It was teenage time at the world-famous Chicago Symphony Orchestra, an idea not nearly as incongruous as it sounds. As part of its annual series of youth concerts, the CSO performed works composed by local young people. Along with Carter’s “Adagio,” “Inspirations” by John Orfe and Jeff Letterly’s “Green-Gold” received full-dress treatment. The three pieces were the first fruits of the Young Composers Project, an idea spawned by John Corigliano, 53, the CSO’s first composer-in-residence. As notable as the music was the fervor of the players, led by assistant conductor Michael Morgan. Violinist Arnold Brushoff gave the works the highest praise: “They’re worth playing as regular subscription pieces.”
The miracle on Michigan Avenue began many blocks and a world away from Orchestra Hall, at the Howland School of the Arts, an inner-city public elementary school on the city’s South Side. Several fourth and fifth graders, most with little musical training, had an unusual assignment. Write a tune, their teacher told them, dream up a melody. Some kids worked on the recorder, others on a classroom piano; when Corigliano arrived last March, they were ready. None knew musical notation, so they brought scraps of paper with themes indicated simply by a string of letters - C, E, G - or carried tunes in their heads. Corigliano talked with the students, listened and eventually took down the airs.
At the same time, the CSO gathered recommendations for prospective composers - kids who were already dedicated musicians - from junior and senior high schools all around Illinois. Corigliano worked with Letterly, Carter and Orfe and divided among them 16 themes written by the Howland students. The teenagers’ assignment was meaty: use the melodies as building blocks in a full-scale orchestral work. The inducement: a pledge of three performances by the CSO.
“People said, ‘Can you really find these kids?’ We omit the idea, the possibility, that young people could compose,” says Corigliano. “In fact, it wasn’t hard to find them. They’re all over the country.” One of the most appealing aspects of the CSO project is that it encourages not only the gifted but the curious and the eager. It could serve as a model for orchestras from Atlanta to San Francisco - in fact, a few have already made inquiries. With American music education minimal, at best, it’s also timely. The National Commission on Music Education, which has just released its report “Growing Up Complete, the Imperative for Music Education,” warns that, without proper arts education, American children may grow up “right-brain damaged.”
Young composers, unlike performers, have a particularly tough time learning their craft and refining their art. “There are no roads open to them,” says Corigliano. “There’s no instruction. The school says, ‘Good luck, it’s nice you’re doing that, we can’t help you.’ Ask kids today who a composer is and they’ll say, ‘A stooped, white-haired old man. And dead.’ Composers are excluded not by intent but because nobody knows who they are.” They also have almost no way to judge the quality of their music. “If you manage to get your school orchestra to play your work, it sounds lousy, even if you’re Beethoven.”
Whether or not Orfe, Letterly or Carter will ever approach Beethoven isn’t important. “All three kids have real personalities already,” says Corigliano. Carter is “very American.” His “Adagio,” plaintive and folklike, shows off individual instruments. Orfe, who is only 14, produced a virtuoso piece clearly influenced by Mahler and Strauss. “It was like telling a kid in a candy store, ‘OK, we’re going to leave you alone here for two hours.’ He goes for the jugular. He took the players to their limits.” Letterly, 18, “soaked everything up like a sponge. He grew light years from where he started last summer,” Corigliano says. The Young Composers Project has also given participants a chance to shine among their peers. Recently Orfe’s chemistry teacher interrupted class so everyone could hear a radio feature on the young composers. Afterward, students turned to Orfe and asked admiringly, “You wrote that?”
At Orchestra Hall, each of the Howland students took a bow. Even if the unabashedly enthusiastic novices (some of whom prefer rap to Rachmaninoff) don’t pursue classical music, the composers project has set them on a great adventure. “They’re getting here at 5 o’clock in the morning,” reports principal Anita Broms. “They’re smiling and laughing and grinning at me and saying, ‘I heard my music’.” That, of course, may be the greatest legacy of all.
