Ask An Expert: Pecking Orders & Patriarchy
We always seem to get good new Ask An Expert questions right after we perform a set of Inside the Classics shows, and this month is no exception. Mark Mironer starts us off with a classic "If A>B, and X>Y, then when is X>B?" conundrum...
Q: Ok, so first violin is generally more prestigious (and difficult) than second violin, and being a "titled" player is more prestigious (and difficult) than being non-titled. So, is it better to be a titled second violinist than a non-titled first violinist? How does the pecking order work?
A great question with no clear answer beyond personal preference, I'd say. It's true that the Principal Second Violin will almost always make a bit more money than a section player in the firsts. (Emphasis on "a bit." Except for the very most prominent players in the orchestra, titled players don't make nearly as much overscale as you might imagine.)
But playing second violin can be a hard and thankless job. They play fewer melodies and more backing textures than any other instrument group in the orchestra, and that can really mess with your playing technique if you're not careful. So for many violinists, being in charge of a section is less important than being challenged every day by first violin parts, which can be wickedly difficult. Case in point: this past year, our orchestra's longtime Principal Second, Vali Phillips, voluntarily moved into a section chair in the firsts. He seems quite happy, and while his replacement at the head of the seconds, the estimable Gina DiBello, now technically outranks him, it certainly doesn't mean that my admiration of Vali's skills has diminished in the slightest.
So I guess what it comes down to is finding the right balance between the challenge of playing your instrument and the challenge of leadership. There's no single answer that works for everyone.
Moving on, Ruth Ann Marks has a question about a different sort of orchestral hierarchy:
Q: On New Year’s Day I watched two televised concerts: one by the New York Philharmonic and one by the Vienna Philharmonic. I was struck by the gender difference between the two groups as I did not see any women musicians playing in the VPO! (However, I believe that the VPO actually has at least one (?) official female member.) From the internet I have gleaned that the reason for the VPO’s lack of female musicians relates to their assumption that men produce a unique quality of sound. What is your take on this? I find this argument contrary to my experience listening to the Minnesota Orchestra; when Jorja Fleezanis is concert master, I feel that the MN Orchestra is at its best. (And Sarah Kwak is pretty amazing too!)
(Yes. Yes, she is.) Without getting too deep into the specifics of the Vienna situation (you can read the whole sorry history of their continuing exclusion of women elsewhere,) I think it's safe to say that every musician I know would laugh at the outmoded and absurd idea that an all-male orchestra is in any way preferable. Yes, the Vienna Phil is one of the world's great orchestras, and has nearly no female players. But the Berlin Phil is at least Vienna's equal, and they've got tons of women in their ranks. (As does nearly every other great orchestra in the Western world.) The one just has no connection to the other.
Interestingly, it was this argument that women were incapable of performing at a high enough level to be admitted to major orchestras that led, in part, to the process of "screened" auditions that so many orchestras (especially in America) now use. If women couldn't compete at a man's level, went the theory, then there should be no harm in having the orchestra make it's hiring decisions without being able to see the candidates. Not surprisingly, it was around this time that women started to be hired in abundance.
The Minnesota Orchestra is currently made up of 2/3 men and 1/3 women, which actually surprised me when I counted, because I thought it would be closer to 50/50. (Our orchestra admitted its first female member, violinist Jenny Cullen, way back in 1923, much to the dismay of many of the men in the orchestra at the time.) Our violin sections are overwhelmingly female, and our cello section has a solid majority of women as well. So from the audience, our band probably appears to have fewer men than we actually do. But brass sections are nearly always dominated by men, as are bass sections. (We'll be getting a new female bass player in the fall, our first since I've been in the orchestra.) And oddly, our viola section is overwhelmingly male, which is quite unusual, and I don't really have an explanation for it, except to say that it's definitely not that way on purpose.
In any case, Ruth is certainly right that Jorja Fleezanis and Sarah Kwak stand as living refutations of the notion that women lack the qualities necessary to play in, or lead, an orchestra. And eventually, even the Vienna Phil will get over themselves and join the modern world...
Q: Ok, so first violin is generally more prestigious (and difficult) than second violin, and being a "titled" player is more prestigious (and difficult) than being non-titled. So, is it better to be a titled second violinist than a non-titled first violinist? How does the pecking order work?
A great question with no clear answer beyond personal preference, I'd say. It's true that the Principal Second Violin will almost always make a bit more money than a section player in the firsts. (Emphasis on "a bit." Except for the very most prominent players in the orchestra, titled players don't make nearly as much overscale as you might imagine.)
But playing second violin can be a hard and thankless job. They play fewer melodies and more backing textures than any other instrument group in the orchestra, and that can really mess with your playing technique if you're not careful. So for many violinists, being in charge of a section is less important than being challenged every day by first violin parts, which can be wickedly difficult. Case in point: this past year, our orchestra's longtime Principal Second, Vali Phillips, voluntarily moved into a section chair in the firsts. He seems quite happy, and while his replacement at the head of the seconds, the estimable Gina DiBello, now technically outranks him, it certainly doesn't mean that my admiration of Vali's skills has diminished in the slightest.
So I guess what it comes down to is finding the right balance between the challenge of playing your instrument and the challenge of leadership. There's no single answer that works for everyone.
Moving on, Ruth Ann Marks has a question about a different sort of orchestral hierarchy:
Q: On New Year’s Day I watched two televised concerts: one by the New York Philharmonic and one by the Vienna Philharmonic. I was struck by the gender difference between the two groups as I did not see any women musicians playing in the VPO! (However, I believe that the VPO actually has at least one (?) official female member.) From the internet I have gleaned that the reason for the VPO’s lack of female musicians relates to their assumption that men produce a unique quality of sound. What is your take on this? I find this argument contrary to my experience listening to the Minnesota Orchestra; when Jorja Fleezanis is concert master, I feel that the MN Orchestra is at its best. (And Sarah Kwak is pretty amazing too!)
(Yes. Yes, she is.) Without getting too deep into the specifics of the Vienna situation (you can read the whole sorry history of their continuing exclusion of women elsewhere,) I think it's safe to say that every musician I know would laugh at the outmoded and absurd idea that an all-male orchestra is in any way preferable. Yes, the Vienna Phil is one of the world's great orchestras, and has nearly no female players. But the Berlin Phil is at least Vienna's equal, and they've got tons of women in their ranks. (As does nearly every other great orchestra in the Western world.) The one just has no connection to the other.
Interestingly, it was this argument that women were incapable of performing at a high enough level to be admitted to major orchestras that led, in part, to the process of "screened" auditions that so many orchestras (especially in America) now use. If women couldn't compete at a man's level, went the theory, then there should be no harm in having the orchestra make it's hiring decisions without being able to see the candidates. Not surprisingly, it was around this time that women started to be hired in abundance.
The Minnesota Orchestra is currently made up of 2/3 men and 1/3 women, which actually surprised me when I counted, because I thought it would be closer to 50/50. (Our orchestra admitted its first female member, violinist Jenny Cullen, way back in 1923, much to the dismay of many of the men in the orchestra at the time.) Our violin sections are overwhelmingly female, and our cello section has a solid majority of women as well. So from the audience, our band probably appears to have fewer men than we actually do. But brass sections are nearly always dominated by men, as are bass sections. (We'll be getting a new female bass player in the fall, our first since I've been in the orchestra.) And oddly, our viola section is overwhelmingly male, which is quite unusual, and I don't really have an explanation for it, except to say that it's definitely not that way on purpose.
In any case, Ruth is certainly right that Jorja Fleezanis and Sarah Kwak stand as living refutations of the notion that women lack the qualities necessary to play in, or lead, an orchestra. And eventually, even the Vienna Phil will get over themselves and join the modern world...
Labels: ask an expert, inside the orchestra, women in music
posted by Sam at
11:33 AM
6 Comments:
Idly comparing rosters in some Boston Symphony concert programs, I observed that the non-endowed first violinists swapped places with the non-endowed second violinists. I wondered whether that really happened, or whether it was a big typographical error.
When a vacancy in a section position or in a titled position comes up, would an interested current orchestra member have to audition/compete for the slot against external applicants?
In the case of an open titled position, RN, yes, any auditioning orchestra member would compete at an open audition with candidates from outside the orchestra. Under the terms of our contract, however, members of the orchestra are automatically advanced to the final round of the audition and can skip the preliminaries. (This does not generally turn out to be as much of an advantage as you might think.)
For open section positions, no existing member of the orchestra would need to audition, because our section strings use a system of revolving seating, wherein we all switch chairs on a regular basis, so no one section player outranks any other...
On the first/second violin issue, I have another question: Would it be feasible to have the players switch sections on a regular basis, or simply flip the sections? Last year I saw a concert by the Schleswig-Holstein Festival Orchestra, and the first violins in the first half played second violin in the second half, and vice versa.
Now, I could see how a student festival orchestra doing this is a different matter than a professional orchestra. First, there's simply the matter of determining what pieces you do this with, i.e. do you always have the same first violin section every time you play Brahms 1? If not, maybe you'll waste a lot of rehearsal time as each section has to learn the new part. And would you flip the concertmaster and principal second violin, or keep the first two desks always the same? And so on.
So a lot of possible complications, but in terms of providing some challenge, varying the experience, etc., might it be worth trying out?
It could certainly be done, Anonymous, but I don't know of any orchestras that actually do it. I would think that the major difficulty of implementing a system like that, though, would be convincing the existing first violins that they'll be playing second half the time.
That having been said, we do have one or two violinists who regularly flit between sections when someone is sick or we have an open position. The thinking is that, if the firsts are short a player, it's better to flip one of our seconds over to them, and hire a substitute to play second violin. But of course, we also regularly place subs in the firsts, so it's situational...
On the switching sections issue, in some orchestras, including the Boston example cited by a previous blogger and in Chicago, violinists rotate within their own sections and between sections. This not only benefits the technique of all involved, but can relieve repetitive motion/physical isuues (right shoulders for the 2nds who suspend their right arms to play on lower strings most of the time, and lefthands for 1sts who are contorted to play in higher positions frequently).
Just as rotating seating has improved the tightness of the ensemble since we started it in the MN orch, I suspect that rotating between sections (for interested volunteers) would do the same, as the sense of timing is slightly different from one group to the other.
Sam, musicians enjoy reading the great questions from the ITC audience.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home