January 23, 2005 Regular folks find joy in music commissions By Anne Midgette New York Times News Service Published January 23, 2005 Jack and Linda Hoeschler had a wedding anniversary coming up. It was their 15th. To celebrate, they considered having a tea dance, because they met at one. But they also wanted something more for their guests and for themselves. Linda Hoeschler, who was working at the Dayton Hudson Foundation in Minneapolis at the time, had an idea. She had recently advised the two composers who had founded the Minnesota Composers Forum. Why not, she suggested to her husband, commission a piece of music from one of them? The Hoeschlers' two children play flute, oboe, cello and piano, so Linda Hoeschler asked Stephen Paulus to write a piece for those instruments. She asked Paulus how much he charged, and he answered $100 a minute. "Well," she told him, "it's for our 15th anniversary, so how about 15 minutes?" He agreed, and eight months and $1,500 later, "Courtship Songs for a Summer's Eve" was given its premiere at the Minnesota Club in St. Paul, during a 40-minute private concert. Last summer the couple celebrated their 38th anniversary. In the intervening years, the piece had taken on a life of its own and been recorded twice. The Hoeschlers still vividly recall its debut. "It was great fun," Jack Hoeschler, a lawyer, recently said from his home in St. Paul. "It was so much fun we decided to have him do the whole thing again five years later." That was just the beginning. They have since commissioned, in whole or in part, some 70 works, including, every five years, a new anniversary piece from Paulus. Anyone can do it Patronage of music by individuals may seem like a throwback to the days when nobles maintained court orchestras with composers to write for them. Today, a few private donors have made names for themselves by commissioning new music (notably Betty Freeman, who since the 1960s has supported the likes of John Adams, Steve Reich, Morton Feldman and John Cage), but most of the big patrons of contemporary music are linked with institutions, giving money to symphony orchestras, operas and new concert halls. As it turns out, anyone can commission a piece of music. Like the Hoeschlers, Maurice and Lillian Barbash, who live on Long Island, were inspired to celebrate their 40th anniversary with music. They asked Yo-Yo Ma which composer he would like to write a cello concerto for him. He chose Leon Kirchner, and the piece went on to win a Grammy. Under its president, Heather Hitchens, the arts group Meet the Composer is trying to get the word out about private patronage. "A lot of people didn't know this was something an individual could do," Hitchens said. "They had a lot of misunderstandings about it. They had wild ideas about how expensive it would be." "It sounds so lofty, so unapproachable," said Jennifer Basye Sander, who raised money in Sacramento to commission a new work from Andre Previn, inspired by the works of the painter Wayne Thiebaud, another Sacramento citizen. The piece will have its premiere in April. The Hoeschlers are walking advertisements for the joys of commissioning. Ten years and a dozen pieces after their first one, they formed a club, like an investment club, to share the fun of creating new works. Five couples each commit to giving $2,000 a year for five years. The club has been going strong ever since, commissioning works that have been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra, the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the choir of King's College, Cambridge, and others. Kathryn Gould, a venture capitalist who lives in the Menlo Park area in California, had a different motivation. Having heard a lot of new music that she didn't like, she wanted to help create a repertory that she could enjoy. She plunged into commissioning with a vengeance. Her mammoth project, Magnum Opus, involves nine new orchestral works, each to be played by San Francisco Bay area orchestras. "I'm now one of the largest private patrons," Gould, who also collects art, said recently. "That's kind of hair-raising, considering that it's not all that much money I'm putting into it. I haven't added it all up, but all told, it's probably about half a million dollars. I hope I can inspire people who have the means and the interest -- and the patience, I might add." It's an open field. You could buy paintings for years without approaching the level of leading art collectors. But individual music commissioners are being sought for some of the top musicians in the field. Midori and Vadim Repin recently approached Meet the Composer to help them find patrons for four short works for solo violin. The works will cost $3,500 to $5,000. Of course, there's a major difference between buying a painting by Modigliani and commissioning a piece to be played by Midori. You can't hang a piece for Midori on your wall. You don't own the rights. "At the end of the day, you have a few fun evenings and a CD," Gould said. "When you collect paintings you have something that goes up in value. You can actually make money. What I do in music is strictly altruistic." High cost of recording Much of the time, you don't even get a CD. The musicians' union is notoriously strict about licensing recordings; musicians have to be properly paid for their performances, which means the cost of a professional-quality recording is often as much as the cost of commissioning and performing a work in the first place. Chrys Wu, a freelance writer in Los Angeles, contributed money toward a piece by Pierre Jalbert. Last year the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra gave the work its premiere. "It was phenomenal, especially the last movement," Wu recalled. But she couldn't get a recording of it. "I was like: `You don't have to give me the whole thing. Just give me the last movement."' Wu was part of Sound Investment, a commissioning club established by the orchestra as a way to generate new work. The club finances a new piece each year, giving members, who contribute as little as $250 a work, access to the composer and rehearsals. If $250 is too much, there's always Bang on a Can's People's Commissioning Fund, which you can join for as little as $5. Begun in 1999, it awards three commissions a year, and Bang on a Can presents them in a concert (this year on Feb. 3 in Manhattan). The Hoeschlers and their club have come to their own understanding of the commissioner's role: They use their business experience to act as advocates for the composers they commission. For example, they arranged for an orchestra to pay for photocopying the parts of a score (a not inconsiderable expense, and one the composer often has to swallow). "We view ourselves as executive producers," Jack Hoeschler said. "Sometimes the orchestras need to be straightened up a bit: `Come on, you can do better than that.' We'll pay for the commission, but we want the orchestra to have some skin in the game."