fifty years hence of fifty years ago

Over at her blog, irontongue has written an interesting post based on Norman Lebrecht's poll asking the question, "Which composers of today [do you think] will be played fifty years from now?" irontongue with admirable logic turns this around by asking about a control case: Which composers current fifty years ago are, and which are not, being played today?

I happen to possess a few statistics relevant to this question, and presented them briefly in the comments section. I'll present them in more detail here where there's more room. There is an interesting statistical survey of the historical orchestral repertoire, under the unprepossessing title of Twenty-Seven Major American Symphony Orchestras: A History and Analysis of Their Repertoires, Seasons 1842-43 Through 1969-70 by Kate Hevner Mueller (Indiana University Studies, 1973). For the most part it is simply a list, in alphabetical order, of every work played by these selected major orchestras in their regular seasons from the founding of the New York Philharmonic in 1842 on, with the years they were played in. Some years ago I went through this book and made an Excel file totaling up, by decade (my "1950s" includes the 1950-51 through 1959-60 seasons), the complete number of performances of every symphony in the repertoire. Just symphonies - I didn't do this for other works.

For more recent material, there's the Orchestra Repertoire Reports of the League of American Orchestras, which cover all orchestras belonging to the League, a much larger selection than Mueller's. These are available online for the 2000-01 through 2007-08 seasons; let's call that the 2000s for simplicity's sake. I've made the same compilation out of these, adjusting for the fact that the League in different years seems to have used different standards for listing multiple performances of the same concert.

So here's a list of the most-performed - I'm taking roughly the top 20 - symphonies in the 1950s written by composers still living in 1959, followed by their year of composition and the number of performances in the 1950s and in the 2000s.

( The 1950s in the 1950s )

Remember that the numbers in one column are not directly comparable to the other column, but they do indicate relative standing within the columns. From this we can see that Shostakovich has gone up, as has Copland's Third, and a few other American symphonies - Barber's First, Hanson's Second (the "Romantic") - have held ground, but Paul Hindemith, at the time a reasonable candidate for greatest living composer, has rather faded, while a number of once-standard American composers have lost it further. Roy Harris is not the man he used to be, and the name of Paul Creston is almost forgotten. (Being named Paul does not seem to be a good omen for a classical composer. Paul Dukas is too early for this list, but even The Sorcerer's Apprentice is rather dusty these days, and the rest of his works are little heard. This does not bode well for Paul Moravec.)

We can see the rise of Shostakovich and Copland even more clearly by flipping the list around and, using the same selection criteria - symphonies written by 1959 by composers who were alive in 1959 - but picking the ones most played in the 2000s.

( The 1950s in the 2000s )

It's part of the sorting process of history, by which those who rise to prominence get the lion's share of the future's attention, that six of the top eight places are occupied by Shostakovich. Note also the rise of Messiaen, Benjamin Britten, and one American composer who was certainly not taken seriously as a symphonist in the 1950s, one L. Bernstein.

One technically qualifying symphony I left off the list: Shostakovich's Fourth was written in 1936 but was withdrawn until the 1960s, so it couldn't have been played in the '50s. If you're wondering how symphonies written since 1959 would stack up, only three would make the cut for this list, and two of them are by Shostakovich: his 15th (17 performances) and 13th (13 performances), plus Corigliano's First (11 performances).

Now that we have that, let's look at this decade: symphonies played in the 2000s by composers still living today. This is less typical of what's being played by orchestras, since the symphony as a genre has less cachet today than it did fifty years ago, let alone a century, but these are living composers being played today.

( The 2000s in the 2000s )

So which of these composers do you think will be played fifty years from now? Will John Corigliano? Will Michael Daugherty? I'm putting my money on John Adams, Thomas Ades, and Peteris Vasks.

For my next trick, I'm going back a century, and not just fifty years.