Alan Shockley

Department of Music, University of Pittsburgh
afs7@pitt.edu

Alan Shockley's research, "New Music and the American Symphony Orchestra," examines the details and questions the vitality of newly penned orchestral music in the U.S. over the past few years. With U.S. orchestras radically restructuring themselves or simply folding in quite palpable numbers, and with their playlists still heavily focused on masterworks of nineteenth-century German composers, there's very little that's "new" about orchestral music in the U.S. Yet young composers are still being taught that writing for the symphony orchestra is an essential skill. How do we reconcile this discrepancy? Shockley will survey organizations that monitor U.S. orchestral repertoire as well as examine the connections between composer and orchestra that some American arts organizations foster. How do the orchestras' playlists affect the output of today's composer? How is composition for orchestra in the U.S. a market-determined act?