I was reading the program notes for John Corigliano’s band piece, “Circus Maximus”, and came upon the following interesting passage:
Attending a band concert … I find exhilarating. For starters, the repertoire of band music is largely contemporary. As a result the audiences expect and look forward to new works. Listening in an environment largely ignored by the press, they learn to trust their own ears and respond directly to what they hear. Most important of all, concert bands devote large amounts of rehearsal time over a period of weeks – not days – to learning thoroughly the most challenging of scores. With its combination of new notations and spatial challenges demanding an intricate coordination of a large work, Circus Maximus could only have been attempted under such special circumstances.
The most thought provoking part of that for me is the line “Listening in an environment largely ignored by the press, they learn to trust their own ears and respond directly to what they hear”. I think this tends to be true. Almost every new orchestra work that gets commissioned and premiered will have several reviews written about it, and orchestra enthusiasts are very keen to those sort of things. On the other hand, band pieces rarely get reviewed unless its a big performance by a big composer, so the audience would not have any preconceived notions about the quality or character of the piece. They listen to the music for what it is, not what someone else says it is. Of course, an educated, open minded musician will be able to do this regardless of the venue, but I think its interesting that a big name composer like Corigliano, who writes primarily for the orchestral world, would have such a keen understanding of band audiences.
