

Too Much Schooling, Too Little Education: A Paradox of Black Life in White Societies.

Too Much Schooling, Too Little Education: A Paradox of Life in White Societies, edited by Mwalimu J. Shuiaa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1994. 424 pp. $45.95, cloth; $16.95, paper. According to editor Shujaa, this collection of essays presents concert-on-paper built upon meaningful parts that meld into dynamic (p. 9). As self-proclaimed orchestra leader of this concert and author of 2 of book's 16 chapters as well as its five section introductions, Shujaa goes on to explain that this dynamic whole is an examination and indictment of schooling of Blacks, especially in United States. It is also, he notes, prescription for African-centered education as alternative or, at best, complement to schooling. The organizing themes of book include calls for following changes in schooling in U.S.: (1) shift from preoccupation with schooling to concern for education; (2) shift in schools' orientation to knowledge to better respect African cultures and perspectives; (3) recognition and accommodation of African American resistance to schooling; (4) embracing of an African-centered pedagogy; and (5) people's assumption of responsibility for education of youth. Shujaa distinguishes between schooling and education in very thoughtful and carefully argued early chapter. The former, he notes, is a process intended to perpetuate and maintain society's existing power relations and institutional structures that support those arrangements (p. 15). The latter is the process of transmitting from one generation to next knowledge of values, aesthetics, spiritual beliefs, and all things that give particular cultural orientation its uniqueness (p. 15). This explanatory chapter is followed by 15 others in which authors describe and advocate for African-centered pedagogy. As background for work reported in this book, editor has included chapter by Jacob Carruthers on Black Intellectuals and Crisis of Education. This is provocative think-piece that should challenge those of us who think of ourselves as members of intelligentsia. Also included is Beverly Gordon's (no family relationship to reviewer) comprehensive epistemological treatment of relationship between cultural knowledge and liberatory education. Gordon's essay alone is worth price of book. Nsenga Warfield-Coppock's discussion of rites of passage as an extension of education into African American community embodies notions that many communities are finding useful. Kwame Akoto's, Molefi Asante's, Joyce King's, and Carol Lee's treatments of approaches to African-centered education are consistent with some of best practice in this field. Like aforementioned essays, Nah Dove's discussion of supplementary schools and Shujaa's analysis of African American independent schools movement include notions and models that are pregnant with possibilities for more effectively engaging students in processes of intellectual development. Deserving of special notice is Vernon PoIite's discussion of ecology of resistance to schooling not so much as fear of acting white (Fordham, 1989) as natural rejection of educational neglect, lack of caring, and instructional malpractice they experience in school settings that have not changed to reflect changes in its clientele. A better understanding of nature and meaning of history of African American resistance to schooling (treated in separate chapters by Ronald Butchart, Joan Ratteray, and Violet Harris) and greater familiarity with variety of experiences with and perspectives on schools and education (covered in chapters by Kofi Lomotey, Gail Foster, and Vivian Gadsden) have potential for greatly enhancing readiness of some of us professionals for more effective service in education of students. There is much in this book that, if sensitively implemented, will greatly increase engagement of children with their education. …

A Letter by the Composer about "Giovanni d'Arco" and Some Remarks on the Division of Musical Direction in Verdi's Day

A relatively long letter from Giuseppe Verdi to the Florentine vocal director Pietro Romani, reproduced here, indicates the tempos for individual numbers of his opera Giovanna d'Arco. Verdi had a general preference for quicker tempos. The letter also provides valuable evidence for the different roles of the vocal director (Maestro di cappella, Maestro al cembalo, Maestro della musica, Maestro delle opere, or Maestro concertatore) and concertmaster, who served as the orchestra's leader, suggesting an account of the evolution of divided direction of Italian opera into the modern situation of direction by a single conductor.

Toward Theory and Method with the Jazz Oral History Project

Oral history, as a relatively young field, offers pleasures and challenges as we try to learn something from the perspective, discursive style, and the reminiscences of a respondent and occasionally try to figure out the motivations of an interviewer. That oral history is so young is reflected in the discussions about what function it serves, what methodology it should follow, and whether or not it should be ascribed the status of a discipline ancillary to research in history and culture. We can agree that oral history is an approach to historical events and personalities offering valuable insights into social history, the anecdote, chronology, and factual detail. We can verify suspicious details or the unknown; we gain a sharper focus on work conditions, travel and accommodations, technology and inventions; and we obtain descriptions of littleknown but important figures contemporaneous with the subject personality being interviewed. Oral history is history first, provided subjectively by an individual who experienced a historical period first-hand, a reminiscence guided by a sympathetic student of history to be preserved through sound reproduction and storage and ultimately to be transcribed in order to preserve the raw material of the oral history as its goal. Of all the professions, the literary and performing arts have received much attention from journalists and cultural historians because artists combine the workings of the intricate, the mysterious, and the seemingly esoteric processes of imaginative creations with peripatetic and spectacular lifestyles. Musicians, painters, and poets are perceived as social outcasts and therefore make good copy. In any given issue of a daily newspaper the public is more likely to read a brief biography of a writer or musician than of a political figure or entrepreneur. Jazz, categorically spanning classical, pop, and ethnic musics, is the foremost of all these musics in American journalism and aesthetic analysis. No sooner had the word jazz come into usage in the media than a New York journalist in 1919 interviewed conductor and orchestra leader James Reese Europe for an explanation of this music and word (Vernon 1919). With the publication of installments in the Saturday Evening Post during 1925 and later in book form of orchestra leader Paul Whiteman's

Haldan Keffer Hartline, 22 December 1903 - 18 March 1983

Haldan Keffer Hartline was of genuine ‘Pennsylvania Dutch’ stock. His grandfather, James A. Hartline, a cabinet maker and also a farmer was from Reading, Pennsylvania. With his wife Hettie (Esther Ann) Schollenberger he lived as a farmer in Berks county, a Pennsylvania Dutch settlement (Dutch = Deutsch = German). One of the children of this couple was Daniel Schollenberger Hartline (b. 1866). This farmer boy rose in education to become a teacher in the natural sciences at Bloomsburg State Normal School. Clearly a man of considerable gifts he had taken a Master’s degree at Lafayette College and afterwards had spent some time (1901-1902) studying at the universities of Bonn and Heidelberg. In 1897 he married Harriet Franklin Keffer (b. 1864), daughter of Washington Henry Keffer, a violinist and orchestra leader in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and his wife Elizabeth Ann Moss of a New England colonial-time family. Harriet Keffer taught English at Bloomsburg State Normal School and played the violin in the school orchestra. She was a skilful amateur gardener and botanist and something of a connoisseur of ferns. The son of the two Bloomsburg teachers, Haldan Keffer (b. 1903) became the visual physiologist, known to his friends as Keffer. He grew up in an English-speaking family but his father had still spoken the Pennsylvanian German dialect at home and learned English in school.

Black Women in American Bands and Orchestras

Handy has revised the profiles of members featured in the first edition, corrected omissions, and added personal and career facts for new faces on the scene. Profiles are presented under the headings of orchestras and orchestra leaders, string players, wind and percussion players, keyboard players, and non-playing orchestra/band affiliates.

The Music of James Hewitt: A Supplement to the Sonneck-Upton and Wolfe Bibliographies

The musical output of composers active in the concert and theater life life of the United States from the Colonial period through 1825 is generally quite thoroughly tallied and described by the Sonneck-Upton and Wolfe Bibliographies of secular American music. Occasionally, however, some compositions were overlooked, being either in smaller libraries or concealed within large bound volumes of sheet music. Or perhaps a composer living within this period was also active in another country or exceeded the 1825 cut-off date of the Wolfe Bibliography during his later years. Also, any sacred works would not be found in these reference works, as they both catalog only secular compositions. It is in instances such as these that new material may be presented to supplement these monumental bibliographies. James Hewitt (1770-1827) was an important force in shaping the musical culture of New York and Boston during the early nineteenth century. He was a composer, publisher, performer, seller, importer, teacher, and orchestra leader in those cities and other American localities during the years 1792-1825. He was also active in London as a composer and performer for at least two years before coming to America. Although the last year and a half of his life was largely unproductive due to a facial cancer, a few of his works were published after his death by his son and other music publishers in New York and Boston. The following checklist contains works by Hewitt which, for one reason or another, have appeared in neither the Sonneck-Upton nor the Wolfe Bibliographies. The compositions are listed in a style similar to that of the two above-mentioned bibliographies and the library abbreviations used follow the form of the Union List of Serials. All of the known locations for each work are given, since with the exception of three works listed in the British Union-Catalog of Early Music, this article is presumably the only source where this information may be found. The list is divided into vocal and instrumental works and is arranged alphabetically by title within each division. A brief commentary follows each item on the list.

Trade Regulation: Second Circuit Finds Sherman Act Violation in Musicians Union's Price-Fixing but Exempts Coerced Unionization of Orchestra Leaders

Trade Regulation: Second Circuit Finds Sherman Act Violation in Musicians Union's Price-Fixing but Exempts Coerced Unionization of Orchestra Leaders

The Decibel as a Musical Unit

* Loudness is a subject very much misunderstood by musicians. Using the conventional notation available to them, they have no way of accurately expressing, measuring, or comparing loudness. Adding thirty violins to an orchestra does not make them thirty times as loud, nor does adding any number of instruments make them that many times as loud. The familiar notations of p, for piano, and f, for forte, have no specific meaning objectively. Their only value is psychological, or subjective. Even then, what one musician may interpret as p another might interpret as f, or vice versa; what one might interpret as f may be considered as fff by another, or vice versa. Furthermore, the same ear which can easily detect a 1 per cent difference in pitch-a semitone represents nearly a 6 per cent difference -cannot ordinarily detect a 25 per cent change in sound energy. Tones of different pitches may require different amounts of additional sound energy to sound equally loud. On the average, however, a 100 per cent change is required just to be noticeable. To be twice as loud a sound must have nearly 1000 per cent more power. Some of the analysis of the loudness of musical instruments referred to here may seem fantastic to musicians, but this can be checked with a decibel meter. Band and orchestra leaders and music educators in the near future may find themselves using such a meter in the same way they now use other musical equipment. Science offers us valuable assistance in standardizing our conceptions of loudness and in measuring it. The decibel is the unit with which this is done. Those musicians who have heard of it usually think of this unit as too difficult to understand and, in any case, of no importance to their musicianship. This article endeavors to show that the decibel is really a simple as well as a useful unit. Even the hearing of normal people can vary tremendously, particularly if they are of different ages and sex. The following chart, using the decibel (abbreviated db.), indicates this:

Tachometers for Use in Motion Picture Work

Speed indicators when first used on projectors in motion picture theaters were considered a luxury and were only to be found in a few of the best first-run houses. The advantages to be gained by the use of accurate speed indicators or tachometers soon became apparent, however, and today the projectors in nearly every first-run house are equipped with them. It is only by the use of tachometers that the modern theater is able to maintain an exact schedule; that the projectionist is able to run his projector at a definite, constant, speed which will give the best results on the screen; and that the orchestra leader is able to correctly time his score; but it is not only on projectors that tachometers have made possible improvements in technique which would otherwise have been impossible.