by Jeffrey Bell-Hanson

During a recent professional conference of college orchestra conductors, I heard some early American orchestral music that was surprisingly good. When I say “early” American orchestral music, I mean the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Our orchestral tradition is not as old in the United States as it is in Europe. When I say “good,” I mean well-constructed and well-orchestrated. It was also well-performed, but that was not surprising at all. My colleagues in this organization can always be trusted to produce impressive performances. And I say it was “surprising” because, yet again, we discover that what we once thought was a trickle of musical activity at a particular time in our history begins to look more like a torrent.

The research effort that unearthed these pieces in the Library of Congress and brought them to light is also impressive. Some dedicated scholar/conductors have spent a lot of time and effort searching this music out and producing legible and critical performing materials. This effort and its immediate fruits are worthwhile and praiseworthy. It is one of the reasons that I have come to believe so strongly in the value and power of professional organizations like this one.* Our particular profession tends to isolate us on our campuses. It is a rare university or college in the US where more than one of us can be found. That isolation would eventually lead the best of us either to question ourselves too much or not enough. So our professional associations, when we engage in them earnestly and energetically, make us all better.

Observing that to be true might also prompt us to reflect on the freedom that we have to form these associations and pursue their goals unfettered by any limitations imposed from some governing authority. Though we may not often think of our professional lives in constitutional terms, freedom of association, with professional colleagues or anyone else, is enshrined in our constitution. The effect of the first amendment on the freedom that we have to live every aspect of our lives is sweeping and profound. It is the proverbial forest that we often do not see because we live inside of it. One of its trees is the freedom to define our individual lives in any way that we choose, including those with whom we make common cause. This freedom also extends to our right as academics to the unfettered pursuit of knowledge and the examination of our collective lives through the artifacts and documents that we produce.

That freedom also obligates us to assess the impact of what we find. As a general principle, sunlight is the best disinfectant. But it is possible to imagine objects or documents that have been consigned to the dustbin of history because that’s where they belong. No level of musical ingenuity or artistic quality may redeem them. Acceptance of that responsibility is how we maintain this liberty, and is the other side of the coin for those of us living in a free society. The often-used platitude, “freedom is not free,” is much more than a summons for some among us to serve in the military. It is a mandate for all of us to accept the responsibility of governing ourselves in a way that contributes to our constitutional ideals, and not to use our freedom without considering the impact of our actions on others.

Our American orchestral history is bound to be, like all our cultural history, complicated. Our composers, conductors, and even orchestral musicians right down to the back-desks have inevitably lent their efforts to support the ideals of our political and social culture, and the structures created by our founders to embody them. Wittingly or unwittingly, they have also inevitably supported whatever local power structures have arisen within the society—for both good and ill.

As we unearth the artifacts left to us by our musical predecessors, it is incumbent upon us to evaluate not only their technical and artistic merits, but also the values that they support. It is an ongoing debate for musicians. When should we consider a work of art too tainted with the evils of our past to render it irredeemable? And the correlating question, is a work so valuable artistically that the taint should not matter?

We can disagree about the answers to those questions in any given case. The only unforgiveable sin is not to ask—before we bring a work back into the light of day. Some of them will go back into the archive at least until they lose their power to call on our darker angels. Some may stay there forever, and we need to be okay with that.

*College Orchestra Directors Association codaweb.org