Robert P. Commanday, Editor

A crucial element in our musical world is leadership, yet it is almost never discussed in print. Artistic leadership yes, the directors of opera companies and symphonies are fair and frequent game. But no one writes, for example, about the board leadership that will make or break a musical enterprise. The failure of the original Oakland Symphony needn't have happened, save for an incompetent president. The chain of symphonic disasters in Sacramento, on the brink of repeating itself yet again, is almost entirely attributable to the board leadership not to the audiences.

Conversely, equal inattention is paid to those responsible for the success stories, like the great support for the San Francisco Symphony and the big turnaround for the San Francisco Opera, directly due to particular individual Leaders, with a capital L. Good or bad, great or indifferent, however, there will always be board presidents, their quality determined by the dynamics in each community.

Much rarer and by no means guaranteed to be there is that other kind of leader, the doyen or doyenne of the profession. In the larger scheme, these musician/statesmen are most important. In our times, Yehudi Menuhin and Isaac Stern, and before them, Pablo Casals, were exemplars, singular in their contributions to the musical society as a whole and to particular sectors. Capitalizing on their reputations and the respect in which they were held, they spoke out for the big causes, education in music notably, but on other issues as well, broad ones and particular ones. Menuhin for example, voluntarily appearing before the San Francisco Board of Education, about 15 years ago, spoke so eloquently that his testimony saved 15 or 20 music teacher-specialist jobs that were about to be cut. Stern is of course best known for his key role in saving Carnegie Hall and as a guiding figure in the creation and early days of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Now, however, there's no longer anyone out there in front. As longtime participant and spokesman Gunther Schuller said yesterday, "That's all gone." The renowned composer, conductor, educator and artistic director has been in town to conduct the Marin Symphony Sunday and this evening, and to attend last night's performance of his Sonata for Alto Saxophone and Piano by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. The presence in the area of such an outspoken voice for many important causes in music brought the subject of music leadership to the surface.

"We don't have any spokespersons for contemporary music or challenging music of any kind, whether 100 years old or written today," he said. "In the past we had such people--Mitropoulos, Bernstein. The only one who as a conductor speaks out and programs new music is Leonard Slatkin. The others are playing it safe. They play their annual premiere that someone else paid for. That's not a commitment. The people who had a commitment--Stokowski, Koussevitzky, Klemperer--they're just gone."

If anyone knows about this, it's Schuller, winner of the Pulitzer Prize (1994) for his orchestral work, Of Reminiscences and Reflections, of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship among many major awards (including the 1994 Musical America's Composer of the Year), for his election as one of the 26 original members of the American Classical Music Hall of Fame, his presidency of the New England Conservatory of Music, 1967-77, and artistic directorship of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood, his four books and other writings, his conducting and most important, a large and distinguished corpus of compositions.

"A whole new breed and species of people has taken over in a field that I find now to be characterized by safe programming, catering essentially to the audience tastes, with no risk taking, financial or otherwise," Schuller continued, "don't offend anybody."

Schuller sees this situation as the consequence of television--- "network television. By that I mean, if we're talking about culture or we're talking about art--those things for which society is eventually celebrated and remembered-- those things do not exist on television, except on public television and radio, and then to a minimal extent. You have a TV landscape on which Beethoven, the most prominent and popular composer, is not played, nor Duke Ellington or Charlie Parker... Except when by some accident of fate, there's, say, something like a Picasso sold at auction for 5 million dollars, then because money is involved, it is news and reported.

"If you have 35 or 40 years of such inattention to anything that smacks of culture or art, then you create through three generations a people of cultural illiteracy, which then makes it impossible for someone like me even to get on television to be a spokesman. We sit around and gripe and there's nothing we can do. Today if something is not on television, in effect it does not exist in the larger society. I'm old enough to have seen this change from the glory days of TV and radio in the ‘40s and ‘50s. It's now a lost thing.

"There's a creeping paralysis in our society. When you look back over a ten year period, you see how much we lost in integrity, adventurousness, taking risks and challenging. At the bottom line are consultants telling us what to do in our institutions, the number crunchers."

Schuller has done more than his part. As a conductor, as a leader at the New England Conservatories and the Berkshire and Sandpoint Festivals, and later through his two self-underwritten music publishing companies, he espoused the music of other composers. "I just sold my two publishing companies to G. Schirmer," Schuller explained. "I did this idealistic thing for composers, promoting and selling as best I could, but then I had to subsidize my companies with $40 to $50 thousand annually. I could do this because it was a tiny company, I had the mobility, and I was crazy enough to do this because I believed in it." So he was carrying water on both shoulders, and speaking out. By his admission today, he paid a price.

"I used to be more of a spokesmen for lots of things, for all kinds of justice in the music field, but I'm out of the loop and kind of ignored nowadays. A lot of people hate my guts because I have been so outspoken and there are people who will not help because they consider something you said to be outrageous. You pay for that."

Before this current mini-Schuller festival, there have been hardly any Schuller performances here for a long time. A group called the Worn Ensemble is performing two separate all-Schuller programs on Saturday and next Monday in the Chapel at the San Francisco Presidio.

Classics are pieces that survive because they still work. The orchestra directors in our region, and elsewhere, in their infatuation with the latest and the trendy, including the so-called "mavericks" (oh, what a catchy term), have no interest in discovering or rediscovering the American classics of the older generation of composers who are still alive.

Of course there are different kinds of musical leaders, or rather, different ways of leading. Last night, the local PBS television station aired the splendid Great Performances documentary, Aida's Brothers and Sisters: Black Voices in Opera. A tribute pervading through the 90 minute show was paid Marian Anderson who, through her peerless gift and magnificent, noble manner, paved the way. That was leadership without verbal assertiveness. The persuasive eloquence was in her singing and presence. Those who followed--Leontyne Price, Grace Bumbry, Shirley Verrett, Reri Grist and on, and the too few male singers to break opera's barrier--were also leaders, by magnificent example.

But, the advocacy for breadth, change and challenge in repertory that can influence the course of our musical life and history must come from a different source. It seems to require conductors whose commitment matches their curiosity and vision. Composers don't seem to be convincing as advocates in the dramatic terms that are apparently necessary, not even Aaron Copland, although he tried mightily and did make a significant impression. For broad persuasiveness in major issues of music other than repertory, statesmen, spokespersons of stature and eloquence are essential. For that, celebrity status or stardom may be a first requirement, but far more is needed. It wants a sense of mission and an agenda that transcends career and personal ambition.