Musicological research on contemporary classical music has grown significantly over the past few years. William Robin's recent book adds a detailed account of one of the most influential organizations in the field, Bang on a Can. Founded in 1987 as a festival of contemporary music, it has become one of the most prestigious organizations dedicated to what is called “new music” by its practitioners. The original New York City festival was created by composers Julia Wolfe, Michael Gordon, and David Lang and featured about 11 hours of continuous music by avant-garde composers. Through historical research and original interviews, Robin shows how the organization sought to bridge the contentious division between institutionally housed “uptown” musicians such as Milton Babbitt and “downtown” minimalists such as Steve Reich. Here, he draws on Kyle Gann's famous theorization of the New York scene at the time.Footnote 1 Robin situates Bang on a Can within a history of influential trends in classical music. He draws on interviews, archival research, analyses of recordings, and press reviews to present a clear and accessible history of the festival, its founders, and the organization they created.
Robin's research demonstrates a pervasive rhetorical advocacy for the embrace of for-profit and public-oriented strategies within new music. Described by Robin as a “market turn,” he argues that this orientation shapes the history of Bang on the Can's founders. All three composers earned graduate degrees at Yale University in the early 1980s. In contrast to other schools where students often imitated their teachers, Yale composition professors Jacob Druckman and Martin Bresnick fostered an atmosphere that encouraged individuality. The result allowed Michael Gordon, who was more interested in minimalism than serialism, to develop a distinct voice. Wolfe, who had a background more oriented toward experimental musical theater, also found success, in part because of Bresnick's savvy advice. Lang was much closer with Druckman, who by then had become a highly accomplished symphonic composer. For all three composers, collaborations with the student-led experimental group Sheeps Clothing provided part of the template for the Bang on a Can festival in 1987.
Robin connects this education directly with the 1983 New York Philharmonic festival of new music titled “Horizons ’83: Since 1968, A New Romanticism?” Similarly evidencing a “market turn,” this festival was part of a major initiative by Meet the Composer, a non-profit venture that worked to install resident composers across the United States. Druckman, in residence to the Philharmonic, helped organize the festival, which coincided with a major conference of music critics in the city. Robin demonstrates strong connections between the relative pluralism of Yale, the public orientation of the festival and successive iterations, and the creation of Bang on a Can. Although he has already published a history of the Horizons festivals, here Robin makes its connections to Bang on a Can the central concern and provides previously unpublished material to argue his point.Footnote 2 Robin shows how Lang worked closely with Druckman on the 1986 festival and was able to learn about the working of a major organization. Although the 1987 Bang on a Can festival was inspired by the aesthetic pluralism of Horizons, Robin demonstrates how the organizers represented a much smaller, grassroots type of organization. They thus presented an image more in line with the urban gentrification and yuppie bohemianism spreading through U.S. cities at the time.
Robin's research is strongest in his detailed documentation of the relationships between specific institutional forces and Bang on a Can. An entire chapter considers funding in the context of the culture wars of the 1980s and the reorganization of the National Endowment for the Arts in the 1990s. The result is, to my knowledge, one of the most detailed considerations of new music funding in the late twentieth century. Amidst right-wing attacks on public arts funding, Bang on a Can seemed to evidence a financially viable organization in spite of lost government arts funding. The organization grew its budget dramatically at this time and reproduced the populist rhetoric found among the organizers of Meet the Composer. Its mailers and grant reports asserted that, “fundraising and clever marketing continue[d] to produce new audiences and contributors” (133). Robin's nuancing throughout demonstrates that although Bang on a Can's founders claimed an aesthetic plurality, they in fact evidenced more of a legitimization of post-minimal aesthetics. Later chapters consider the creation of the Bang on a Can All-Stars (one of the most influential ensembles in the United States), collaborations with the Lincoln Center, and major shifts within the recording industry. Like the Lincoln Center, record labels briefly saw new music as a way to make their classical music divisions profitable, a view bolstered in part by the commercial success of Henryck Górecki's Symphony no. 3. Robin considers broader changes in the recording industry marked by the shift toward CDs and demonstrates that, despite some flashes in the pan, later new music recordings only offered large profits when part of commercial films.
Robin's book engages only occasionally with arguments about new music, either from within the community or from academics who have written about it. A major problem is Robin's treatment of the “market” to which new music is said to have “turned.” What he actually describes is not a setting in which composers and performers work to create surplus value from sales, but one in which they secure income from fees, grants, foundational support, and direct donations. This system certainly could be like a marketplace, but its distinctive qualities and historical formation warrant far greater consideration than afforded by Robin. Instead, he only defines this market implicitly and without consideration of the growing body of scholarly work on the subject. Mariana Ritchey and Andrea Moore, among others, have demonstrated new music as part of a broader embrace of neoliberal ideologies within classical music more generally.Footnote 3 Robin gestures toward such work, but only once, in consideration of the recording industry, does he apply it in his analysis. The material assembled by Robin presents to me overwhelming evidence of Bang on a Can's deep embrace of neoliberalism, but he never considers the impact of neoliberalism as an ideology that shapes music. This is especially striking given composers such as Cornelius Cardew and Ivan Tcherepnin and classmates of Lang, Gordon, and Wolfe are quoted in the book voicing sincere objections to capitalism. Robin, however, never deeply engages with such critiques. Race and gender are similarly considered here only with reference to Bang on a Can's claim that, in relation to classical music more generally, they improved the racial and gender make-up of their programs. These are important issues that continue to trouble many in the field. A lack of stated aims beyond Robin's descriptions of the book's contents exacerbates these omissions. The resulting arguments may thus ultimately be frustrating to those searching for ways to imagine a better future for new music. In summary, Robin's work presents a compelling account of Bang on a Can. It offers useful insights for researchers of classical music, especially those interested in new music, its funding, and its position in the recording industry in the late 1980s and 1990s. The book is eminently readable at the non-specialist level, suitable for undergraduates.
John R. Pippen is an assistant professor of music at Colorado State University. His research considers contemporary classical music from historical and ethnographic perspectives. He teaches courses in music history and ethnomusicology, focusing largely on class and racial formations.
