We have arrived safely in Budapest and will spend the next three days with my brother, sister-in-law, and niece before moving on to Bulgaria and a month with Marta’s family. The trip was relatively uneventful, but I will admit that one of the three landings had me scared witless. That happens from time to time.

In music related news, I was reading the “Weekend Journal” section of the Wall Street Journal Europe and came across an interesting article about digital orchestras and their growing influence in the classical music world. The article focused on Paul Henry Smith, the founder of the Fauxharmonic Orchestra and an advocate of creating digital music that is truly a realistic and artistic interpretation of the score.

When I was younger, I would have railed against Mr. Smith’s work and bemoaned it’s potential for destroying the livelihood of myself and particularly my performing colleagues. However, as I’ve gotten older, I’ve had a change of heart regarding this topic and now see virtual orchestras as yet another venue that creates the opportunity for the spread of classical concert music. I also fully understand that the world is constantly evolving and that classical music has survived greater catastrophe than the advent of digital music and will continue as an important part of the musical landscape. There are important drawbacks to this technology, such as the use of digital renditions of scores in lieu of pit orchestras and live musicians (particularly in London’s West End) as well as the loss of gigs for studio musicians. These are valid concerns, and could potentially be a tragic side effect of computerized performance, but as I mentioned before, I believe that evolution is natural and sometimes painful and unless there is a general audience revolt that manifests itself in a loss of profit, I don’t see the trend reversing itself.

A snippet from the article addresses this concern and I find Smith’s response to be fairly well-measured given the vitriol of the personal attack left on his website:

For Mr. Smith, this [Beethoven’s No. 7] will be a work of art. But that clearly isn’t the view of the person who put an anonymous posting on Mr. Smith’s Web site: “This man is evil. This project is evil. Die in hell.” Mr. Smith responds that the advance of computerized music is inevitable, and that musicians are better off taking control of it than leaving it in the hands of producers and executives.

I have to admit that I submitted an entry to their recent composition contest, which was a call for works for string orchestra that evoke the pathos of Samuel Barber’s famous Adagio. The winner of the competition wins a cash award, a digital recording and a performance of the work by the Baltimore Chamber Orchestra. I felt a twinge of guilt at the moment of submission, but the potential for a live performance and the opportunity to be named the “Master of Melancholy” was simply impossible to ignore. (What artist could resist this potential moniker?)

Does that make me a hypocrite or enemy of live music? I do not believe so, as I firmly believe that nothing can replace the experience and emotive power of a live performance and I honestly (and optimistically) foresee a future where live music and technology can co-exist, providing wider opportunities for the art that I love as well as maintaining the important tradition of live performance.

I’m sure that this post will generate some response from my readers and I’m especially interested in hearing from the performers who read this blog. What are your feelings? Do you agree with Johan Schodl, the Austrian musician who recorded trombone samples for the Vienna Symphonic Library and doesn’t see it as a threat to his livelihood, or do you see computerized performance as a legitimate threat to live music?