Tanglewood: The Clash Between Tradition and Change - Hardcover

Andrew L. Pincus

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1555533469 ISBN 13: 9781555533465

Publisher: Northeastern University Press, 1998

Synopsis

An internationally renowned and beloved music festival, Tanglewood is summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra and site of the Tanglewood Music Center, a prestigious academy for advanced studies in classical music. Set on spacious lawn overlooking the picturesque Berkshire hills of western Massachusetts, this idyllic place attracts thousands of picnickers and concertgoers for music under the stars.

Yet Tanglewood's tranquillity masks the many challenges facing the festival as it strives for success and survival in the coming years. This provocative work explores the dynamics affecting Tanglewood within the larger context of recent trends in American musical life, including dwindling audiences for classical music and growing commercialism in the arts. Andrew L. Pincus begins his lively narrative with an account of Tanglewood's rich history, from founder Serge Koussevitzky's vision of a great music festival and academy, to Seiji Ozawa's controversial tenure as BSO director. He describes the construction of the acclaimed Seiji Ozawa Hall and the publicity glitz surrounding its gala opening in 1994 as both a turning point for Tanglewood's passage to a new era and a link to its past. Pincus traces Ozawa's demanding conducting career, fully exploring mounting criticism of his repertoire and commitment to the BSO and Tanglewood, and recalls how Leonard Bernstein and other important figures influenced Tanglewood's legacy.

Against this backdrop of the festival's evolving relationship between tradition and transition to the innovative and unknown, Pincus examines recent clashes among leaders and artists over both programming decisions and the direction of the Music Center. The staging of highly-publicized events and gala performances to attract larger and broader-based audiences raises thorny questions about whether or not serious art is being compromised for the sake of commercial success.

This fascinating book illuminates the ways in which Tanglewood represents both the best and the worst aspects of musical culture. It also captures the enduring spirit that will lead this extraordinary festival into the next century.

About this title

About the Author:

Andrew L. Pincus is the music critic for the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and has been a contributor to The New York Timesm\, Boston Globe, Opera News, Musical America, and numerous other publications. He has twice won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence in music criticism. He lives in Lenox, Massachusetts. Phyllis Curtin, the internationally renowned soprano, is Artist in Residence at the Tanglewood Music Center and retired Dean of the School of Arts at Boston University, where she still teaches. She lives in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Its always a valuable exercise when critics step out of the moment to subject our most established artistic institutions to the magnifying glass, for they become reliable bellwethers of larger cultural trends. Such is certainly the case with this valuable look at Tanglewood. For nearly 60 years, Tanglewood, in western Massachusetts, has been the summer residence of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) and an oasis of classical music scholarship, pedagogy, and performance. Pincus, an award-winning music critic for the Berkshire Eagle, the Boston Globe, and other newspapers, has been covering Tanglewood for nearly a quarter-century. His informed account takes up where his Scenes from Tanglewood (1989) left off, chronicling the modernizationsome have argued commodificationof the festival under the tutelage of current BSO director and conductor Seiji Ozawa. Ozawa, more profoundly than any of the Tanglewood legends (Serge Koussevitsky, Charles Munch, Erich Leinsdorf, and Leonard Bernstein) in whose legacies he operates, has been charged with reconciling the festival with both economic and cultural realities. In this respect, Pincuss overview is not only a worthwhile history of the phenomenon of Tanglewood, but also a paradigmatic appraisal of Ozawas navigation of the art and administration of the classical repertory itself. Pincuss commentary is honest and astute throughout, as when he notes the revolution implicit in the mundane appearance of signs . . . on the manicured lawn outside . . . warning that the grass, chairs and tables, with their commanding view of the lake and hills, were for the use of club members only. That the club in question was an outgrowth of the constructionwith monies provided by the conductors friends at the Sony Corporationof Seiji Ozawa Hall illuminates the extent to which market forces have impinged on this formerly utopian compound; that they took so long to arrive reminds us of Tanglewoods strange existence behind and, until recently, even beyond the times. (b&w photos, not seen) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Northeastern University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1555533469
• ISBN 13: 9781555533465
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 210