FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF MUSIC

DEFINING SOUND, CONFRONTING HIERARCHIES:

A STUDY OF THE AMERICAN WIND ENSEMBLE COMMUNITY

By
KATE SUTTON STORHOFF

A Dissertation submitted to the

College of Music
in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

2018




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Kate Sutton Storhoff defended this dissertation on March 21, 2018.

The members of the supervisory committee were:

Denise Von Glahn

Professor Directing Dissertation

Leigh Edwards

University Representative

Charles Brewer

Committee Member

Michael Broyles

Committee Member

James Mathes

Committee Member

The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies

that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements.

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation was made possible by the support and assistance of many. I am most

grateful to my advisor, Denise Von Glahn, who believed in this project from the very beginning, and

my dissertation committee members, Charles Brewer, Michael Broyles, Leigh Edwards, and James

Mathes. The FSU Musicology department provided me with exemplary role models in both the

faculty and my fellow students. I would particularly like to thank Sarah Eyerly, Frank Gunderson,

Sara Nodine, and Douglass Seaton for their mentorship throughout my time at Florida State.

Without the individuals who graciously agreed to speak with me, this dissertation would not

exist. I would like to thank Steven Bryant, Richard Clary, Michael Daugherty, Michael Haithcock,

Caroline Hand, Jennifer Jolley, Jerry Junkin, John Mackey, Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, Jonathan

Newman, Joel Puckett, and Mark Scatterday for talking about the band community with me. Their

insight shaped this project immensely; more importantly, their generosity with their time emphasized

the supportive nature of the community they represent. I would be remiss if I did not also thank the

many music educators who instilled a love for both the clarinet and band music, especially Nancy

Caston, Robert Caston, Judy Hare, Michael Isadore, Richard Shanley, and Rick Yancey. My college

band directors at Baylor and Florida State, Eric Wilson and Richard Clary, not only inspired me daily

with their passion for and knowledge about wind music, but also encouraged and supported my

research goals.

I am grateful to my friends and family who have supported me throughout the writing

process, especially Casey Knowlton, Kate Medic, Kelly Young, and my parents, Lesley and Greg.

Annie Jones and my coworkers at The Bookshelf provided a necessary haven during the year I spent

writing. Finally, I could not have done this without the love and support of my husband, Tim.

iii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................................ vii

ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................................viii
INTRODUCTION: THE AMERICAN WIND ENSEMBLE ................................................................ 1
Defining the Wind Ensemble ...................................................................................................................... 5
Four Threads of Community ....................................................................................................................... 7
CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN WIND ENSEMBLE
COMMUNITY .................................................................................................................................................. 9
What is Community? ...................................................................................................................................12
The Historiography of the Wind Ensemble Community ......................................................................17
Why is the Wind Ensemble Community Unique? ..................................................................................24
Exploring the Wind Ensemble Community ............................................................................................29
CHAPTER TWO: AMERICAN BANDS IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH
CENTURIES ...................................................................................................................................................31
Early American Bands and the Beginning of a Descent Community ..................................................32
American Bands before the Nineteenth Century ...............................................................................34
American Bands before the Civil War ..................................................................................................37
American Bands during the Civil War ..................................................................................................39
Patrick Gilmore and John Philip Sousa ....................................................................................................41
Patrick Gilmore ........................................................................................................................................41
John Philip Sousa .....................................................................................................................................46
After Sousa: Bands in the Early-Mid Twentieth Century ......................................................................53
Edwin Franko and Richard Franko Goldman ....................................................................................53
The Founding of ABA ............................................................................................................................55
The Goldman Band Commissions........................................................................................................59
The Founding of CBDNA .....................................................................................................................65
Conclusions ..................................................................................................................................................68
CHAPTER THREE: FREDERICK FENNELL AND THE WIND ENSEMBLE CONCEPT ...71
Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble: The Formation of a Dissent Community ..74
Fennell’s Vision........................................................................................................................................78
The Wind Ensemble Concept Spreads: Frank Battisti and Robert Boudreau ...............................84
The Wind Ensemble and Its Evolving Sound .........................................................................................90

iv
 Flexible Instrumentation ........................................................................................................................90
Texture and Timbre ................................................................................................................................94
Virtuosity...................................................................................................................................................96
Case Study: Steven Bryant’s Concerto for Wind Ensemble ..............................................................98
The Wind Ensemble and American Musical Culture .......................................................................... 102
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................... 108
CHAPTER FOUR: RELATIONSHIPS AND HIERARCHIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY
AMERICAN WIND ENSEMBLE COMMUNITY ............................................................................. 110
“We Exist for Each Other”: The Wind Ensemble as Affinity Community .................................... 112
Enacting Relationships in the Wind Ensemble Community.......................................................... 114
Professional Organizations: ABA and CBDNA .............................................................................. 117
Composer-Conductor Relationships ................................................................................................. 119
Repertoire and Canonicity ....................................................................................................................... 127
The Wind Band Canon ........................................................................................................................ 131
Canonical Works of the Wind Ensemble ......................................................................................... 137
Perspectives on Twenty-First-Century Repertoire .......................................................................... 144
The Canon in Practice ......................................................................................................................... 152
Hierarchies and the Wind Ensemble Community ............................................................................... 155
Within the Wind Band Community ................................................................................................... 155
Within Academia .................................................................................................................................. 158
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................... 159
CHAPTER FIVE: GENDER IN THE WIND ENSEMBLE COMMUNITY ............................... 161
Gender in Academic Music Communities ............................................................................................ 165
Gender and Instrumental Music: A Brief Historical Overview ......................................................... 170
Gender in the Contemporary Wind Ensemble Community .............................................................. 180
Women Wind Ensemble Conductors: A Summary ........................................................................ 180
CBDNA 2017: A Case Study in Gender Representation ............................................................... 186
Women Composers and the Wind Ensemble: Challenges and Advances ................................... 192
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................................... 205
CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................................................ 208
APPENDIX A: GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS ......................................................................... 214
APPENDIX B: INSTRUMENTATION OF SELECTED BANDS ................................................. 215
APPENDIX C: DISSERTATIONS ABOUT WIND BAND REPERTOIRE ................................ 219

v
APPENDIX D: TOWNER’S WORKS OF “ARTISTIC MERIT” .................................................... 220
APPENDIX E: REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN AT CBDNA NATIONAL
CONFERENCES, 2001-2017 .................................................................................................................... 225
APPENDIX F: WIND ENSEMBLE WORKS BY WOMEN CONPOSERS ................................ 226
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................................ 227
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ..................................................................................................................... 235

vi
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 3.1 Steven Bryant, Concerto for Wind Ensemble, instrumentation .......................................... 100
Figure 3.2. Steven Bryant, Concerto for Wind Ensemble, antiphonal placements.............................. 101
Figure 3.3. Hunsberger’s diagram of terms for groups of wind instruments........................................ 103

vii
 ABSTRACT

This dissertation explores the American wind ensemble community, specifically focusing on

the relationships between composers and conductors. Using Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s definition of

musical communities, the history of the wind ensemble is traced from its roots in the American

band tradition, a community shaped by processes of descent; its founding in the 1950s through

processes of dissent; and ending with today’s thriving community shaped primarily by processes of

affinity. My study of the contemporary wind ensemble community draws upon interviews with

community members as well as observations at the 2017 meeting of the College Band Directors

National Association. Each chapter considers one of four themes that are important to wind

ensemble insiders: American national heritage, sound palettes, hierarchies and canonicity, and

gender, specifically the privileging of male participants over female ones. These elements also affect

the relationships that form the backbone of a historically vital American music community.

Today, composer-conductor relationships form the fundamental bonds of the wind

ensemble community. Wind ensemble conductors value contemporary American composers and

emphasize new music and repertoire growth; as a new generation of composers emerges, an

increasing level of outside attention is given to the wind ensemble. Overall, the wind ensemble

community represents a vibrant part of American musical culture: one that is worthy of further

study and of attention from outsiders of the community. The composers and conductors

interviewed for this project were welcoming and eager to talk about their work; their enthusiasm

about the community of which they are a part emphasized the value and vitality of wind ensemble

music. While American musical culture is changing rapidly, especially as the clout of the symphony

orchestra and its canon decline, the band’s adaptability and resilience over the course of the nation’s

history suggests that the tradition of wind music will continue to thrive if its community actively and

enthusiastically changes with the times.

viii
 INTRODUCTION

THE AMERICAN WIND ENSEMBLE

The wind ensemble has one of the most important contemporary communities in terms of

its support of new American music. It is a tightknit group that defines the repertoire and

performance practice for a specific kind of band music, one that is distinct from that played by

athletic bands and concert bands; it inhabits a liminal place between these groups and the more

culturally valued symphony orchestra. The community includes conductors and composers, who

enjoy symbiotic relationships with one another, as well as the performers in the ensembles, who are

most often college or university students. Because the wind ensemble is a relatively recent creation

and has a repertoire that spans just sixty years, conductors need new and innovative works to fulfill

their aspirations for the group. As a result, conductors regularly commission works from emerging

American composers, whose careers benefit greatly from becoming part of the wind ensemble

community. The relationships between conductors and composers are paramount to the success of

the community.

The ensemble has existed officially since 1952, when conductor Frederick Fennell founded

the Eastman Wind Ensemble. He intended it to be a group separate from the traditional concert

band and believed that there was a “genuine need and place for another wind instrument

organization,” one that would focus on playing technically demanding and timbrally exciting works

for winds and percussion.1 Fennell’s ensemble used flexible instrumentation and little doubling,

which meant that composers could write for any combination of wind and percussion instruments

that they chose, as well as compose challenging music that demanded soloistic playing. Fennell also

added the harp, string bass, and piano (sometimes celeste or organ) to the standard instrumentation.

1 Frederick Fennell, Time and the Winds (Huntersville, NC: NorthLand Music Publishers, 2009), 57.

1
The new ensemble could thus play not only a variety of new works by contemporary composers, but

it could also bring to life what were at the time rarely performed masterpieces of generations past,

including Mozart’s three Serenades for Winds, Dvořák’s Wind Serenade, and Stravinsky’s Symphonies

of Wind Instruments. Fennell invited composers to write for the group by emphasizing their freedom

to imagine any combination of wind and percussion instruments they desired. Percy Grainger and

Vincent Persichetti were among those who responded to Fennell’s invitation, composing original

works for the newly created ensemble that ranged from short, overture-style pieces to full-fledged

symphonies. A small but strong community of conductors and composers coalesced in the years

immediately after the founding of the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

Fennell’s group was immediately accepted by university and college band programs as an

important addition to their institutional offerings alongside existing athletic and concert bands, and

today the presence of wind ensembles in music schools is prevalent. In addition to these collegiate

groups, there are professional wind ensembles including the Dallas Winds and the Keystone Wind

Ensemble. Some military concert bands have also adopted the wind ensemble approach, including

“The President’s Own” Marine Band and The United States Army Band, “Pershing’s Own.” The

wind ensemble continues to thrive in the twenty-first century commissioning and performing new

works every year. Contemporary composers continue the legacy of Frederick Fennell, who died in

2004, and their advocacy is met by a commitment to the wind ensemble from contemporary

composers. While established names like William Bolcom and John Corigliano have embraced the

group, it also provides a forum for up-and-coming composers. Achieving success in the American

symphony orchestra community, a group that has focused primarily on European works since its

establishment in the nineteenth century, is difficult for most contemporary composers. Many of

them turn to the wind ensemble knowing their works will be received and performed eagerly within

a culture that has been created with them in mind by the conductors who lead these groups.

2
 I have been part of the university wind ensemble community for nine years. I grew up in

Texas, a state where band is enthusiastically supported in high school programs, and I went to

Baylor University to major in instrumental music education. I played with the Baylor Wind

Ensemble for four years, and I played with the Florida State University Wind Orchestra for three

out of my five years as a musicology student. During my seven years as a member of a university

wind ensemble, I performed at national or state conferences four times. I was awed by the size and

enthusiasm of our audiences. These performances were my initiation to the larger wind ensemble

community.

Performing in university wind ensembles offered many opportunities to work with living

composers. Even in high school, when I participated in the Texas All-State program, I met and

interacted with the composers whose music I was playing. While I still admired orchestral

composers like Beethoven, Brahms, and Mahler, my experiences performing wind ensemble music

instilled an interest in living composers and an enthusiasm for new American music at a young age.

My involvements in youth orchestras and university orchestras furthered my interest in the canonical

European composers, while, in contrast, participation in wind ensembles led me to discover

contemporary composers. Over the past decade I have played in groups that worked directly with

composers including Steven Bryant, John Mackey, Jonathan Newman, Carter Pann, Narong

Prangcharoen, and Joel Puckett, several of whom served as interview subjects for this dissertation.

In 2013, as a new graduate student at Florida State University, I attended the national

meeting of the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA); this was the first time I was

not a performer at the event. I heard premieres of new works, met composers and conductors, and

saw research presentations on band topics. I quickly realized two things, however: first, the wind

ensemble community was unusually tightknit, and, second, I was not the typical member of the

community: I was studying musicology, not conducting or music education. Even though all these

3
communities are housed in academia, musicologists and wind ensemble conductors rarely mix. Many

conductors I talked to in 2013 expressed surprise that I was a musicology student interested in

researching contemporary wind ensemble music. They routinely asked where I went to school and

expressed surprise that I was allowed to research band music. With good reason, perhaps, band

conductors assumed that musicologists were not interested in band music. Until recently, with few

exceptions the only people who wrote about band music were band conductors. Their experience

had been my own: I had also been told by musicologists at other universities that I could not write

about contemporary band music and be taken seriously as a scholar. Attending my first CBDNA

conference as one of the only musicologists was revealing: I was treated as an outsider in the

community until conductors learned that I played with the FSU Wind Orchestra and had completed

an instrumental music education degree at Baylor; then they recognized me as an insider as well. I

was a member of two communities that rarely mixed, and I didn’t quite fit into either because of my

role in the other.

Furthermore, my place in the wind ensemble community required me to negotiate gender as

an issue that imbalanced the community. As a clarinetist in wind ensembles I had not thought much

about gender—there are many female clarinetists in both the wind ensemble and larger band

community—but the membership of CBDNA made the gender imbalance immediately obvious. I

already knew that most band conductors were male, but it was still shocking to realize how out of

place I was as a woman, especially a young woman. At times, I felt as if I stumbled into a fraternity

reunion. I roomed with two other women at the 2013 conference, both of whom were pursuing

doctoral degrees in conducting. We discussed our reactions to the gender imbalance, but accepted it

as a natural occurrence in the community. When I returned to CBDNA in 2017, I was pleasantly

surprised to find that what had appeared to be widespread acceptance of the gender imbalance had

changed significantly, with many important community members publicly addressing the issue, as

4
will be addressed in Chapter 5 of this dissertation. In 2013, however, I became aware that I would

approach my research from two marginal positions: one as a musicologist and another as a woman. I

would be different from the majority of my interview subjects (as I still am from the majority of the

community).

I continued to play in the FSU Wind Orchestra as my schedule allowed. In 2014 I completed

a master’s thesis on David Maslanka, one of the best known contemporary band composers.

Throughout my research I enjoyed how easy it was to work with people inside the wind ensemble

community. There is a clear sense of camaraderie that comes from a shared passion for the music we

play, conduct, compose, and listen to—just like many other musical communities.

Defining the Wind Ensemble

Although band community insiders understand the term “wind ensemble,” the terminology

used to refer to different kinds of bands is fluid. In this dissertation, I use “band” or “wind band” as

an umbrella term referring to the band tradition in the United States, but I use the term “wind

ensemble” to refer to a specific kind of band, one that uses flexible instrumentation and one-on-a-

part scoring and focuses on a high level of artistic and technical performance, especially of original

works for winds. I will discuss the historic context of the term, as well as the intended specifications

for the group, in my chapter about Frederick Fennell. Despite the clear distinctions I draw, the use

of the term “wind ensemble” today is inconsistent within the band community, both because the

function of the group has changed over the past half century and because institutional names for

this type of performing ensemble vary. Members of the community are familiar with the history and

the connotation of the term, however, and it is still the most common term used to distinguish

5
between this flexible, one-on-a-part performing group and larger groups that often have a more

pedagogical focus. I will use the term “concert band” to describe those larger groups.2

In addition to this often-unclear terminology, another potential obstacle to understanding

the wind ensemble is distinguishing its sound, a concept that goes hand in hand with terminology.

The wind ensemble sounds different from a large concert band. Composer Steven Bryant describes

the “big brown band sound” that emerges in concert bands of over sixty musicians playing

simultaneously; for example, there may be ten flutes, twenty clarinets, and ten trumpets playing the

melody, while saxophones and horns play an accompaniment, and the rest of the band plays a bass

line.3 This immense amount of unison playing creates the “big brown band sound” that so many of

us are familiar with from attending high school band concerts. While there are pedagogical reasons

behind composing this type of sound, conductors and composers both realized in the latter half of

the twentieth century that a large group of winds promised more opportunities for artistry than were

being explored. Wind ensembles focus on paring down the sound so the listener can appreciate the

varied timbres of a group of winds. This transparency is a necessity for the soloistic playing often

demanded of players in wind ensembles. It is rare for a wind ensemble to play extended passages in

unison; this is a technique usually reserved for climactic musical moments. Instead, composers most

often write for transparent textures that expose individual timbres, or layers of contrasting timbres

that create a combined sound rarely heard in a concert band. Wind ensemble conductors know how

to guide players through this music; soft dynamics and balanced playing are often vital. This unique

sound palette will be explored in greater detail early in Chapter 3.

2 Other terms often used for both wind ensembles and concert bands include symphony band, symphonic band,
symphonic winds, wind orchestra, wind band, etc. The use of these varied terms will be further addressed in Chapter 3.
3 Steven Bryant, interview with the author, February 5, 2017.

6
 Four Threads of Community

I have identified four separate threads that weave through my study of the wind ensemble

community: American national heritage, sound palettes, hierarchies and canonicity, and gender. The

wind ensemble community would not exist without the legacy of American bands, which can be

traced back to the very beginning of the country. Today both wind ensemble music and the

community reflect this national heritage. Developing a distinctive sound palette for the wind

ensemble was an important moment in the history of this repertoire. Fennell’s original innovations

and the ways his ideal sound palette has been employed and modified are crucial to the discussion of

the wind ensemble community. Once the sound palette was defined, wind ensemble repertoire grew.

Wind ensemble repertoire is often compared with orchestral repertoire; studying this group and its

community means questioning canonicity and hierarchies, realities that connect the community to

other non-traditional ensembles. Studying hierarchies in repertoire leads directly to issues of gender:

like many other musical genres, women are underrepresented as composers in the wind ensemble

repertoire. Men also greatly outnumber women as conductors. Acknowledging the continuing

gender imbalance has become more important within the community, but progress is slow and the

wind ensemble often appears to lag behind other contemporary musical communities. These four

threads raise questions regarding how the wind ensemble and its composers are viewed within and

outside of the community.

In addition to community, all four topics connect in some way to identity. Identity is

important in any discussion of the wind ensemble because of the ongoing struggle to clearly define

what constitutes a wind ensemble. While naming the group is important to a scholarly study of the

wind ensemble, many of my interviewees emphasized that this aspect of wind ensemble identity is

the least important to them. Michael Haithcock, Director of Bands at the University of Michigan,

7
points out that whatever a band is called, it’s still a band.4 This is an important point for several

reasons: first, this view encapsulates much of the confusion among outsiders regarding what goes on

in the modern band community. Second, it is a reminder that no matter how I describe the wind

ensemble, it is impossible to disconnect it from the history of American bands. Third, and perhaps

most important, thinking of wind ensemble music as band music avoids making hierarchical

designations within the band community. While I have chosen to focus on wind ensemble music in

this dissertation, I do not want to imply a value judgment in my choice: wind ensemble music is no

more important than concert band, marching band, or military band music. It is one kind of band

music that inhabits a unique place within the larger band community. The variety of music and

musical communities within the larger band world is part of what makes band so special. In focusing

on one of these communities, I argue for the importance of the band and its music within American

musical culture.

4 Michael Haithcock, interview with the author, February 28, 2017.

8
 CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION TO THE AMERICAN WIND ENSEMBLE

COMMUNITY

If an outsider to the band world arrived at one of the College Band Directors National

Association (CBDNA) National Meetings, they would immediately witness evidence of a strong

musical community around them. While the members seem to take the strength of their

relationships for granted, they continually work toward recruiting and welcoming new members and,

more recently, increasing inclusivity. At the 2017 CBDNA meeting, the word “community” came up

in panel presentations and roundtables, during concerts as the conductors spoke to the audience,

and in conversations at meals or between sessions. Many CBDNA members emphasized the

uniqueness of their organization compared to other musical bodies in the United States. At the final

composers’ forum of CBDNA 2017, in response to a question about his impressions of the

conference, composer John Corigliano said, “You have a wonderful spirit,” referring to the

welcoming and positive atmosphere evident at the meeting.5 The American wind ensemble

community, made up of composers, conductors, performers, and audience members, is a thriving

example of a contemporary music community. A study of relationships between composers and

conductors, as well as the organizations formed to foster these relationships, reveals the inner

workings of this group.

To study the contemporary wind ensemble community, I attended the 2017 CBDNA

Conference (Wednesday, March 15, through Saturday, March 18), where I spoke with many

prominent attendees, heard eleven concerts performed by university bands from around the country,

and attended panel discussions on topics important to the members. I also interviewed wind

5John Corigliano, Composers’ Forum IV at the College Band Directors National Association National Meeting, March
18, 2017.

9
ensemble composers and conductors on the phone or through Skype in the months before and after

the conference. My primary interviewees included Steven Bryant, Richard Clary, Michael Haithcock,

Jennifer Jolley, Jerry Junkin, John Mackey, Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, Jonathan Newman, Joel

Puckett, and Mark Scatterday (five composers and five conductors). These men and women

represent university wind ensemble conductors and composers who have written significant wind

ensemble works and consider themselves part of the community. While I had met several of them

before I embarked on this dissertation, others I had only heard of. Their willingness to devote time

to discuss their work with me is just one indication of how community is valued in the wind

ensemble world.

My choices of which conductors and composers to feature were guided by a set of criteria

that included their length of time as active participants in the wind ensemble community, their

presence at the most recent CBDNA conference, and, for practical purposes, their accessibility and

willingness to participate in my study. For conductors, I considered their prominence within the

wind ensemble community, which I gauged by their presence on CBDNA national programs from

the past decade, their role in commissioning new repertoire, and their positions directing high-

profile university ensembles. The conductors I chose represent different regions of the country;

Clary teaches at Florida State University, Haithcock at the University of Michigan, Junkin at the

University of Texas, Mösenbichler-Bryant at Duke University, and Scatterday at the Eastman School

of Music. Most have been active in the wind ensemble community for decades; Mösenbichler-Bryant

represents a younger perspective, as she has held a university conducting position only since 2009.

She also represents the only international perspective; she grew up in Austria and completed her

bachelor’s degree there in 2005 before beginning graduate work in the United States, where she

studied with Kevin Sedatole and Jerry Junkin.

10
 For composers, I considered the number of wind ensemble pieces they have written. I

initially selected Bryant, Mackey, and Newman as three composers who have become popular in the

wind ensemble community within the past decade; Bryant and Mackey especially are two of the best-

known wind ensemble composers today. All three have contributed several significant works to the

wind ensemble repertoire. I added Joel Puckett to my study after hearing his name grouped with

Bryant, Mackey, and Newman by more than one conductor I interviewed. He is also one of the

most widely regarded wind ensemble composers today. Jennifer Jolley, my only female composer,

and who unlike the previously named composers, is relatively new to the wind ensemble community,

has a different relationship to the community. At CBDNA 2017 she was the only woman

programmed, which garnered additional attention for her work. Other composers could have been

added to this study, including Andrew Boss, Paul Dooley, Emily Koh, Adam Schoenberg, Alex

Shapiro, and Peter Van Zandt Lane, but the five I chose provide a variety of perspectives on topics

regarding commissions, publishing, and relationships with conductors.

Often in my conversations with these representatives, it was made clear to me that the wind

ensemble world was unique among other contemporary American musical entities. John Mackey

explained, “The band community has been incredibly good to me and supportive of my music,”6

while Steve Bryant describes it as “very vibrant and tightknit.”7 Jonathan Newman specifically

identifies that “one of the attractive things about writing for wind ensemble is that you are writing

for a community.”8 From the conductor’s perspective, Michael Haithcock speaks of a group of

people who share a dedication to specific artistic pursuits. He explains, “I have colleagues that I have

known for thirty or forty years who have chased the same dreams in terms of developing repertoire

6 John Mackey, interview with author, 17 March 2017.

7 Steven Bryant, Skype interview with author, 5 February 2017.
8 Jonathan Newman, Skype interview with author, 9 February 2017.

11
and analyzing needs.”9 This is one of the identifying factors of the wind ensemble community: a

dedication to the development of a unique genre of American music.

What is Community?

Understanding how the contemporary wind ensemble community compares to other similar

entities requires an understanding of the concept and the term. While there are many writings on the

subject, Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s article “Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in

Music” (2011) has been especially useful to this project. Shelemay surveys earlier scholarship on the

subject, including discussions of both musical and non-musical populations. Among sociological

studies that she reviews, two books are particularly important: Benedict Anderson’s Imagined

Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983, rev. ed. 2006) and Anthony P.

Cohen’s The Symbolic Construction of Community (1985). Both books challenged the idea of the primacy

of a local community, arguing that bonds can exist on a much larger scale. Anderson’s book focuses

on exploring the idea of nations as imagined communities in which it is not possible for one

member to know all other members, while the key argument of Cohen’s book surveys an

understanding of the term “by seeking to capture members’ experience of it.”10 Similar to Anderson,

Cohen suggests that a community is “a matter of feeling, a matter which resides in the minds of the

members themselves.”11 The idea of communal bonds existing beyond fixed boundaries is essential

for understanding the wind ensemble community.

Studies of musical communities that helped frame this project include Mark Slobin’s

Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West (1993, rev. 2000) and Thomas Turino’s Music as Social Life:

The Politics of Participation (2008). Slobin’s book relates to Anderson’s Imagined Communities in its focus

9 Michael Haithcock, phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.

10 Anthony P. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (New York: Tavistock Publications, 1985), 19-20.
11 Ibid., 21.

12
on music in the context of national, regional and ethnic identity, especially among marginalized

communities, such as certain immigrant groups in the United States. He introduces terms including

“superculture,” which designates hegemonic, overarching structures that often dominate various

communal entities; “subculture,” which addresses the idea of belonging to specific communal

structures whose bonds can be based on non-localized shared interests; and “interculture,” which

addresses the ways in which various sub-structures of society interact with one another.12

Turino’s book approaches the relationship between music and cultural significance from an

interdisciplinary perspective.13 In his chapter “Participatory and Presentational Performance,” he

addresses music-making as a social activity compared to music as an object or commodity, revealing

the importance of understanding the social context of the community that is the subject of one’s

study. Another relevant study is Mellonee Burnim’s article “Culture Bearer and Tradition Bearer: An

Ethnomusicologist’s Research on Gospel Music” (1985), which assumes the position of an

ethnographer who is an inside member of the community she is studying.14 Although my study is in

many ways more historical than ethnographic, I engaged in dialogue with members of a community

of which I have been part for all of my adult life. Burnim makes it evident that it is important to

remember that as an ethnographer, one is always an outsider, too.

The resource I draw on most is Shelemay’s article, primarily her detailed definition of

“musical community,” which appears as the culmination of her study:

A musical community is, whatever its location in time or space, a collectivity

constructed through and sustained by musical processes and/or performances. A
musical community can be socially and/or symbolically constituted; music making
may give rise to real-time social relationships or may exist most fully in the realm of a
virtual setting or in the imagination.

12 Mark Slobin, Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West, second printing (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 2000), 27,
36, 67.
13 Thomas Turino, Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008).
14 Mellonee Burnim, “Culture Bearer and Tradition Bearer: An Ethnomusicologist’s Research on Gospel Music,”

Ethnomusicology 29, no. 3 (Autumn 1985): 432-47.

13
 A musical community does not require the presence of conventional
structural elements nor must it be anchored in a single place, although both
structural and local elements may assume importance at points in the process of
community formation as well as in its ongoing existence. Rather, a musical
community is a social entity, an outcome of a combination of social and musical
processes, rendering those who participate in making or listening to music aware of a
connection among themselves.15

The scope of Shelemay’s definition accommodates many musical groups, including the

contemporary American wind ensemble community, which exists both in reality, through regular

meetings of professional organizations and through the professional and personal relationships

formed between its members, and in the imagination, through a shared interest in wind ensemble

music. Like other widely dispersed musical entities, the members of the American wind ensemble

community are not restricted to a single geographic location, but instead come from all over the

country and for most of the year function as part of their own local groups, usually within

universities. Their relationships also extend to members outside of the country, especially through

organizations such as the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE). It is

impossible for individuals within the wind ensemble community to know all their fellow members

because it surpasses local boundaries and exists on a national level. The presence of band and wind

ensemble communities at both local and national levels can be traced throughout the history of

American music, which is addressed in the following chapter.

Shelemay develops her definition by identifying three processes that shape a community:

descent, dissent, and affinity. A descent community is one that is rooted in shared identities; this is

the most dominant type in traditional discussions on the subject. When studying musical groups

shaped by processes of descent, Shelemay notes that often music goes beyond its literal performance

in its significance to members as a marker of collective identity.16 The wind ensemble can be

15 Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music,” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 64, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 364-65.
16 Ibid., 368.

14
understood as a descent community because it grew out of a musical heritage that extends from the

beginning of U.S. history. As a sub-genre of band, the wind ensemble draws upon many aspects of

the American wind band heritage. This is evident in the contemporary meetings of national

organizations, which often include regular performances of Sousa marches and honoring of

bandmasters. The wind ensemble’s descent heritage will be discussed more fully in the following

chapter.

Dissent communities often respond to descent communities, as they resist or modify the

defining factors of another group.17 Shelemay explains that they are “almost always at least partial

offspring of the forces they challenge, hence the close and interactive relationship between descent

and dissent, and the possibility that they can, for long periods of time, overlap.”18 She uses the early

music movement as an example, noting that as a dissent community it was responsible for the

formation of new ensembles, concert series, and festivals, as well as an international network of

people.19 This process of dissent also illuminates the development of the wind ensemble. While the

wind ensemble has a place within the larger musical heritage of the American wind band, it also

represents a marked movement away from the concert band tradition. Fennell’s Eastman Wind

Ensemble incited the creation of many similar new ensembles, which were created as fundamentally

different groups from concert bands. The relationships between wind ensembles and concert bands

demonstrates the overlapping natures of descent and dissent. The dissent processes that relate to the

formation of the wind ensemble in the mid-twentieth century will be discussed in Chapter 3.

Shelemay describes groups shaped by affinity as those that are defined by the formation of

relationships based on shared interests.20 Affinity communities sometimes begin as those shaped by

17 Ibid., 370.
18 Ibid., 372.
19 Ibid., 373.
20 Ibid., 373.

15
processes of dissent, and it is common for them to overlap with both descent and dissent processes

to some extent. Today, the wind ensemble community should be considered as one primarily shaped

by the processes of affinity. The composers and conductors who form the body of the population

are connected to one another because of their shared interest in and passion for wind ensemble

music. Because of the close ties between composers and conductors, the wind ensemble repertoire

grows quickly. New works are not only performed several times within their first year, but they are

also shared between conductors through recordings and word of mouth. The active support for

composers is one of the defining factors of the wind ensemble as an affinity community. These

composer-conductor relationships and the hierarchies that grow out of a focus on repertoire will be

discussed in Chapter 4.

Although its membership consists of a significant majority of white men, the contemporary

wind ensemble community encompasses multiple types of ethnic identities, ages, gender identities,

and financial backgrounds, like many entities shaped by affinity. In this dissertation I focus on

gender and its role in a community shaped primarily by affinity. As in similar musical genres,

including the symphony orchestra, female wind ensemble composers and conductors often face

additional challenges. In the wind ensemble world, the military roots of the American wind band

present an additional obstacles; this was especially true when today’s prominent female wind

ensemble conductors were first beginning their careers. Similar challenges exist for female

composers; programming on wind ensemble concerts overwhelmingly features male composers. I

focus on the gender imbalance in the wind ensemble world in Chapter 5, focusing on recent changes

in the ways gender is discussed among members of CBDNA.

The contemporary wind ensemble community is one shaped primarily by processes of

affinity, born of processes of dissent, and representing one part of a larger entity based on descent

characteristics. The ways that this group interacts with its history, its repertoire, and its people

16
demonstrates what is most valued among insiders, but this often differs from what is perceived by

outsiders. One of the greatest challenges facing the wind ensemble community is that so little is

known about it in the larger world of American contemporary music, even though an increasing

number of emerging composers are turning away from the symphony orchestra and toward the wind

ensemble. Despite this trend, the symphony orchestra is still considered the foremost large

instrumental ensemble in this country. The wind ensemble and the hierarchy of cultural values will

be discussed in the conclusion of this dissertation.

The Historiography of the Wind Ensemble Community

The historiography of the American wind ensemble community provides insight into the

differences between how insiders and outsiders view the group. While sources written by those

within the band world (especially books by Richard Franko Goldman, Frederick Fennell, Frank

Battisti, and Richard K. Hansen) regularly reflect the mid-twentieth-century insistence that the group

is capable of performing “serious” music, this reality often goes unrecognized by scholars from

outside the wind band world. While band directors and music educators tend to research wind

ensemble music of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries, musicologists traditionally focus on

earlier band history. Understanding this early band history is crucial to contextualizing the wind

ensemble community; however, there is equal value in studying the music and the organizations of

the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

When musicologists discuss bands in the context of broader topics (American music history

or Western music history), they most often focus on the military bands of the nineteenth century

and the concert bands of Patrick Gilmore and John Philip Sousa. Some musicologists have

dedicated their careers to researching these early American bands. The work of Raoul Camus on

pre-1830s American bands is invaluable to the band community, and studies by scholars including

17
Kenneth E. Olson’s Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsmen of the American Civil War and Frank J.

Cipolla’s articles on Patrick Gilmore continue Camus’s work further into the nineteenth century.21

Paul E. Bierley and Patrick Warfield have contributed in-depth studies of Sousa’s career; Warfield’s

is especially important in its contextualization of Sousa’s band career alongside his work in other

genres of American music, including songs and musical theater.22 Joshua Gailey, a musicology Ph.D.

candidate at Yale University at the time of this writing, is studying the American school band

industry that emerged in the early twentieth century, a neglected area of band research.23 Studies of

nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century American bands are minimal yet relatively thorough;

what is missing is scholarship connecting this history to today’s wind ensemble community.

The most important sources for understanding the development of the contemporary

American band and wind ensemble from the perspective of community insiders are Richard Franko

Goldman’s The Wind Band: Its Literature and Technique (1961), Frederick Fennell's Time and the Winds

(1954), Frank Battisti's The Winds of Change (2002) and its companion The Winds of Change II: The New

Millennium (2012), and Richard K. Hansen's The American Wind Band: A Cultural History (2005).24 All

four authors are or were band or wind ensemble conductors. Goldman, the son of the great

bandmaster Edwin Franko Goldman and the leader of the Goldman Band for more than twenty

21 Raoul Camus, Military Music of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1976);
Camus, “Band,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2252742 (accessed 15 January
2017); Kenneth Olson, Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsmen of the American Civil War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1981; Frank J. Cipolla, “Patrick S. Gilmore: The Boston Years,” American Music 6, no., 3 (Fall 1998): 281-92.; Cipolla,
“Patrick S. Gilmore: The New York Years,” in European Music and Musicians in New York City, 1840-1900, ed. John
Graziano (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 182-197.
22 Paul E. Bierley, John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973); Bierley, The

Incredible Band of John Philip Sousa (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006); Patrick Warfield, “Making the
Band: The Formation of John Philip Sousa’s Ensemble,” American Music 24, no. 1 (Spring 2006): 30-66; Warfield, Making
the March King: John Philip Sousa's Washington Years, 1854-1893 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013).
23 Gailey’s dissertation is forthcoming.
24 Richard Franko Goldman, The Wind Band: Its Literature and Technique (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1961); Frederick

Fennell, Time and the Winds: A Short History of the Use of Wind Instruments in the Orchestra, Band, and the Wind Ensemble -
reprint (Huntersville, NC: NorthLand Music Publishers, 2009); Frank Battisti, The Winds of Change: The Evolution of the
Contemporary American Wind Band/Ensemble and its Conductor (Galesville, MD: Meredith Music Publications, 2002); Battisti,
The Winds of Change II: The New Millennium (Galesville, MD: Meredith Music Publications, 2012); Richard K. Hansen, The
American Wind Band: A Cultural History (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2005).

18
years, was ideally prepared to reflect upon the band in mid-twentieth-century American culture. His

writings demonstrate one of the earliest attempts to justify the artistic and cultural significance of the

band in American musical culture. Fennell, Battisti, and Hansen all hold or held positions as

university conductors. Hansen is also a musicologist. In addition to founding the Eastman Wind

Ensemble, Fennell was the conductor laureate of the Tokyo Kosei Wind Orchestra and principal

guest conductor of the Dallas Wind Symphony. Along with Fennell, Battisti is highly regarded in the

band world as someone who contributed to the establishment of the wind ensemble with his work

at Ithaca High School and the New England Conservatory. He is also a co-founder of the World

Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE).

Goldman’s study (1961) focuses primarily on the concert band of the early twentieth century

but also examines the early days of the wind ensemble. Although the book is over fifty years old, it is

still relevant given Goldman’s position as one of the most important people in twentieth-century

band history. Because Goldman downplays his own role in the development of wind band

repertoire, it is helpful to consult other sources that better describe the ways in which he was directly

involved. Perhaps the most important aspect of Goldman’s book for this study is his discussion of

the mid-twentieth-century cultural understanding of the American concert band and wind ensemble.

In his observations it is evident that many of the developments he had hoped for in the mid-

twentieth-century regarding audience reception and the status of the ensemble did not come to

fruition. His chapter on contemporary bands is especially relevant to this study: he documents the

different kinds of bands in existence in 1960, including the professional band, armed service bands,

university and college bands, the high school band, community and municipal bands, industrial

bands, and he concludes with a discussion of the new “symphonic wind ensemble.”

Although his book was published before Goldman’s, Fennell follows Goldman in terms of

when the men were most active in the band and wind ensemble communities. Fennell’s Time and the

19
Winds (1954) is a short history of the use of wind instruments in European and American orchestras,

bands, and wind ensembles. It is most valuable for the final three chapters that focus on the

American band tradition. Chapter 4 discusses Gilmore and Sousa at the end of the era of

professional bands. Chapter 5 focuses on developments in music education in the early twentieth

century that had direct bearing on the wind ensemble, including the founding of the Eastman School

of Music and the beginnings of college bands. In Chapter 6, Fennell describes founding the Eastman

Wind Ensemble, as well as his original goals for the group, including the instrumentation and

repertory. Although this book was reprinted in 2009, it was originally written not long after Fennell

founded the Eastman Wind Ensemble, so it does not consider the ways wind ensembles have grown

and developed over subsequent decades. It is still an essential source for understanding Fennell’s

thoughts about wind instruments and the role they play in the performance of American music.

Battisti’s The Winds of Change (2002) traces “the contemporary wind band/ensemble” (his

solution to the terminology problem) and its evolution in America, focusing on its ascent as a

musical group of important cultural value. In addition to a short history of the band, most of which

covers events of the twentieth century, the book includes essays by Battisti and other band directors

about conducting, leadership, and challenges for the twenty-first century. In the sequel, Winds of

Change II: The New Millennium (2012), Battisti showcases the works that he felt were most important

to the development of wind repertoire in the recent past. Unlike his first book, Battisti includes no

assessments of the new works, believing that “evaluate[ing] their artistic merit from such a short

perspective would be premature.”25 Instead, he provides basic information about the commissioning

history, first performance, and formal structure of the works, as well as program notes written by the

composers. Both books represent an insider’s perspective of the wind ensemble community;

25 Frank Battisti, The Winds of Change II: The New Millennium (Galesville, MD: Meredith Music Publications, 2012), x.

20
however, Battisti belongs to an earlier generation of wind ensemble conductors, and his ideas often

differ from today’s leading university band directors.

Hansen’s The American Wind Band: A Cultural History (2005) is the most comprehensive study

of the American wind band and is valuable because it contextualizes contemporary band composers

within the history of American music. The book is divided into three large sections: the first is a

narrative of American wind traditions, beginning with wind instruments in Aztec culture, continuing

through U.S. colonial drum and fife bands and the Gilmore, Sousa, and Goldman bands, and ending

with the development of the modern wind ensemble; the second section of the book consists of a

timeline chart that places events in American wind band music alongside other musical

developments in the U.S., the arts in the Western world, and events in world history; the third

section of the book is an overview of the current state of research in the field. In this section

Hansen identifies gaps in wind band research and discusses the relationship of band history to

musicology. In summarizing the research trends of the 1990s and early 2000s, Hansen concludes,

“The current state of wind band research can best be described as uneven, as most historical studies

have been conducted by practicing musicians and educators with little to no formal training in

advanced historical musicology.”26 This statement is still mostly accurate today, with the exceptions

of musicologists including Raoul Camus, Joshua Gailey, S. Andrew Granade, Sondra Wieland Howe,

John McCluskey, Nathan Miller, Michael O’Connor, Patrick Warfield, and myself.

In the first section of his book Hansen discusses the practice of contextualizing the band as

either vernacular or cultivated, a dichotomy drawn from H. Wiley Hitchcock's Music in the United

States: A Historical Introduction (1969, rev. ed. 1988). Hansen tackles the problematic nature of the

taxonomy, arguing that band music is neither exclusively vernacular nor exclusively cultivated, but

instead manifests qualities of both. He weakens his argument, however, by continuing to use these

26 Richard K. Hansen, The American Wind Band: A Cultural History (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2005), 333.

21
terms throughout his survey. These outdated terms serve little purpose in discussing today’s band

and wind ensemble communities. Labeling the band as “vernacular” or even “popular,” as Gilbert

Chase did in his chapter “Music for the Millions” from America’s Music: From the Pilgrims to the Present

(1955, rev. ed. 1987), dismisses its historical position as a source of “classical” music for many

Americans. The wind ensemble has often struggled to overcome the value judgments that attend this

labeling of band music. An inferiority complex continues to plague many in the community today.

While it is important to recognize the historiography of the band and its related ensembles, I avoid

these terms in my discussion, as they work against a more nuanced understanding of how the wind

ensemble fits into American musical culture.

The most recent study written by a musicologist about the history of the wind ensemble is

Edward Jacob Caines’s master’s thesis “Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble: The

Transformation of American Wind Music through Instrumentation and Repertoire” (2012).27 He

reflects on the founding of the Eastman Wind Ensemble and Frederick Fennell’s aspirations for the

group, arguing that his ideas were unique to the wind ensemble community. Building on Hansen’s

The American Wind Band: A Cultural History, one of the chapters of Caines’s thesis contextualizes the

history of band within a vernacular vs. cultivated dichotomy, reflecting on what he considers to be

the duality that exists in wind bands (marching bands, military bands, and community bands vs.

wind orchestras and wind ensembles) and the importance of ensemble nomenclature. Like Hansen,

Caines misses the opportunity to suggest new vocabulary and instead uses the same outdated terms.

He posits that the effectiveness of these terms breaks down only with Fennell’s founding of the

Eastman Wind Ensemble; I argue that these terms have never been useful in understanding the

history of the American band.

Edward Jacob Caines, “Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble: The Transformation of American Wind
27

Music Through Instrumentation and Repertoire” (MA thesis, University of Ottawa, 2012).

22
 A problematic but revealing study related to my own is a recent article about the

historiography of the wind band and its relationship to musicology: musicologist Denise Odello’s

“Canons and Consequences: Musicology and the Wind Band,” published in The Journal of Band

Research in 2013.28 Odello investigates the growth of American musicology and compares it to the

history of American wind bands, drawing two main conclusions. First, she suggests that the wind

band has escaped the attention of musicologists primarily because the discipline was “introduced to

the wind band as an educational ensemble, not as a professional ensemble to present canonical

artwork.”29 While this rings true in some regard, it overlooks the band’s association with

entertainment throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Odello’s second conclusion

is more problematic: she believes that some aspects of band research, mainly those that involve

bands performing “functional” music, should be researched by ethnomusicologists, while studying

band music performed for “aesthetic” reasons is a task for historical musicologists. Because of this

division, she suggests that the wind band “offers a unique topic that could possibly embrace a wide

variety of approaches.”30 While American band scholarship benefits from a variety of approaches, as

does all scholarship, the division between “functional” and “aesthetic” music is as ineffective in

accurately assessing the wind ensemble as is the division between cultivated and vernacular, as it

implies that “functional” music cannot also be considered “aesthetic.”31 That this article was

published in the most prominent journal for band research in 2013 suggests how widely

disseminated this thinking is among both musicological and band populations.

These sources reveal the broad interests of scholars from both inside and outside the band

community. In general, scholars who are also band conductors focus on two main topics:

28 Denise Odello, “Canons and Consequences: Musicology and the Wind Band,” Journal of Band Research 49/1 (Fall 2013):
71-83.
29 Ibid., 77.
30 Ibid., 80.
31 Odello’s reasoning also implies a fundamental division between historical musicology and ethnomusicology, when in

practice today, many musicologists use methodologies traditionally associated with both sides of the discipline.

23
demonstrating the legitimacy of band and wind ensemble music, often through analytical studies of

specific works, and identifying a canon. Musicologists who write about bands are more often

interested in the larger historical context; for example, Patrick Warfield considers Sousa as a

composer and conductor within several genres of nineteenth-century American music, rather than

focusing exclusively on his marches and his leadership of bands. It should be noted that most

musicologists who write about band history are, like me, not complete outsiders to the band

community, but rather people that grew up playing in bands and fully identify with the experience.

No doubt firsthand experience is useful to understanding the inimitable value of wind music;

however, it is my goal in this dissertation to persuade musicians and musicologists from all areas of

the field that the wind ensemble community provides a unique opportunity for exploring the

expression of American music culture and values.

Why is the Wind Ensemble Community Unique?

Although all musical communities are unique to some extent, the wind ensemble stands out

in several ways. One of the clearest differences between the wind ensemble and other large

instrumental ensembles relates to professionalism. Nearly all wind ensembles are associated with

universities and so have primarily pedagogical purposes (notable exceptions are the Dallas Winds

and some military concert bands that perform using a wind ensemble instrumentation, such as “The

President’s Own” Marine Band). This may contribute to it being taken less seriously than established

professional orchestral ensembles. Other major differences include the enthusiastic support of

young and contemporary composers, especially emerging composers. The enthusiasm for new

works is in part a response to the absence of a traditional canonical repertoire. Additionally, the

strong interpersonal relationships that exist between conductors and composers are in many ways

unique to the wind ensemble community, although similar relationships exist between composers

24
and chamber ensembles like eighth blackbird and Bang on a Can, and resident composers with

professional orchestras.

The wind ensemble has been tied to universities since its creation. Fennell was successful

largely because of institutional support from the Eastman School Director Howard Hanson;

Fennell’s group provided welcome new opportunities for the many student wind instrumentalists

who needed ensemble experience. Today, the wind ensemble is an established part of almost all

major music schools in the country, with the exception of some of the major conservatories like The

Juilliard School, The Curtis Institute, and the Cleveland Institute of Music, schools that focus on

preparing their wind instrumentalists for careers in symphony orchestras. At larger music schools

with more diverse student bodies and curricular offerings, like the Eastman School of Music, Florida

State University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Texas, wind ensembles provide

one of the most important performance opportunities for student wind players. Students learn

challenging new music and often interact with composers throughout the process of working on a

piece. Composers speak of the benefits of interacting with student performers rather than

professionals: John Mackey appreciates the students’ willingness to experiment with playing

techniques and even to suggest ways to improve sections of his work. A case in point is when the

saxophone section of the University of Texas Wind Ensemble added a flutter-growl to a few

measures in his symphony Wine-Dark Sea.32 That playing technique is now written into the part.

Mackey observes that those kinds of interactions rarely happen in professional ensembles, especially

orchestras.

The symphony orchestra community provides the most direct comparison to that of the

wind ensemble. Both are large instrumental ensembles dedicated to performing original works in

their genres. Besides the basic differences (instrumentation, professionalism, etc.), there are two

32 John Mackey, personal interview with author, 17 March 2017.

25
other differences that separate the communities based around these ensembles: a commitment to

canonicity, and a long history of strong European ties. Michael Haithcock believes that the wind

ensemble community does not have anything equivalent to the canon of the symphony orchestra,

pointing out that while there are excellent wind pieces from the Classic and Romantic eras, including

three major works by Mozart, one by Dvořák, and two by Richard Strauss, none of these works can

compete with the orchestral works by the same composers in terms of traditional understandings of

musical value.33 There are notable works that can be performed by winds alone composed as far

back as the 1500s, like Tielman Susato’s Danserye and Michael Praetorius’s Terpsichore, but these

works are shorter and simpler than works intended for strings or keyboard instruments. Beyond the

fact that length and complexity are values arbitrarily enforced by the canon, significant differences

existed in both the functions and the technological advancements of wind and string instruments.

While wind instruments were long associated with outdoor celebrations and military parades, string

instruments were more often used in ensemble performances for the purposes of art and

enlightenment. With this history in mind, the wind ensemble canon likely can never compete with

the orchestral canon in traditional terms. To properly understand its canon, it is important to

consider wind ensemble repertoire as much as possible outside of Western musical hierarchies.

By the late nineteenth century, wind instruments had reached increasing technological

sophistication, and groups of winds could now play complex music together. Since the 1950s and

Fennell’s attempts to create a repertoire for wind ensembles, composers have contributed works to

form an emerging canon, which differs from the orchestral canon in its smaller scope and focus on

contemporary composers. Haithcock identifies Joseph Schwantner’s …and the mountains rising nowhere

(1977) as one of the most notable works from the period between 1950 and 2000, and pieces like

Ingolf Dahl’s Sinfonietta (1961), Karel Husa’s Music for Prague 1968 (1968), David Maslanka’s A Child’s

33 Michael Haithcock, phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.

26
Garden of Dreams (1981), Michael Colgrass’s Winds of Nagual (1985), and John Corigliano’s Circus

Maximus: Symphony No. 3 (2004) have joined Schwantner’s piece as canonical works of the wind

ensemble repertoire. It may seem strange to consider works composed so recently as part of a

canon, but when the nature of the wind ensemble repertoire is to gravitate toward new works, often

commissioned, it becomes clear very quickly which works will demand repeat performances and

become repertoire standards. Compared to the canonical works of the symphony orchestra, these

recent compositions cannot compete with the decades and even centuries of recognition that

standards like Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 or Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique have enjoyed. They can,

however, compete in terms of the value of the piece itself, especially regarding the innovations in

instrumental writing. Virtuosity and complexity are also often addressed; however, evaluating a piece

based on nineteenth-century orchestral values of virtuosity and complexity only serves to prolong

the effects of old canonic ideas. Discussing wind ensemble works in relation to orchestral standards

can be difficult and often fruitless. Multimovement works like A Child’s Garden of Dreams and Winds

of Nagual do not attempt to replicate what has been done in the orchestral repertoire; instead,

Maslanka and Colgrass reimagine what a multimovement instrumental work can be without strings

but with the diverse timbral and technical possibilities of the wind ensemble. I address these issues

further in Chapter 4.

In contrast to the wind ensemble, which is a distinctly American institution, the symphony

orchestra in the United States is inextricably tied to its Germanic roots. Since the nineteenth century,

the American symphony orchestra has been shaped by German conductors (like Theodore Thomas)

and German composers (like Richard Wagner), and today it is almost impossible to find an orchestra

that does not include at least one Beethoven performance per season. These connections to a

respected musical tradition lend a sense of legitimacy and history to the symphony orchestra that the

wind ensemble lacks. It is likely that this freedom from European traditions, however, is one of the

27
most distinguishing qualities of the American wind ensemble. While the wind ensemble does share

roots with European styles of music from the German Harmoniemusik to the French military bands

of the Napoleonic Era, these influences are channeled into a thoroughly American sound. The roots

of the wind ensemble sound will be discussed further in the following chapters.

Finally, the relationships between composers and conductors in the wind ensemble

community are in general different from their counterparts in the orchestral realm. Composers often

speak of the support they receive from wind ensemble conductors; they point to the time they spend

working with a group, the number of performances a new work receives, the group’s flexibility and

willingness to try new things, and a general atmosphere of acceptance. Joel Puckett explains, “I think

that’s the thing I like about the wind world—there just isn’t a whole lot of pretension.”34 Many

conductors feel it is important to continue building the wind ensemble repertoire; thus, they build

friendships with composers whose styles complement the ensemble and who they believe may create

works that will become part of the repertoire.

Although the orchestral community is often compared to the wind ensemble because of the

similar size and artistic goals, it is also important to consider the wind ensemble community in

relation to the world of new music ensembles. Many of these ensembles, including eighth blackbird,

Bang on a Can, and Third Coast Percussion, function on a professional level as touring groups but

perform many of their concerts at universities and other educational institutions. These groups are

smaller than the larger ensembles discussed above, which in many ways grants them more flexibility

in their performance practices. John Pippen discusses new music groups in his dissertation “Toward

a Postmodern Avant-Garde: Labour, Virtuosity, and Aesthetics in an American New Music

Ensemble” (2014), which focuses on eighth blackbird and the many ways the ensemble has brought

34 Joel Puckett, Skype interview with author, April 26, 2017.

28
new degrees of accessibility and commercial practices to avant-garde music.35 A chamber ensemble

enjoys more flexible performance options than a large ensemble, especially regarding performance

venues, but the willingness to try new things is shared by small new music ensembles and wind

ensembles. In his dissertation “A Scene Without a Name: Indie Classical and American New Music

in the Twenty-First Century” (2016), William Robin also discusses the changing approaches to

performing what he calls “indie classical” and new music.36 Robin focuses in part on the relationship

between indie classical and the university; like eighth blackbird, many of the professional ensembles

he studied perform primarily at institutions. While wind ensembles are most often peopled with

students rather than professionals, in many ways the wind ensemble has much more in common

with the ensembles discussed by Pippen and Robin than it does with the symphony orchestra.

Exploring the Wind Ensemble Community

In this dissertation I use Shelemay’s definition of musical communities to explore the four

themes I identified as most important to wind ensemble insiders: American national heritage, sound

palettes, hierarchies and canonicity, and gender. Chapter Two focuses on the American wind band

descent community, briefly tracing the earliest military bands of the 1700s to the Civil War bands. I

contextualize the bands of Patrick Gilmore, John Philip Sousa, and Edwin Franko Goldman in

relation to these processes of descent, exploring the contributions of each bandleader toward

making bands part of an American national heritage. I also address the founding of two important

organizations: the American Bandmasters Association (ABA) and the College Band Directors

National Association (CBDNA). Chapter Three begins in the mid-1950s with Frederick Fennell’s

35 John Pippen, “Toward a Postmodern Avant-Garde: Labour, Virtuosity, and Aesthetics in an American New Music
Ensemble,” Ph.D. diss., The University of Western Ontario, 2014.
36 William Robin, “A Scene Without a Name: Indie Classical and American New Music in the Twenty-First Century,”

Ph.D. diss., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2016.

29
creation of the Eastman Wind Ensemble and its evolution as a community shaped by dissent

processes. I use Fennell’s group as a point of departure to explore the developing sound palette of

the wind ensemble, focusing on the timbral possibilities offered to composers, and the values

implied by twentieth-century conductors in the naming of their ensembles.

Chapter Four considers how the wind ensemble community functions today as one shaped

primarily by processes of affinity. In this chapter I use the topics of hierarchies and canonicity to

explore the emerging wind ensemble repertoire and the efforts to build strong relationships between

conductors and composers. I also discuss the wind ensemble in the context of other genres of

American classical music, especially the symphony orchestra, examining the hierarchies that exist

and comparing the concept of canonicity between the wind ensemble and other similar entities.

Chapter Five presents an in-depth study of one aspect of the contemporary affinity community,

gender, and especially the imbalances that persist. This chapter focuses on the challenges faced by

women conductors and composers, but also illuminates progress made toward diversifying the wind

ensemble population. Both chapters draw upon interviews with conductors and composers as well

as my observations at the 2017 meeting of the College Band Directors National Association.

It is evident that the wind ensemble community is important to contemporary American

music culture. Although the wind ensemble does not enjoy or wield the same level of cultural capital

or influence as the symphony orchestra, I argue that traditional modes of evaluating the wind

ensemble and the greater band world are outdated. Wind ensemble conductors value contemporary

American composers and emphasize new music and repertoire growth; as each new generation of

composers emerges, an increasing level of outside attention is given to the wind ensemble. In this

dissertation I demonstrate the connections between Shelemay’s three kinds of community—descent,

dissent, and affinity—and explain why the relationship between these processes and the topics they

relate to creates a historically vital American musical community.

30
 CHAPTER TWO

AMERICAN BANDS IN THE NINETEENTH AND EARLY

TWENTIETH CENTURIES

The history of bands in the United States offers many examples of the power of community.

Early bands that were formed to serve a specific organization or town represented a clearly defined

community. Community can also be observed among the audiences who attended concerts, as well

as with the composers who wrote for and the conductors who led the ensembles. In the last four

decades of the nineteenth century, changes occurred in the performance practices of bands that

shifted the existing community structure to encompass a much broader range of people. The change

from an emphasis on local communities to one on a larger, national band community mirrors a shift

from a community defined primarily by processes of descent to one defined by processes of affinity.

In this chapter I explore this shift by focusing on changes to instrumentation and repertoire. I first

survey bands from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, then proceed to reviewing the

innovations of Patrick Gilmore and John Philip Sousa, and conclude by discussing both the

commissioning efforts of Edwin Franko Goldman and his son Richard Franko Goldman and the

founding of the American Bandmasters Association and, later, the College Band Directors National

Association. I argue that the bands led by Gilmore, Sousa, and the Goldmans mark significant

changes in the construction of band communities, especially regarding composer-conductor

relationships.

Observing the growth of American bands from the earliest days of the nation to the mid-

twentieth century reveals three factors that made the development of the modern wind ensemble

possible: 1) new ideas about the most effective wind band instrumentation; 2) the performance of a

variety of repertoire that reflects the liminal place occupied by bands within the larger musical

31
community; and 3) a growing interest in establishing the band as a “serious” ensemble without

compromising its accessibility to audiences.

Early American Bands and the Beginning of a Descent Community

Kay Kaufman Shelemay identifies a descent community as one that is based primarily on

shared identities; this is the most dominant type of community in traditional discussions of the

concept. When studying musical descent communities, Shelemay notes that “music moves beyond a

role as symbol literally to perform the identity in question and serves early on in the process of

community formation to establish, maintain, and reinforce that collective identity.”37 The

traditionally constructed band communities of the nineteenth century, including military bands, fire

brigade bands, and local brass bands associated with a particular town, are all clear examples of

descent communities. These bands generally fulfilled specific functions for their communities,

reinforcing shared identities both within the bands and for the audiences they served. In contrast,

affinity communities are those which “emerge first and foremost from individual preferences,

quickly followed by a desire for social proximity or association with others equally enamored.”38 It is

common for affinity communities to overlap to some extent with both descent and dissent

communities. In the case of nineteenth-century American bands, there is usually a fair amount of

crossover between descent and affinity identities, mostly due to the role that bands played within

their larger communities. I propose that one of the main factors that differentiates a descent group

from an affinity group in the context of nineteenth-century American bands is repertoire, especially

as regards the function of programming choices. I suggest that the first time this difference is

37 Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music,” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 64, no. 2 (Summer 2011), 368.
38 Ibid., 373.

32
evident in the history of American bands is when Patrick Gilmore became leader of the 22nd

Regiment Band of New York. The contemporary band and wind ensemble community as an affinity

community will be the focus of Chapters 4 and 5.

In his book How Early America Sounded, Richard Cullen Rath discusses the importance of

mere sound in the earliest American settlements. He considers primarily seventeenth- and

eighteenth-century communities, and his observations illuminate the way American communities

were formed. The earliest colonies, like Jamestown, were designed so that the outer reaches of the

community were the farthest one could venture while still being able to hear bells rung or guns shot

from the center of the town.39 Thus, from the earliest days of the American colonies, sound and

music served important functions in community life. By the beginning of the nineteenth century,

many of the towns in the United States had grown considerably. Musical life differed in these larger

communities; while smaller towns generally could support a small band, cities like Boston attracted

greater numbers of professional musicians, enabling the founding of orchestras and choruses in

addition to the amateur bands that already existed. Boston, Philadelphia, and New York were

especially significant in their support of a variety of music ensembles. In the early years of the

nineteenth century, there was not always a clear division between amateur and professional

ensembles; even military bands, which were mainly amateur groups, were often led by professional

musicians like Lowell Mason.40 The overlap in personnel between amateur and professional

ensembles became standard in nineteenth-century bands, and even today it is often difficult to

distinguish between amateur and professional bands.

Determining what is, and who belongs to the band community, however, was not always

decided by the participants. To understand the band community, it is necessary to recognize the way

39Richard Cullen Rath, How Early America Sounded (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 54-55.
40Michael Broyles, “Music of the Highest Class”: Elitism and Populism in Antebellum Boston (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1992), 153.

33
in which American music critics and scholars have written about band music over the past two

centuries. In the nineteenth century, the central difference between band music and orchestral music

was in the characterization of band music as “popular” and orchestral music as “classical.” Michael

Broyles, in his book “Music of the Highest Class”: Elitism and Populism in Antebellum Boston, focuses on

this “fundamental duality” that has shaped American music culture; he writes, “The most popular

musician in late nineteenth-century America, for example, John Philip Sousa, was never considered

on par with even the most pedestrian symphonic conductor. Sousa conducted a band, an ensemble

devoted to entertainment.”41 The perception of the band as a community focused upon

entertainment and popular music persisted throughout the nineteenth century and into the

twentieth, evidence of which can be found in writings of music critic John Sullivan Dwight. Today,

the band is still often viewed outside the realm of classical music. The struggle and desire to claim

equality with the symphony orchestra is one that shaped important aspects of the band’s

development. As the band community changed between the start of what band scholars refer to as

the “Golden Age of Brass Bands” in 1834 and the founding of the American Bandmasters

Association in 1929, many of the changes were in part driven by this desire.42

American Bands before the Nineteenth Century

Bands had been firmly established as important parts of American communities by the

beginning of the nineteenth century, but evidence of the activities of the earliest bands in the

American colonies is sometimes inconsistent in its documentation. Most scholars agree, however,

that the earliest recorded American bandmaster was Josiah Flagg (1737-1794). Flagg, also an

engraver and compiler of tune books, organized at least six concerts for the city of Boston, the first

41Broyles, “Music of the Highest Class,” 2.

42Kenneth E. Olson, Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsmen of the American Civil War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1981), xviii.

34
of which took place on June 15, 1769, at Concert Hall.43 A 1771 concert was “advertised as featuring

vocal and instrumental music ‘accompanied by French horns, Hautboys, etc.’ to be given by the

band of the 64th Regiment.”44 The 64th Regiment was a British band, as the American colonists did

not yet have their own army, but this advertisement demonstrates the early interest in band music in

what would become the United States. Flagg programmed European repertoire, including music by

Carl Friedrich Abel, J. C. Bach, G. F. Handel, and Johann Stamitz; it is likely that hearing bands play

this music would have been the only way for audiences to become acquainted with it this early in the

history of American performing institutions.45 In addition to organizing concerts, evidence suggests

that Flagg founded his own band. Some scholars believe that the June 1769 concert was actually the

first concert of Flagg’s militia band, but more recent sources place the date at 1773. After his last

recorded concert on October 28, 1773, there is no extant information about either Flagg or his

band.46

The American Revolution marked an increase in the use of military bands with the founding

of the first American regimental bands. These bands descended from European traditions—mainly

from British regimental band traditions, but also influenced by the Hessian bands that were attached

to units that fought for the British. Raoul Camus divides this early military band music into two

types: “field music” and “bands of music.”47 Field music generally referred to the camp duty calls

performed on fifes, drums, trumpets, or bugles, much of which had its origins in the music of

British military bands. In contrast, bands of music were responsible for ceremonial and social

functions, and their instrumentation was based more closely on the European Harmonie, chamber

43 David Music, “Josiah Flagg,” American Music 7, no. 2 (Summer 1989), 145.
44 Richard Franko Goldman, The Wind Band: Its Literature and Technique (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1961), 34.
45 John Ogasapian, Music of the Colonial and Revolutionary Era (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004).
46 Goldman, The Wind Band: Its Literature and Technique, 34. Music, “Josiah Flagg,” 149.
47
Raoul Camus, Military Music of the American Revolution (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1976), 6,
20.

35
ensembles typically consisting of pairs of oboes, clarinets, bassoons, and horns.48 These bands

marked the beginning of the American band as a descent community; from the start, these groups

shared clear connections to British and German band traditions.

American regimental bands were disbanded after the Revolutionary War, in keeping with

new peace principles established by Congress that demobilized most of the Continental Army

forces. Some of the bands of music, rather than disbanding, became civic ensembles, including

Colonel John Crane’s Third Artillery Regimental Band, one of the most well-organized bands of

music in the Revolutionary War. Crane’s Band became the Massachusetts Band in 1782 and thirty

years later was refashioned as the Boston Brigade Band, an ensemble of great significance to the

formation of a nineteenth-century band tradition. On July 11, 1798, sixteen years after the

establishment of the Massachusetts Band, President John Adams oversaw the creation of the Marine

Corps in an Act of Congress. The act specifically mentioned that the corps would have a field band

of thirty-two drums and fifes among its members, with William Farr serving as drum major.49

January 1, 1801, marked the first White House performance by the Marine Band, setting the

precedent for the tradition of White House concerts by the ensemble. The establishment of the

Marine Band marked the culmination of the developments affecting American military bands

through the end of the eighteenth century. The establishment of a band associated with the highest

level of government is testament to the importance of bands in eighteenth-century American

society; it set a precedent for the future development of bands and marked the beginning of the

American band as a descent community based on the idea of a national heritage.

48 Raoul Camus, “Band,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/music/A2252742 (accessed 21
November 2016).
49 Kenneth William Carpenter, "A History of the United States Marine Band" (Ph.D. diss., The University of Iowa,

1970), 21.

36
American Bands before the Civil War

From approximately the second quarter of the nineteenth century through the Civil War,

brass bands reigned supreme in the United States; band scholars including Raoul Camus and

Kenneth E. Olson refer to the years 1834-1865 as the “Golden Age of Brass Bands.”50 The early

1830s marked a further shift from military bands to community bands, when the U.S. Army reduced

the size and number of service bands, and a change in instrumentation that eliminated woodwinds in

favor of brass instruments.51 The switch to brass instruments largely came about due to the spread

of technological improvements to the keyed and (slightly later) valved brass instruments, which

made them almost as versatile as woodwinds, as well as cheaper to produce. The invention of the

Kent (keyed) bugle by Irish bandmaster Joseph Halliday in 1810 was one of the major influences on

American bands; the instrument, named after the Duke of Kent, is a conical bugle that uses keys like

those of a woodwind instrument to cover the tone holes.52 Edward Kendall, the leader of the

Boston Brass Band (founded in 1835, but descended from the Massachusetts Band), publicized the

instrument by becoming the most famous Kent bugle player. His prowess on the instrument

encouraged many other bands to take it up, replacing their woodwind instruments. By 1860,

however, most keyed brass instruments had been replaced by the even more versatile valved

instruments. In addition to improvements to bugles and cornets, the addition of the valved tuba

eliminated the need for the cumbersome serpent and ophicleide.53 Camus writes, “The change was

50
Kenneth E. Olson, Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsmen of the American Civil War (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,
1981), xviii.
51 Ibid. See a sample instrumentation of a mid-nineteenth century American band in Appendix B.
52 Ralph T. Dudgeon, "Keyed bugle (USA)," Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, Oxford University Press,

http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo
-9781561592630-e-1002241962 (accessed 6 January 2018).
53 Olson, Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsmen of the American Civil War, 27.

37
so swift and complete that by 1856 the indomitable Boston music critic John Sullivan Dwight

complained, apparently bitterly, that ‘all is brass nowadays—nothing but brass’.”54

Civilian brass bands in the nineteenth century performed everything from dance music to

operatic and symphonic transcriptions, thus providing one of the foundations for musical life in the

United States. Although brass bands were used mainly for parades, a mixed wind band was still used

for outdoor concerts with strings added as necessary. Olson’s identification of the year 1834 as the

beginning of the Golden Age of Brass Bands compliments Broyles’ discussion of the public

perception of nineteenth-century bands: “as late as the 1830s wind bands were considered on a par

with symphonic ensembles. They played the same music and were welcome to share the stage. In

fact, the presence of a wind band was considered a plus by anyone organizing a concert.”55 The

switch from mixed bands to brass bands, then, occurred around the same time that public

perception of wind bands began to change. Broyles writes that by 1845 bands “were considered

distinctly inferior to symphony orchestras,” evidence of which appears in Theodore Hach’s

association of bands with “bad taste” based on his distinction between indoor and outdoor music.56

Hach, the editor of The Musical Magazine, regularly wrote about the importance of cultivating musical

taste in Boston, focusing on his view of instrumental music as “high art.”57 The emerging duality

between “high art” and “low art” dominated how bands were perceived by both audiences and

critics for the rest of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth; later band directors would have

to contend with this supposed inferiority.

The band community during the first half of the nineteenth century was important in its

representation of the American nation. Although bands borrowed musical characteristics from

54 Raoul Camus, “The Brass Band in the Nineteenth Century,” in On Bunker’s Hill: Essays in Honor of J. Bunker Clark, eds.
William A. Everett and Paul R. Laird: 27-44 (Sterling Heights, MI: Harmonie Park Press, 2007), 29-30.
55 Broyles, "Music of the Highest Class": Elitism and Populism in Antebellum Boston, 293.
56 Ibid.
57 Ibid., 221-22.

38
European bands, these same characteristics became the stylistic features of a new American

community of bands. The music played by these groups was largely functional—from ceremonial

music for official events, to familiar folk songs and dance tunes performed for local audiences. The

communities they served were generally localized; for example, the Boston Brigade Band played for

specific functions within the Boston community. Local pride became an important component of

the communities supporting these types of bands, which continued into the second half of the

nineteenth century through the Civil War.

American Bands during the Civil War

When the Civil War began, the number of brass bands in the United States greatly increased,

as each regiment attempted to recruit its own brass band. Many regiments, however, found that it

took them years to successfully organize their own regimental band. To help out, professional bands

like the Boston Brigade Band and the Dodworth Band occasionally accompanied regiments on

marches, especially their first march to training camp.58 The functions of these bands were very

similar to the functions of the “bands of music” from the Revolutionary War: providing

entertainment for troops, both at camp and in hospitals; participating in ceremonial occasions and

military events, like funerals and parades; and performing dances and concerts for the towns and

villages that they marched through between battles. Members of these brass bands, plus individual

drummers and fifers, may have had specific roles in the battles themselves; Bruce Gleason identifies

examples of the horse-mounted bands associated with General Philip H. Sheridan’s units being

ordered to perform “the gayest tunes in their books” on the firing line during battles.59 Kenneth

Olson argues that the Civil War years represent the peak of the Golden Age of Brass Bands, but

Stuart Feder, Charles Ives, “My Father’s Song”: A Psychoanalytic Biography (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 34.
58

Bruce P. Gleason, Sound the Trumpet, Beat the Drums: Horse-Mounted Bands of the U.S. Army, 1820-1940. (Norman, OK:
59

University of Oklahoma Press, 2016), 49-50.

39
these years also represent the point at which brass bands began to die out, initiating a change in the

structure of bands from brass groups to mixed instrumentation. Even with this significant

transformation occurring, by the end of the Civil War wind band culture (both brass and mixed) was

firmly established as an iconic aspect of American national identity.

Civil War bands were more significant as communities shaped by descent than by affinity.

Both the Union and Confederate soldiers, as well as the people they had left behind, found

motivation and solace in the music played by the Civil War bands. More importantly, the bands

became an icon of nationalism; beyond motivating soldiers and their families, bands were most

important for recruitment efforts, especially well known civilian bands. Olson writes, “The brass

band had long been part of our national culture. Civilian soldiers naturally associated band music

with any sort of civic or patriotic demonstration. The close relationship between militia units and

bands was long standing.”60 This observation speaks to the strength of the descent community

informing American bands at the time of the Civil War. In terms of repertoire, bands still performed

primarily functional music and music for entertainment: marches, dance tunes, popular songs, pieces

for solo instruments and accompaniment, and transcriptions of “light classics”—works by

composers like Johann Strauss II and Jacques Offenbach.61 Some of this music was newly

composed, including one of the most popular tunes from the Civil War: “When Johnny Comes

Marching Home” by bandleader Patrick Gilmore.

Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore (1829-1892) was among the most prominent band directors who

supported the war effort during these years. Gilmore, an Irish immigrant, became the bandmaster of

the Boston Brass Band in 1852, and by 1859 he had taken over leadership of the Boston Brigade

Band. Even though this group was one of the most renowned in the country’s history, management

60 Olson, Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsmen of the American Civil War, 66.
61 Gleason, Sound the Trumpet, Beat the Drums: Horse-Mounted Bands of the U.S. Army, 1820-1940, 53.

40
was only able to convince Gilmore to accept the job when they allowed him to change the group’s

name to the “Gilmore Band.”62 Gilmore did not have long to make changes to the group before he

became fully involved in the war effort. He initially contributed by providing escorts to regiments as

they went off to training camp; later, Gilmore enlisted his band with the 24th Massachusetts

Volunteer Regiment. After his group’s discharge in 1862, Gilmore was tasked with the

reorganization of the state militia bands, at which time he added woodwind instruments back into

the band. He also helped put together some early “monster concerts,” first in New Orleans and then

in Boston; the bands at these performances comprised over 500 players.63 These wartime

experiences prepared Gilmore for the events he would organize after the war.

Patrick Gilmore and John Philip Sousa

Patrick Gilmore

Gilmore’s success as a bandleader during and immediately after the war paved the way for

his organization of the National Peace Jubilee held in Boston in 1869. This “monster concert” was

influenced by the 1853-54 American concert tour of the French conductor and composer Louis

Jullien and his orchestra. In addition to the large scope of his concerts, Jullien was also known for

programming a mixture of popular and classical music, including newly commissioned pieces by

American composers George Frederick Bristow and William Henry Fry. Jullien’s cultivation of

American audiences related at least in part to the development of band audiences. Katherine K.

Preston notes, “Although there was no sudden interest in establishing community orchestras in

American towns following Jullien’s visit, there was a remarkable growth in the number of local brass

62 Olson, Music and Musket: Bands and Bandsmen of the American Civil War, 225.
63
Frank J. Cipolla, “Patrick S. Gilmore: The Boston Years,” American Music 6, no., 3 (Fall 1998): 284-86.

41
bands at midcentury,” which could be because brass players were more numerous than string

players.64 Gilmore adopted many of Jullien’s practices for his own group. Taking place over a period

of five days and requiring thousands of performers, Gilmore’s National Peace Jubilee was a

significant accomplishment, and even earned the praise of John Sullivan Dwight, who was notorious

for his critiques of American music. Dwight invariably preferred an orchestra playing the works of

German composers to a band, but after the National Peace Jubilee he grudgingly acknowledged

some degree of success:

As an occasion, of a new kind, of unexampled magnitude—whatever may have been

musically—the Jubilee was a success. All acknowledge it, not without joy, even
though at times it may come over some of us again in the character it wore from the
first, as a strange overshadowing aspiration, a vast work of willfulness, which had,
intrinsically, ideally, no right to be.65

The Nation praised the Jubilee more highly, calling particular attention to Gilmore’s leadership: “It is

wonderful what a man completely possessed by one idea and blessed with blind faith and pugnacity

sufficient to carry it out in the face of every obstacle, can accomplish.”66 Gilmore’s vision directly

impacted the development of American bands.

The World Peace Jubilee and International Musical Festival held three years later in 1872

cemented Gilmore’s reputation as the nation’s leading bandmaster, one who focused on

programming a variety of music that was intended both to entertain and to educate. He invited

foreign bands from England, France, and Prussia to perform at this second Jubilee, and after hearing

the French Garde Republicaine Band, he determined to use it as a model for an American band. Bill

F. Faucett notes that the French band was the favorite of most of the attendees, and critics reviewed

its performances positively.67 Attendance at the 1872 Jubilee did not match the numbers who

64 Katherine K. Preston, “‘A Concentration of Talent on Our Musical Horizon’: The 1853-54 American Tour by Jullien's
Extraordinary Orchestra,” in American Orchestras in the Nineteenth Century, ed. John Spitzer: 319-347 (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2012), 342.
65 John Sullivan Dwight, quoted in Cipolla’s “Patrick S. Gilmore: The Boston Years,” 288.
66 The Nation, reprinted in Cipolla’s Patrick S. Gilmore: The Boston Years,” 288.
67 Bill F. Faucett, Music in Boston: Composers, Events, and Idea, 1852-1918 (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2016), 55.

42
witnessed the National Peace Jubilee, however, and critical reception of the World Peace Jubilee was

mostly negative, in part because of its comparisons to its precursor. Dwight, for example, expressed

his displeasure: “The great, usurping, tyrannizing, noisy and pretentious thing is over, and there is a

general feeling of relief, as if a heavy, brooding nightmare had been lifted from us all.”68 Despite

overall reception, Frank Cipolla observes that one of the most important results of the World Peace

Jubilee was a new interest in choral singing and in wind music.69 The World Peace Jubilee played a

role in the continued development of American bands; the event focused attention on the high

caliber of the European groups and encouraged Gilmore and others to improve their own.

Upon assuming leadership of the 22nd Regiment of New York in 1873, Gilmore reconceived

the American band, making several important aesthetic decisions in the process. He expanded the

woodwind instrumentation, especially the clarinet section, which doubled in size, and turned his

attention to creating a unique tone color for his band. With these changes his band grew to 101

players, with sixty woodwinds, thirty-seven brass, and four percussion.70 Gilmore’s shift in

instrumentation was essential to the development of an American band sound. While today’s British

and German bands retain their focus on brass instruments, American bands typically have a large

woodwind section, which often carries the melodic material, more like the traditional French bands.

The prominence of woodwinds in the American band sound made possible future developments,

including the wind ensemble concept, which focuses on timbral contrasts and, as stated previously,

requires soloistic playing from individual players. Comparing contemporary band music by French

and American composers to music by British and German composers reveals the influence of these

68 John Sullivan Dwight, quoted in Cipolla’s “Patrick S. Gilmore: The Boston Years,” 290.
69 Frank J. Cipolla, “Patrick S. Gilmore: The Boston Years,” American Music 6, no., 3 (Fall 1998): 290.
70 Frank J. Cipolla, “Patrick S. Gilmore: The New York Years,” in European Music and Musicians in New York City, 1840-

1900, ed. John Graziano (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 186. Cipolla notes that the band’s
instrumentation was usually advertised as 100 players, rather than 101.

43
historical timbral preferences. Gilmore’s decision to base the tone color of his band on the sound of

the French Garde Republicaine sound was thus a crucial step in the development of American

bands’ distinctive sound. In 1878 Gilmore brought his band to Europe; this band used a smaller

instrumentation of sixty-six players (see complete instrumentation in Appendix B).71

Additionally, Gilmore continued his practice of programming a variety of concert repertoire;

a typical program by the 22nd Regiment Band included overtures, opera selections, waltzes and

polkas, solo pieces, and original marches by Gilmore.72 The program for the band’s inaugural

concert on November 18, 1873, consisted of:

PART I.
March, “Salute to New York” (first time) – P. S. Gilmore
Overture, “Semiramide” – Rossini
Solo for Cornet, “7th aire et varie” – De Beriot
Reminiscences of Various Operas – Bellini
Introducing variation on “Non-piu Mesta,” for Clarinet. Played by the twelve
principal Clarinetists of the Band in unison; the closing cadenza, by Mr. Carl
Kegel; also an aria for Baritone, from Robert Bruce, played by W. F. Letsch
Concert Polka, for Cornets, in unison – Arban

PART II.
March, “22nd Regiment” (first time) – P. S. Gilmore
Overture, “Der Freischutz” – Weber
Solo for Saxophone, “Fantasie air Suisse” – Singelee
Grand Selections from Martha – Flotow
International Pot Pourri
Introducing the “Star Spangled Banner,” “Hail Columbia,” “German
Fatherland,” “Russian Hymn,” “The Marsellaise,” “God Save the Queen,”
“The Harp that once through Tara’s Halls,” and “Yankee Doodle,” with
brilliant variations.73

Gilmore’s practice of alternating more serious works, like opera overtures and pieces featuring solo

instruments, with lighter crowd-pleasers, like the medley of patriotic songs at the end of the

71 Ibid., 187.
72 Frank J. Cipolla, “Patrick S. Gilmore: The New York Years,” in European Music and Musicians in New York City, 1840-
1900, ed. John Graziano (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 184.
73 Original program reprinted in Cipolla, “Patrick S. Gilmore: The New York Years,” in European Music and Musicians in

New York City, 1840-1900, ed. John Graziano (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2006), 185.

44
program, appealed to his audiences in New York. Later in his career, however, Gilmore removed

what he considered to be the lighter pieces from his program in order to focus more on the

“serious” music. Gilmore made these programming decisions part of his European tours with the

22nd Regiment Band, in which they visited towns in England, Scotland, France, the Netherlands,

Belgium, and Germany.74 His band’s international presence shaped a new reputation for the

American wind band and created a model for future bandleaders to emulate; Frank Cipolla observes

that “no other American band had ever attained such a continuously popular and profitable concert

and traveling schedule.”75 Both the changes in instrumentation and repertoire and the new

international reputation signaled a shift in the community of which Gilmore’s Band was a part; the

band moved from a descent community closer to an affinity community.

In an 1879 article titled “American Military Bands,” Gilmore spoke of the changing

perception of the nineteenth-century band: “In a word, the orchestra, in the voluptuousness of its

swelling and fascinating melodies, may be recognized as a very queen, but the military band, in the

sonority and grandeur of its ravishing harmonies, shall be king.”76 The desire to move the band from

its position as a functional ensemble to a position more equal to that of the orchestra is another

aspect of the band’s morphing from a descent community to an affinity community. As Gilmore’s

Band became increasingly famous, audiences grew in numbers; these audiences were primarily

connected by their desire to hear music performed by Gilmore’s Band. More importantly, however,

Gilmore’s aesthetic developments influenced later bands, including arguably the most famous band

in the history of American music: Sousa’s Band.

74 Cipolla, “Patrick S. Gilmore: The New York Years,” 187.

75 Cipolla, “Patrick S. Gilmore: The Boston Years,” 191.
76 Patrick Gilmore, quoted in Cipolla’s “Patrick S. Gilmore: The New York Years,” 192. The gendering of the band as

male and the orchestra as female is noteworthy.

45
John Philip Sousa

Upon assuming the leadership of the United States Marine Band in 1880, John Philip Sousa

(1854-1932) inherited Gilmore’s legacy and began to realize their shared goal of creating a band

comparable to the Garde Republicaine. Born in Washington, D.C., Sousa was the first American-

born bandmaster of the Marine Band; he also arguably had the greatest impact on the development

of that band even though he had no training as a military bandmaster. In his autobiography Sousa

explained that he had been charged with reorganizing the Marine Band. One of the most important

changes he would make was in the realm of repertoire: “I found its music library limited, antiquated,

and a good deal of it poorly arranged and badly copied. There was not a sheet of Wagner, Berlioz,

Grieg, Tschaikowsky, or any other of the modern composers who were attracting attention

throughout the musical world.”77 Sousa’s observation is revealing: before his leadership, the Marine

Band focused mainly on traditional patriotic music. He expanded the repertoire to include the most

popular orchestral and operatic composers, thus applying Gilmore’s repertoire changes to the most

prominent band in the country. Many of the marches performed by the Marine Band were Sousa’s

original compositions. During this time, he composed some of his most popular works, including

“The Gladiator” (1886), “Semper Fidelis” (1888), and “The Washington Post March” (1889). In

response to “The Washington Post March,” a British band journalist remarked that Sousa should be

known as the “March King,” refashioning the nickname that had been applied to the “Waltz King,”

Johann Strauss II.78 Sousa’s updating of the Marine Band repertoire was appreciated by the

American public when he and the band embarked on their first (and, under Sousa, only) tour of the

United States in the spring of 1891. Paul Bierley argues that Sousa’s twelve years of command

77 John Philip Sousa, Marching Along: Recollections of Men, Women, and Music (Boston: Hale, Cushman, and Flint, 1928), 68.
78 Paul Bierley, John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 50.

46
developed the Marine Band to the extent that it performed on a level comparable to the European

bands heard at the World Peace Jubilee in 1879.79

Sousa led the Marine Band until 1892, when he formed his own professional band, called

Sousa’s Band; he was assisted by former Gilmore Band manager David Blakely. An often-cited early

success of Sousa’s Band was the group’s appearance at the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition

(World’s Fair) in 1893. Theodore Thomas, one of the most famous orchestral conductors in the

United States, was the musical director for the World’s Fair. Like Dwight, Thomas championed

Germanic music, yet for the World’s Fair his goal was to showcase the nation’s musical

accomplishments. Blakely wrote to Thomas to persuade him of the importance of including a band

among the Exposition’s musical offerings:

Pardon me for asking you to consider whether it is not a most desirable thing to
have on the ground at all times, the very best American Band, as a standard by which
to measure the accomplishments of our country in this direction. Your great
orchestra will do this for the orchestral branch of the musical art of the new world.
Our band will not fail to do its part, in its sphere, to confer equal honor upon the
country.80

Thomas assented to including Sousa’s Band among the showcased ensembles, and the band became

one of the musical highlights of the World’s Fair. This was especially significant when compared to

the failure of Thomas’s ticketed “artistic concert” series. In his article “Making the Band: The

Formation of John Philip Sousa’s Ensemble,” which focuses in part on Sousa’s World’s Fair

performance, Patrick Warfield asserts that it was Sousa’s performances at the Chicago Exposition

that cemented his reputation as Gilmore’s successor.81 Much of this assessment was attributable to

79 Ibid., 57.
80 David Blakely, quoted in Patrick Warfield’s “Making the Band: The Formation of John Philip Sousa’s Ensemble,”
American Music 24, no. 1 (Spring 2006), 46.
81 Warfield, “Making the Band: The Formation of John Philip Sousa’s Ensemble,” 52.

47
the technical skill of the band, but Sousa’s more inclusive approach to repertoire was equally

significant.

As he did with the Marine Band, Sousa continued Gilmore’s programming practices with his

own professional band, performing a variety of repertoire that included marches, dance music,

popular songs, operatic and symphonic transcriptions, and virtuosic works for solo instruments.82

He had inherited many of his soloists from Gilmore’s Band. Sousa’s conception of “popular music”

included much of the same repertoire that his orchestral contemporaries (most prominently

Theodore Thomas) esteemed for its educational and edifying values. Sousa usually programmed a

selection of transcriptions of the best-known European orchestral works separated by encores,

usually marches, dance pieces, or works for solo vocalists or instrumentalists; this alternation of

“classic” and “popular” works was known as “potpourri” programming. As the culmination of

decades of research on Sousa, Paul Bierley compiled an appendix of typical Sousa programs. This

research is especially valuable because he reconstructed programs to include the encores, which were

not included on the printed programs.83 A sample program is provided below:

Evening Concert, 11 November 1894

Rochester, New York, at Lyceum Theater

Tannhauser: Overture – Wagner

Encore: Plantation Chimes – Hall
Encore: The Washington Post, march – Sousa
Encore: Jesus, Lover of My Soul – Marsh
Hungarian Rhapsody, No. 2 – Liszt
Encore: Minuet l’Antique – Paderewski
Encore: The Directorate, march – Sousa
Annie Laurie, air varie – Pryor
Encore: Love’s Old Sweet Song – Molloy (Arthur Pryor, Trombone Soloist)
Scenes at a Masquerade – Lacombe
I. Grand March of the Maskers
II. Ponchiello Family
III. Columbine Flirtation

See a sample instrumentation for Sousa’s Band in Appendix B.

82

Paul Bierley, Appendix IV: Typical Sousa Band Programs, in The Incredible Band of John Philip Sousa (Urbana and
83

Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 270-320.

48
 IV. Revelry of the Maskers
Encore: Crack Regiment – Hairmann
Encore: Corncracker – Meacham
Serenade Enfantine – Bonnard
The Liberty Bell, march – Sousa
Encore: The Manhattan Beach, march – Sousa
O Hail I Greet Thee, from Tannhäuser – Wagner
Encore: Old Folks at Home – Foster (Francesca Guthrie-Moyer, Soprano)
Intermezzo Russe – Franke
Pasquinade – Gottschalk
Encore: At the Circus – Dunewaller
Encore: Bamboula, Negro Dance of Trinidad – Urich
Good-Bye, humoresque – Sousa
Encore: The High School Cadets, march – Sousa
Prelude to Act I of Lohengrin – Wagner84

It was this approach to programming that won over audiences like those at the 1893 Exposition.

Warfield concurs, “Sousa’s success did not in fact come from concerts full of marches and popular

songs,” but instead from his skill at putting together a varied concert that followed “a tradition of

eclecticism.”85 In his autobiography, Sousa lists several works he programmed on a particularly well-

received concert in 1908: it included pieces by Mozart, Handel, Bach, Haydn, Beethoven, Weber,

Schumann, and Mendelssohn. Sousa explained, “Those I maintain are among the most popular

compositions ever written and every one of them is from the pen of a great composer whom critics

would dub a classic writer. I didn’t even have to include an opera composer like Wagner.”86 Sousa’s

statement implies that his conception of popular music did not always match that of the music

critics; additionally, it suggests that he considered opera composers like Wagner more “popular” (i.e.

less “classic”) than orchestral composers like the others listed. Sousa rarely mentioned his own

marches or other short compositions in conjunction with his discussions of European composers.

84 Bierley, The Incredible Band of John Philip Sousa, 271. Bierley’s original source: Rochester Herald, 12 November 1894. Bierley
notes that this program would have had an interval, but its placement is uncertain.
85 Warfield, “Making the Band: The Formation of John Philip Sousa’s Ensemble,” 55.
86 John Philip Sousa, Marching Along: Recollections of Men, Women, and Music (Boston: Hale, Cushman & Flint, 1928), 295.

49
Even as a band conductor, he perceived original compositions for band as less “serious” than

transcriptions of symphonic works.

Sousa continued to enjoy a successful career with his band well into the twentieth century,

touring internationally and performing regular concert series in the United States, like the Willow

Grove Park summer concerts. According to Paul Bierley, Willow Grove Park, located in downtown

Philadelphia, was known as both the Sousa Band’s “home away from home” and the “summer

music capital of the nation.”87 With the exception of a world tour in summer 1911, the Band

performed there every summer from 1901 to 1926; these concerts became very popular with local

audiences, again largely because of the repertoire. Sousa continued his potpourri approach,

providing audiences with both symphonic transcriptions and marches. Many musicians and critics

focused only on the former. Arthur Pryor, a trombonist in Sousa’s Band and eventual leader of his

own group, stated in a 1909 interview,

I am a firm believer in the uplifting power of good music. It is chiefly on account of

this kind of musical development observed at Willow Grove that the music of Bach
and Beethoven, Wagner and Chopin, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Rossini, Verdi,
Mozart, and the great masters who sway the musical world, has become a favorite in
American households where twenty years ago the work of these musicians was
unknown and unappreciated.88

Pryor’s reflection reveals the influence of the perception of European music as “good” or

“uplifting” music. Lawrence Levine, who writes about the elevation of the “highbrow” arts,

including music, under the term “sacralization” in his book Highbrow-Lowbrow: The Emergence of

Cultural Hierarchy in America, argues that sacralization “increased the distance between amateur and

professional,” and “reinforced the all-too prevalent notion that for the source of divine inspiration

87Bierley, The Incredible Band of John Philip Sousa, 49.

88Ibid., 51. It should be noted that Pryor’s assertion regarding the popularity of the composers he listed is not true, but
the message he conveys here warrants the inclusion of this quote.

50
and artistic creation one had to look not only upward but eastward toward Europe.”89 Levine further

explains that Sousa did not fall subject to the same kinds of criticism by Dwight as Gilmore did

because he “came to symbolize good taste and order and was perceived as muting some of the most

grating features of bands.”90

It is unlikely, though, that Sousa perceived himself in the way Levine describes. Sousa’s

reflections on the supposed dichotomy between “classic” and “popular” and his continued

dedication to “potpourri” programming demonstrate that he did not embrace this kind of thinking.

Although he divides music between “simple” and “higher” music, he does not speak of popular

music disparagingly. In the article “Bandmaster Sousa Explains His Mission in Music,” he wrote:

My theory was, by insensible degrees, first to reach every heart by simple, stirring
music; secondly, to lift the unmusical mind to a still higher form of musical art. This
was my mission. The point was to move all America, while busied in its various
pursuits, by the power of direct and simple music. I wanted to make a music for the
people, a music to be grasped at once.91

Even with his reference to a “still higher form of musical art,” Sousa does not specifically associate

European composers like Beethoven, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Wagner with this higher form of art;

he speaks of the “power of direct and simple music” in a way that suggests he has no interest in

creating hierarchies. In his autobiography Sousa compared his band to Thomas’s orchestra,

emphasizing the difference in his approach to programming:

Thomas had a highly organized symphony orchestra with a traditional

instrumentation; I a highly organized wind band with an instrumentation without
precedent. Each of us was reaching an end, but through different methods. He gave
Wagner, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky, in the belief that he was educating his public; I gave
Wagner, Liszt, and Tchaikovsky with the hope that I was entertaining my public.92

89 Lawrence Levine, Highbrow-Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1988), 139-40.
90 Ibid., 165-66.
91 John Philip Sousa, quoted in Paul E. Bierley’s John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-

Hall, 1973), 119.

92 Sousa, Marching Along: Recollections of Men, Women, and Music, 132.

51
In other instances, Sousa compared his own marches to symphonies. As Bierley notes, “He

observed that lovers of literature would never deny the greatness of a brief poem and saw no reason

why lovers of music should discriminate against shorter works.”93 Sousa’s programming, then,

provided audiences with access to symphonic works, but also highlighted original works for band in

a way that did not insist upon hierarchical distinction.

Sousa’s contribution to the history of the American wind band cannot be overstated, but it is

important to recognize that his musical background was diverse. Before he became the director of

the Marine Band, Sousa was a violinist, a theater conductor, and a composer of art songs. Sousa’s

varied musical background prepared him well to continue Gilmore’s transformation of the American

band into an ensemble that achieved both national and international renown; he applied his

understanding of other genres of classical music to his leadership of his bands. Like Gilmore, Sousa

was an early champion of the American band in its struggle to be viewed as an equal to the

symphony orchestra: “I fancy musicians still entertain a vague idea that a military band is inferior to

the symphony orchestra; inferior it is not. It is simply different. . . . Yet composers will write for the

symphony orchestra willingly, and for the military band with a certain sense of doing humbler

work.”94 Much of this notion relates to Levine’s concept of sacralization, but it seems possible that

part of this sense of the inferiority lies in the construction of the community surrounding the band:

the band has much stronger ties to localized descent communities than any of the early orchestra

did, whose personnel frequently were members of touring ensembles or recent immigrants. By the

end of the nineteenth century, changes to bands made by both Gilmore and Sousa realigned the

band community from primarily a descent community to a more hybridized descent and affinity

community. Sousa’s leadership of the Marine Band and the founding of his own band brought the

Paul E. Bierley, John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 124.
93

John Philip Sousa, “No State Aid for Art,” quoted in his autobiography Marching Along: Recollections of Men, Women, and
94

Music (Boston: Hale, Cushman, and Flint, 1928), 191.

52
American band into the twentieth century and further cemented its amalgamated place between

descent and affinity community. Furthermore, Sousa’s continuation of Gilmore’s innovations

revised the idea of what “descended”: in the twentieth century it became impossible to speak of the

heritage of the American band without acknowledging Gilmore or Sousa. Their innovations and

ideas became foundational for twentieth-century bandleaders, including Edwin Franko Goldman

and Frederick Fennell.

After Sousa: Bands in the Early-Mid Twentieth Century

Edwin Franko and Richard Franko Goldman

During the first half of the twentieth century, the wind band genre underwent significant

changes, especially in terms of repertoire and relationships with contemporary composers.

Professional wind bands like Sousa’s began to decline, while college bands were on the rise.95 As the

function of the ensemble changed, a desire for more “serious” music increased. The programs of

Edwin Franko Goldman (1878-1956), leader of the New York-based Goldman Band from 1919 to

1958, provide insight into how band repertoire developed from the late nineteenth- and early

twentieth-century programming of Sousa. Goldman and his son Richard Franko Goldman (who

succeeded his father as leader of the band) are best remembered for their efforts to create an original

band repertoire, yet in the early decades of the twentieth century the majority of the Goldman Band

programs consisted of arrangements of orchestral works. Edwin Goldman disagreed with those

directors who limited themselves to original works, perhaps because in the first half of the twentieth

century there was only a small repertoire of original works for band compared to the number of

symphonic arrangements. Instead he continued to program transcriptions of orchestral pieces in

95Joshua Gailey discusses the emerging school band movement in the early twentieth century in his forthcoming
dissertation.

53
addition to marches and other original wind works throughout most of his career. By the end of the

1940s, however, both Goldmans had become major advocates of a new repertoire for the wind

band. Their work culminated in 1948 with a landmark concert that preceded the initiation of the first

series of commissioned original works for band by American composers.

Creating a new repertoire of serious works for the wind band had been Edwin Franko

Goldman’s dream. Goldman, born in 1878, came from a musical family on his mother’s side (the

Frankos), and he embraced that heritage when he began studying music at the National

Conservatory in 1892. He played trumpet in the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra from 1901 to 1909,

but resigned this position to pursue his goal of creating a “fine concert band.”96 Goldman organized

the New York Military Band (later the Goldman Band) in 1911, which was unlike the Sousa Band in

that it did not tour.97 In 1918 he began conducting a series of free summer concerts performed “on

the Green” of Columbia University; conductor Eugene Corporon noted that these concerts “did a

great deal to advance the band as a serious performance medium and legitimize the repertoire,” as

Goldman consistently added more original, serious works to the programs.98 The concerts were

moved to the Mall in Central Park in 1923, with additional performances at New York University

beginning in 1925 and Prospect Park in Brooklyn beginning in 1934.99 Goldman noted in his 1940

New York Times article that audiences at these summer concerts ranged from 25,000 to 40,000,

regardless of the weather; they came not only from New York but New Jersey and Connecticut as

well. In 1924 the Guggenheim family started sponsoring the concerts; with the influx of funds,

Goldman acquired considerable freedom in his leadership of the band.

96 Herbert N. Johnston, “Edwin Franko Goldman: A Brief Biographical Sketch on the Centenary of his Birth,” Journal of
Band Research 14 (Fall 1978): 5.
97 See sample instrumentation of the Goldman Band in Appendix B.
98 Eugene Migliaro Corporon, “Historical Highlights of the Wind Band: A Heritage and Lineage: Part Two: The French

Revolution to the Present,” in Teaching Music Through Performance in Band: Volume 7, (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2009), 95.
99 Douglas Stotter, “The Goldman Band Programs, 1919-1955” (D.M.A. diss., University of Iowa, 1993), 2.

54
The Founding of ABA

In an effort to gather prominent American band directors to “provide important leadership

in raising the standards of bands and band music,” Goldman founded the American Bandmasters

Association (ABA) in 1929.100 The organization was the first of its kind, and focused primarily on

elevating all aspects of the band community. The original Constitution of the American Bandmasters

Association stated in part,

The object of this organization shall be mutual helpfulness and the promotion of better
music through the instrumentality of the concert band. To this end the Association will
strive . . . to induce prominent composers of all countries to write in the larger forms for
band; to establish for the concert band a higher standard of artistic recognition which it
rightfully merits.101

Goldman hoped that the ABA would become part of a greater musical community, attracting the

interests of musicians active in other genres. He had observed the declining popularity of touring

bands throughout the 1920s, and he determined that organizing a group of conductors to engage the

most popular American composers to write for band would return the band to the forefront of

American musical culture. In a preliminary meeting with Victor Grabel, the conductor of the

Chicago Concert Band, and Captain William Stannard, leader of the United States Army Band,

Goldman announced his ideas for the organization. He also enlisted Sousa, who was crucial to the

ABA’s success.

The first organizational meeting of ABA took place on July 5, 1929, in New York City; the

organization consisted of nine charter members and was presided over by Goldman, who became

the first ABA president. They drafted a constitution and elected officers, including John Philip Sousa

as Honorary Life President.102 This gesture indicated not only their respect for Sousa, but also a

100 Frank Battisti, The Winds of Change: The Evolution of the Contemporary American Wind Band/Ensemble and its Conductor
(Galesville, MD: Meredith Music Publications, 2002), 40.
101 Ibid., 41.
102 Alan Lee Davis, “A History of the American Bandmasters Association,” (DMA diss., Arizona State University, 1987),

23.

55
desire to foster a sense of tradition. ABA quickly became synonymous with the preservation of

tradition in the wind band community. In his 1987 dissertation on the history of the organization,

Alan Lee Davis wrote that one of his goals was to “capture the atmosphere of tradition that is the

American Bandmasters Association: the tradition of Sousa, Goldman, Simon, Harding, Pryor,

Bainum, Filmore, and others. To paraphrase one of the leaders of the association, ABA is an

organization which links the past and future of the American band movement.”103 The twin

emphases on remembering the great bandmasters of the past and commissioning music for the

future directed the ABA through the rest of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

In the months preceding the inaugural ABA convention in March 1930 in Middletown,

Ohio, charter members identified the issues most important to the organization: they included

establishing a standardized instrumentation, developing more effective arranging methods, and

encouraging contemporary composers to write for the band.104 To Goldman and his colleagues,

establishing a standardized instrumentation went hand in hand with attracting composers, a topic

which Goldman addressed in his opening remarks at the Ohio convention:

We do not want the band to be looked upon merely as a thing for parades and
picnics. We do not want to feel that a few men in uniforms carrying instruments
constitute a band. And we will not admit that the band is inferior to the orchestra.
Our Honorary President, John Philip Sousa, said recently, “The band is not inferior
to the orchestra—it is different.” And I agree with him fully and will add to that by
saying that in many respects the band is superior to the orchestra, just as in some
ways the orchestra is superior to the band. Each can achieve effects which the other
cannot. . . . The two great advantages the orchestra has over the band are—first,
there is a universal instrumentation for it, and—secondly, the great composers write
directly for orchestra. If the instrumentation for bands did not vary in each country,
I feel sure that composers would be glad to write directly for band. This would give
them a greater outlet for their works.105

103 Ibid., iv.

104 Davis, “A History of the American Bandmasters Association,” 33.
105 Edwin Franko Goldman, opening remarks at the first ABA convention, cited in Davis, “A History of the American

Bandmasters Association,” 39.

56
Opinions would change over the next few decades; while some band conductors continued to

advocate for a standardized instrumentation, others, most importantly Frederick Fennell, saw the

advantages of flexible instrumentation in appealing to contemporary composers. The charter

members also invited the leading band directors in the United States and Canada to become

members.106 At the time, members were also required to take and pass a four-part entrance

examination covering music history, form and analysis, instrumentation/scoring, and harmony; this

was eliminated in 1941.107 Although these requirements may appear problematic and exclusionary,

Davis suggests that they were necessary to establish ABA as a legitimate organization within the

larger musical world: “It was only by adhering to these strict membership procedures that the ABA

began to speak with a strong and knowledgeable voice in addressing the important issues

confronting the band movement.”108

The founding of ABA marked an important moment in the history of the American wind

band as regards community. For the first time, a national organization existed to foster

communication among band conductors from around the country. Even though members of the

organization typically met only once a year, they communicated extensively through letters between

annual conventions.109 The conventions, however, quickly became a focal point of the community

(and remain so today). Davis notes three traditions that began at the Middletown convention: the

106 Today, as for almost all of the organization’s history, membership is invitation-only. Davis speculates that at one
point the intention may have been to allow bandmasters to apply for membership; citing the 1928 draft of the
Constitution, which states, “The name of any bandmaster, who may desire to become a member of the Association, may
be submitted to the Chairman of the Membership Committee.” The 1932 Constitution reads, “The Board of Directors
and the Membership Committee shall have the power to waive examination in the case of any outstanding bandmaster
of established reputation and admit him to active membership in this association by invitation. Such bandmasters, to
receive consideration, must be proposed and sponsored by active members of the association,” which Davis points out
implies that other bandmasters must have been able to apply for membership. Since 1938, however, membership has
officially been by invitation only. Davis, “A History of the American Bandmasters Association,” 35.
107 Ibid., 30.
108 Ibid., 49.
109 With the exception of the years of World War II, during which time Henry Fillmore, the president at the time, and

Lynn Sams, the editor of the ABA Newsletter, held the organization together purely through personal correspondence
and the distribution of the newsletter. The conventions began again in 1947.

57
presence of conductors’ wives at the conventions, the establishment of a formal banquet, and the

practice of each piece on a concert program being conducted by a different ABA member.110 ABA,

perhaps because of its status as an honorary organization and its accompanying sense of tradition,

maintained these practices with very few changes. Today, spouses still attend ABA; the first woman

inducted into ABA—Gladys Stone Wright, in 1984—was married to a man already a member, Al G.

Wright, so there were still no husbands present at spousal events until the following year when

Barbara Buehlman was inducted. The designation of spousal events clearly reveals the gendering of

the band community; the founders conceived of ABA as an innately male community in which the

place of women was specifically identified as separate from that of men. It is likely that the founders

never conceived of a world where women would be inducted as ABA members. That the tradition

of spousal events continues today demonstrates the reluctance to confront gender imbalances in the

community. The place of ABA in the contemporary wind community will be addressed in Chapter

4, and the role of gender will be discussed in Chapter 5.

Most importantly to composer-conductor relationships, the ABA conventions provided a

space to present new works for the repertoire. Goldman’s earliest efforts to improve the quality of

repertoire for the wind band occurred with the premieres of three new pieces at ABA conventions

in the 1930s: Henry Hadley's Youth Triumphant, Ottorino Respighi's Huntingtower Ballad, and Erik

Leidzen's Holiday Overture, premiered in 1931, 1932, and 1937, respectively. Although debuting at the

ABA conventions and dedicated to ABA, none of these pieces was officially commissioned and the

composers were not paid for their work. Respighi dedicated his score to Edwin Franko Goldman as

well as the ABA, and Hadley and Leidzen both state in program notes for their works that their

pieces were written at the request or suggestion of Goldman. These works were important additions

to the repertoire, as well as early accomplishments of Goldman’s goals. Other works premiered at

110 Davis, “A History of the American Bandmasters Association,” 41-42.

58
ABA conventions during this time include two canonical works for band: Holst’s Hammersmith in

1932 and Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy in 1937. Despite a great deal of success in a short period of

time, Goldman retired from the ABA presidency in 1933; he was immediately elected the second

Honorary Life President.111 In the following decade, Goldman and his son increased their efforts to

improve the band repertoire by commissioning works for The Goldman Band to premiere.

The Goldman Band Commissions

On July 21, 1942, the Goldman Band performed a concert sponsored by the League of

Composers that was unique in consisting entirely of original works for band. The League hoped that

it would set an example for other bands regarding original repertoire.112 The League of Composers

was founded in 1923 as a response to the Edgard Varèse’s International Composers’ Guild (ICG),

which “even his closest allies admitted [was] essentially a vehicle for him and the music he

preferred.”113 Unlike the ICG, the League claimed to support contemporary composers who wrote

“all types of music, whether radical or conservative, or even ‘the safe middle road’.”114 The League

preferred not to program works that “did not reflect the spirit of the times,” however; works by

Howard Hanson and Amy Beach, for example, were rejected for being too “traditional.”115 The

League’s decade-long backing of the Goldman Band was unusual in that it was a rare instance of the

League stepping outside of the modern new-music scene. The pairing of the band community and

the League of Composers is also significant in their shared goal of forming organizations to support

young American composers. Claire Reis, the League’s president from 1923 to 1948, explained, “We

began in the early years looking for American works because they were so hard to find. . . . We

began to realize that we should emphasize the need of commissioning American composers.”116 This

111 Davis, “A History of the American Bandmasters Association,” 66.

112 Richard Hansen, The American Wind Band: A Cultural History (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2005), 84.
113 Michael Broyles, Mavericks and Other Traditions in American Music (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 127.
114 Ibid., 128.
115 David Metzer, “The League of Composers: The Initial Years,” American Music 15, no. 1 (Spring 1997), 56.
116 Claire Reis, quoted in Metzer, “The League of Composers: The Initial Years,” 53.

59
mission is consistent with the mission of band organizations from the mid twentieth century. The

League of Composers played a role in promoting the works of composers like Aaron Copland and

Ruth Crawford; in later decades, the wind ensemble community would do the same for other

composers.

The 1942 concert program included works by Leo Sowerby, Pedro San Juan, Morton Gould,

Paul Creston, William Schuman, Gustav Holst, Henry Cowell, Percy Grainger, and Ralph Vaughan

Williams, as well as by both Edwin and Richard Goldman.117 Of the works performed on this

concert, only Holst’s First Suite in E-flat and Vaughan William’s Folksong Suite are still regularly

performed. Most of the others were short and simple works that did not highlight the unique

capabilities of band; few (if any) of the works matched the kind of music usually programmed on

League concerts. Nevertheless, the new and radical idea of an entire program consisting of original

works for band took root with this concert. Furthermore, this concert marked the beginning of a

collaboration between the Goldman Band and the League of Composers that would continue

throughout the next decade. The concert was well received in the musical community; music critic

Carl Buchanan wrote, “Major tribute must go to Richard Goldman, who conceived this idea of

presenting the series of new works and conducted the greater part of them with characteristic insight

into their content. This one enterprise alone has put generations of American music and musicians

in his debt.”118 The 1942 concert and the combined efforts of the Goldmans and the League of

Composers presaged a landmark concert in 1948.

The Goldman Band concert at Carnegie Hall on January 3, 1948, demonstrated how far the

wind band had come in the decades since the founding of the ABA. The League of Composers and

Richard Goldman, who at the time was serving as the Executive Director and Program Chairman of

117 See the program in Richard Franko Goldman, The Wind Band: Its Literature and Technique (Boston: Allyn and Bacon,
1961), 90-91.
118 Carl Buchanan, “Composers Dedicate Works to the Band,” Modern Music 20 (1942): 48.

60
the League, planned this event in honor of Edwin Goldman’s seventieth birthday and the League’s

twenty-fifth anniversary, with Walter Hendl conducting the Goldman Band. The program was

revolutionary because it consisted entirely of original contemporary works for the wind band.

Directors and critics regarded the repertoire as more serious than, for example, the marches

composed and performed by Gilmore and Sousa, or the works performed on the 1942 Goldman

Band concert. In an article published two days after the performance, the New York Times music

critic Noel Straus observed:

As Aaron Copland remarked in a brief address, which he made before the intermission as
chairman of the National Composers Committee of the League of Composers, the event
was a “double-header.” For, on the one hand, it was unique because of the type of music
presented, and on the other, because it paid tribute to the man who had made such a
program possible. . . .
The program, as a whole, was a striking revelation of the great advance made in
band writing during the last quarter of a century. Every work presented had its special
merits and the sum total of achievement proved remarkably high.119

It should be noted that Straus, while well known as a regular music critic for the newspaper, was not

unbiased. He had been a vocal ally of Edwin Goldman and his efforts since at least 1936, when

Goldman’s article “Place of the Band” appeared in the New York Times, explaining the need for

original wind band compositions.120 Nevertheless, his glowing review captured important reactions

to the concert, especially Copland’s recognition of Goldman’s significance to the band tradition.

The 1948 concert program included works by Vaughan Williams, Milhaud, Schoenberg,

Grainger, Cowell, and Miaskovsky.121 The focal point of the concert was Percy Grainger’s new work,

The Power of Rome and the Christian Heart, commissioned by Edwin Goldman and the League of

Composers. This work is performed infrequently today; however, it is a work that is representative

of Grainger’s idiomatic writing for band and worthy of increased scholarly attention by both the

119 Noel Straus, “Composers Honor Dr. Goldman at 70,” New York Times, January 5, 1948.
120 Noel Straus, “Place of the Band,” New York Times, June 28, 1936.
121 See the program in Goldman, The Wind Band: Its Literature and Technique, 93.

61
band and musicological communities. The program also included two works recently commissioned

by other organizations: Arnold Schoenberg’s Theme and Variations, Op. 43a, and Darius Milhaud’s

Suite Francaise. Carl Engel, the president of G. Schirmer Music Publishers, commissioned

Schoenberg’s piece in 1943 with the intention that it would be playable by high school bands. The

difficulty of the work, however, meant that it was not premiered until 1946, by the Goldman Band

under Richard Goldman. Originally, it received mixed reviews, even from Richard Goldman himself.

Straus’s reaction to the work at the 1948 performance was much different than earlier reviews; in his

1948 review he called Schoenberg’s piece “...the noblest, profoundest, and most important of the

evening's contributions.”122 Perhaps surrounding the Theme and Variations with other brilliant original

works for band in an atmosphere like Carnegie Hall enhanced the listening experience. Straus’s

earlier 1946 review had expressed disappointment at the work’s suitability for outdoor concerts.123

Like Schoenberg’s work, Milhaud’s Suite Francaise was originally intended for American high school

bands. Leeds Music Publishing commissioned the work in 1945; it was also premiered by the

Goldman Band. The fact that both of these works were commissioned by music publishers implies

that they were expected to become successful commercially. In a review of the premiere, Straus

called attention to Milhaud’s “exceedingly knowing treatment of a score remarkable for imaginative

coloring and effective contrasts of moods and tinting.”124 Original wind works by composers of the

stature of Schoenberg and Milhaud, especially ones who experimented with the wind band sound

palette, further demonstrated the compositional possibilities that lay within the ensemble.

Following the success of the 1948 concert, Edwin Goldman established the League of

Composers Band Work Fund in 1949 as the first regular commissioning series for original wind

122 Straus, “Composers Honor Dr. Goldman at 70.”

123 Noel Straus, “New Composition Heard at Concert,” New York Times, June 29, 1946.
124 Noel Straus, “Goldman's Band Entertains 16,000,” New York Times, June 14, 1945.

62
band works.125 The funds came in part from royalties earned by Goldman’s The League of Composers

march, composed in 1948. The awarding of the commissions was transferred from the League of

Composers to ABA in 1952; the league disbanded in 1953. Although the Guggenheim Foundation

generously supported the Goldman Band summer concert series, the Goldman Band’s funds were

limited and mainly went toward salaries and maintenance, so there was little, if any, money left over

for commissions. Partnering with organizations such as the League of Composers and ABA gave the

Goldmans the ability to commission pieces on a yearly basis. In his book The Wind Band: Its Repertoire

and Technique, Richard Franko Goldman noted that this commissioning series proved to be “a great

stimulus to the broadening of the repertoire.”126 Not only was one new work per year guaranteed,

but also many of the commissioned composers went on to write additional works for the band. The

pieces commissioned under the leadership of Edwin Goldman starting in 1949 to the year of his

death in 1956 were A Solemn Music by Virgil Thomson (1949), Tunbridge Fair by Walter Piston (1950),

Canzona by Peter Mennin (1951), Mademoiselle, Ballet for Band by Robert Russell Bennett (1952),

Pageant by Vincent Persichetti (1953), Chorale and Alleluia by Howard Hanson (1954), Celebration

Overture by Paul Creston (1955), and Santa Fe Saga by Morton Gould (1956). The majority of these

works have become repertoire standards. Because of the commissioning series, many of the leading

American composers of the time had written for band by the 1950s; of the above, only Piston and

Mennin did not compose additional works for the band. Richard Goldman continued the series after

his father’s death.

The real proof of the effectiveness and importance of these early commissions, as well as the

1948 concert, lies not just in the continuation of the ABA commissioning series, but also in the

development of countless new commissioning projects over the next seven decades. In addition, the

125 Battisti, The Winds of Change, 187.

126 Goldman, The Wind Band: Its Repertoire and Technique, 236.

63
ABA established the Ostwald Award for composition in 1955, named for Ernest Ostwald, an

associate member of ABA who owned a uniform-making business and donated the funds to found

the award. The first award went to Clifton Williams, for his Fanfare and Allegro, in 1956. The Ostwald

Award is still awarded today and is one of ABA’s most important contributions to the band world in

its encouragement and acknowledgement of contemporary band composers.127 The Goldman

commissioning series and the Ostwald Award not only continued to boost the creation of new band

repertoire that had begun with Gilmore and Sousa, but also laid the grounds for Fennell’s creation

of the wind ensemble in 1952; without this new repertoire of original music for band by some of the

most prominent American composers, the argument for a new ensemble would have been less

convincing.

The 1948 concert was also important in marking the decline of the age of professional

bands; after World War II, the bands of Sousa, Fillmore, Pryor, and others were gone, and the

Goldman Band and a select few of the military bands were all that survived. The Goldman Band

continued performing until its disbandment in 2005, but it never reached the same level of visibility

and success that it enjoyed in the first half of the twentieth century. At the same time, the college

and university band movement was expanding rapidly, as the changing membership of the ABA

demonstrated. Davis writes, “After World War II the band movement in this country, almost

exclusively, revolved around bands found within the educational community.”128 Originally

conceived as an organization for professional bandmasters, ABA shifted its membership to

collegiate and high school directors. But as ABA was still exclusive, it meant that there was room for

another organization, one that would welcome anyone interested in band music being performed at

the highest level, regardless of their background. By 1958 the ABA was regarded primarily as an

127 The importance of the Ostwald Award and the pieces it has honored is discussed by Shawn Vondran in his DMA
study, “The Development of the Ostwald Award” (DMA diss., University of Miami, 2009).
128 Davis, “A History of the American Bandmasters Association,” 90.

64
honorary association rather than a professional organization, and this remains the case today. It

focuses on electing new members and honoring old ones; today the ABA website states, “The

importance, however, of The American Bandmasters Association does not lie in its meetings, but in

its membership.”129

The Founding of CBDNA

The creation of the College Band Directors National Association (CBDNA) in 1941 was a

landmark event in twentieth-century wind band history, commensurate with the founding of ABA

and its takeover of the commissioning series started by Edwin Goldman in 1949. William Revelli,

the founder of CBDNA, felt there was a need for an organization specifically dedicated to college

band directors; as he told Davis in 1986, “The birth of CBDNA was greatly influenced by the fact

that ABA held only one meeting a year and its membership was restricted.”130 Revelli contacted

other university and college band directors in the fall of 1941 to gauge their interest in creating such

an organization. Response was positive, and Revelli gathered forty directors who met later that year

to discuss the possibility. Since its founding, CBDNA has become especially important in the

commissioning and fostering of new repertoire for the band and wind ensemble.

When Revelli’s forty members met in December 1941 in Chicago, CBDNA was officially

known as “University and College Band Conductors Conference” (UCBCC). The UCBCC had

begun its life as a committee on college and university music within the Music Educators National

Conference (MENC), where band directors were the majority.131 From 1941 on, the group was

intended to be an efficient autonomous organization. Fennell wrote in the UCBCC First Annual

Conference Proceedings, “Autonomy, which has often been the most effective by-product of a

129 Jennifer Scott, “History,” American Bandmasters Association, 1995. http://www.americanbandmasters.org/history/

(accessed 4 December 2017).
130 William Revelli, quoted in Davis, “A History of the American Bandmasters Association,” 91.
131 The organization’s name was changed in 2011 to NAfME (National Association for Music Education).

65
simple structure, was our equal desire from the outset. The independent alliance which we have

enjoyed with the National Education Association through our association with the Music Educators

National Conference has become the pattern for other groups seeking autonomous association with

that important body.”132 It was vital to the founding members that they be able to determine how

their organization operated without outside interferences; today, CBDNA still functions as a fully

independent organization, while maintaining friendly relations with other organizations like MENC

and the College Music Society (CMS).

The forty founding members did not meet again until December 1946, when the Declaration

of Principles was adopted. Its full text appears below; with two minor grammatical changes, the

original declaration reads identically to the one posted on the CBDNA website today:

We affirm our faith in and our devotion to the College Band, which, as a serious and
distinctive medium of musical expression, may be of vital service and importance to
its members, its institution, and its art.

To its members the College Band, through exemplary practices in organization,

training, and presentation, should endeavor to provide effective experiences in
musical education, in musical culture, in musical recreation, and in general
citizenship.

To its institution the College Band should offer adequate concerts and performances
at appropriate functions and ceremonies, in the interest of music culture and
entertainment, and for the enhancement of institutional spirit and character.

To music as an art and a profession the College Band should bring increasing
artistry, understanding, dignity, and respect, by thorough and independent effort
within the band’s own immediate sphere, by leadership and sponsorship in the
secondary school program, and by cooperation with all other agencies pursuing
similar musical goals.

To these ends we, the members of this Association, pledge ourselves to seek
individual and collective growth as musicians, as teachers, as conductors, and as
administrators.133

132 Frederick Fennell, quoted in Richard Lasko, “A History of the College Band Directors National Association,” (Ed.D.
diss., University of Cincinnati, 1971), 28.
133 CBDNA Declaration of Principles, in The College and University Band: An Anthology of Papers from the Conferences of the

College Band Directors National Association, 1941-1975, ed. David Whitwell and Acton Ostling, Jr. (Reston, VI: Music
Educators National Conference, 1977), xvii.

66
The principles articulated two main points that shaped the development of the college and university

band and wind ensemble over the next half century: first, that the most important obligation of

conductors is to their students; and second, that the band represents a genre of music that could and

should be competitive with the other ensembles active in a college or university music school.

The following year, as part of the adoption of the organization’s first constitution, the

organization was renamed the College Band Directors National Association. The constitution also

provided guidelines for the collection of dues and the election of officers, specifying two levels of

membership: Active and Associate. Active members include “college/university band directors

including Associate and Assistant directors, directors of a [sic] military service bands, community

bands, school bands, etc. – active or retired,” as well as former band directors “now engaged in

college/university music education, administration or related areas” and Honorary Life Members. 134

Associate members are identified as either “Music industry – one member of the firm shall be

designated as representative to the Association” or “Student – graduate or undergraduate who is

actively involved in band activities and development.”135 The constitution indicates that the founding

members envisioned CBDNA as an organization for band directors, but despite these identified

membership levels, today members of CBDNA include many composers and music educators, as

well as a few musicologists.

From its first meeting in 1941, members of CBDNA dedicated significant time and effort to

cultivating band literature. The first sub-committee on repertoire, made up of Harold Bachman,

Frederick Fennell, Graham Overgard, John Barabash, John J. Heney, and B. B. Wyman, was

instructed to “study particular problems and items of interest to the association.”136 This sub-

committee meeting took place just a year before the Goldman Band concert of all original band

134 CBDNA Constitution and Bylaws. http://www.cbdna.org/cgi-bin/about4.pl (accessed 7 December 2017).

135 Ibid. I have been a student member of CBDNA since 2013.
136 Lasko, “A History of the College Band Directors National Association,” 81-82.

67
works, indicating that by the beginning of the 1940s, interest in band repertoire was growing among

the community. It is also noteworthy that Fennell was a member of this committee; his tireless

efforts to create a new wind repertoire are the focus of the next chapter. In 1946, the Committee on

Service to Music as an Art concluded in part,

The committee feels that the existing literature for the college band is insufficient for
our needs. We recommend that each conductor take it upon himself to personally
interest the composers known to him, or those whom he may cultivate, in writing for
the wind band. We must encourage composers to acquaint themselves with our need
for new literature for the band as a serious medium of musical expression.137

These ideas are in line with those expressed by the Goldmans and the leadership of ABA, many of

whom were also CBDNA members. By the midpoint of the century, CBDNA had joined ABA in its

focus on actively pursuing new repertoire. The committee also expressed their belief that “intelligent

and effective transcriptions of music conceived for other mediums be encouraged rather than

scorned,” indicating that despite the overall drive toward original music for band, directors

recognized that a large portion of their existing repertoire was transcriptions and much of it was

worth keeping.138 Even today, transcriptions are still an important part of wind repertoire; like the

Goldmans, however, many mid-century conductors knew that nurturing an original repertoire was

the most effective way to accomplish their goal of recognition as a serious ensemble. In the

following chapter, I address Fennell’s creation of the wind ensemble, which was predicated in part

on a desire to attract more contemporary composers to the band.

Conclusions

The advances observed in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century bands mark a clear

progression from the original establishment of a descent community focused primarily on the

137 Report of Committee on Service to Music as an Art, in Lasko, “A History of the College Band Directors National
Association,” 83.
138 Ibid.

68
creation of national musical heritage, to the blending of these descent qualities with those more

closely related to affinity communities. This was accompanied by an interest in creating an original

repertoire for the wind band. The changes in instrumentation observed in the latter part of the

nineteenth century had far-reaching effects on the development of American bands. In fact, one of

the most important results of the innovations of Gilmore and Sousa was the quasi-standardization

of instrumentation.139 The composition of bands as about one-third clarinets, one-third other

woodwinds, and one-third brass became the approximate instrumentation used not only by Sousa’s

Band but also by the concert bands that began to appear in public schools and universities in the

first decades of the twentieth century. Mixed instrumentation would inspire Frederick Fennell’s wind

ensemble concept; program notes for his first Eastman Symphonic Wind Ensemble concert stated

plainly that it was designed to focus equally on woodwind pieces, brass pieces, and mixed

instrumentation pieces. Ideas regarding instrumentation would produce a new dissent community

within the band world.

The nineteenth-century shift in focus from bands as providers of functional music to

ensembles performing music for entertainment had an even greater impact. Gilmore and Sousa both

strove for their bands to be understood as “serious” ensembles that could compete with the

symphony orchestra; both men’s ensembles succeeded. As the reputations of their bands spread

internationally, audiences appeared at band concerts for similar reasons that they attended orchestral

concerts: a desire to see renowned musicians perform and to hear popular and well-regarded music.

The contrast between the field calls and recruitment efforts of early nineteenth-century military

bands and the concerts of Gilmore’s and Sousa’s bands demonstrates the shift from a descent

community to an affinity community. As Shelemay writes, affinity communities are primarily based

Jere T. Humphreys, “Strike up the Band! The Legacy of Patrick S. Gilmore,” Music Educators Journal 74, no. 2 (Oct.
139

1987): 26.

69
on individual preferences; the community constructed around these preferences results from a

shared desire to experience the preferred music. At the turn of the twentieth century this type of

community increasingly typified bands.

In the twentieth century, the widely shared desire for original wind band repertoire focused

the community as one defined primarily by affinity, but the same motivations also prepared the way

for a new dissent community. The founding of professional organizations that oversaw the

maintenance and growth of wind band repertoire further changed the character of the band

community. As the efforts of Edwin Franko Goldman, the ABA, and the CBDNA demonstrate, by

the mid-century the band community was increasingly defined by its relationships with composers;

these relationships serve as the focus for the rest of this dissertation.

70
 CHAPTER THREE

FREDERICK FENNELL AND THE WIND ENSEMBLE CONCEPT

At the College Band Directors National Association meeting in March 2017, ten university

bands performed concerts. Six of these bands had “wind ensemble” in their names, two identified as

wind symphonies, one as a symphonic wind ensemble, and one as a symphonic band. To one

unfamiliar with the wind band community, these names and the differences (or lack of differences)

among and between them can be confusing; in fact, even to members of the community the

distinction between terms like “wind symphony” and “symphonic wind ensemble” is vague, though

many individuals argue that there is no difference between these terms. Michael Haithcock, Director

of Bands at the University of Michigan, voiced a common opinion held by band directors when he

quoted Shakespeare: “A rose by any name would smell as sweet.”140 When speaking with composers,

however, a greater interest in nomenclature is evident, and many of them are more eager to clarify

the terminology, or at least use the terms in a way that both demonstrates and requires an

understanding of the differences between them. Shared traits between the performing groups at

CBDNA became evident when considering both the instrumentation used and the pieces

programmed. As discussed in the introduction, “wind ensemble” and “concert band” are the two

main categories of wind band I refer to in this dissertation. Based on my understanding and use of

these terms, nine of the performing groups at CBDNA, despite their different names, fit the

designation “wind ensemble,” while one, the symphonic band, was better understood as a “concert

band.”

As stated in the introduction, for the purposes of my research I use the word “concert band”

to mean a large band with many people playing the same part, often with younger or more amateur

140 Michael Haithcock, phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.

71
players, while I use “wind ensemble” to refer to a smaller band that focuses on flexible

instrumentation, one-on-a-part playing, and/or a high level of technical and artistic dexterity and

soloistic playing. I use the word “band” (or “wind band”) as an umbrella term, with “concert band”

and “wind ensemble” being two contrasting types of band. My use of these terms reflects most

accurately how the differences between these two types of band are implicitly understood within the

community, even though, today, many groups that function sonically as wind ensembles are not

called “wind ensemble.” Examining the historical reasons for the distinction sheds light on the

contemporary uses of these terms.

Given its history, it is difficult to eliminate the distinction between the group conceived as

the “wind ensemble” and other types of bands. When Frederick Fennell (1914-2004) created the

Eastman Wind Ensemble in 1952 (originally called the Eastman Symphonic Wind Ensemble, per the

request of Howard Hanson), he intended it to be an entirely separate group from the concert bands

that already existed at the university level. His “wind ensemble concept” required the use of one-on-

a-part playing and flexible instrumentation, or any arrangement of instruments drawn from a group

of 45 players, including winds, percussion, harp, piano, and string bass.141 Beyond those

specifications, the ensemble could perform almost any work composed for a group of wind

instruments, including existing works like Mozart’s three Serenades and Hindemith’s Symphony for

Band. What is significant about the wind ensemble concept is that it represented an intentional

departure from the band tradition of the past, which included military bands and professional

concert bands like those led by Gilmore, Sousa, and the Goldmans. Rather than a continuation of

that band tradition, the wind ensemble was meant to be an entirely new creation that fulfilled a

different role in American musical life than that played by the concert band. Fennell’s group was

dedicated to playing new American music composed specifically for winds, rather than the

141 Today the maximum size is closer to 60-65 players.

72
transcriptions of orchestral works by European composers that still dominated concert band

programs in the mid-twentieth century. Wind ensembles also provided opportunities for

professional-level playing for wind students in addition to their performances with orchestra.

Because of their dedication to breaking away from the concert band tradition and forming a

new genre of wind music, Fennell’s ensemble at Eastman can be considered a dissent community. It

is the clearest example of a movement in the mid-twentieth century to establish a wind group that

could compete with the symphony orchestra in terms of technical and artistic ability, as well as focus

on original repertoire. For a time, the wind ensemble existed as a new and innovative ensemble with

its own unique qualities, and despite some changes to Fennell’s original vision regarding what a wind

ensemble would be, I argue that the contemporary wind ensemble remains one of the most

innovative performing groups for which a composer can write. As will be discussed, many

contemporary composers choose to write for the wind ensemble not only because their works will

be performed regularly, but also because they have access to a sound palette that is both starkly

different from and much more malleable than that of the symphony orchestra, due to the

application of flexible instrumentation. Studying the wind ensemble as a dissent community reveals

the importance of understanding the sound palette of the group; sound is key to understanding the

difference between the new entity and the old tradition it left behind. In turn, the sound palette and

the music it enables demonstrate the significance of the term “wind ensemble.”

In this chapter, I explore the history of Fennell’s efforts to foster a new tradition of writing

for winds and illuminate the sound palette that resulted. I address the ways in which the “wind

ensemble” became a separate category from the more widely known “concert band,” concluding

with a discussion of the value in using these terms as a pathway to discussing the place of the wind

ensemble within American musical culture.

73
 Frederick Fennell and the Eastman Wind Ensemble:
The Formation of a Dissent Community

It is no exaggeration to state that without Frederick Fennell, the contemporary wind

ensemble would not exist. In the early months of 1951, Fennell began to experiment with

programming for the Eastman Symphony Band, of which he had become the director in 1939. He

focused especially on music for chamber winds, which at the time was rarely performed by concert

bands or symphony orchestras. In November of that year, he was hospitalized with hepatitis. During

his hospital stay he continued to think about repertoire for small groups of winds and realized that

an ensemble of winds performing one-on-a-part would offer new playing opportunities to his wind

students. He founded the Eastman Wind Ensemble in 1952 “with the belief that there is genuine

need and place for another wind instrument organization.”142 Whereas the concert band tradition

generally revolved around providing entertainment or pedagogical instruction, Fennell’s wind

ensemble was more comparable in terms of repertoire goals to the symphony orchestra, which

emphasized soloistic playing in its wind section rather than the homogenous scoring of most concert

band pieces (somewhat like the string section in a symphony orchestra). Fennell wanted to move

away from orchestral transcriptions, marches, and other traditional crowd-pleasers generally

performed by concert bands and toward a new repertoire of original music for wind instruments,

like the works commissioned by the Goldman Band and ABA. The wind ensemble gave

contemporary composers an opportunity to experiment with both new and traditional combinations

of wind and percussion instruments. As Fennell concluded in an article published in the September

1952 issue of Music Journal, “The time has come for the wind instruments to own a home of their

own, unmortgaged by the limitations and traditions of other properties in which they have resided

Frederick Fennell, Time and the Winds: A Short History of the Use of Wind Instruments in the Orchestra, Band, and the Wind
142

Ensemble - reprint (Huntersville, NC: NorthLand Music Publishers, 2009), 56.

74
for so long. We are providing one such home in Rochester.”143 He believed the wind ensemble could

provide something unique to American musical culture that simultaneously integrated aspects of the

symphony orchestra, military band, and concert band traditions into the new wind ensemble

tradition.144 Fennell’s approach aligns with Shelemay’s understanding of how dissent communities

are formed.

In Fennell’s insistence that the wind ensemble constituted a new ensemble, separate from

the larger wind band tradition, the creation of the wind ensemble has some similarities with the birth

of the early music movement, which Shelemay cites as an example of a dissent community that grew

out of the larger entity that it challenged.145 Shelemay describes how the early music movement not

only dedicated itself to playing rarely-performed music, but also to developing new techniques in

areas like instrument-building and performance practice. These new techniques, especially those

regarding performance practice, often led to “intense ideological debates.”146 Although the wind

ensemble, like early music ensembles, focused in part on playing music that had often been

neglected, its true significance lay in the creation of a new repertoire of music for winds. Fennell’s

resolve that the wind ensemble was a new group meant that composers had to develop new

compositional techniques; rather than writing for the typically homogenized sound of the concert

band, composers had to balance a large group of winds in a way that allowed for soloistic playing.

As in the early music community, these new techniques presented their own challenges, especially

regarding the instrumentation of the group. Nomenclature was also debated regularly in the wind

ensemble’s early years.

143 Frederick Fennell, “The Eastman Wind Ensemble,” in The College and University Band, eds. David Whitwell and Acton
Ostling, Jr. (Reston, VI: Music Educators National Association, 1977), 84.
144 Fennell, Time and the Winds, 57.
145 Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music,” Journal of the American

Musicological Society 64, no. 2 (Summer 2011): 372.

146 Ibid.

75
 Shelemay notes the creation of a larger community centered around the early music

movement that included new ensembles, institutions, and festivals.147 Existing institutions created

ensembles, and in other cases entire organizations dedicated to the cause, like Early Music America,

were founded. The leaders of these groups initiated conferences and festivals, where members of the

early music community could meet to share research, discuss playing techniques, and perform music.

The wind ensemble followed a similar path: after Fennell founded the Eastman Wind Ensemble,

other directors, like Frank Battisti, followed his lead at their own institutions. A few individuals, like

Robert Boudreau, founded their own independent groups devoted to performing music for small

groups of winds. Groups that already existed in support of wind music, like ABA and CBDNA,

broadened their focus to include Fennell’s goals, especially the commissioning of original wind

ensemble literature. The lack of new institutions devoted solely to wind ensemble music emphasizes

the fine line between the descent and dissent processes that shaped this community; the ideological

debates that emerged from the creation of the wind ensemble took place within the larger band

community, of which the wind ensemble remains a part.

Besides the essential role played by Fennell, the creation of the wind ensemble community

would not have been possible without the right institutional home to nurture the new group. In the

last chapter of his book Time and the Winds, originally published in 1954, Fennell addresses the

necessity of the wind ensemble and the aptness of the Eastman School of Music as its natal place.

He writes of the vision of George Eastman, who founded and funded the school, and Howard

Hanson, the second director who led the school for forty years, “to bring the development of the

academic and creative aspects of musical education to new heights of attainment.”148 Eastman hoped

that his school would not only train performers at a high level, but also foster widespread music

147 Ibid., 373.

148 Fennell, Time and the Winds, 56.

76
appreciation in the Rochester community. In 1921 he told the New York Times after he founded the

school, “We have undertaken a scheme for building musical capacity on a large scale from

childhood.”149 Whereas Eastman hoped to develop both performers and audiences, many of

Hanson’s goals focused on changing the organization of the American conservatory system: moving

away from the European model of private studios and focused study toward a model “in which

musical training was only part of a broad educational program.”150 In keeping with this agenda,

Hanson believed that students benefited from performing in ensembles; he began adding extra

orchestras, chamber ensembles, and choral ensembles in the 1930s.151 When Fennell proposed the

wind ensemble in 1952, the new opportunities it provided to wind ensemble students furthered

Hanson’s objectives. Another of Hanson’s goals was repertoire development, which Fennell

regarded as one of his most important accomplishments as director:

When Dr. Howard Hanson established his symposiums of new orchestral music by
American composers, he began with the simple logic and vision that a composer
should have a laboratory in which to test the products of his creative instincts and
mental processes. This has been a great contribution to the development of some
five hundred American composers. The wind ensemble program will serve a similar
program.152

Hanson’s support of American composers and Fennell’s intention to do the same made the

Eastman Wind Ensemble a logical extension of the artistic goals of the larger Eastman School of

Music.

In light of the controversy surrounding names, is important to note that Fennell’s group

began as the Eastman Symphonic Wind Ensemble, a name which Hanson preferred. Fennell

changed the name to the Eastman Wind Ensemble, however, because he felt it conveyed the true

149 George Eastman, quoted in Robert Freeman, “New Perspectives on Audience Development,” Arts Education Policy
Review 97 (Jul./Aug. 1996): 22-28, 22.
150 Allen Cohen, Howard Hanson in Theory and Practice (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004), 11.
151 Ibid., 12.
152 Fennell, “The Eastman Wind Ensemble,” 82.

77
nature of the ensemble more effectively: removing “symphonic” helped distance it from the

symphony orchestra tradition. As the wind ensemble concept spread across the nation, new groups

were founded with the name “wind ensemble.” A number of existing bands kept their original

names, while other conductors formed groups that had instrumentation and repertoire in common

with the Eastman Wind Ensemble, but were called “Wind Symphony” or “Wind Orchestra.” I

explore inconsistencies in nomenclature later in this chapter, but I address it now to avoid confusion

as I discuss ensembles that practiced the wind ensemble concept but did not change their names,

like the Ithaca Concert Band, or that were formed using names other than “Wind Ensemble,” like

the American Wind Symphony Orchestra. Although Fennell felt strongly about the name of his

group when he created it, many of his contemporaries did not share his belief, and that is true of

most of the conductors who lead wind ensembles today.

Fennell’s Vision

In Time and the Winds Fennell specifies his original instrumentation for the Eastman

Symphonic Wind Ensemble. He envisioned the group as 45 players maximum, ideally including:

Reeds: Brass:
2 flutes and piccolo 3 cornets
2 oboes and English horn 2 trumpets (or five trumpets in B-flat)
2 bassoons 4 horns
Contra-bassoon 3 trombones
1 E-flat clarinet 2 euphoniums
8 B-flat (or A) clarinets 1 E-flat tuba
divided in any manner 1 or 2 BB-flat tubas
or fewer in number
1 alto clarinet
1 bass clarinet Other instruments:
2 alto saxophones percussion, harp, celeste, piano, organ,
1 tenor saxophone harpsichord, solo string instruments,
1 baritone saxophone and choral forces as desired.153

153 Fennell, Time and the Winds, 57.

78
Almost all the instruments (typically with the exception of the B-flat clarinet, whose parts were often

doubled even in Fennell’s ensemble) are responsible for their own individual parts, as they would be

in a symphony orchestra. In explaining his concept to outsiders, Fennell emphasized that the full 45-

player ensemble should only be used occasionally:

The above instrumentation has been established as a point of departure—one from

which it is possible to deviate when a particular score requires more or fewer
instruments than are considered basic to the Wind Ensemble. This instrumentation
is considered in the same sense that composers have always evaluated the tutti
orchestra, the full organ, or the complete seven-plus octave range of the piano
keyboard—a sonority resource to be utilized only when desired.154

This specification—which Fennell would later to refer to as “flexible instrumentation”—is one of

the most important features of the Eastman Wind Ensemble. All aspects of the wind ensemble’s

unique sound palette stem from this principle. The textural and timbral possibilities that entice so

many contemporary composers to write for the group are both cause and effect of the principle of

flexible instrumentation. Part of the reason Fennell advocated for a smaller wind group and one-on-

a-part playing was to avoid the concert band’s thick textures that made many kinds of writing for

winds impossible. In the mid-twentieth-century concert band, doubling existed not only within one

section, but also between sections; for example, it is not uncommon to see scorings in which the

melody is played in unison by flutes, oboes, and trumpets, often resulting in a blended sound that

hides the distinctive timbral possibilities of individual instruments. Once the ensemble had been

pared down to one on a part, it was easier to hear individual instruments. Fennell wanted composers

to take this even further by specifying the exact instruments they required for each piece.

With scoring limited to the specific sounds the composer desired, there was more space for

technical and artistic virtuosity. When only one flute plays a melody, for example, the composer is

free to write complex rhythms, articulations, and extended techniques that would be nearly

154 Fennell, Time and the Winds, 57.

79
impossible to align when played tutti, as in a concert band. This is not to say that technically

demanding solo playing cannot exist in a piece for concert band, but it is the exception rather than

the rule. In 1952 Hanson welcomed the addition of a wind ensemble to Eastman because of the new

playing opportunities it provided to wind players. Reflecting on the first rehearsal, Fennell remarked,

“I chose the best students in the school, and the best solo performers, and the best ensemble

players. I gave them responsibility; I gave them pleasure and the joy that playing in a good group

could give.”155 Today, this type of soloistic playing is the norm. Fennell’s vision of composers relying

on the wind ensemble to produce the exact sounds they imagined has come to fruition. Even as

instrumentation has evolved over the decades, composers still regularly speak of the flexibility of the

wind ensemble in providing the precise sound palette they need. Additionally, composers are often

able to work closely with wind ensemble players as they write; this process results in pieces that have

been checked by the composer and the instrumentalists for playability before the piece is published.

This working relationship will be addressed further in the following chapter.

The scoring of the new wind ensemble was not universally applauded. When Fennell first

presented his ideas at the 1953 CBDNA meeting, many who favored standardizing instrumentation

of the large concert band reacted with scorn.156 Debates from the first half of the twentieth century

regarding whether the band should be based primarily on woodwind or brass sonorities continued

into the 1950s and culminated in a two-day conference in 1960 called by the president of CBDNA,

James Neilson. Conductors, composers, and publishers deliberated points ranging from the value of

the contrabassoon to the equivalence of the clarinet section to the string section of an orchestra, a

belief that Fennell and many others interested in the wind ensemble concept disdained. The

155 Frederick Fennell, interview with Jon Newsom, quoted in Robert Simon, A Tribute to Frederick Fennell (Chicago: GIA
Publications, 2004), 22.
156 Richard K. Hansen, The American Wind Band: A Cultural History (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2005), 98.

80
conference concluded with the development of a standardized instrumentation for a 73-piece

concert band.157 No piece was ever written specifically for this “ideal” instrumentation, however,

either before or after the conference, and it was quickly forgotten.158 The growing popularity of the

wind ensemble represented another option for the band community, with the idea of flexible

instrumentation appealing greatly to both conductors and composers.

To understand Fennell’s vision for the function and sound palette of the wind ensemble, it

helps to consider some of the works that formed the earliest wind ensemble repertoire. The debut

concert of the Eastman Wind Ensemble, on February 8, 1953, was designed to feature one-third

music for woodwinds, one-third for brass, and one-third for the full instrumentation of the wind

ensemble: woodwinds, brass, and percussion. This program put into practice Fennell’s conception

of the wind ensemble instrumentation as a point of departure, rather than a standardized

instrumentation. The program included three works: W. A. Mozart’s Serenade no. 10 in B-flat, K.

370a (1781), Wallingford Riegger’s Nonet for Brass (1951), and Paul Hindemith’s Symphony in B-

flat (1951). None of these were composed with Fennell’s wind ensemble concept in mind, but they

all represented possible instrumentations for the group. Fennell’s choice of these three works is

evidence of his dedication to supporting new music and his advocacy of pieces not typically

programmed by either symphony orchestras or concert bands. By pairing two new works with

Mozart’s most popular piece for winds, Fennell revived a tradition of wind music that stretched back

almost two centuries. He understood the importance of demonstrating the value of the wind

ensemble: “This program argues strongly against the old complaint leveled against wind instruments

157 Charles Minelli, “Conference on the Band’s Repertoire, Instrumentation, and Nomenclature,” in The College and
University Band (Reston, VI: Music Educators National Association, 1977), 103. The complete instrumentation listed in
this report contains 73 players; some other sources cite the “standardized” instrumentation as 72 players.
158 David Whitwell and Acton Ostling, Jr., eds, The College and University Band (Reston, VI: Music Educators National

Association, 1977), 70.

81
that there is no music written for them which is of sufficient interest to make anyone care to hear it

performed.”159 He would continue to balance the programming of new and old works during his

tenure as director of the Eastman Wind Ensemble.

To build his repertoire, Fennell wrote letters to over 400 composers explaining his wind

ensemble concept and soliciting new works. In the letter he defined his principle of flexible

instrumentation and specified that “there would be no ‘commissions’ save those of a performance

that was prepared with skill and devotion.”160 Later he reported that the response from composers

was “immediate and enthusiastic.”161 Composers who responded included Percy Grainger, who

submitted four of his concert band pieces that he felt were suitable for Fennell’s wind ensemble. By

1952 Grainger had been a popular composer on concert band programs for four decades, and he

often wrote of his devotion to wind instruments and their timbral possibilities:

Why this cold-shouldering of the wind band by most composers? Is the wind
band—with its varied assortments of reeds (so much richer than the reeds of the
symphony orchestra), its complete saxophone family that is found nowhere else (to
my ears the saxophone is the most expressive of all wind instruments—the one
closest to the human voice. And surely all musical instruments should be rated
according to their closeness to man’s own voice!), its army of brass (both wide-bore
and narrow-bore)—not the equal of any medium ever conceived? As a vehicle of
deeply emotional expression it seems to me unrivalled.162

Like Fennell, Grainger believed that wind instruments were not adequately appreciated; thus, he

responded to Fennell’s request with enthusiasm. The wind ensemble was ideal not only for new

works, but also older works that were not regularly played, including a piece by Grainger from 1902,

Hill Song No. 1, that was scored for twenty-four double reeds. The piece was not performed in its

original scoring until 1969; essentially, it had been composed for an ensemble that did not yet exist.

In addition to Grainger’s works, concert band pieces from the first half of the century, including

159 Frederick Fennell, “The Wind Ensemble,” American Music Teacher 2, no. 4 (March-April 1952): 16.
160 Fennell, “The Wind Ensemble,” 12.
161 Ibid.
162 Percy Grainger, program notes to Lincolnshire Posy (New York: Schott, 2004), 1. Italics are Grainger’s.

82
Gustav Holst’s Hammersmith (1929), Florent Schmitt’s Dionysiaques (1913), Arnold Schoenberg’s

Theme and Variations, Op. 43a (1943), and Darius Milhaud’s Suite Française (1944) also found a place

in the wind ensemble repertoire. These works were typically considered too challenging for the

average concert band and so were rarely played. Despite the wealth of pieces that already existed,

Fennell knew that the group would succeed only if composers were actively commissioned to write

for it: “The future development of literature for this attractive musical medium once again rests

squarely in the hands of the composer.”163

Fennell also knew that this repertoire had to be made widely available to become part of the

American musical community. In April 1952, ten months before the debut concert of the Eastman

Wind Ensemble, he arranged with Mercury Records producer David Hall for a recording project

that would document the new repertoire, reinforcing its distinctness from the concert band sound.

Not everyone was optimistic about the outcome. About the recordings, Hanson reportedly said to

Fennell, “Well, we can always give them to the alumni!”164 Over the years Fennell completed twenty-

two recordings with Mercury, and these records allowed his wind ensemble concept to spread

quickly around the nation, reaching both band directors and other musicians. Some, however, found

the concept confusing, especially because the earliest recordings featured works that predated

Fennell’s wind ensemble concept.165 Although the track lists often featured pieces with the word

“band” in the title (e.g. Persichetti’s Divertimento for Band and Schuman’s George Washington Bridge—An

Impression for Band), the record series also included smaller works that contrasted the sound of the full

group required to perform these pieces, demonstrating that conductors no longer needed to

163 Fennell, “The Wind Ensemble,” 17.

164 Hansen, The American Wind Band, 99. Originally quoted in Frederick Fennell, The Wind Ensemble. LP set. (Arkadelphia:
Delta, 1988).
165 Donald Hunsberger, “The Wind Ensemble Concept,” in The Wind Ensemble and its Repertoire: Essays on the Fortieth

Anniversary of the Eastman Wind Ensemble, eds. Frank J. Cipolla and Donald Hunsberger (Rochester: University of
Rochester Press, 1995.), 16.

83
program for “all the players in the band.”166 The records clearly showcased the innovation of the

Eastman Wind Ensemble, inspiring other conductors to model their own groups on Fennell’s and

furthering the dissent processes that shaped the new community as they moved away from the

concert band tradition.

The Wind Ensemble Concept Spreads: Frank Battisti and Robert Boudreau

The true effect of Fennell’s wind ensemble concept is perhaps most evident in its quick

dissemination and adoption. Though it is impossible to consider all the directors who contributed to

the development of the early wind ensemble, two figures deserve attention: Frank Battisti and

Robert Boudreau. In The Winds of Change Battisti wrote, “As a young high school band director in

central New York in the mid-50s, I can attest to the powerful influence of Fennell and the Eastman

Wind Ensemble. It motivated me to make a strong commitment to commission music for high

school bands from important composers.”167 Although Battisti, who served as head band director at

Ithaca High School from 1955-1967, worked with students younger than Fennell’s, he recognized

the same problems with repertoire of limited quality and found the wind ensemble concept useful

for raising playing standards at the high school level.168 Led by Battisti, the Ithaca Concert Band,

despite its name, became one of the leading contributors to the wind ensemble repertoire during his

twelve years there.169 Battisti commissioned pieces from composers including Leslie Bassett and

Warren Benson. Benson was especially important to Battisti’s growth as a wind ensemble director,

encouraging him to reconsider the standard repertoire for bands. Like Fennell, whom he met in

1953, Battisti was determined to develop a repertoire for wind instrumentalists. He commissioned a

166 Frank Battisti, The Winds of Change: The Evolution of the Contemporary American Wind Band/Ensemble and its Conductor
(Galesville, MD: Meredith Music Publications, 2002), 59.
167 Battisti, The Winds of Change, 59.
168 The Ithaca High School Concert Band benefitted from its proximity and relationships to the Ithaca College School of

Music, although the Ithaca College Wind Ensemble was founded much later in 1981.
169 See a sample instrumentation of the Ithaca High School Concert Band in Appendix B.

84
new work by Benson for the Ithaca Concert Band in 1958. Benson described the work, titled Night

Song, as a piece that was “quiet, slow, and lightly scored, serious and of healthy length.”170 It would

not be simplified for the purposes of “school music,” instead its artistic merit would challenge the

students at Ithaca High School.171

By the time he had commissioned Night Song from Benson, Battisti knew Eastman’s

repertoire well. He regularly brought his students to Rochester to hear the EWE perform, and

Fennell often visited Ithaca to work with Battisti’s group. Battisti primarily programmed music that

was part of the Fennell’s repertoire, so when he began to commission new works, he understood the

kinds of compositions that were needed. In his discussions with Benson, Battisti questioned why it

was assumed that every member of a band had to play all the time. Why were there so few

opportunities for solo playing?172 Battisti concluded, “I had to stop thinking of myself as a band

director. It was too limiting. . . . I’m a music educator and a conductor, not just a band director.”173

Such a remark emphasizes the dissent processes at work in the band community; as an increasing

number of directors made decisions about the repertoire they programmed and the instrumentation

was put into practice, they found themselves consciously re-imagining themselves to reflect their

new goals. Like Fennell, Battisti remained committed to providing his students with music that

challenged them both artistically and technically. Between 1959 and 1967, he commissioned twenty-

two new works for the Ithaca Concert Band; many of these pieces are still performed today.

After leaving Ithaca High School in 1967, Battisti served as the Director of Bands at Baldwin

Wallace College until 1969. His time there was brief due to an invitation that was impossible to

170 Warren Benson, quoted in Margaret Leonore Young-Weitzel’s “Frank Leon Battisti: The Music of Life” (DMA diss.,
University of Washington, 2011), 41; originally quoted in Brian Norcross’s One Band That Took a Chance (Fort Lauderdale:
Meredith Music, 1994), 71.
171 Ibid.
172 Brian Norcross, “Spotlight on the American Band Education,” Music Educators Journal 78, no. 5 (Jan. 1992): 53-54.
173 Frank Battisti, quoted in Margaret Leonore Young-Weitzel’s “Frank Leon Battisti: The Music of Life,” 45; originally

quoted in Robert Simon’s A Tribute to Frederick Fennell (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2004), 42.

85
refuse: Gunther Schuller appealed to Battisti to form a wind ensemble at the New England

Conservatory of Music. Schuller had become President of NEC in 1967; like Hanson at Eastman, he

understood the value and potential of the wind ensemble and he trusted Battisti to lead a group that

would demonstrate its worth to the NEC community, one that was historically closely tied to

Germanic musical practices. Three decades later, Battisti reflected on his task, emphasizing the uphill

battle fought by many band conductors: “In the first few years everybody watched me, to see what

the wind ensemble was going to be. I had to earn their trust, and I had to earn their respect. The way

I did that was to perform excellent music.”174 Battisti continued his commissioning efforts at NEC,

performing a total of thirty-two new works during his time as director of the NEC Wind Ensemble.

Some of these, such as Michael Colgrass’s Winds of Nagual (1983) and John Harbison’s Three City-

Blocks (1992), have become foundational works in the wind ensemble repertoire and are still

performed regularly today. Battisti further contributed to the wind band community when he co-

founded the World Association for Symphonic Bands and Ensembles (WASBE) in 1981.

Another figure important to the development and dissemination of the wind ensemble is

Robert Austin Boudreau, the founder of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra (AWSO).

Boudreau started the independent Pittsburgh-based group in 1957 under the name American Wind

Ensemble as a small wind group that focused on performing original music. He changed the name

in 1958 to more accurately reflect the instrumentation, which was drawn from a doubled orchestral

winds section plus percussion (no saxophones or euphoniums). Like Fennell, Boudreau does not use

the group’s full instrumentation for every piece programmed, and every piece commissioned uses

one-on-a-part scoring. The group has performed every summer since 1957; at the time of this

Frank Battisti, quoted in Christopher Hayes’s “Six Highly Successful Band Conductors, and the Development of their
174

Band Programs,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Missouri-Columbia, 1998), 164.

86
writing, Boudreau announced that he would retire at the end of 2017.175 The AWSO primarily

performs as a summer touring group on a barge with a floating stage, the Point Counterpoint II

(perhaps an unlikely venue for the performance of such repertoire). Since its first years performing

on the rivers of Pittsburgh, it has expanded to tour in various American and international waterways.

AWSO performers are generally university music students or recent graduates who benefit from the

opportunity to perform professional-level wind repertoire.176 The performers’ room and board

during the summer touring is provided by host families.

In the past sixty years, Boudreau commissioned much of the music performed by the

AWSO, including over 450 works for winds by composers from all over the world: William Bolcom,

Alan Hovhaness, Krzystof Penderecki, Joaquín Rodrigo, and Heitor Villa-Lobos.177 Boudreau

initiated his commissioning series with a piece for fifteen winds by Ned Rorem called Sinfonia for

Wind Ensemble, a work that is not widely performed today; in fact, few of Boudreau’s commissioned

works have enjoyed regular performances.178 During Boudreau’s first season, however, the AWSO

earned enthusiastic praise from local critics, and at the end of the summer, critic Donald Steinfirst

wrote in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

175 There has been no public announcement regarding the future of the AWSO following Boudreau’s retirement. Brenda
Cronin, “Yo-Yo Ma’s Plea to Rescue a Symphony Barge,” The Wall Street Journal, 7 August 2017,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/yo-yo-mas-campaign-to-rescue-a-symphony-barge-1502122857 (accessed 11 March
2018).
176 Boudreau wrote in his 1958 statement of objectives presented to the AWSO board of directors that his primary

purpose was “to present an opportunity for talented music students to perform with a group whose efforts are directed
towards the highest professional standards; to aid financially a specific group of these students and thereby further their
artistic development as music educators and performers; to present a musical literature for wind instruments including
standard as well as rarely heard masterpieces that date from the baroque period; to encourage contemporary composers
of serious music to write for this unique organization; [and] to provide musical experience for music students and music
lovers of the Pittsburgh area, where an exchange of musical ideas can take place.” Warren D. Olfert, “The Development
of a Wind Repertoire: A History of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra” (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University,
1992), 30.
177 Robert Austin Boudreau. The American Wind Symphony Orchestra: Music.

https://americanwindsymphonyorchestra.org/music/ (accessed 14 September 2017).

178 Battisti identifies Hovhaness’s Symphony No. 4 (1958) as the most widely performed of Boudreau’s commissioned

pieces. Battisti, The Winds of Change, 60.

87
 They have been of inestimable musical value. A whole new literature has been heard,
the ensemble has consistently improved in matters of balance and detail, and people
who formerly wouldn’t have been caught dead in the same hall with bassoons and
clarinets and oboes have learned the difference between the various instruments and
have enjoyed the sheer pleasure of sitting by the magnificent waterfront on a
pleasant summer evening, listening to good music.179

In the same review, however, Steinfirst noted his belief that the ensemble’s success with the

Pittsburgh public would not last, implying that much of his praise stemmed from the novelty of a

group of wind instruments performing on a floating barge. Even so, his identification of the

“inestimable musical value” of the group points to its success in introducing new audiences to wind

ensemble music. The AWSO’s public performances continued over the next six decades,

distinguishing the group from the collegiate wind ensembles that performed primarily for audiences

of community insiders. Boudreau’s summer performances recall Sousa’s at Willow Grove Park in

their attraction of diverse local audiences.

Boudreau’s group is noteworthy because it inhabits unique places within both the wind

ensemble and the larger American music community. Donald Hunsberger, the third director of the

Eastman Wind Ensemble, writes that the AWSO “may well be called the purest of all wind

ensembles as it has no function other than to develop original repertoire for its varied

instrumentations and to perform this music for interested audiences.”180 As an independent

ensemble, the AWSO is free from the confines of even the most progressive university music

programs; there are no obligations to play standard repertoire or uphold traditions of earlier

conductors, as there are in university wind ensembles. Hunsberger’s reference to purity recalls

debates in the early music movement related to authenticity, especially regarding the performance of

music composed specifically with that group in mind. Boudreau regularly emphasized the

179 Donald Steinfirst, quoted in Olfert, “The Development of a Wind Repertoire: A History of the American Wind
Symphony Orchestra,” 28.
180 Hunsberger, “The Wind Ensemble Concept,” 17.

88
uniqueness of his ensemble throughout its six decades of existence. In a dissertation titled “The

Development of a Wind Repertoire: A History of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra,”

Warren D. Olfert cited the opportunity to write for a unique group as an “incentive” for composers

who accepted the small commission fees Boudreau could afford.181

Throughout his career, Boudreau has been something of an isolationist; he does not attend

the same annual conferences as other wind ensemble conductors or readily agree to interviews, yet

through his efforts he has contributed more repertoire to the community than any individual. Many

of his commissioned works are available as part of the music publisher C. F. Peters’s series of

American Wind Symphony editions. Hunsberger wrote in 1994, however, that this series has “largely

been ignored by the majority of the wind band world, due partly to misconceptions concerning the

instrumentation of the works, [and] partly because of the many unfamiliar composers in the

series.”182 It is also likely that if many of these works had been premiered at venues such as the

CBDNA and ABA conferences, they would have been brought to the attention of other conductors.

It is unfortunate that most of the works premiered by AWSO are rarely performed today, even

though other pieces similar in instrumentation and difficulty have become repertoire standards. The

American Wind Symphony Orchestra is perhaps best understood as its own entity; it stands apart

from the rest of the wind ensemble community by processes of dissent and forms a dissent

community within a dissent community.183 Its uniqueness is apparent in its name; it is rare to see a

wind group embrace the full term “Symphony Orchestra” instead of one or the other. Boudreau’s

choice of name advertises his desire to set AWSO apart from both the university band and wind

ensemble community.

181 Olfert, “The Development of a Wind Repertoire: A History of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra,” 34.
182 Hunsberger, “The Wind Ensemble Concept,” 18.
183 For this reason, my discussion of AWSO is limited to this section; however, Boudreau’s impact on the development

of the wind ensemble repertoire is worthy of further musicological study beyond Olfert’s 1992 dissertation.

89
 The Wind Ensemble and Its Evolving Sound

Three main qualities define the sound of today’s wind ensemble: 1) the principle of flexible

instrumentation, which includes the freedom to incorporate new instruments and extended

techniques; 2) a focus on creating a balanced, transparent texture through one-on-a-part playing

which allows listeners to focus on the many timbres available in a wind ensemble; and 3) an

emphasis on virtuosity and soloistic playing. The ubiquity of these three characteristics among wind

ensembles at both the university level and professional level—primarily the elite military bands—

demonstrates the extent to which Fennell’s wind ensemble concept has become a cornerstone of the

contemporary band community.

Flexible Instrumentation

As noted above, Fennell held fast to the idea that the recommended instrumentation for the

wind ensemble should be viewed as a point of departure. Thus, the sound palette fluctuates

according to a composer’s desires. Michael Haithcock specifies that one of the most important

results of Fennell’s principle of flexible instrumentation was the creation of a group that could play

pieces not necessarily labeled as band pieces, but as pieces for winds.184 Additionally, many of these

pieces are not for winds alone: Dvořák’s Wind Serenade, which includes both a cello part and a

double bass part, is an example. Other works include Igor Stravinsky’s Octet for Winds (1923),

scored for flute, clarinet in B-flat and A, two bassoons, trumpet in C, trumpet in A, tenor trombone,

and bass trombone; Edgard Varèse’s Hyperprism (1924), scored for flute (doubling piccolo), E-flat

clarinet, three horns, two trumpets, tenor and bass trombones, and percussion; and Francois

Poulenc’s Suite Française for “small orchestra” (1935), scored for two oboes, two bassoons, two

trumpets, three trombones, percussion, and harpsichord. Before the wind ensemble was established,

184 Haithcock, phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.

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works with such unusual instrumentation, focused heavily on winds and percussion, did not have an

institutional home. The instrumentation for Dvořák’s Wind Serenade (two oboes, two clarinets, two

bassoons, contrabassoon, three horns, cello, and double bass) is standard in its reflection of the

traditional Harmoniemusik palette, and the work is regularly programmed by symphony orchestras

as well as wind ensembles (who simply recruit a cellist in order to perform this piece). On the whole,

works with unconventional scoring are not often played outside of the wind ensemble.

In addition to serving as a home for previously composed works scored primarily for winds,

Fennell’s wind ensemble required new repertoire. His principle of flexible instrumentation meant

that composers were not obligated to write for the standard concert band and instead could specify

exactly what they desired, much as Varèse and Poulenc did in works like Hyperprism and Suite

Française. These and other works from the first half of the twentieth century are proof that the idea

of composing for a specific yet unconventional group of instruments was already a well-established

practice in the realm of Western art music. Fennell’s promotion of the wind ensemble as a home for

these types of works encouraged more composers to experiment with scoring throughout the 1950s,

1960s, and 1970s. Works like Ingolf Dahl’s Sinfonietta (1961) and Karel Husa’s Music for Prague 1968

(1968) solidified the potential scope of the large wind ensemble, with both pieces calling for a group

the size of Fennell’s specified maximum of 45 players. Both can be performed using one player per

part with occasional exceptions: for example, Husa divides each of his three clarinet parts into as

many as three separate lines at some points in the piece, meaning a minimum requirement of nine B-

flat clarinets, plus E-flat clarinet, alto clarinet, bass clarinet, contra-alto clarinet, and contrabass

clarinet. Even with one player per part whenever possible, both pieces end up requiring a large

ensemble. The starting point for the sound world of these works is in many ways closer to the

concert band than to that created in smaller works by Dvořák, Stravinsky, Varèse, and Poulenc.

Nevertheless, Dahl and Husa apply textural and timbral decisions in ways that keep their sound

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palettes much closer to the wind ensemble concept than to the thick texture of a concert band.

These approaches to texture and timbre will be considered in the next section.

Joseph Schwantner’s …and the mountains raising nowhere (1977), commissioned by Donald

Hunsberger and the Eastman Wind Ensemble, is widely regarded as one of the most important

works for wind ensemble. It is scored for a doubled orchestral winds section with six percussionists

playing forty-six percussion instruments:

6 flutes (4 doubling piccolo) Bass drums (3)

4 oboes (2 doubling English horn, 4 Bell tree
doubling crystal glasses) Crotales
4 bassoons Glockenspiels (2)
2 clarinets Marimba
4 trumpets Suspended cymbals (10)
4 horns Tam-tams (2)
3 trombones Timbales
1 bass trombone Timpani
1 tuba Tom-toms (3 sets of 4, 4, and 3)
1 string bass Triangles (6)
1 amplified piano Tubular bells
Vibraphones (2)
Water gongs (2)
Xylophones (2)

Schwantner’s emphasis on percussion stemmed from his desire to write a piece in which the

percussion and wind sections were equally important. The percussion section provides the primary

melodic instruments in the piece, and the piano functions as a member of the percussion section. In

addition, …and the mountains rising nowhere displayed the possibilities for extended techniques in wind

ensemble music, especially what Schwantner called “extra performance activities,” including singing,

whistling, and playing crystal glasses.185 Schwantner’s expansion of the wind ensemble sound world

influenced many composers who came after him.

In the twenty-first century, wind ensemble composers have approached scoring with greater

freedom. The use of electronics in wind ensemble works has increased in the past two decades, as

185 Joseph Schwantner, …and the mountains rising nowhere (Valley Forge: Helicon Music, 1977).

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has a willingness to experiment with unusual instruments. John Mackey has added prominent parts

for bass flute and waterphone in The Frozen Cathedral (2009); he also included a harpsichord in a

piece for winds (for the first time since Poulenc’s Suite Française) in his trumpet concerto Antique

Violences (2017).186 In both instances, his choices were guided by a desire to capture an idea in sound.

The Frozen Cathedral evokes the majestic ethereality of Denali, focusing on how the mountain looms

over the Alaskan landscape through the use of the timbre of the bass flute and waterphone. Antique

Violences is more literal: the second movement captures the sound of the French Baroque by

incorporating a harpsichord. He explains, however, that this approach of adding one or two unusual

instruments is usually the furthest he takes the idea of flexible instrumentation.187 He believes it is

important to keep the scoring within the realm of what is possible with the typical forces of a wind

ensemble; a flutist can easily double bass flute, and a pianist may be able to double harpsichord.

Adding string instruments beyond the double bass, or electronic instruments, often requires

recruiting performers from outside of the wind ensemble.

In contrast to Mackey, Jonathan Newman is a composer who wishes that today’s wind

ensemble could be even more flexible than it is.188 Like Mackey, Newman usually writes for a large

wind ensemble but often adds to or deletes from what has become standard. His three-movement

Symphony No. 1, “My Hands Are a City” (2009), is scored for a large wind ensemble with the

addition of electric guitar and several non-standard percussion instruments. What is most interesting

about the work may be the way he writes for guitar, and the way the instrumentation changes

186 According to the official website run by the inventor of the waterphone, waterphones are “stainless steel and bronze
monolithic, one-of-a-kind, acoustic, tonal-friction instruments that utilize water in the interior of their resonators to
bend tones and create water echoes. . .Each Waterphone is custom made using a hot metal process developed over the
past 40 years. The tonal rods are tuned to a combination of micro-tonal and diatonic relationships presented in two
distinct but integrated scales having both even and uneven increments.” Richard Waters, “The Waterphone,” Waterphone
Online, http://www.waterphone.com/about.php (accessed 11 March 2018).
187 John Mackey, interview with author, 17 March 2017.
188 Jonathan Newman, Skype interview with author, 9 February 2017.

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between movements. Of the electric guitar, which is used in the outer movements, Newman writes,

“The electric guitar is an ensemble instrument, not a solo player. It should blend and balance with

the ensemble.”189 By blending the electric guitar with the winds and percussion, Newman creates a

tone he describes as “bluesy overdrive.”190 The scoring for the second movement is a great example

of Fennell’s principle of flexible instrumentation; Newman reduces the instrumentation to orchestral

winds only, leaving out the saxophones, euphonium, electric guitar, percussion, and the extra

members of the clarinet family. The result is a sound palette that provides stark contrast to the outer

two movements, recalling Virgil Thomson’s style of writing for winds in orchestral works like the

second movement of Three Pictures for Orchestra.

In all the works explored in this section, it is important to note that beyond the scoring of

the compositions, the ways that composers combine instruments into small groups and highlight

individual timbres are key to better understanding what the wind ensemble sounds like. Once a

composer has established the scoring for a piece, the next step in realizing the principle of flexible

instrumentation is to determine how these instruments will be combined and how their individual

timbres will be heard.

Texture and Timbre

One of the most often cited challenges to composing for band is the difficulty of creating a

balanced texture. Steven Bryant and Jonathan Newman both characterize the sound of a concert

band as “brown”; the thick sound of a large group of winds playing simultaneously is familiar to

anyone who has attended a high school band concert. Haithcock asserts that one of the

commonalities of the canonic works for band, including Dahl’s Sinfonietta and Schwantner’s …and the

189 Jonathan Newman, Symphony No. 1, “My Hands Are a City,” (OK Feel Good Music, 2009), 4. Perusal score
available at JonathanNewman.com. https://jonathannewman.com/music/symphony-no-1-my-hands-are-a-city
(accessed September 4, 2017).
190 Ibid.

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mountains rising nowhere is the scoring technique of using winds in various novel combinations, rather

than the old emphasis on tutti wind band doublings.191 As Bryant composes, he focuses on thinning

out the texture of his pieces; he is inspired by an idea he picked up from Richard Clary, director of

the Wind Orchestra at Florida State University: “carving away sound.”192 Bryant explained how that

term crystallized the concept of the balanced sound he hoped to achieve: “There is no problem with

making a wind ensemble present. It is always very, very present. It’s making it delicate and soft and

subtle that is the constant challenge.”193 Bryant, like many wind ensemble composers, generally

reserves the full tutti ensemble for climactic moments in his music; this means the bulk of his wind

ensemble writing is concerned with creating thinner textures that highlight the timbres of individual

instruments.

Bryant’s approach to “carving away sound” is not new. All band composers must tackle the

timbral and textural problems of writing for the wind ensemble at some point in their careers.

Returning to some of the most renowned wind pieces from the first half of the twentieth century

reveals that the most effective writing for winds means limiting how often tutti scoring is used. Even

works for small wind ensembles, like Stravinsky’s Octet and Poulenc’s Suite Française, focus primarily

on recombining instruments into even smaller groups; in Stravinsky’s Octet, for example, he scores

for all eight instruments sparingly. In general, early works for large wind ensembles, like Dahl’s

Sinfonietta and Husa’s Music for Prague 1968, often feature one section of instruments at a time (but

rarely playing in unison), whereas works by contemporary composers tend to divide sections so they

can be combined with other instruments, creating more timbral variation. Both techniques are

effective because they focus the listener’s attention on specific timbres rather than the “big brown

band sound” of a tutti ensemble. When Jennifer Jolley wrote her first piece for a top-tier wind

191 Haithcock, phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.

192 Steven Bryant, Skype interview with author, 5 February 2017.
193 Ibid.

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ensemble (the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Jerry Junkin), she realized

that in contrast to the larger bands she had composed for previously where she focused on doubling

lines, she could use the wind ensemble as a “coloristic ensemble.”194 The freedom to write for more

transparent textures means the full palette of instrumental colors is available to composers.

For Joel Puckett, the fundamental goal that guides the way he designs the textures of his

works is “constantly trying to hide the fact that the musicians have to breathe.”195 He does this by

continually overlapping the instrumental lines he writes, almost replicating the continuous sound of

an organ, but with more timbral variety. He works to eliminate any audible reliance on human

breath, without requiring circular breathing, even as he emphasizes the contrasting timbres of the

wind instruments. This technique is especially evident in his most recent work, that secret from the river

(2017), composed for and premiered by the Northwestern Symphonic Wind Ensemble under the

direction of Mallory Thompson. In this piece, Puckett creates transparent layers of instrumental

voices that seamlessly lead into one another, even timbres as dissimilar as the marimba and the alto

saxophone, for example. Such effects require a high degree of artistry to execute effectively, but the

result is stunning when achieved. When Puckett writes for the full group, the thick texture and the

blended wind and percussion timbres provide intense contrast to the thinner textures employed

elsewhere. The orchestration of these thick textures must still be carefully thought out, however, and

composers like Puckett can avoid the “big brown sound” by employing careful scoring even in the

densest moments.

Virtuosity

In wind ensemble music, once the texture has been thinned out to allow for specific timbres

to emerge, there is a great deal of space for virtuosity. Lines written for small groups of wind

194 Jennifer Jolley, Skype interview with author, 28 August 2017.

195 Joel Puckett, Skype interview with author, 26 April 2017.

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instruments or as solos that may get buried in thicker textures are easy to hear in pieces orchestrated

using the “carving away sound” principle employed by Bryant, Jolley, and Puckett. In contrast, Jolley

explains that when writing for a group that in any particular year may have no low reed section, for

example, she must accommodate the possibility by doubling lines heavily. She is also aware that

younger or more amateur players often require “strength in numbers,” either because of their

elementary level technique, or from fear of standing out.196 As noted, most wind ensembles exist as

university groups, where they are often the top bands and reserved for the most proficient students.

The skill level of wind ensembles is consistently high, which means composers have the freedom to

employ the kinds of flexible instrumentation and transparent textures that define the wind ensemble

sound. This compositional practice is so common that a high level of technical and artistic ability has

become a defining feature of wind ensemble music.

For many composers who began to write for band in the 2000s, John Corigliano’s Circus

Maximus (2004) provided a model of what could be asked of the wind ensemble. Corigliano was

hesitant to write for band for many years, but Jerry Junkin, who directs both the University of Texas

Wind Ensemble and the Dallas Winds, finally convinced him to accept a commission for a

symphony for band. Corigliano’s piece is an excellent example of flexible instrumentation and the

timbral possibilities of the wind ensemble, as well as the virtuosic playing required to execute both.

He scores antiphonally to create a “surround sound” effect, and calls for several different small

groups, including a seven-piece marching band that walks down the aisle in the sixth movement; the

on-stage group is not large—the score calls for forty-four players, just one fewer than Fennell’s

preferred maximum. Upon hearing Circus Maximus for the first time, Mackey wrote, “Even fans of

‘band’ music have to admit that a lot of band music sounds like band music. Not so here. This piece

196 Jolley, Skype interview with author, 28 August 2017.

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sounds like it’s an orchestra piece that just has no need for strings.”197 Corigliano’s symphony is

noteworthy for its extreme interpretation of flexible instrumentation—one of the antiphonal groups

consists of eleven trumpets—but it is the virtuosity required to perform the piece that makes it stand

out. Corigliano assumed that the students in Junkin’s ensemble would be able to deliver the sounds

he desired. Every player functions as a soloist at some point in the symphony.

Newman, who along with Bryant and Mackey studied with Corigliano in his graduate

composition studio at Juilliard, also emphasizes the virtuosic abilities of university wind ensembles

as influencing his writing: “I write differently when I know a work is going to be played by a more

nimble group.”198 Even when the group for which he writes uses doubling, however, Newman has

found ways to accommodate the group without sacrificing the sound he wants. He gave as an

example what a wind ensemble composer could do with fifteen clarinets: rather than writing one line

for all fifteen to play, he might use them to create an “aleatoric sound world” in which the fifteen

individual players become a necessity rather than a hindrance to the overall timbre and texture of the

piece.199 Each individual must perform soloistically without detracting from the main line. The

virtuosity of wind ensembles also is helpful when writing music of that draws upon many different

styles: in Symphony No. 1, Newman requires a great deal of musical and experiential sophistication

from the players, including technically challenging be-bop influenced melody lines and delicate,

slow-moving melodies necessitating a sharp ear and understanding of balance.

Case Study: Steven Bryant’s Concerto for Wind Ensemble

The combination of these three fundamental qualities (flexible instrumentation, balanced

texture, and virtuosity) is audible in Bryant’s Concerto for Wind Ensemble (2009), which features

197 John Mackey, “Circus Maximus,” Osti Music, blog post from December 27, 2004.
http://ostimusic.com/blog/circus-maximus/ (accessed September 4, 2017).
198 Newman, Skype interview with author, 9 February 2017.
199 Ibid.

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one main group of thirty-six winds located on the stage and three antiphonal groups positioned

elsewhere in the concert hall. The instrumentation for this piece is shown in Figure 3.1, and the

placement of the antiphonal ensembles in Figure 3.2. Bryant notes at the bottom of the

instrumentation page of his score: “This is an exact instrumentation (i.e. strictly one player per

part).”200 Because of his precise scoring demands, the concerto must be played by a group using the

wind ensemble concept of instrumentation.

Bryant composes using a variety of textures in his five-movement concerto, but most are

transparent enough to highlight the soloistic playing of both the on-stage group and the three

antiphonal groups. When he does write for the full ensemble, Bryant balances the colors of the

sound palette, often by scoring the instruments in the extremities of their ranges. The majority of

the piece uses transparent scoring so that the technically challenging solos are exposed throughout

the two fast movements. Band music is often thought of as loud and fast, with no room for artistic

subtleties or virtuosic display. Bryant states outright that he set out to write a work that “requires,

and celebrates, virtuosity,” and in the Concerto for Wind Ensemble, he proves that loud and fast

music for winds can provide as much space for artistic performance as any other large or small

ensemble.201 Bryant also notes that the part numbers do not indicate range or difficulty; every part

requires virtuosic playing (see Figure 3.2). In a wind ensemble, every player is a soloist and an

ensemble player simultaneously, which invites works displaying the highest levels of artistry and

virtuosity. Bryant’s Concerto for Wind Ensemble epitomizes the possibilities of Fennell’s wind

ensemble concept transformed in the twenty-first century.

200 Steven Bryant, Concerto for Wind Ensemble – Perusal Score. https://www.stevenbryant.com/wp-
content/uploads/2015/02/BRYANT_Concerto_for_Wind_Ensemble_PERUSAL.pdf (accessed 28 August 2017), 4.
201 Ibid., 5.

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 Figure 3.1. Steven Bryant, Concerto for Wind Ensemble, instrumentation.202

202 Steven Bryant, Concerto for Wind Ensemble (Steven Bryant, 2009), 4. Used with permission.

100
 Figure 3.2. Steven Bryant, Concerto for Wind Ensemble, antiphonal placements.203

203 Steven Bryant, Concerto for Wind Ensemble (Steven Bryant, 2009), 6. Used with permission.

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 The Wind Ensemble and American Musical Culture

Based on the history of its formation and the characteristics of its sound palette, the wind

ensemble is irrefutably a unique group. It is also evident that Fennell intended the term “wind

ensemble” to be reserved for groups following the wind ensemble concept, reinforcing its role as a

dissent community. His discussions of the term provide insight into how he believed the wind

ensemble would fit into American musical culture. One of the most interesting aspects of Fennell’s

exploration of the term “wind ensemble” involves its departure from the concert band tradition:

We do not call our group a band simply because we do not believe that it is a band.
To qualify for that distinguished classification a group should be a unit formed in the
tradition of that band, should perform the traditional musical literature of the band,
and maintain those time-honored traditions and associations to which the public and
its institutions have become so rightfully accustomed.204

This excerpt suggests Fennell’s respect for the heritage of the American wind band and his desire to

clearly separate the wind ensemble from this earlier tradition. Fennell’s interest in creating a new

repertoire for the unique sound of the wind ensemble further reinforced the need for a new name.

Calling the wind ensemble a “band” would place it in the continuing tradition of the descent

community that reached back to the earliest days of the United States; Fennell instead wanted the

wind ensemble to represent a new community focused on its own repertoire. He also explained that

the word “band” could hinder the development of his group: “I must also be frank to say that I am

banking quite heavily on simple terminology. The word band is death to too many people.”205 By

dropping the word “symphonic” from the Eastman Wind Ensemble’s original name, however,

Fennell also prevented any association with the symphony orchestra tradition. Clearly, Fennell

intended the wind ensemble to stand alone as a new group that would establish its own artistic value,

uninhibited by expectations that came with the name “band” or the adjective “symphonic.”

204 Frederick Fennell, Program Notes, 20 March 20 1960, quoted in Battisti’s The Winds of Change (Galesville, MD:
Meredith Music, 2002), 56.
205 Frederick Fennell, quoted in Battisti’s The Winds of Change, 58.

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 Donald Hunsberger, who directed the Eastman Wind Ensemble from 1965 to 2002, clearly

demonstrated his own desire to separate the wind ensemble from the larger band community. A

diagram he included in a 1967 newsletter called The Wind Ensemble that was intended to accompany a

new series of wind ensemble editions from MCA Music clarified the relationship of terms for all

groups of wind instruments (see Figure 3.3).

Figure 3.3. Hunsberger’s diagram of terms for groups of wind instruments.206

In this diagram Hunsberger organizes the terms under either “flexible” or “fixed” instrumentation,

from small to large and large to small on either side. He locates the wind ensemble as the largest

possible ensemble on the “flexible” side of the umbrella, while the symphonic band and concert

206 Hunsberger, “The Wind Ensemble Concept,” 34.

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band are the largest possible ensemble on the “fixed” side of the umbrella, which reflects the

concurrent hope that instrumentation for the concert band was becoming standardized.

Hunsberger’s diagram is revealing because it clearly separates the wind ensemble from the other

kinds of bands, although there might be porous boundaries between the groups.

The various names of the ensembles founded in the second half of the twentieth century,

many of which are included on Hunsberger’s diagram, reveal the implications of cultural values and

status conveyed by choosing particular labels, especially ones that avoided including the terms

“band” or “orchestra.” At some institutions, like Baylor University, the New England Conservatory,

and the University of Texas at Austin, new groups were formed under the term “wind ensemble,”

avoiding connections to either earlier tradition. Where bands capable of playing Fennell’s intended

repertoire already existed, many chose to overtly align their groups with Fennell’s vision by changing

the names, while others, faced with the weight of tradition, chose to keep their groups’ original

names in place but altered their approach to scoring and repertoire.207 It is evident that during the

1950s and 1960s, heightened concerns in establishing the wind ensemble’s legitimacy beyond its

separation from the concert band persisted, especially in comparison to the symphony orchestra.

Orchestras represented the pinnacle of American classical music culture; bands, as Fennell made

clear, had other connotations. In drawing a connection to the symphony orchestra with terms like

“symphony band,” it is evident that nineteenth-century values and hierarchies still dominated the

culture as a whole and permeated the band community.

These values are evident in writings from the time. In the 1967 Wind Ensemble newsletter,

Hunsberger provided his own definition for the young ensemble that reflected his understanding of

the wind ensemble concept as it had been practiced for the previous fifteen years:

Examples include the Florida State University Wind Orchestra and the University of Michigan Symphony Band.
207

Sample instrumentations of these ensembles are included in Appendix B.

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 The symphonic wind ensemble is a concert organization, devoted to granting the
composer and his audience the most faithful performances of his music. It is an
ensemble which calls upon the strictest disciplines possible, for the composer—in
establishing his wants and needs; for the conductor—in placing the composer and
his music above personal promotion and peripheral activity interference; for the
performer—to assume his rightful position as a legitimate symphonic musician
dedicated to the furtherance of wind performance; and, for the audience—to
discard past prejudices regarding wind music and wind performance as second class
musical citizens.208

The readership of this newsletter included band directors likely unfamiliar with the wind ensemble

concept.209 Hunsberger writes that the explanation was necessary due to the proliferation of wind

ensembles “of various sizes and instrumentations . . . many of them capitalizing on the success of

the EWE and its recordings but not following any standards or precepts,” largely because there were

none that had been standardized and disseminated.210 Like Fennell, Hunsberger emphasizes the

ensemble’s purpose of generating an original repertoire for wind instruments, as well as offering

performers an opportunity to play music comparable to that played by the symphony orchestra. He

also highlights the continuing struggle of wind bands, including wind ensembles, to achieve equality

with symphony orchestras in the eyes of American audiences. In the language Hunsberger employs,

however, he implies a much stronger connection to the orchestral tradition than Fennell did.

It is notable that Hunsberger reintroduces the term “symphonic wind ensemble” for the

purposes of this newsletter, which seems in part an attempt to legitimize the wind ensemble as a

group that makes valuable contributions to American high-art music culture. Hunsberger’s emphasis

on the “legitimate symphonic musician” and his characterization of wind musicians as “second class

musical citizens” most clearly demonstrate the continuing hegemony of the symphony orchestra.

Fennell typically stressed the uniqueness of the wind ensemble; in contrast, Hunsberger underscored

208 Hunsberger, quoted in “The Wind Ensemble Concept,” 22. Bold text used by Hunsberger.
209 Based on the pronouns used throughout, it is clear that Hunsberger considers the wind ensemble a male community.
The gendering of the wind ensemble will be addressed in Chapter 5.
210 Hunsberger, “The Wind Ensemble Concept,” 21.

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its connections to the more widely respected orchestral tradition. Even in his reinforcement of the

original goals behind the creation of the wind ensemble, Hunsberger states that the conductor, “in

placing the composer and his music above personal promotion and peripheral activity interference,”

should focus primarily on the man behind the work. This phrasing clearly implies the nineteenth-

century idea of composer as male genius who the (male) conductor serves, further locating the wind

ensemble in the tradition of the symphony orchestra. Today, the relationship between conductors

and composers is markedly different from this older notion; however, the ideas Hunsberger

expressed still permeate the community, as addressed in the following chapter.

As Hunsberger’s definition shows, addressing ideas about virtuosity, difficulty, and

complexity can be problematic when discussing the wind ensemble. The very importance of these

ideas is tied to the aesthetic values of the nineteenth century and the modernism of the first half of

the twentieth century, yet they are often the most obvious markers in differentiating amateur and

professional groups. For the wind ensemble community, which contains very few professional

groups, the emphasis on virtuosity and complexity serves to legitimize groups that are student

ensembles. Part of the emphasis comes from practicality, however: in convincing composers to write

for the wind ensemble, conductors in the 1950s and 1960s needed to make them aware that they did

not have to restrict their music due to the issues with range and dexterity that usually limit student

musicians.

In The Winds of Change, Battisti explained that by the end of the twentieth century most

conductors placed less emphasis on the names of their groups:

The music selected, rehearsed, and performed is the priority issue. The titles of band,
concert band, symphonic band, wind ensemble, symphonic wind ensemble, wind
orchestra, etc. do not reflect a moral philosophy, character, or personality; this can
only be established through the examination of the repertoire being rehearsed and
performed by the conductor and his/her ensemble.211

211 Battisti, The Winds of Change, 68.

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The implication of a works-centric value system may appear problematic, but Battisti is pointing to

the instrumentation of the repertoire, rather than the value. Works like Bryant’s Concerto for Wind

Ensemble and Puckett’s that secret from the river, for example, are clearly wind ensemble works. If a

conductor programs a majority of works that use one-on-a-part flexible instrumentation, their group

functions as Fennell’s idea of a wind ensemble rather than a concert band the size of the Goldman

Band in which the instrumentation stayed the same for every piece on a program, no matter the

name of the group. Richard Clary, director of the Florida State University Wind Orchestra,

referenced his predecessor James Croft, who was convinced that focusing too much on establishing

specific nomenclature harmed the band community by making it inaccessible to outsiders.212 This

perspective, shared by many of today’s most successful band and wind ensemble conductors,

demonstrates that the complete separation between band and wind ensemble traditions that Fennell

hoped to instigate did not occur. It is clear, however, that many contemporary wind groups have

fully adopted Fennell’s approaches to scoring and repertoire, no matter their names, and these

trends are easily recognized within the wind ensemble community.

From a practical perspective, composers find value in differentiating between the wind

ensemble and larger types of bands because it signals their intent for soloistic, one-on-a-part

playing.213 Generally speaking, composers consistently use “wind ensemble” when they want one on

a part, and “band” or “concert band” for groups that use doublings. Like Hunsberger explained, the

term “wind ensemble” also implies a professional playing level; this is apparent on Puckett’s website,

in which he divides his works for band into two categories: “professional/collegiate wind pieces,”

212Richard Clary, interview with author, 24 October 2016.

213Conductors also differentiate as necessary; Jerry Junkin, director of the University of Texas Wind Ensemble,
explained that to an outsider, he would not differentiate between the wind ensemble and the concert band, but to
someone who wanted to write for the wind ensemble, he would go into much greater detail, emphasizing the flexible
instrumentation and soloistic, one-on-a-part playing that define the wind ensemble sound. 213 Jerry Junkin, Skype
interview with author, 9 October 2017.

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which are all for “wind ensemble,” and “works for younger/developing bands,” which are all for

“wind band.”214 Since most of that community understands the wind ensemble concept, however,

conductors can simply look at the instrumentation list and understand how to perform the piece,

regardless of what term the composers uses or what the name of the conductor’s ensemble is.

Although historical approaches to defining the wind ensemble are revealing for their implied values,

today, the most important reason for codifying terminology is to enable conversations about

contemporary wind music outside of the band community.

Conclusions

When Fennell created the wind ensemble, he envisioned it as a new kind of musical entity

that would inhabit a separate realm from the traditional band. In the 1950s and 60s, the community

surrounding the new group was largely shaped by processes of dissent, as leaders like Battisti and

Hunsberger joined Fennell in his effort to create a new repertoire based on the innovative sound

palette of the wind ensemble concept. In other instances, namely Boudreau’s creation of the

American Wind Symphony Orchestra, additional dissent communities were formed. These processes

shaped the larger band community throughout the following decades, as directors of newly-formed

ensembles aimed to prove that bands could attain a high level of artistry, many of them wrestling

with the values implied by comparing the wind ensemble to the symphony orchestra. Reflecting on

Fennell’s wind ensemble, composer Alfred Reed wrote:

But the fact impressed itself on me with great urgency that in listening to what
Fennell had done with [the] Wind Ensemble in the matter of purity of instrumental
color, balance among wood and brass, dexterity and clarity of whatever texture the
music might consist of, and complete adaptability to any kind or type of music was
really the first time I had ever heard this in reality, outside of hearing it in my
imagination… That first-time experience made me realize fully and completely that it
COULD indeed be done. Which, in turn, convinced me that what I might even have

214 Joel Puckett, Winds, http://joelpuckett.com/music/winds/ (accessed 19 September 2017).

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 regarded as an impossible dream: namely that the wind orchestra and the symphony
orchestra could indeed be the opposite sides of the same coin, to be called “serious
large-scale music for large-scale instrumental performing groups” was not only
possible, but it existed.215

Reed’s words capture the desire shared by conductors and composers during Fennell’s time: to

create a large ensemble that would feature the timbres of wind instruments the same way that the

sound of string instruments forms the backbone of a symphony orchestra, and that would be

respected for its artistic possibilities. Even though the wind ensemble today is more interchangeable

with larger bands than Fennell envisioned, his legacy endures as conductors continue to commission

new works, while increasingly large numbers of emerging composers are drawn to the wind

ensemble sound.

215 Alfred Reed, letter printed in Robert Simon, A Tribute to Frederick Fennell, 118. Date of letter not provided in source.

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 CHAPTER FOUR

RELATIONSHIPS AND HIERARCHIES IN THE CONTEMPORARY

AMERICAN WIND ENSEMBLE COMMUNITY

During the Q&A session of the final composers’ forum at CBDNA 2017, Florida State

University conductor Richard Clary asked the composers to respond to the concerts they had heard

so far during the conference. In reply, John Corigliano reflected on the major differences between

the band and orchestral communities:

I think the band situation is extremely healthy, and the orchestra situation is not
healthy. . . . Composers in the band world are collegial. They like each other, they
encourage each other. . . .The performers in an orchestra are disgruntled, and they
don’t want to play new music. You live on new music. When I come to these things,
I am filled with happiness. . . . You have a wonderful spirit. A spirit of optimism, and
high quality—the standards are so high here. I think all of us are just in awe of what
you do.216

Statements of this kind are not unusual within the wind ensemble community, including from

someone who is regarded as one of the most respected postmodern American composers. Why,

then, does contemporary wind ensemble music receive so little attention from outside the

community? Composers who primarily write for wind ensemble or concert band receive little

attention in scholarly musicological or theoretical publications or presentations or from critics of

contemporary classical music. Even wind ensemble pieces by renowned composers like Corigliano

are often neglected in favor of their works for other genres. In a review of a 2013 performance of

Corigliano’s Circus Maximus, New York Times critic Steve Smith wrote, “That Mr. Corigliano’s Third

Symphony has received comparatively less attention is almost certainly because he wrote it for wind

ensemble rather than for symphony orchestra.”217 There are historical precedents for this

inattention, as the previous two chapters revealed. Although contemporary American music culture

216 John Corigliano, Composers’ Forum No. 4, National Meeting of the College Band Directors National Association, 18
March 2017.
217 Steve Smith, “For a Composer’s Birthday, a Tribute at Full Blast,” New York Times, 10 February 2013.

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has experienced significant changes in recent decades, it still holds fast to many of its nineteenth-

century values. Today, as in the time of Gilmore and Sousa, many regard playing in the symphony

orchestra as the pinnacle of the large instrumental ensemble experience, which is reflected at both

individual and institutional levels, including in academia. Frederick Fennell aimed to change this

perception; sentiments like those expressed by Corigliano reveal that today the wind ensemble is

well respected by the composers it has welcomed into its fold.

This chapter investigates relationships between conductors and composers in the

contemporary American wind ensemble community. Fennell and his colleagues spent much of the

1950s and 1960s actively commissioning new repertoire for the wind ensemble; today, wind

ensemble conductors still pursue and maintain relationships with composers, commissioning works

that typically enter the repertoire quickly due to the rapid dissemination of new pieces within the

community. Composers, especially emerging ones, are drawn to the wind ensemble in part because

of the flexibility of its sound palette, but also because the wind ensemble community provides them

a multifaceted and rewarding experience as professional composers. In this chapter, I consider the

twenty-first-century wind ensemble as an affinity community, focusing primarily on how the

relationship between conductors and composers is enacted; I then explore the wind ensemble

repertoire and concepts of canonicity; and I conclude by framing the wind ensemble community

within the contemporary hierarchies of academia and American musical culture.

When compared to other musical canons, the wind ensemble repertoire faces distinct

challenges. The most obvious of these is that the young repertoire cannot compete with the

centuries-long canon of the symphony orchestra in size or prestige, and too often this results in

institutions neglecting the wind ensemble in favor of more traditional groups. And though the influx

of new repertoire from emerging composers is one of the cornerstones of the wind ensemble

community, the fixation on commissioning and premiering new works can sometimes create

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difficulties when it comes to a work attaining a permanent place in the repertoire. Nevertheless, in

the changing landscape of twenty-first-century American musical culture, many composers find that

the advantages of writing for the wind ensemble outweigh the disadvantages.

Many of the advantages enjoyed and challenges faced by the wind ensemble are unique to its

community, but there are some important similarities between the wind ensemble, symphony

orchestra, and new music communities. Like the symphony orchestra, the wind ensemble usually

performs in a traditional concert atmosphere—in a concert hall, in formal attire, with a conductor.

New-music groups, on the other hand, often perform outside the traditional concert hall

environment but are still highly regarded in many parts of the country. Like the new-music scene,

the wind ensemble community predominantly features music by contemporary composers. On the

other hand, wind ensembles do not receive the same scholarly or critical attention granted to

symphony orchestras and new-music ensembles. The wind ensemble’s place within American music

culture can be best understood as a liminal place between the concert band tradition and the

symphony orchestra tradition, with some similarities to the new-music scene. Its liminality is one

aspect of how the contemporary wind ensemble functions as what Kay Kaufman Shelemay

identifies as an affinity community.

“We Exist for Each Other”: The Wind Ensemble as Affinity Community

At the end of an interview with Mark Scatterday, the current director of the Eastman Wind

Ensemble, he remarked, “I think your composer-conductor [topic] is very important. . . . We exist

for each other.”218 He described the journey of commissioning, rehearsing, and premiering a work

as “the most exciting thing I do in my life” and “one of the great things that we do” in the wind

218 Mark Davis Scatterday, phone interview with author, 4 October 2017.

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ensemble world. The idea of existing for each other is central to the relationships that define the

wind ensemble community: composers and conductors enjoy symbiotic relationships that are very

different from those most often experienced in the orchestral world.

As the end of the twentieth century neared, the wind ensemble had become a vital part of

the band community. Rather than concentrating on the differences between band and wind

ensemble, conductors focused more on simply expanding the repertoire for both wind ensemble and

concert band, and continuing to form bonds with composers. As the community turned away from

issues shaped by processes of dissent, it morphed into one primarily defined by processes of affinity,

in which its members were most connected by their shared interest in and passion for band and

wind ensemble music. These processes were similar to those that shaped the community around late

nineteenth and early twentieth-century bands. Kay Kaufman Shelemay writes, “Whatever the basis

of the attraction, an affinity community assumes its shape based in the first instance on individual

volition, in contrast to motivations deriving from ascribed or inherited factors (descent) or driven by

specific ideological commitments or connections (dissent).”219 It is individual volition that primarily

defines the relationships between conductors and composers. Nevertheless, the heritage of the

American wind band, especially the bands of Gilmore, Sousa, and the Goldmans, and the fight for

artistic credibility modeled by Fennell are both unshakable aspects of the contemporary band

community; it is still a community defined to some extent by processes of descent and dissent. This

situation aligns with Shelemay’s observation that it is not unusual for an affinity community to

contain elements of descent or dissent.220 Even as an affinity community with a focus on growing

the repertoire and spreading awareness of new music, the wind ensemble community is first and

219 Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music,” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 64, no. 2 (Summer 2011), 374.
220 Shelemay, “Musical Communities,” 375.

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foremost an educational community with the goal of teaching wind instrumentalists to be better

players and better musicians.

Enacting Relationships in the Wind Ensemble Community

Because most wind ensembles are university ensembles rather than professional groups, the

most fundamental relationship is between conductors and performers, who are their students. Every

conductor I spoke to for this dissertation stated that their main obligation as a conductor was to

their students, many of them returning to that point several times throughout our conversations. For

example, Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, Director of Bands at Duke University, explained, “First of

all, I think we all have this common goal of education, but second, to really take our medium to the

next level.”221 Conductors are not only caretakers of a repertoire and members of an affinity

community based on their shared love of wind music, but they are also educators. Their primary role

as wind ensemble directors is to make sure their students’ playing improves, that they are exposed to

a variety of “great” music, and that they get a chance to be part of the creative process of

commissioning, rehearsing, and premiering a new work. As educators, wind ensemble conductors

are, in most cases, charged with preparing students for careers as professional musicians, whether in

orchestras, new-music ensembles, or military bands. Unlike professional orchestras, which must

form strong connections with audience members to sell tickets, wind ensembles have the advantage

of being able to focus primarily on their players, rather than on listeners. As a result, wind ensembles

are much better situated than orchestras to focus on unfamiliar music because they do not depend

on ticket sales and the preferences of donors. Although this is a plus for composers, the practice

fails to attract audience members who are not already connected to wind ensemble music in some

way (and thus can be considered part of the affinity community).

221 Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, phone interview with author, 5 December 2017.

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 Many aspects of the conductor-student pedagogical relationship overlap with conductors’

relationship with composers, especially the performance of new works. When a composer receives a

commission from a wind ensemble, he or she usually does not just interact with the conductor

leading the group, but with every member of the ensemble. The composers studied in this

dissertation all referred to their closeness with performers during the early stages of readying a piece

for its first performance as one of the main advantages of the wind ensemble community. Because

university wind ensembles are not bound to the same schedules as professional groups, composers

often enjoy a great deal of time to work with the performers, making changes to their music

throughout the process. Conductors are the facilitators of these interactions. They are motivated to

ensure composers have the best possible experience working with the group so that they will

continue to contribute to the repertoire: doing so also means that their students will experience a

process very different from performing a traditional canonical work.

In addition to performers/students and audiences, publishers are members of the wind

ensemble community. The ways that conductors, composers, performers, audiences, and publishers

interact in the community have changed greatly in the past decade, in part because of technology.

Shelemay identifies technology as particularly suited to furthering bonds of affinity: “The processes

of affinity partner well with new technologies, which circulate music to settings (and listeners) it

would otherwise not reach.”222 With the advent of self-publishing, for example, the role of

established publishers like Carl Fischer, Hal Leonard, and Manhattan Beach has diminished over the

past decade, especially with emerging composers (I address the financial aspect of the composer-

conductor relationship later in this chapter). Audiences at wind ensemble concerts used to be local

but now include listeners from all over the country and even the world, thanks to the widespread

222 Shelemay, “Musical Communities,” 375.

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adoption of livestreaming video platforms. Social media has further revolutionized the ways that

conductors and composers interact, as well as how they connect to audiences.

In the last ten years, increasing numbers of conductors have begun livestreaming their

concerts, which in some ways has changed their relationships with audiences. Scatterday pointed out

that livestreaming brings additional pressure to a performance, as colleagues from around the

country can tune in to hear (and evaluate) performances.223 For a community that only gathers in

person a few times per year at conferences, however, livestreaming provides additional opportunities

for community members to engage with one another. For example, after the death of David

Maslanka in August 2017, wind ensembles around the country honored his life and career by

performing his works. Jerry Junkin, director of the UT Wind Ensemble, conducted a performance

of Maslanka’s Symphony No. 4, enhancing the livestream experience by including a video shown

during intermission that was a compilation of clips from interviews with musicians around the

country who had performed in the premiere of Symphony No. 4 with the UT Wind Ensemble in

1994. Junkin also played a recording of Maslanka speaking before the premiere. Utilizing livestream

technology in this way allowed community members around the country to remember Maslanka

together, bringing a sense of connection and collective memory to the experience. That the majority

of these members had in common only their experiences with and appreciation for Maslanka’s

music, and band music more generally, conveys the strength of the affinity processes that define the

community.

Although conductors, composers, and publishers have all adopted social media over the past

decade, composers have embraced its possibilities most enthusiastically. One of the wind ensemble

composers most recognized for his social media presence is John Mackey (b. 1973). He began with a

blog called OstiMusic, and from the early days of his emerging presence in the band community he

223 Scatterday, phone interview with author, 4 October 2017.

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has encouraged students performing his music at conventions to find him and take pictures with

him. He is active on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat; many of my own interactions with

Mackey over the past decade have taken place on these platforms. Another application of social

media in the community are Facebook pages designed for university ensembles. The Eastman Wind

Ensemble page, for example, regularly contains posts with information about upcoming concerts,

news on current and former members of the group, and pictures of documents from the Fennell

archives at Sibley Music Library.224 For a community that meets infrequently, social media has

extended the contact that many composers and conductors have with each other and with other

members of the community.

Professional Organizations: ABA and CBDNA

The attention lavished on composers of band music in the 1950s and 60s has continued into

the twenty-first century. The prestigious place held by composers in the wind ensemble community

is evident in the two main professional organizations for wind ensemble and band music: the

American Bandmasters Association (ABA) and the College Band Directors National Association

(CBDNA). Their national meetings provide some of the only opportunities for conductors and

composers from around the country to gather in one place. Because of this, the organizations

provide excellent case studies of life within the wind ensemble community. I have attended CBDNA

three times, once as a performer with the Baylor Wind Ensemble in 2009 and twice as a student

attendee in 2013 and 2017. I have performed at ABA once, with the Florida State University Wind

Orchestra in 2013. ABA and CBDNA are the only two organizations I consider in this dissertation

because they are most relevant to the music I identify as wind ensemble music; CBDNA forms my

primary case study because it represents arguably the most inclusive and diverse membership of

224Eastman Wind Ensemble’s Facebook page, accessed 17 January 2018,

https://www.facebook.com/eastmanwindensemble/.

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composers of wind ensemble music. However, there are other professional groups that are

important to the wind ensemble community, especially regarding pedagogical topics, including the

National Bandmasters Association (NBA), the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Wind

Ensembles (WASBE), the Midwest Clinic, and state music education organizations. Future studies

would address the role of these organizations in the wind ensemble community.

Shelemay writes that “ultimately, affinity communities derive their strength from the

presence and proximity of a sizeable group and for a sense of belonging and prestige that this

affiliation offers.”225 Organizations like ABA and CBDNA provide opportunities for community

members to share music, research, and thoughts on issues important to them, which is

representative of an affinity community. Throughout its history, CBDNA especially has become an

important venue for premieres of new works and the discussion of continuing issues such as, in its

early years, instrumentation and canonicity, and, more recently, diversity and inclusiveness.

As discussed in Chapter 2, the American Bandmasters Association is an honorary society

that was initially founded in 1929 to set standards for band conductors and repertoire. Today, ABA

focuses primarily on recognizing important works for band and wind ensemble and honoring

exceptional members of the community. The Ostwald Award, initiated by ABA in 1956, is still

awarded today and has played an important role in the careers of several emerging composers,

including John Mackey, who won the award in 2005 for Redline Tango. The organization also

publishes the Journal of Band Research. Between the journal and the ABA Official Records at the

University of Maryland Archives, ABA is the primary caretaker of the history of the wind band

community. Since members are nominated, it retains its aura as an “old boys’ club” even into the

second decade of the twenty-first century. Clary describes the selection process through which

candidates are invited to membership as being “rigorous” but a “lot less demographically-

225 Shelemay, “Musical Communities,” 373.

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challenged” than it used to be.226 Today’s membership encompasses approximately just over 300

conductors and composers.227

The College Band Directors National Association, on the other hand, is a more inclusive

organization. Anyone can join CBDNA regardless of career, achievements, age, gender, nationality,

etc. Their statement of purposes, updated in 2005, specifically articulates the organization’s focus on

community:

The members of the College Band Directors National Association are devoted to the
teaching, performance, study and cultivation of music, with particular focus on the
wind band medium. CBDNA is an inclusive organization whose members are
engaged in continuous dialogue encompassing myriad philosophies and professional
practices. CBDNA is committed to serving as a dynamic hub connecting individuals
to communities, ideas and resources.228

Most important to the goal of fostering discussion are the biennial national conferences, which also

allow members to form new relationships. This can make the CBDNA national conferences

particularly useful for composers who are interested in beginning to write for band or wind

ensemble. Clary, reflecting on decades of CBDNA history, concluded that in terms of repertoire,

CBDNA is one of the most important organizations today: “The arc of its existence has turned

decidedly in the direction of encouraging new compositions.”229 Like ABA, CBDNA also published

a journal (the CBDNA Journal), but the last issue appeared in 2000.230

Composer-Conductor Relationships

The wind ensemble community has been driven to expand its repertoire since its beginning;

consequently, the most important practical aspect of the conductor-composer relationship is

226 Richard Clary, interview with author, 24 October 2016.

227 American Bandmasters Association, http://www.americanbandmasters.org/ (accessed 13 November 2017).
228 About CBDNA: Statement of Purpose, College Band Directors National Association, http://www.cbdna.org/cgi-

bin/about5.pl (accessed 13 November 2017).

229 Clary, interview with author, 24 October 2016.
230 Efforts have been made to restart the CBDNA Journal as an online scholarly journal, but no issues have been

published at the time of this writing.

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commissioning. Conductors ensure that writing for wind ensemble is lucrative, but most university

wind ensembles do not have the funds to commission new works from established composers.

Consortium commissioning and funding from ABA, CBDNA, national band fraternities Kappa

Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma, and other organizations provide the necessary resources.

Consortium commissioning provides each member with the rights to perform their own premiere

during a period in which performance is limited to consortium members only; the composers

benefit financially because they will be guaranteed a minimum number of performances during

which their work can reach many new listeners. Consortia are occasionally aided by CBDNA,

although not as often as they were in the last decades of the twentieth century. Clary described the

process of schools contributing commissioning funds to CBDNA, which allows CBDNA to act as

the common treasurer, dealing with a larger amount of money than most university band

departments would handle themselves.231 CBDNA also has its own commissioning fund. In ABA,

the Ostwald Award (now known as the Sousa/ABA/Ostwald Award) continues to provide funding

for composers, while organizations like Kappa Kappa Psi and Tau Beta Sigma regularly commission

new band works, both at the national level and by individual chapters. Consortium commissioning

and outside funding are two practices that enable wind ensemble conductors to actively contribute

to the growth of their repertoire, even when individual resources are limited.

As mentioned, the relationship between publishers and composers has changed over the past

decade with the increasing practice of self-publishing. Mackey, Steven Bryant, and Jonathan

Newman self-publish, whereas Jennifer Jolley and Joel Puckett do not. Puckett explained that he

does own the publishing rights, unlike most composers who work with a publisher, but he has an

agent—Bill Holab Music—who handles everything involved with getting the scores out in the

231 Ibid.

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world.232 For Puckett, who does not enjoy the business side of composing, this is an appealing

arrangement. Mackey, in contrast, excels in the business side as well as the creative side. Unlike

Bryant, Jolley, Newman, and Puckett, who all hold (or have formerly held) teaching positions,

Mackey is fully self-employed as a composer and publisher of his own music. Mackey’s success as a

businessman and his popularity, in part because of his social media presence, has led some

conductors to write him off as a fad. But Shelemay suggests that popularity and financial success are

part of what define an affinity community: “The acquisition of cultural capital inevitably plays a role

in the emergence and maintenance of communities of affinity, with financial gain frequently

providing motivation for shaping a musical style or event that will engender the devoted affiliation

of many.”233 Three of the composers I interviewed responded to my question about what they

consider before taking a commission by mentioning that money is one of the most important

aspects affecting their decision; interestingly, two of them prefaced their answers with the word

“unfortunately.” Puckett went a step further: “It’s kind of terrible to talk about it, but you know—

raising a family, paying a mortgage—there are those realities to life. Sometimes I might really want to

do a project but there’s just not enough money in it for me to say yes.”234 When I told him that he

was the third composer to express regret that financial considerations were part of their decision, he

responded, “Some people are much more comfortable looking at it truly like a mercenary. It’s a very

weird thing we’re in.”235 In his article “Fraudulence and the Gift Economy of Music,” Eric Drott

addresses the economics of contemporary music, in which financial transactions are overlooked in

favor of non-commercial “gifts,” especially attention from critics.236 He writes, “Market transactions

232 Joel Puckett, Skype interview with author, 28 April 2017.

233 Shelemay, “Musical Communities,” 373.
234 Puckett, Skype interview with author, 26 April 2017.
235 Ibid.
236 Eric Drott, “Fraudulence and the Gift Economy of Music,” Journal of Music Theory 54, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 61-74.

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are still very much present in the art world. It is simply that they are less preponderant in its

economy than elsewhere, and their role is downplayed, regarded as a necessary evil.”237 Evidently,

for Puckett and other composers, focusing on the business side of their careers causes them to feel

as if they are neglecting the cultural understanding of how art enters a community. It can be difficult

to balance the desire to create art with the need to earn money; however, the amount of money that

wind ensemble conductors funnel into commissioning new works that provide spaces for

composers’ artistic voices is one of the most important facets of the community.

In commissioning and premiering new works, wind ensemble conductors play a major role

in the careers of composers. Drott addresses the power held by critics in the gift economy of

contemporary music, explaining that “selflessness and selfishness are once more intertwined” and

concludes, “Indeed, one of the primary ways that critics can distinguish themselves from rivals in the

cultural field is by ‘discovering’ new talent.”238 In the wind ensemble world, where critics do not play

a large role, conductors became the agents in this economy who are credited with discovering

emerging composers, especially at the CBDNA national conferences, where premieres are a

prominent and important focus. As Scatterday points out, composers and conductors in the wind

ensemble community “exist for each other,” but this is true more literally when applying Drott’s

arguments. Conductors receive praise for discovering and supporting composers, as well as the

artistic recognition for leading performances. In Drott’s understanding of the gift economy of

contemporary music, wind ensemble conductors receive a double gift by inhabiting the roles of both

critic and artist.

The financial concerns associated with composing bring up a related issue of conductor-

composer relationships: many are colleagues within the same academic institutions. All the

237 Ibid., 66.

238 Ibid., 71, 72.

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conductors I spoke to have at least one composer colleague who writes for the wind ensemble.

Michael Haithcock, Director of Bands at the University of Michigan, is an unusual position

compared to many other conductors in the wind ensemble community, in that the composition

department is large enough to represent a community within a community. There are seven

composers currently on the faculty at the University of Michigan, and most of them have written

pieces for band or wind ensemble, including Michael Daugherty, Roshanne Etezady, Kristen Kuster,

and Bright Sheng, as well as past faculty William Bolcom and Susan Botti. Furthermore, many

graduates of the UM composition studio have become big names in the wind ensemble community,

including Puckett. The tight-knit community of UM composers works to support and promote each

other. Thus, Haithcock is overwhelmed by the task of programming the wind ensemble repertoire

written by composers associated with the University of Michigan alone: “There’s constantly people

coming to me with ideas, and they’re good ideas.”239 Haithcock feels some obligation to select works

written by colleagues, which affects the rest of his programming. From the composer’s point of

view, Puckett describes Haithcock as the person he keeps in mind as he composes: “Stephen King

talks about the constant reader: the person he imagines he’s writing for. Mike [Haithcock] is the

constant conductor. I’m always thinking about writing for him. That sense of him being so

welcoming to me certainly showed me the other side of the ensemble.”240 Haithcock’s focus on UM

composers, especially emerging composers, comes from a place of mentorship and support.

Although the financial benefits of writing for the wind ensemble appeal to composers, the

additional advantage of completing a work for a specific commission is that often composers can

dialog directly with the groups that will premiere their works. Corigliano discovered this when

writing Circus Maximus, which was commissioned by Junkin and the University of Texas Wind

239 Michael Haithcock, phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.

240 Joel Puckett, Skype interview with author, 26 April 2017.

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Ensemble in 2003 and premiered in 2004. Corigliano worked closely with Junkin throughout the

compositional process, often sending Junkin fragments of the score as he completed them; Junkin

mailed CDs of rehearsal recordings to Corigliano for further feedback.241 Corigliano spoke of his

experience working with the UT Wind Ensemble:

I was free to write a piece I was convinced, before I wrote it, that the performing
body would really spend time on it and learn. There were many surprises for me in
doing this, starting with my initial thrill with the concept that the band would actually
learn the piece and not be reading it. But I found it was even more than that…this
band in Austin came in two Sundays to rehearse because they wanted to do it better.
They didn’t have to, but they came, and I couldn’t help think about what would
happen if I asked for even five extra minutes from a [major] orchestra.242

An ensemble composed of student performers means that this is standard practice in the wind

ensemble community. Corigliano concluded, “It’s rather difficult to go back to the symphony

orchestra after that.”243 Mackey had a similar experience with the UT Wind Ensemble when writing

Wine-Dark Sea, which the group premiered in 2014. In one case, Mackey worked closely with the

group’s harpist, Vincent Pierce, to create a harp part that balanced playability with Mackey’s artistic

goals. Mackey explained, “When I send the harp part out now, it is Vince’s edition of the part.”244

Mackey benefited by producing a more idiomatic harp part, while Pierce emphasized the significance

of a composer’s willingness to dedicate time to learning to write effectively for the instrument. He

explained, “That is why I make it a point to work with a lot of composers; my purpose is that I want

to advocate for the harp.”245 This type of interaction between player and composer is not unusual

during the process of preparing to premiere a wind ensemble work.

241 Jerry Junkin, Skype interview with author, 9 October 2017.

242 John Corigliano, interview with Christopher Koch, “John Corigliano,” in A Composer’s Insight: Thoughts, Analysis and
Commentary on Contemporary Masterpieces for Wind Band, Vol. 3, ed. Timothy Salzman (Galesville, MD: Meredith Music
Publications, 2006), 104.
243 Ibid.
244 John Mackey, interview with author, 17 March 2017.
245 Vincent Pierce, Skype interview with author, 22 November 2017.

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 Beyond working closely with specific individuals or groups, in general composers enjoy a

great deal of artistic flexibility when writing for the wind ensemble; as discussed in the previous

chapter, Fennell intended the group to be able to accommodate composers’ requests. This is

perhaps even more true of the wind ensemble today sixty years after its inception. Mackey, who

pursued a career as an orchestral composer before turning his attention to the wind ensemble

community, explained, “The band community allows me to take risks with different pieces in ways

that I couldn’t with any other medium.”246 The unusual scoring in Antique Violences, his concerto for

trumpet and wind ensemble, is one example; not only does the tutti ensemble include harpsichord

and fife-style flute parts, but it also requires the soloist to perform on five different trumpets. In

terms of unusual scoring, Corigliano’s Circus Maximus is another example, as will be discussed in the

following section. Beyond flexible instrumentation, the technical capabilities of wind ensembles

make the genre an attractive alternative to more standard groups. Corigliano explained what

ultimately caused him to accept the commission from the UT Wind Ensemble: “The combination of

the idea that I wouldn’t have to hold back—and this piece is as difficult technically and musically as

anything I’ve ever written for a major orchestra—and that I could let my imagination go completely,

won me over completely.”247

Conductor-composer relationships are defined and strengthened by affinity processes that

pertain specifically to their shared interest in furthering the wind ensemble repertoire. Conductors

share their experiences regarding works they have performed and enjoyed; these interactions are

defined primarily by affinity processes. Bryant refers to this process as “automatic value guidance,”

where his works are recommended by reputable community figures.248 Mackey expressed a similar

246 Mackey, interview with author, 17 March 2017.

247 Corigliano, interview with Christopher Koch, “John Corigliano,” 87.
248 Bryant, Skype interview with author, 5 February 2017.

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understanding when discussing his relationships with Clary, Junkin, and Kevin Sedatole. When

conductors of their stature program his pieces, especially in prominent venues like CBDNA, they are

more likely to become part of the repertoire.249 The insider network of conductors determines which

pieces earn repeated performances. Composers have their own sub-community; they emphasize the

importance of a venue like CBDNA conferences in providing the opportunity to converse with

others who write for wind ensemble. Bryant commented, “The composers are certainly my closest

circle of friends.”250 Mackey acknowledged the influence of other composers on his style and

explained that being friends with prominent wind ensemble composers and knowing the quality of

their work means he cannot get complacent.251 Furthermore, many composers who hold university

positions teach their students to write for band, ensuring that the repertoire will continue to grow.

Michael Daugherty, a composer who has had success in many different genres, yet still writes

prolifically for wind ensemble and concert band, explained that he always encourages his students at

the University of Michigan to compose for band, emphasizing the opportunities available to them in

that community.252 As more contemporary composers enjoy mutually beneficial relationships within

the wind ensemble community, they make it a point to teach band works in their composition

classes. Puckett, for example, teaches a modern wind band seminar for his graduate students in

which he invites his composer friends to guest lecture via Skype. He regularly features Mackey and

Bryant because “they really know what they’re doing in terms of dealing with a wind band,” but he

also makes it a point to invite composers who are lesser known within the community, especially if

they are women or people of color.253 In this way, composers can advocate for each other, a topic

249 Steven Bryant, Skype interview with author, 5 February 2017; Mackey, interview with author, 17 March 2017.
250 Bryant, Skype interview with author, 5 February 2017.
251 Mackey, interview with author, 17 March 2017.
252 Michael Daugherty, phone interview with author, 29 March 2017.
253 Puckett, Skype interview with author, 26 April 2017.

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that will be discussed further in the following chapter. Relationships between conductors and

composers come to the forefront when considering how works enter the wind ensemble repertoire.

Repertoire and Canonicity

Perhaps nothing sets the wind ensemble apart from other genres of American classical music

as much as its repertoire. It includes concert band and chamber wind works from previous centuries,

but the bulk of the modern wind ensemble repertoire was composed in the past sixty-five years.254

With such a young repertoire, a different understanding of canonicity than what is used in the

orchestral world must be applied. For example, wind ensemble pieces composed in the 1960s,

1970s, and even the 1980s have similar status to standard orchestral works that were composed in

previous centuries. Karel Husa’s Music for Prague 1968 (1968), Joseph Schwantner’s …and the

mountains rising nowhere (1977), David Maslanka’s A Child’s Garden of Dreams (1981), and John

Corigliano’s Circus Maximus: Symphony No. 3 (2004) are examples of works that are regularly cited

as canonical pieces for wind ensemble.255 It is difficult, however, to place them within the larger

classical music canon and to evaluate the canonicity of more recently composed works. In this

section I scrutinize perspectives on repertoire and canonicity from within the American wind

ensemble community, drawing on CBDNA programs, personal interviews, and existing wind

ensemble scholarship. My interviews suggested that despite general agreement about which

twentieth-century wind ensemble works are canonical, it is much more difficult to identify a shared

perspective on more recent additions to the repertoire. Interviewees were also conflicted on how the

wind ensemble canon relates to the larger classical music canon. Rather than aiming to identify a

254 Some regularly-performed works that predate Fennell’s wind ensemble are Tielman Susato’s Danserye; W. A. Mozart’s
Serenades and other examples of Harmoniemusik from the eighteenth century; John Philip Sousa’s marches; and early-
twentieth-century concert band works by composers like Gustav Holst, Percy Grainger, and Arnold Schoenberg.
255 In my interviews with members of the wind ensemble community, Michael Haithcock, Jerry Junkin, John Mackey,

Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, and Mark Scatterday cited these as canonical works in the wind ensemble repertoire.

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canon of wind ensemble works, this section focuses on the values implied in discussions of

repertoire and canonicity within the wind ensemble community.

Musicologists do not always agree on how to identify or define a canonical work, but for the

purposes of this dissertation, I will argue that a canonical work provides a significant influential

model for pieces that followed it. Although many works are cornerstones of the performing

repertoire, this does not necessarily mean that all foundational works in the repertoire are canonical.

Joseph Kerman distinguished between a canon and a repertory: “A canon is an idea; a repertory is a

program of action.”256 Applied to my discussion of the wind ensemble canon, this means that not

every piece that is widely performed is canonical. But differences between practices in the orchestral

and wind ensemble communities mean that not all of Kerman’s ideas transfer well. For example,

Kerman observes that canons are created by critics while repertories are created by musicians.

Similarly to Drott’s observation about the cultural power of critics, Kerman’s assessment does not

fit the wind band canon that has developed: most of the scholars exploring and evaluating the wind

band repertory are the same people who decide which works to program and perform.

In addition to Kerman’s thoughts on canon formation, another important scholar to treat

the subject is William Weber, who identifies three types of canon: a scholarly canon, a pedagogical

canon, and a performing canon.257 In “The History of Musical Canon” Weber contends that

“performance is ultimately the most significant and critical aspect of musical canon.”258 This is

perhaps even more descriptive of the wind band canon than of the orchestral canon, which unlike

the band canon plays an important role in the musicological community. Again, this is due to the

multifaceted role of the conductor within the community. Although Weber argues that his three

256 Joseph Kerman, “A Few Canonic Variations,” Critical Inquiry 10, no. 1, Canons (Sept., 1983): 107.
257 William Weber, “The History of Musical Canon,” in Rethinking Music, eds. Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 339.
258 Ibid., 340.

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types of canon often overlap, in the wind ensemble world this overlap occurs with greater frequency

and to a greater degree than it does in other genres. I also draw on Weber’s discussion of classical

music canons to illustrate some of the ways in which the wind band canon differs from other

canons, and how it may fit into the larger classical canon. In addition to Weber’s observations, many

of Marcia Citron’s arguments in Gender and the Musical Canon are also applicable to a discussion of the

wind band genre in comparison to other genres, especially her ideas about quality, complexity, and

value. Citron writes, “For canonic works come to be canonic not through some abstract notion of

quality, but largely through the accretion of value systems the work encodes and endorses.”259 The

values system in place in the wind ensemble community has changed throughout the past sixty years;

in turn, the interpretation of canonicity has also altered.

Studying the wind ensemble repertoire reveals the complexity and thoroughness of the

conductor-composer relationships that exist in the community, which ultimately decide its canon.

After speaking about three emblematic wind ensemble composers (Husa, Maslanka, and Steven

Stucky), Scatterday reflected, “My responsibility to those composers is to create a living legacy that

goes into the next century of music.”260 Wind ensemble conductors view themselves as curators of

their repertoire, which requires different actions than needed in the orchestral, operatic, or chamber

music worlds. In many ways, the orchestral canon is set and does not offer ample flexibility.

Orchestral conductors know which pieces they should program to satisfy audience and subscriber

expectations; it is rare to see an orchestral program that does not include at least one work by an

agreed-upon master per concert. With orchestral, operatic, and chamber music genres,

considerations of repertoire focus primarily on maintaining traditions. The wind ensemble must also

focus on this consideration, but as both Scatterday and Mösenbichler-Bryant emphasized, the

259 Marcia Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, paperback edition (University of Illinois Press, 2000), 223.
260 Scatterday, phone interview with author, 4 October 2017.

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repertoire is a living tradition that is constantly growing and evolving. Because of this, Kerman’s idea

of canonicity does not exert the same power over programming as it does in classical music

communities. New music groups are also outliers in the world of classical music in part because they

often play pieces composed specifically for their group, which results in a different set of questions

to consider regarding canons. In contrast to wind ensemble works, however, several new-music

pieces could be considered parts of the larger classical music canon; possible examples include Steve

Reich’s Different Trains (1988), Nico Muhly’s Mothertongue (2008), and Julia Wolfe’s Anthracite Fields

(2014), works that are widely known and have been recognized by musicians and critics outside of

their immediate community.

Just as Fennell’s desire to clearly establish the wind ensemble as a separate genre from the

band is basic to understanding the community, the differences between the two groups are

important to keep in mind when considering the wind ensemble’s repertoire and canonicity. The

challenge in discussing wind ensemble repertoire alone, however, is to avoid privileging its repertoire

over the concert band’s. Weber discusses the influence of canonicity on genre hierarchies:

Canonic ideology brought about the ideas of ‘popular’ and ‘classical’ music, and a
formidable hierarchy of genres. … By the middle of the nineteenth century, a much
more systematic hierarchy of genres had emerged. Chamber music, focused on the
quartets of Beethoven, had become accepted as its pinnacle, followed by the
symphony, the concerto, and then lesser genres such as the overture and the suite,
and finally popular genres—waltzes, sentimental songs, marches—that were marginal
to the formal concerts in which works from the classical music tradition were
performed.261

The “popular” genres identified by Weber were the genres most identified with the band in the

nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and today, they are still what many listeners associate with

band music. This situation means that the band’s relationship to the classical music canon is often

unclear. Separating the wind band canon into works for concert band and works for wind ensemble

261 Weber, “The History of Musical Canon,” 354.

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can assist in developing a more complete understanding of their place within American classical

music culture, but as discussed earlier, the distinction between these concert band and wind

ensemble works is not always obvious. Nevertheless, to enable a discussion of genre and canonicity,

it helps to establish an understanding of the wind ensemble canon in relation to the larger band

canon of which it is a part.

The Wind Band Canon

The American wind band canon encompasses works created and performed over the course

of the history of the United States. If one considers the wind band canon in the context of other

nations, it reaches back even further. Even though works like Susato’s Danserye, Mozart’s Serenades,

and Sousa’s marches are well-known examples of skilled writing for wind instruments, they are rarely

regarded as canonical works outside of the wind band community, especially when compared to

pieces written contemporaneously that are more complex, like Josquin’s motets, Mozart’s

symphonies, and Dvořák’s string quartets, respectively. Wind instruments have different limitations

than strings or keyboard instruments, especially in the centuries before technological advances such

as brass valves and the Boehm clarinet became realities. Many of the instruments populating the

modern wind band were not invented until the late nineteenth or even the twentieth century. Thus,

evaluating wind repertoire written before the late nineteenth century requires altering perspectives

on what defines a “great” work.262 Arguing equivalency between the band canon and the orchestral

canon, for example, is ineffective. Haithcock cited Mozart’s Serenades as an example: “They’re not

of the same substance, nor are they meant to be, as [Symphonies] no. 40 and 41.”263 Since debating

equivalency is not the goal of this discussion, I focus instead on three questions: How do we

262 It can be argued that the concept of greatness is anachronistic to this discussion; however, because many of my
interview subjects referenced greatness in relation to canonicity, it is important to consider how “great” works are
defined in a contemporary musical community.
263 Haithcock, phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.

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evaluate which pieces belong in the band canon? How do we talk about these works to reveal their

individual merits? How does the wind ensemble canon fit into the larger wind band canon?

In addition to Mozart’s Serenades, Sousa’s marches are foundational works of the wind band

canon and provide an apt starting point from which to answer these questions. Like European wind

serenades of the 1700s, American marches of the 1800s were not considered equivalents of

symphonies, concertos, or string quartets. Sousa intentionally did not compose symphonies; the

form did not appeal to him. Paul Bierley writes of Sousa, “When transcribing orchestral works for

his band, he was often heard to mutter such phrases as ‘My, how he could pad!’ He observed that

lovers of literature would never deny the greatness of a brief poem and saw no reason why lovers of

music should discriminate against shorter works.”264 Citron argues a similar point:

The distinction between complex and simple style has served as a fundamental
criterion in the relative valuation of genres and subgenres. The ranking rests on the
assumption that complexity is desirable: it shows skill and competence, qualities
deemed necessary for ‘good’ composition. Yet why does complexity automatically
spell quality? Why is the demonstration of skill a necessary component for good
composition?265

Music for concert bands, including Sousa’s, is usually considered simple; because of the size of the

ensemble and the extent to which doubling is used, simplicity is often a necessity. As Weber

explains, in the classical music canon, marches are a “popular” genre that cannot compete with the

orchestral or chamber genres. Again, arguing equivalency is fruitless, but finding equal value is

possible. In addition to enjoying unquestioned popularity, Sousa’s works had compositional

integrity. Like other classical works, both complex and simple, Sousa’s marches are impeccably

crafted; they follow the formal, structural patterns that he pioneered, which focus on constant

forward motion. Bierley observed that Sousa believed “that a march should be a short masterpiece

264 Paul E. Bierley, John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), 124.
265 Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 131.

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and that a composer should take the composition of a march as seriously as the composition of a

symphony.”266 Sousa’s innovative marches influenced band composers for generations and secured

his place not only as a canonic composer of the wind band, but also as a major figure in the larger

canon of American classical music. In addition to his compositions, Sousa is also remembered for

his beliefs about musical life in the early twentieth century, especially the advent of new music

technologies. Many listeners can recognize Sousa’s most famous melodies, even those who cannot

identify melodies by Mozart or Beethoven. Sousa, however, is an exception among canonical wind

band composers. In contrast to his marches, Sousa’s works in other genres did not achieve the same

kind of success, something that Bierley suggests haunted him throughout his career.267 Several of

Sousa’s art songs were published in the 1870s, including “The Song of the Sea,” which Patrick

Warfield describes as “indicative of a new maturity entering into his vocal writing.”268 He also

composed dance pieces for orchestra, although only one survives today, the “Myrrha Gavotte.”269 As

a composer, Sousa is remembered more for his band pieces than for anything else he composed.

Canonical works for concert band composed in the first half of the twentieth century by

Percy Grainger, Paul Hindemith, Gustav Holst, and Alfred Reed, among others, did not achieve the

same level of recognition within either the classical canon or among audience members as Sousa’s

marches did. In terms of the wind band canon, however, works like Grainger’s Lincolnshire Posy

(1937) demonstrated the new possibilities of the continually evolving sound palette of the concert

band, as well as increased complexity in both the formal structure of the piece and the technical and

artistic demands placed upon the performers. Lincolnshire Posy is a six-movement work for band; each

movement is based on a folk song recorded by Grainger in Lincolnshire, England. Grainger aimed

266 Bierley, John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon, 123.

267 Bierley, John Philip Sousa: American Phenomenon, 124.
268 Patrick Warfield, Making the March King: John Philip Sousa’s Washington Years, 1854-1893 (Chicago: University of Illinois

Press, 2013), 75.

269 Ibid., 76.

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to capture the idiosyncrasies heard in the sung melodies, resulting in tonally and rhythmically

complex passages. He also experimented with the tone colors in the ensemble in order to mimic the

timbres of the singers’ voices; for example, the main solo melody in the third movement, “Rufford

Park Poachers,” is played by either the flugelhorn or the soprano saxophone, both unusual choices

for the time but representative of Grainger’s interest in and experience with various wind timbres.270

Grainger advocated especially for the use of the soprano saxophone, which he considered “the most

beautiful and characteristic voice of the entire saxophone family.”271

Paul Hindemith’s Symphony for Band in B-flat (1951), premiered by “Pershing’s Own” with

the composer conducting, took innovations in timbre and rhythmic complexity even further. This

piece was among those performed on the first Eastman Wind Ensemble concert in 1953 and

influenced future wind ensemble composers. Richard K. Hansen describes it as a “composers’ ‘bible’

of wind band orchestration.”272 Although pieces like the Symphony for Band and Lincolnshire Posy

predate the wind ensemble, they are important parts of both the wind ensemble and the larger wind

band canons. The previous chapter highlighted the difficulty of drawing a clear line between wind

ensembles and concert bands, but though it can be said that all canonical wind ensemble works are

also part of the wind band canon, not all concert band works are part of the wind ensemble canon

as understood by the community members I interviewed. Thus, in this chapter I focus on works

intended specifically for the wind ensemble, rather than concert band works that are part of the

270 Willis M. Rapp, The Wind Band Masterworks of Holst, Vaughan Williams, and Grainger (Galesville, MD: Meredith Music,
2005), 67. Version A of “Rufford Park Poachers” includes an opening quartet for piccolo, E-flat clarinet, B-flat clarinet,
and bass clarinet, with the main solo on flugelhorn, while in Version B the opening quartet is for piccolo, oboe, bassoon,
and alto clarinet, with the main solo on soprano saxophone. Grainger preferred Version B, and this is what is most
commonly performed today.
271 Percy Grainger, “The Saxophone’s Business in the Band,” in Grainger on Music, edited by Malcolm Gillies and Bruce

Clunies Ross (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 357.

272 Richard K. Hansen, The American Wind Band: A Cultural History (Chicago: GIA Publications, 2005), 95.

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wind band canon but are not often typically performed by wind ensembles.273 Wind ensemble works

are typically composed for university or professional groups and demonstrate innovations

specifically regarding flexible instrumentation and one-on-a-part playing.274

Over the past half century, members of ABA and CBDNA have argued for the artistic value

of the wind band and its place as a serious performing ensemble within American musical culture.

From the perspectives of community members, especially those from the generation that began their

careers during the 1960s-1980s, an important part of what defines a canonical wind band work for

them is whether it has “serious artistic merit.” The theses and dissertations written on this topic are

too numerous to list here (see Appendix C), but it is worth mentioning the earliest and most often

cited: “An Evaluation of Compositions for Wind Band According to Specific Criteria of Serious

Artistic Merit” by Acton Eric Ostling, Jr., written in 1978.275 Since then, many band conductors have

written about their repertoire following Ostling’s model, including two updates to his study: Jay

Warren Gilbert wrote the first replication study in 1993, and Clifford N. Towner wrote a second

273 Examples of canonical concert band works that made important strides in the development of music for large wind
bands include John Barnes Chance’s Variations on a Korean Folk Song (1965), Norman Dello Joio’s Scenes from the Louvre
(1966), and, more recently, many of the works of Donald Grantham and Frank Ticheli.
274 In the band community, most conductors and composers are familiar with the National Band Association Selective

Music Lists, which includes a grading scale from 2-6, with Grade 2 pieces designed for the average middle school band
and Grade 6 pieces intended for university and professional groups. Similar 1-6 grading scales for orchestral and choral
music also exist and are used by music educators throughout the country. Such a method of classifying band literature is
important from a pedagogical perspective; a Grade 2 piece requires significant adjustments to demands in articulation,
range, and dynamics to accommodate players whose muscles and lung capacity are still developing. A composer writing
for younger bands must be aware of these restrictions; the scale and accompanying guidelines aid them in writing a piece
that is physically playable by young students (the NBA uses the term “technically playable”). The scale is provided
below:
• Grade 2: Technically playable by advanced grade school and “typical” good junior high school bands.
• Grade 3: Technically playable by “typical” good high school bands.
• Grade 4: Technically playable by advanced high school band, and readily playable by college bands.
• Grade 5: Technically playable by experienced university bands with full instrumentation and the finest high
school bands.
• Grade 6: Technically difficult in some or all parts for the very finest high school, university, and professional
bands
National Band Association, Selective Music Lists, https://nationalbandassociation.org/selective-music-lists/ (accessed 6
November 2017).
275 Acton Eric Ostling, Jr., “An Evaluation of Compositions for Wind Band According to Specific Criteria of Serious

Artistic Merit,” DMA thesis, The University of Iowa, 1978.

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update in 2011, considering works composed before January 1, 2008.276 The three studies evaluate

wind compositions according to a list of ten criteria created by Ostling that define “serious artistic

merit,” using panels of experts on wind band repertoire—all of whom were conductors—to

complete the evaluation process.277 The ten criteria were intended to be applied as objectively as

possible, but they all require qualitative, subjective evaluation. The criteria provide insight into what

directors from the second half of the twentieth century considered most important in wind band

compositions; for example, many of the criteria stem from the influence of nineteenth-century

aesthetic values, like an emphasis on form and the idea of a “musical validity which transcends

factors of historical importance.”278 Ostling, Gilbert, and Towner then used the point totals from the

panel evaluations to conclude which works were perceived by the community representatives as

cornerstones of the repertoire. The two updates to Ostling’s original study reconsider some of the

works in his study as well as adding newly composed works. Towner’s panel evaluated 1,680

compositions for wind band in his second update, resulting in 144 works of “serious artistic merit,”

276 Jay Warren Gilbert, “An Evaluation of Compositions for Wind Band According to Specific Criteria of Serious
Artistic Merit: A Replication and Update,” DM diss., Northwestern University, 1993; Clifford N. Towner, “An
Evaluation of Compositions for Wind Band According to Specific Criteria of Serious Artistic Merit: A Second Update,”
DMA diss., The University of Nebraska, 2011.
277 Towner, “A Second Update,” 14-20. The ten criteria are as follows.

1. The composition has form—not ‘a form’ but form—and reflects a proper balance between repetition and
contrast.
2. The composition reflects shape and design, and creates the impression of conscious choice and judicious
arrangement on the part of the composer.
3. The composition reflects craftsmanship in orchestration, demonstrating a proper balance between transparent
and tutti scoring, and also between solo and group colors.
4. The composition is sufficiently unpredictable to preclude an immediate grasp of its material meaning.
5. The route through which the composition travels in initiating its musical tendencies and probably musical goals
is not completely direct and obvious.
6. The composition is consistent in its quality throughout its length and in its various sections.
7. The composition is consistent in its style, reflecting a complete grasp of technical details, clearly conceived
ideas, and avoids lapses into trivial, futile, or unsuitable passages.
8. The composition reflects ingenuity in its development, given the stylistic context in which it exists.
9. The composition is genuine in idiom, and is not pretentious.
10. The composition reflects a musical validity which transcends factors of historical importance, or factors of
pedagogical usefulness.
278 Ibid.

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89 of which met the requirements in all three studies (see Appendix D for the list of 144 works).279

The works by Ostling, Gilbert, and Towner, as well as the numerous other studies that follow

similar formats, provide insight into how members of the wind band community construct their

canon.280 The normative process established by Ostling is not without its flaws, but its value to a

community attempting to organize and evaluate a young repertoire as objectively as possible is clear.

It is, however, a very different process than that resulting in the symphony orchestra canon, for

which the development of a set of rules over a centuries-long history would have been impossible. It

is likely that in future decades, the expansion of the wind ensemble repertoire will hamper further

updates to Ostling’s study.

Canonical Works of the Wind Ensemble

In the wind ensemble repertoire, almost all distinctive canonical works were composed in

the twentieth or twenty-first centuries, as opposed to the orchestral canon in which works from this

time represent only a fraction of the repertoire.281 In this section I consider representative works of

the modern wind ensemble canon, composed after 1952, excluding works like Mozart’s Serenades

that Fennell adopted into the repertoire. I address works from the past ten years in the following

section. In addition to the date of a work’s composition, I considered the music itself: the

innovations in the use of the wind ensemble sound palette, including the approach to flexible

instrumentation and the technical and artistic demands. It is also important to know the genesis of

the piece and its current place in the repertoire, especially regarding its influence on later works. One

thing that is not considered as a marker for canonicity is the length of the piece; a forty-minute,

279 Ibid., ii-iii. Towner’s panel of wind literature experts included three of the conductors I interviewed for this project:
Richard Clary, Michael Haithcock, and Jerry Junkin.
280 For a list of literature on evaluating the wind band canon, see Towner’s Appendix A: A Review of Related Literature.
281 Possible examples include John Luther Adams’s Become Ocean (2013), Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral (2000) and

Concerto for Orchestra (2002) and Christopher Theofanidis’s Rainbow Body (2000). Contemporary composers for the
symphony orchestra face their own set of challenges (namely, championing the cause of living composers).

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four-movement symphony for wind ensemble is not privileged over a ten-minute piece. I identify

four canonical wind ensemble works for discussion in this section: Karel Husa’s Music for Prague 1968

(1968), Joseph Schwantner’s …and the mountains rising nowhere (1977), David Maslanka’s A Child’s

Garden of Dreams (1981), and John Corigliano’s Circus Maximus (2004).282 All four of these works

achieved a high score in Towner’s study and qualified for the designation of works of “serious

artistic merit.”283 With these composers, especially Husa and Maslanka, it is difficult to identify only

one of their works for discussion; however, the works I discuss were the ones most often named in

wind ensemble scholarship and the interviews conducted for this project. These four examples

illustrate the development of the wind ensemble canon throughout the twentieth century and into

the twenty-first.

Karel Husa’s Music for Prague 1968 was named repeatedly by my interview subjects as an

influential canonical wind band work. Commissioned by the Ithaca College Concert Band, Music for

Prague uses a large wind ensemble of between 50-60 players, depending on doubling; like most of

Husa’s wind works, it is often performed by concert bands as well. Music for Prague 1968 is one of the

earliest pieces to expand the role of the percussion section within the wind ensemble: the third

movement is for percussion ensemble alone. In addition to featuring percussion, Husa explored the

extreme ends of wind instruments’ ranges, as well as new combinations of wind timbres. He wrote

the main melodic material of the second movement for the saxophone section and explained, “I

have given it to the saxophones purposely: they have the tremendous ability to sing, sound strong

282 Recent studies of these works can be found in the A Composer’s Insight series: Music for Prague 1968, …and the mountains
rising nowhere, and Winds of Nagual in Vol. 1; A Child’s Garden of Dreams in Vol. 2; and Circus Maximus in Vol. 3. Timothy
Salzman, ed. A Composer’s Insight: Thoughts, Analysis and Commentary on Contemporary Masterpieces for Wind Band, vols. 1-5
(Galesville, MD: Meredith Music Publications, 2003-2012).
283 Towner, “A Second Update,” Table 4.1, 143-154.

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and loud, and yet expressive at all times.”284 He also observed that “their vibrating quality, it may be

close to what we call vox humana on the organ.”285 Husa’s timbral and textural achievements

demonstrated the potential of a large group of skilled wind instrumentalists to push the boundaries

of their medium. According to Scatterday, despite the fame of Music for Prague, Husa believed that his

most significant contribution to the wind ensemble repertoire was Apotheosis of this Earth (1971).286

Apotheosis is not a popular work—like Music for Prague, it is difficult to perform, and difficult to listen

to. But it conveys a powerful message about climate change that Scatterday speculates could one day

resonate with the community. Husa’s preference for this piece over Music for Prague serves as a

reminder that discussions of canonicity usually exclude composers.

Like Music for Prague 1968, Joseph Schwantner’s …and the mountains rising nowhere is known for

its expansion of the percussion section and especially the melodic instruments of that family,

including keyboard instruments. Haithcock reflected on hearing the premiere in 1977: “To be cliché

about it, that piece really rocked my world because of the way he used harmony. The way he used

percussion and piano as primary melodic givers was just completely different than anything anybody

had heard. I’ve tried to use that piece and my reaction to that piece as a litmus test for pieces going

forward.”287 Largely influenced by his early experiences as a guitarist, Schwantner approached the

wind ensemble differently than many other band composers who had experience playing wind

instruments. He credited the sound of sustained chords on the guitar for generating his “strong

interest in sonority for its own sake,” which resulted in the unusual instrumentation choices heard in

284 Karel Husa, quoted in David Fullner’s “Karel Husa,” in A Composer’s Insight: Thoughts, Analysis and Commentary on
Contemporary Masterpieces for Wind Band, Vol. 1, ed. Timothy Salzman (Galesville, MD: Meredith Music Publications, 2003),
73.
285 Ibid.
286 Scatterday, phone interview with author, 4 October 2017.
287 Haithcock, phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.

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his wind ensemble works.288 Schwantner’s interest in changing the way composers approached the

medium stemmed from his own experiences in school bands: “When I first started writing for wind

ensemble there wasn’t much to look at other than Hindemith and Schoenberg. My whole band

experience in the public schools had been mostly third-rate music and transcriptions. . . . . You’ll

notice in and the mountains rising nowhere that I go a long way to avoid typical band sounds. I had to

overcome my school experience.”289 Schwantner also required some of the wind players in …and the

mountains rising nowhere to sing, whistle, and play crystal glasses.

Of the fifty-one wind ensemble works of David Maslanka composed between 1981 and

2017, his first, A Child’s Garden of Dreams, is perhaps his most important contribution to the

repertoire. In this piece Maslanka revealed an understanding of the timbres of wind and percussion

instruments that was unlike anything that preceded it, especially in his use of varied textures and

extended techniques. Maslanka’s eclectic compositional style, which he explained was rooted in his

meditation practice, required him to write with a high degree of specificity regarding the timbres he

desired and the textural balance necessary for his music.290 He excelled at creating both delicately

transparent textures focusing on soloists, and thickly scored chords using the entire wind ensemble.

Like Husa and Schwantner, Maslanka is notable as a composer who writes with great care for the

percussion section. Regarding A Child’s Garden of Dreams, Maslanka explained, “In the whole piece,

the percussion was not applied after the fact for accent or coloration, but was heard as an integral

part of the color palette. In the same way, the musical fabric of the piece often grew directly out of

288 Joseph Schwantner, interview with Scott Higbee, “Joseph Schwantner,” in A Composer’s Insight: Thoughts, Analysis and
Commentary on Contemporary Masterpieces for Wind Band, Vol 1, ed. Timothy Salzman (Galesville, MD: Meredith Music
Publications, 2003), 132.
289 Ibid., 134.
290 I discussed Maslanka’s compositional practices, drawing on personal interviews conducted with him in 2013-2014 in

my thesis: Kate Sutton, “David Maslanka and the Natural World: Three Studies of Music for Wind Ensemble,” MM
thesis, Florida State University, 2014.

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the possibilities of instrumental color.”291 When pressed, Maslanka often explained his orchestration

choices as subconscious decisions that grew out of his meditation practice, rather than a systematic

application of principles; such ideas further broadened the range of possibilities for wind ensemble

music. Although several of Maslanka’s works have become repertoire standards, A Child’s Garden of

Dreams is the one most regularly cited as a canonical work.

John Corigliano’s Circus Maximus: Symphony No. 3 premiered in 2004, is already regarded as

one of the most significant works for wind ensemble of the twenty-first century. This may be

explained, at least in part, by Corigliano’s status as a renowned composer in other genres, but the

piece is noteworthy on its own and requires players to perform using techniques that had not been

heard in other wind ensemble works, or works of other genres. Corigliano’s piece is unconventional

for many reasons, but most apparently in his scoring, which calls for one approximately forty-five-

player group on the stage, a “surround sound” group of twenty-two players spread around the

concert hall, and a seven-piece marching band that marches down the aisle of the concert hall. The

eight-movement piece draws on these forces both as a whole and by highlighting specific groups to

create a wide variety of sound palettes. Corigliano also uses the dynamic capabilities of the wind

ensemble unapologetically, with the climatic moments of the piece written at an almost deafening

volume, but deftly contrasted with the transparent textures of the softer movements.

The ability of the wind ensemble to execute such compositional innovations is partly what

drew Corigliano to the genre in the first place. Junkin tried to commission Corigliano to write a

piece for wind ensemble for many years; he invited Corigliano to a University of Texas Wind

Ensemble concert to demonstrate what the group was capable of, explaining, “We were doing things

291David Maslanka, interview with Thomas Martin Wubbenhorst, “The Musical and Philosophical Thoughts of an
American Composer: Conversations with David Maslanka on A Child’s Garden of Dreams,” in The Wind Band and its
Repertoire: Two Decades of Research as Published in the College Band Directors National Association Journal, ed. Michael Votta, Jr.
(Miami: Warner Bros., 2003), 38.

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that I thought might interest him—it was sort of a big panoply of band pieces.”292 Later he sent

Corigliano scores of wind ensemble repertoire standards to show the possibilities in writing for wind

ensemble, which cemented Corigliano’s decision to accept the commission. Corigliano’s piece in

turn has become a repertoire standard that influences today’s emerging composers.

Important similarities between these four pieces exist, most importantly a careful approach

to creating balanced textures, highlighting individual timbres in the wind ensemble, with equal

emphasis on the percussion section as is given to the winds. There are also similarities in the

commissioning of the works and their entrance into the repertoire. Music for Prague 1968 was made a

lasting part of the band repertoire partly because of its championing and early programming by

legendary University of Michigan band conductor William Revelli; the CBDNA premiere of …and

the mountains rising nowhere by Donald Hunsberger and the Eastman Wind Ensemble catapulted it to

fame. Maslanka’s piece was commissioned by John Paynter of Northwestern University, and

Corigliano’s by Jerry Junkin and the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, who premiered it at

CBDNA 2005 in Carnegie Hall. The success of these works lies in the relationships between their

composers and the conductors who championed them. Of these four composers, Husa and

Maslanka are the two who composed most prolifically for wind ensemble. Scatterday reflected, “I

have no doubt that in the twenty-first and twenty-second centuries that they will still be played.”293

It is also worth noting that all four of these pieces are examples of program music. While

there are notable exceptions, including the symphonies of Hindemith, Giannini, and Persichetti, and,

more recently, Bryant’s Concerto for Wind Ensemble, the majority of canonic wind ensemble works

are considered program music, in that the music is narrative or descriptive in some regard, especially

when the term is broadened to include any music that contains “extra-musical references, whether to

292 Junkin, Skype interview with author, 9 October 2017.

293 Scatterday, phone interview with author, 5 October 2017.

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objective events or to subjective feelings.”294 Most of the wind ensemble music composed by Husa,

Maslanka, and Schwantner, as well as Michael Colgrass, Michael Daugherty, Jennifer Jolley, John

Mackey, and Joel Puckett, for example, is program music by this definition. The disposition toward

program music could be an aspect of the wind ensemble community as shaped by processes of

descent, and in respect to the heritage of the concert bands of Gilmore and Sousa. It can also be

argued that the wind ensemble is suited to program music, with its wide variety of timbres and the

flexibility granted to composers. Given the second-class status historically accorded much program

music, especially in the first half of the twentieth century, it might also contribute to the second-class

status often attributed to band music more generally, although this is no longer accurate later in the

century.

Even with pieces like those discussed above that are widely recognized as canonical, there

can be difficulties in evaluating the works that make up the wind ensemble canon. When it comes to

other classical music canons, the task of studying and debating which works merit inclusion involves

more people than those who merely program or conduct the repertoire, including musicologists and

theorists (as both teachers and researchers), music critics, performers, and audiences. The wind

ensemble world, however, is so insular that most of the people discussing the canon are conductors,

as well as composers who write primarily for the genre and are familiar with its body of works.

Although the lack of outsider input could skew the results, canonicity as a topic is discussed freely

within the wind ensemble community. The wind ensemble community has fewer obligations to

satisfy audiences and music critics than the orchestral world, for example, and this means there is

less emphasis on canonical works as looming giants in the repertoire. Instead, conductors often

294Roger Scruton, “Programme Music,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online,
http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo
-9781561592630-e-0000022394 (accessed 20 January 2018).

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speak of caring for the older works in the canon, both to protect the heritage of the wind ensemble

and to educate future generations of community members. Composers become familiar with the

canon as part of the process of learning how to write for wind ensemble, an example of Weber’s

pedagogical canon. Although these older works are important to the wind ensemble community,

contemporary conductors typically focus more time and attention on newly composed works.

Perspectives on Twenty-First-Century Repertoire

It is difficult to evaluate the place of twenty-first-century works in the wind ensemble

repertoire, as there are varying ideas of what constitutes canonicity. Scatterday suggests that a work’s

longevity is the best indicator of canonicity: “I think the real test to what is significant repertoire is

what repertoire exists in twenty, thirty, forty years—are people still playing it?”295 For works like

those discussed above—even Circus Maximus, which has been in the repertoire for only thirteen

years—their longevity means that it is significantly easier to track how they have influenced works

composed in the intervening years. The wind ensemble is so young, however, that the bulk of its

music has not been in existence long enough to determine its canonicity based on longevity. Since

the beginning of the twenty-first century, wind ensemble repertoire has grown rapidly. To evaluate

which of these works may become (or have already become) part of the canon, different criteria

must be considered; the way these criteria are determined must also be addressed. Citron discusses

such problems in assessing canonicity:

But who decides what is acceptable and what is unacceptable in canons—or more
colloquially, what is in and what is out? …Canon formation is not controlled by any
one individual or organization, nor does it take place at any one historical moment.
Rather, the process of the formation of a canon, whether a repertoire or a
disciplinary paradigm, involves a lengthy historical process that engages many
cultural variables.296

295 Scatterday, phone interview with author, 4 October 2017.

296 Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 19.

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In the case of the wind ensemble community, its canonic values respond in part to the historic

processes that shaped the orchestral canon. It is also arguable that the traditional concept of

canonicity is not applicable to the repertoire; however, all my interviewees indicated that the wind

ensemble community has a performing canon that includes recently composed works.

As in other realms of classical music, members of the wind ensemble community often refer

to canonical composers rather than canonical works. This can be problematic, especially when it

results in privileging one group of people over another. The idea of a few “great” composers is

outdated, yet it persists. In the wind ensemble community, the focus on composers manifests itself

differently than in the orchestral world in that the attention given to certain composers is more like

that focused on popular artists, rather than the nineteenth-century orchestral focus on the

sanctification of geniuses. It is not unusual to see contemporary band composers rise to superstar

status; the clearest example from the past decade is John Mackey.297 Many conductors worry,

though, that focusing on popular composers risks neglecting both canonical wind ensemble works

and new pieces written by lesser known composers. My interviews showed that this concern is

broadly shared by composers, including those who currently enjoy great popularity and what some

might call celebrity status. Composers hold significant social status in the wind ensemble community

and have from the beginning when Fennell wrote letters to solicit new works from the composers

he admired most. Today, questions arise regarding how we decide which composers should be

valued: is it the number of works they have composed, or the variety of genres for which they have

written? When considering composers who write primarily for wind ensemble, many musicians both

inside and outside the community evaluate their worth based on whether they also compose for

297The superstar composer is also present in other genres, however, with Eric Whitacre representing a clear example in
the genre of choral music. In many cases, these star composers are inversely respected in the orchestral world.

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other genres. These issues emphasize the liminal position of the wind ensemble as a genre that

inhabits both professional and pedagogical realms.

Of the composers considered in this dissertation who also appeared in Towner’s 2011 study,

Mackey and Newman each had a single work on the list of pieces that earned an evaluation just

under that which would have qualified them for “serious artistic merit”; Bryant and Puckett had

works recommended for further study. The study confined itself to works composed before 2008,

which coincides with the period that my subjects were emerging within the wind ensemble

community (or not long after, in the case of Bryant and Mackey). Of the conductors I interviewed,

Clary, Haithcock, Junkin, and Scatterday all expressed their interest in and support of these four

composers (I spoke in detail about Jolley only with Junkin, as the others were not familiar with her

compositions outside of the CBDNA premiere). Junkin identified Bryant, Mackey, and Newman as

“household names,” whereas Clary spoke highly of Mackey in particular.298 Some, however,

expressed reservations about evaluating the work of these composers, both because their

prominence in the community only emerged in the past decade and because all four write primarily

for wind ensemble. Haithcock and Scatterday acknowledged their respect for works like Mackey’s

Red Line Tango and Bryant’s Concerto for Wind Ensemble, but both also expressed their hesitation

to program works that are currently popular. Scatterday explained, “I think they all have pieces right

now that people will play for the next twenty years. But will we still be playing these pieces 100 years

from now? . . . I think they need to keep contributing in significant ways instead of popular ways.”299

Again, the issue of longevity as it relates to canonicity arises, as does the question of which criteria

are used to evaluate works.

298 Junkin, Skype interview with author, 9 October 2017.

299 Scatterday, phone interview with author, 4 October 2017.

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 Popularity is often viewed with suspicion in the classical music community; for those who

are concerned with the wind ensemble’s place within American music culture, popularity can be

damning. Clary compared the wind ensemble community’s approach to composers to consumers’

fascination with pop culture, reflecting on a discussion with Mackey when he was an emerging

composer: “Band directors are like this: they hear a piece like Red Line Tango and they want to have

John write another piece like Red Line Tango. I said, ‘Do not let them do that to you. It’s going to be

very lucrative for a while—but eventually, somebody gets too important, somebody gets too much

attention, somebody gets too popular, and there’s going to be a backlash.”300 Mackey, as discussed

earlier in this chapter, has used his social media presence and his appeal to younger members of the

community to become a phenomenon; more importantly, his control of all business aspects of his

career has allowed him to enjoy enormous financial rewards. Although Mackey acknowledges that

he has become a household name in the band community, he also worries about his music’s long-

term hold in the repertoire. Drott addresses what often happens when composers achieve financial

success in what he describes as the gift economy of music: “The strength and resilience of this

internalized ethic are such that those who are seen as complying with its dictates tend to be viewed

favorably, while those who break with them—as is the case with those artists who are too quick to

‘sell out’ or profit from their work—are viewed negatively.”301

Haithcock’s concerns with popular composers stem from his desire to maintain variety in

the wind ensemble repertoire. During our first interview, he cautioned me about the composers I

had selected, recommending instead to focus on composers who have achieved success in genres

beyond the wind ensemble: composers who are valued by musicians outside of the band world, like

Mason Bates, William Bolcom, and Michael Daugherty. In contrast, privileging composers who are

300 Clary, interview with author, 24 October 2016.

301 Drott, “Fraudulence and the Gift Economy of Music,” 67.

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unknown outside of the band community often raises questions as to whether research on the wind

ensemble is relevant to broader discussions of American music culture. Haithcock’s observation is

insightful; the opinions of these established composers offer support for the band world. For

example, Bolcom, like Corigliano, initially resisted writing for band. He composed some short band

pieces in the 1990s, and others have arranged a few of his orchestral works for band, but he did not

compose a major work for wind ensemble until his First Symphony for Band, which he wrote in 2008 at

the age of seventy.302 The symphony was commissioned by the Big Ten Band Directors Association

and premiered by Haithcock. Bolcom explained his interest in the band in the program notes for the

symphony:

Band is different from orchestra in more than just the absence of strings and the
greater number of winds. There is a “culture of the orchestra” that goes back several
centuries, one that shapes new pieces for it in subtle ways even a composer may not
be fully aware of. The band culture is younger and historically more oriented to
outdoors events and occasions. Band players seem now to be mostly of college age;
there are very few professional non-university bands, nothing analogous to the Sousa
and Goldman outfits of my youth. The resonance of a long history like that of the
orchestra is largely lacking. Against this—and I think this is why more and more
composers of art music are turning to band—is the fact that band people work long
and hard on a new piece. They will spend weeks in rehearsal perfecting and
internalizing it. And there is something infectious about the youthful enthusiasm a
good college band will put into a performance.303

Bolcom’s awareness and appreciation of the band community is evident; he refers to their

enthusiasm for new music and observes that many composers now write for band. Despite the

overall positive evaluation of the band community, however, Bolcom also implies common

prejudices against writing for the group: the phrase “youthful enthusiasm” can cut both ways. That

Bolcom has not composed a major work for wind ensemble or band since his First Symphony further

302 I consider this a work for wind ensemble based its use of flexible instrumentation and one-on-a-part playing;
however, in his notes, Bolcom does not differentiate between band and wind ensemble.
303 William Bolcom, Program Notes for the First Symphony for Band, Flourishes and Meditations, “The President’s Own”

United States Marine Band, CD booklet, 2011.

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suggests that his interests may lie elsewhere, which is understandable for established composers

whose success writing for different genres means that they likely have their choice of commissions.

When asked to elaborate on his preference for older and more established composers,

Haithcock responded, “I have a particular bias against the people who cultivate cults within the band

medium, who don’t write for other genres,” explaining that composers like Maslanka and Mackey

have contributed many pieces to the band repertoire, a few of which he recognizes as important

works that he programs for his group, without ever being commissioned by orchestras.304 But by

citing their lack of orchestral works, Haithcock implies that the wind ensemble is less important than

the orchestra, drawing on the cultural reading of the orchestra as the pinnacle of large instrumental

ensembles that held sway throughout the nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries. In the

twenty-first century, when many orchestras face shrinking audiences, composers like Bryant, Jolley,

Mackey, Newman, and Puckett do not think of their orchestral works as the ultimate indicators of

their success; in some cases, opportunities to compose in other genres followed their successes in

the wind ensemble realm, reversing the path of composers like Bolcom and Corigliano. For

example, the Minnesota Orchestra performed Bryant’s transcription of Ecstatic Waters (originally for

wind ensemble) in 2016, and he is currently working on a new piece to be premiered by Leonard

Slatkin and the Detroit Orchestra in April 2018. Bryant’s work was well received by the Minnesota

Orchestra audiences: “It connected with them in an unexpected way, and that’s what I think

symphony orchestra should be doing.”305 Joel Puckett articulated a similar thought regarding his

career path:

We went through a period where if you were writing for the wind ensemble, or the
band, you were pretty much ghettoized. It’s certainly not that way anymore, even
though there are still certain studio teachers that may have that attitude and may pass
that along to their younger students.

304 Haithcock, phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.

305 Bryant, Skype interview with author, 5 February 2017.

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 I was basically exclusively writing for band for a while, and now I’m writing an opera
for the Minnesota Opera. Newman was primarily known as a band composer, and
yet he had one of the most performed orchestra pieces of the past two years [Blow It
Up, Start Again]. Steve [Bryant] is primarily known as a band composer, but in the
past two years he wrote a piece for the Minnesota Orchestra, and now he’s writing a
piece for Detroit. So you’ve got these figures—at least the four of us—who found
their footing in the band world and are now being accepted in the larger musical
world, and I don’t think that’s happened before.306

Not quoted above is Puckett’s reference to Mackey, who has worked extensively with ballet

companies in New York City, including most prominently the Alvin Ailey American Dance

Theater.307 The success of these composers in other genres demonstrates that the characteristics of

their music that appeal to the wind ensemble community also resonate with other audiences. The

danger of focusing too heavily on the success of wind ensemble composers in other genres,

however, is reinforcing the traditional hierarchy of band music as inferior to orchestral music.

The popularity of certain composers often means that they receive more commissions than

they can possibly accept. A common argument is that commissioning multiple pieces by the same

composer reduces the diversity of the wind ensemble repertoire; however, this concern is one that

could have been directed at the orchestral repertoire of past centuries. In the eighteenth century, for

example, court composers like Haydn wrote prolifically in the same genres, often resulting in pieces

that sounded similar to the casual listener, and indeed composers often quoted themselves. These

pieces were intended to be performed a few times at most, before moving on to the next piece,

hence Haydn’s output of 104 symphonies. Because of its young repertoire and its focus on living

composers, the wind ensemble community performs music more similarly to the late eighteenth-

century orchestra than its nineteenth-, twentieth-, or twenty-first-century counterparts. In his article

on canon formation in practice and preference, Weber addresses the shift from programming new

works by living composers to established works by dead composers in the music history canon:

306 Puckett, Skype interview with author, 28 April 2017.

307 Currently under the directorship of Robert Battle, a colleague of Mackey’s from his time at Juilliard.

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 Repertory was defined by learning and criticism, and the product was legitimated by
ideology. Only through the last of these stages did the canon achieve its central role
in musical taste and in the culture as a whole. In retrospect, its proponents succeeded
in stunning fashion, for it is remarkable that a culture that had focused so intensively
upon recent works by living musicians should have turned around to put old ones
foremost.308

Conductors concerned with the prospect of the contemporary repertoire becoming overwhelmed by

numerous works by the same handful of living composers may be burdened by the weight of the

orchestral canon. Discussing the issue of canonicity within the contemporary wind ensemble

community recalls resemblances to orchestral canon formation in the eighteenth and nineteenth

centuries, and emphasizes the differences from today’s programming practices of orchestral

concerts. Today’s declining prestige of the symphony orchestra may be proof that a canon formed

primarily of old works cannot last indefinitely.

Concern about genre variety is present among composers, too; both Bryant and Mackey

discussed rejecting more commissions than they accept, emphasizing their desire to write something

different every time. Mackey stresses the importance of writing for other genres to “keep the palette

fresh.”309 Composing for orchestral, choral, or chamber works is less about validating their

compositional careers and more about continuing to improve and diversify as composers. Mackey

also addressed the flaws of a community that wants new music all the time: “It’s an interesting

medium to write for when the back catalog is only a useful catalog for about five years, and then

pieces vanish, for the most part.”310 Newman refers to this paradox as well, pointing out that one of

the most appealing aspects of composing for wind ensemble—writing for a tightknit community—is

also one of the downsides due to the community’s ravenousness.311 Writing in similar circumstances,

although enjoying considerably less flexibility, Bach and Haydn were forced to write in the genres

308 Weber, “The History of Musical Canon,” 354.

309 Mackey, interview with author, 17 March 2017.
310 Ibid.
311 Newman, interview with author, 9 February 2017.

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dictated by the requirements of the positions they held. The demand for certain genres meant that

the composers had little time to write in others, a challenge similar to the one faced by composers

like Bryant and Mackey, especially.

Variety in wind ensemble repertoire recalls the issue of the potential canonicity of works

composed in the twenty-first century. The sheer number of new pieces in the twenty-first century

requires sifting. The conductors I interviewed all acknowledged the challenge of locating the best

new repertoire, especially as an increasingly large number of contemporary composers become

popular. All four emphasized the importance of continuing to commission new composers even as

the repertoire grows and becomes more diverse. Space for new voices is crucial to continued

growth. For many, popularity and a perceived lack of variety complicate the question of whether

Bryant, Mackey, Newman, and Puckett will be elevated to a position as canonical composers, or if

they and their music will be remembered as early-twenty-first-century fads. The dynamic nature of

canonicity means this is impossible to predict; however, the band community has demonstrated a

commitment to its most dedicated composers that is likely to continue. For example, David

Maslanka’s career kept him in the forefront of the band repertoire for almost four decades. His final

new piece will be premiered posthumously in April 2018.

The Canon in Practice

In the first decades of the wind ensemble’s existence and even through the beginning of the

twenty-first century, it was easier for conductors to program older canonical works while

simultaneously featuring newly composed pieces simply because they were fewer in number. Today,

conductors are obligated to grow the repertoire while also preserving the canon. Clary addressed the

challenge of identifying the best new works from among a repertoire that is growing exponentially.

As an educator, his primary responsibility is to his students. Part of programming for the two groups

he conducts at FSU requires performing many of the canonical standards (like Grainger’s Lincolnshire

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Posy, Hindemith’s Symphony for Band, and Husa’s Music for Prague 1968) every few years so that

students have the opportunity to learn and experience them. A second obligation is to make sure

that students play what he considers the highest quality repertoire, which often means focusing on

pieces that have been in the repertoire for at least a few years and are known to be worth the effort.

This does not leave much space on programs for premiering new works. Clary reflected, “My honest

appraisal is that this was a lot easier to do at one point. But we are where we are, and it’s a happy

circumstance of our own making, so we just have to keep at it.”312 Clary makes it a point to

champion emerging composers when he can, including Mackey at the time of his entry into the wind

ensemble community. Scatterday expresses convictions similar to Clary, emphasizing the importance

of maintaining the wind ensemble canon for the sake of his students:

There’s so much great repertoire that we have from the last one hundred years,
especially the last fifty years [like Hindemith’s Symphony for Band and Lincolnshire
Posy], that sometimes we forget those pieces. I’m very concerned about the
Hindemith symphony being lost in our canon of wind works, or Lincolnshire Posy, just
because we have all these new pieces coming out. I may not play that piece for five,
six, seven, eight years, but there’s no way I’m going to let that piece go, because
when I share that with my students, these pieces like the Hindemith and the
Grainger are significant pieces that will inform them and make them better players.313

Dedication to an educational mission by programming canonical wind ensemble works for the sake

of the players speaks to the most important relationship in the wind ensemble community—the one

between conductors and their student performers. Although conductor-composer relationships are

the focus of this chapter, they are always in service to conductors’ relationships with their students.

To a large extent, pedagogy shapes the canon today.

In addition to acknowledging the value of older works, conductors argue for the value of

taking their students through the process of commissioning, rehearsing, and premiering a new piece,

often alongside the composer. Scatterday reflected, “It’s a journey that the ensemble sees you take

312 Clary, interview with author, 24 October 2016.

313 Scatterday, phone interview with author, 4 October 2017.

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them through, and they’re part of it, and they learn from it and grow from it, and it’s very, very

important. It doesn’t happen in the orchestral world that much anymore. In the wind ensemble

world it happens all the time. It’s one of the great things we do.”314 This practice speaks to the

power of new music within the wind ensemble community. Wind ensemble conductors look beyond

premiering a work; they commit to fostering its dissemination through repeat performances.

Haithcock compares the wind ensemble community’s approach to repertoire and canonicity to that

of the literary world, contrasting it to the orchestral method of maintaining its canon:

It’s really only in the classical music [world] that people want to live in the canon. I
don’t think that aspect of what we do is discussed enough. Is every novel written
going to be James Joyce? Probably not. Is every play ever written going to be
Shakespeare? Probably not. Does that mean we stop writing them? Does that mean
we stop reading them?315

In the literary world, scholars, critics, and readers still have a high regard for the masterpieces of the

past, but like the wind ensemble community and its interest in newly composed music, the literary

world also champions new writers and features newly released books in such prominent outlets as

the New York Times Book Review. Haithcock’s comparison speaks to the symbiotic relationship

between conductors and composers; conductors must champion new composers to support new

works regardless of whether they become canonical linchpins.

It will be illuminating to observe the continued effects of a rapidly growing wind ensemble

canon. Bryant wondered, “At some stage, is there going to be a canon for wind ensemble if things

continue like this, and if so, will it have the same drag effect on the ensemble? Will it become more

of a museum, and is that a natural property of a large ensemble that has that sort of cultural

surrounding and people?”316 The wind ensemble community has witnessed the effects of the

orchestral world’s focus on its masterworks, but more importantly, it has chosen to continue

314 Ibid.
315 Haithcock, phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.
316 Bryant, Skype interview with author, 5 February 2017.

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pursuing conductor-composer relationships. In the early decades of the ensemble, it would not have

succeeded without the contributions of composers like Husa and Schwantner; today, a variety of

composers offer diverse works to conductors, expanding the repertoire and broadening the

performance experiences of their students. Though works by composers like Bryant and Mackey

may one day firmly enter a canon, it is unlikely that their compositions will become mainstays at the

expense of continued support of and enthusiasm for new works by emerging composers.

Hierarchies and the Wind Ensemble Community

Discussing repertoire and canonicity necessitates addressing hierarchies, from deciding

which works warrant a place in the canon to evaluating contemporary composers. Other hierarchical

considerations relating to the wind ensemble repertoire emerge when taking a broader perspective of

the larger wind band community and the place of the wind ensemble in academia. The hierarchical

thinking that exists both within and outside of the community reveals the further dissemination of

value judgments about wind ensemble and band repertoire.

Within the Wind Band Community

An ongoing challenge for scholars writing about the wind ensemble is to avoid privileging it

over the concert band. The wind ensemble generally plays more technically and artistically

challenging music than the concert band does, but this does not confer superiority. Nevertheless,

hierarchies emerge in many institutions at both the secondary and college/university levels: at

schools with more than one band, the “top” band is most often the “wind ensemble,” with the

second band commonly “symphonic band” and the third “concert band.” In many ways, this tiered

system is tied to difficulty of repertoire: wind ensemble music is difficult to play, so the best players

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must play in the wind ensemble.317 Newman and Clary both referred to a conflict from the 1990s

between two groups: the educational community, which focused on pedagogical music for middle

and high school bands, and a much smaller group they both referred to as the “turtlenecks”—

conductors and composers from top tier universities and conservatories. Newman described, “If a

piece was played in the larger educational community, it would not get touched by the higher group,

or vice versa. They really were two different worlds, and you had to aim for one or the other as a

composer.” 318 He explained that today, the lines between these two groups have blurred

considerably. For example, all the composers interviewed for this project write music not only for

university and professional wind ensembles, but also for young or developing concert bands. Bryant

addressed the value in writing music for younger players, which is accompanied by a specific set of

restrictions regarding range, technical ability, and dynamic control: “Writing music for younger

musicians is by far the most difficult thing to do. My mindset is to think, ‘what would I have been

fascinated to play?’ I try to create that.”319 Writing for young players is one of the challenges Bryant

currently looks forward to most as a band and wind ensemble composer; the educational music

written by these contemporary composers is as innovative as the music for university and

professional wind ensembles. Whereas the emphasis on virtuosity in the mid-twentieth century

reveals the goals and values of the conductors from that time, the focus of contemporary

conductors and composers is less on complexity for the sake of complexity and more about making

the most of what the players can do. With professional players, there are unlimited possibilities; with

middle school students, the sound palette is more limited, but composers like Bryant demonstrate

that it is still possible to write interesting and innovative works. The concert band fulfills a different

317 Another way of looking at this is that the wind ensemble consists of players who are ready for a challenge; thus, they
play more difficult music. This is in line with what Fennell intended the wind ensemble to offer to students.
318 Newman, Skype interview with author, 9 February 2017.
319 Bryant, Skype interview with author, 16 January 2018.

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role in the band community than the wind ensemble does, but one that is no less important or

worthy of study. Future research could explore a similar study of canonicity as regards the concert

band repertoire.

Regional differences and allegiances also become intertwined with hierarchical thinking.

Historically, the northeastern United States has been the home of many important representatives of

American musical culture, including wind ensemble composers; schools like Eastman, Ithaca, and

the New England Conservatory have been the birthplace of much early wind ensemble repertoire.

The wind band, however, has been associated with the Midwest as much as the Northeast, and wind

ensembles from schools in Michigan, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois, as well as further south in Texas

and Oklahoma, have played a crucial role in the development of repertoire, especially regarding the

relationships between conductors and composers in these areas. Even with this geographic diversity,

the attention of ABA and CBDNA historically favored one region over the others. Clary suggested

that many conductors in the late twentieth century focused primarily on commissioning and

performing works by northeast-based composers, rather than composers from the western,

southern, and Midwestern parts of the United States.320 He explained that for a period of time, the

CBDNA committee responsible for commissioning new works was made up of people who

repeatedly favored the “same small handful of composers, based in the northeast part of the

country.”321 In recent decades, however, this has changed, with schools including the University of

Michigan and the University of Texas leading the way in the development of composer-conductor

relationships. Furthermore, the discussion of nomenclature in the previous chapter can be nuanced

by considering the impact of regional preferences in naming their ensembles: it is possible that

bands based in the Midwest or in the southern United States avoid the name “wind ensemble” to

320 Clary, interview with author, 24 October 2016.

321 Ibid.

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escape the elitist connotations of a term that was born at and remains associated with the east in

general and, more specifically, the Eastman School of Music.

Within Academia

Genre hierarchies within university music programs are easy to identify; for example,

examining the time devoted to studying band repertoire in the music history and theory classrooms

is revealing of larger aesthetic values. I suggest that several of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century

works I discuss in this dissertation should be part of the larger Western classical music canon.

Examining how wind band canons are represented in music history texts, however, reveals that

nineteenth-century music—primarily music written and/or performed by Gilmore and Sousa—was

often the only reference to band in a general music history or American music history survey.322

Some band pieces have since been deemed worthy of study, like the appearance of the first

movement of Music for Prague 1968 in the fifth edition of the Norton Anthology of Western Music,

although it has since been replaced with the first movement of Vincent Persichetti’s Symphony No.

6 for band. What is fascinating from my perspective as a musicologist and music history teacher is

that many band conductors do not seem to be aware of the absence of their repertoire from the

music history canon. Musicologist S. Andrew Granade gave a presentation at CBDNA 2017 titled

“Ventilating Silos: The Wind Band in Modern American Society” in which he guided his audience,

primarily made up of band directors, through the place of the band in the music history canon. The

audience was shocked when Granade revealed how infrequently band music is typically taught in the

music history classroom. There are many benefits to studying wind repertoire in music history

classes, however. For students who plan to teach band, familiarity with how the band canon fits into

the larger music history canon is crucial, but all students, no matter their discipline, benefit from a

322 See survey of literature in Chapter 1.

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broader knowledge of American musical culture and the indisputable role band music has played in

the nation’s musical life.

The hierarchy of large ensembles in academia becomes even more apparent when examining

concert calendars and scheduling. At large schools like the University of Michigan, the University of

Texas, and Florida State University, competition for prime-time concert dates is rigorous. For

example, the best concert times—typically Friday and Saturday evenings—are reserved for the

performances that will fill FSU’s 1,172-seat concert hall: these include the graduate symphony

orchestra, opera productions, and the top choral ensembles. Clary pointed out that whenever the

core group of audience members who regularly attend the above concerts do attend a wind orchestra

concert at FSU, they invariably speak highly of it. They mainly encounter the wind orchestra when it

shares a concert with the graduate symphony orchestra, such as during the final concert of the

biennial Festival of New Music, or at concerts sponsored by the community patrons’ group for the

FSU College of Music. Clary emphasizes that he does not wish to fill the hall for the sake of filling

the hall, though, expressing a preference that only audience members who appreciate wind ensemble

music should attend his group’s performance. The danger in this is that if wind ensembles only

perform to members who are already part of their community, their audiences will not grow. In the

future, it seems that the wind ensemble community must find a way to reach outsiders without

losing the practices that make it so unique.

Conclusions

The contemporary wind ensemble community is unique in part because of its mutually

beneficial composer-conductor relationships, which today form the fundamental bonds of the

affinity community in the support of shared goals. Today, the wind ensemble community inhabits a

liminal place in American musical culture as it navigates playing professional-level repertoire in

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academic settings; its shared descent heritage with the concert band means that it is often

misunderstood and dismissed as an ensemble incapable of serious performance. The wind ensemble,

however, shares characteristics with the symphony orchestra and ensembles in the new music scene

as much as it does the concert band: like the symphony orchestra, the wind ensemble performs in a

traditional concert setting and maintains a canon of works; like new-music groups, wind ensembles

actively commission the best young American composers. Its balance of systematically building the

repertoire and supporting new composers while also preserving canonical works is unique. Despite

its liminality, the wind ensemble community cannot escape ingrained hierarchical practices and

assumptions imposed upon it both by community insiders and outsiders. In the next chapter, I focus

on one example of a traditional band hierarchy—the privileging of male participants over female

ones—and explore the contemporary composer-conductor relationship from a gender-informed

perspective.

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 CHAPTER FIVE

GENDER IN THE WIND ENSEMBLE COMMUNITY

Seated in the middle of an all-male composers’ panel at the 2017 College Band Directors

National Association (CBDNA) conference, composer Steven Bryant decided to call attention to the

absence of diversity in programming on wind ensemble concerts, especially as regards gender. The

irony was not lost on many members of the audience, myself included. Of the almost fifty works

performed at the conference, he noted, only one was composed by a woman: The Eyes of the World are

Upon You by Jennifer Jolley. She was the sole female participant on a series of four composers’

forums at CBDNA, which featured twenty-one of the thirty-nine composers who had works

performed. Others on Bryant’s panel eagerly joined the discussion. Even though it was frustrating to

see and hear the absence of women composers discussed by a group that included none,

acknowledging the gender imbalance within the band community represented a new and welcome

step toward correcting the problem. In addition to this spontaneous discussion, there were two

planned panels on the conference program dedicated specifically to “bridging the gender gap,”

which aimed to address programming imbalances. Clearly, gender was on the mind of many of the

2017 conference attendees.

There are several ways to study gendered practices within any community. This chapter

applies Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s work on musical communities to examine the wind ensemble in

particular as it relates to gender. One of the identifying factors of a community defined by processes

of affinity is that music often crosses boundaries of age, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality to connect

groups of people who may not otherwise have anything in common. Despite their differences,

members of an affinity community share a sense of belonging based on the musical tradition of

which they are all a part. The larger wind ensemble community is predominantly male and white, but

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membership in CBDNA encompasses a wide variety of age cohorts and geographic areas, especially

as new generations of conductors and composers take more active roles in the community.

This chapter focuses on women composers of wind ensemble music, using the CBDNA

National Meeting of March 2017 as my case study. Although there are many factors to discuss

regarding the demographics of the contemporary wind ensemble community, I chose gender as the

emphasis of this chapter for two reasons: first, gender was an important talking point at CBDNA

2017, and second, as a woman within the wind community, gender-related issues affect me

personally and are the ones on which I have the best perspective. In any productive conversation of

gender, intersectionality must be foregrounded; however, at CBDNA 2017 the focus was on gender

by itself. Statistics from CBDNA conference programs show that most of the women featured are

white, and all of the women interviewed for this dissertation but one are white. As Kimberle

Crenshaw writes in “Demarginalizing the Intersection,” women of color deserve special

consideration as they are often doubly marginalized.323 Race and gender (or class and gender,

sexuality and gender, etc.) cannot be regarded separately from each other. Crenshaw’s concept of

“intersectionality” addresses the ways in which multiple identities interact, structuring each

community member’s experience in a unique way.

By focusing on gender I do not intend to minimize the perspectives of other groups within

the wind ensemble community, including for example, people of color or different-abledness.

Gender in the wind ensemble community, like in many other Western communities, especially those

based in academia, has been framed predominantly using the struggles of white women; when

focusing on the roles of these individuals, however, it is important to simultaneously question why

323Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of
Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1989 (Issue 1,
Article 8): 139-167. http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8 (accessed 26 December 2017).

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most of the women in the wind ensemble community are white. For comparison, of the thirty-nine

total composers programmed on eleven concerts at CBDNA 2017, only six identify as people of

color, including Jolley, who passes as and identifies primarily as white, but also identifies as Asian.324

In treating gender as an identity marker within a given community, it can be difficult to

separate which issues affecting women in the wind ensemble world result from their gender, and

which are ones faced by the entire community in the larger society. As discussed in the previous

chapter, composers who write primarily for the wind ensemble struggle in unique ways when

compared to those who write for the symphony orchestra. This chapter explores why many of these

challenges are heightened for women. Additionally, although I focus primarily on the perspective of

female composers in this chapter, I also address the role of female conductors within the wind

ensemble community. This dissertation highlights the relationship between composers and

conductors; a discussion of female composers would be incomplete without also exploring the

perspective of female conductors.

There are many studies by scholars other than Shelemay that look at gender within specific

musical communities, including several writings by Ellen Koskoff, like those gathered in A Feminist

Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender. Among the essays in this collection, her chapter “Miriam

Sings Her Song: The Self and the Other in Anthropological Discourse,” is especially useful. Koskoff

draws attention to the biases scholars bring to any ethnography, including those of gender roles

within specific communities. She identifies three perspectives that could be employed in this study

and demonstrates what an ethnographic depiction would look like from each: the describer, the

analyst, and the subject herself, or two outsiders and an insider.325 This exercise demonstrates that

each of these perspectives is only partial and can produce inaccuracies as well as truths. I approach

324Jennifer Jolley, e-mail message to author, 20 January 2018.

325Ellen Koskoff, “Miriam Sings Her Song: The Self and the Other in Anthropological Discourse” in A Feminist
Ethnomusicology: Writings on Music and Gender (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2014), 91.

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the wind ensemble community from all three of these perspectives to varying degrees. It is

important to accurately represent the thoughts of the insiders interviewed for this dissertation; often

theirs are similar to my own, as a partial insider of the community. Although I am a female member

of the wind ensemble community, I am neither a composer nor a conductor, the two positions I

privilege in this project. My discussion of composer-conductor relationships requires an outsider’s

perspective. I use both descriptive ethnography and analytic ethnography in this chapter; while it is

important to capture perspectives on gender in the wind ensemble community objectively, it is also

important to problematize the gender imbalance and how it is understood from an outsider’s

perspective. Koskoff’s essay reinforces the difficulties of uniting these varying perspectives. Each

contains its own set of biases, both intentional and unintentional, that require nuance to best achieve

the most accurate representation.

Women in contemporary academic communities in any discipline confront unique

challenges, while gendered practices in the wind band world have deep roots in its military origins.

When combined with the gendered practices already ensconced in academia, women band

composers and conductors often confront additional challenges to those faced by women in other

genres of contemporary music. Nevertheless, the focus of wind ensemble conductors on music by

living composers, as discussed in the previous chapter, means that the wind ensemble community

can also be a haven for many composers from historically underrepresented groups, including

women. Drawing on personal interviews with composers and conductors at various stages in their

careers, I argue that despite its heritage of gender discrimination, today’s wind ensemble community

offers unique opportunities for women. This chapter illuminates progress made toward diversifying

a historically male and monochromatic but vital American musical community.

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 Gender in Academic Music Communities

In a Twitter post from July 17, 2017, composer Kristin Kuster linked to a blog post by

University of British Columbia professor Jennifer Berdahl titled “The Crazy/Bitch Narrative About

Senior Academic Women.” Kuster wrote, “I was just made 1st ever female chair of my department.

I’m also the 2nd female ever tenured. Thank you for this article, Professor. #ready.”326

Announcements like Kuster’s are reminders that there are still many “firsts” left to achieve for

female professionals. Academic communities historically have been the domain of men and this is

still the case today. In her blog post, Berdahl describes the narratives of the women she has

encountered throughout her time as a student, an assistant professor, and a senior professor,

identifying two main stereotypes for female senior professors that have persisted throughout her

twenty-five years in academia: the “crazy” woman or the “bitch.” She writes, “I suppose I fell prey

to thinking I (and my generation) was an exception, things would change, and I could escape the fate

of the senior women before me. I now look back on them with compassion and guilt. . . . Why did I

join others in being so hard on them, or readily believe the rumours?” and concludes, “How do we

stop this generational cycle so that women’s wings aren’t clipped as soon as they approach the

power to soar?”327 Kuster’s response to this article demonstrated how important these questions are.

Kuster is not only very well regarded in the wind ensemble community as one of its most talented

composers, but she also writes for orchestras, vocal ensembles, and chamber groups. She has won

awards and grants including an OPERA America Grant for female composers and the Henry Russel

Award, one of the highest recognitions for junior faculty from the University Michigan. Despite

these accomplishments, Berdahl’s article resonated with her, demonstrating that a woman’s place in

326Kristin Kuster, Twitter post, 17 July 2017, 4:07p.m., https://twitter.com/KristinKuster.

327Jennifer Berdahl, “The Crazy/Bitch Narrative About Senior Academic Women,” July 2017,
http://jberdahl.blogspot.com/2017/07/the-crazybitch-narrative-about-senior.html (accessed 1 August 2017).

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academia is still not something to be taken for granted. The hashtag “ready” points to Kuster’s own

desire to lead women forward in her new role as department chair at the University of Michigan.

Kuster has been speaking up on behalf of women in academia for several years. In a 2013

article, “Taking Off My Pants,” published in The New York Times Opinion Pages, Kuster described

the change of attitude regarding discussions about gender that occurred in her mid-thirties: “Today,

I believe we must cast a spotlight on facts and evidence that illuminate the gender imbalance of

composers with visibly active presences in our field.”328 Before this change, Kuster explained, she

avoided speaking about being a woman composer, an attitude she learned from older female

composers who “believed that talking about our gender in relation to our work would perpetuate the

distinction between male and female composers, and therefore pave right over all the ground we had

gained in our efforts to break through the gender normative white-male hegemony that is this

field.”329 This belief is one that is often found in both classical music and academic communities;

many of the individuals interviewed for this dissertation expressed varied opinions about how a

“woman composer” should be represented. Kuster pointed to an article by Amy Beth Kirsten, a

2012 Guggenheim Fellow in composition, published earlier that year in NewMusicBox called “The

‘Woman Composer’ is Dead,” in which Kirsten argued for the irrelevance of the term “woman

composer” and the dangers of focusing too heavily on gender. These issues foreground the

importance of understanding the context of the gendered history of academia.

Bonnie G. Smith’s discussion of the gendered development of the professional academic

study of history in her book The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice provides insight

into why academia is still a male-dominated community. Smith writes, “Historical innovators in the

328 Kristin Kuster, “Taking Off My Pants,” The New York Times, 17 July 2013,
https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/17/taking-off-my-pants/ (accessed 28 December 2017).
329 Ibid.

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nineteenth century were quick to claim that scientific truth about the past was grounded in a rigidly

followed set of practices—foremost among them seminar training and archival research.”330 German

historian Leopold von Ranke (1795-1886) is credited as founding the academic seminar; he hosted

the first one in his personal study sometime between 1825 and 1831.331 The invitation-only attendees

were all male students who aspired to be professional historians. Even the setting of the meeting

marked the seminar as male; Smith describes the home study as exuding “an air of traditional male

command and domination.”332 This aura was transferred to seminar rooms at universities. In

establishing the seminar as one of the cornerstones of training for professional historians, and

separating it from the public lecture, which could be attended by anyone (including women), von

Ranke and his nineteenth-century colleagues argued for the worthiness of a life devoted to historical

study as a career equal to one in the sciences. Like the pursuit of scientific truths, historians would

pursue facts. Their quest marked the academic study of history as male, and the legacy of the

seminar hangs over academia today. This is true even in music departments, especially musicology,

music theory, and composition areas.

As discussed earlier, one of the greatest challenges confronting the wind ensemble is the

youthfulness of its canonical repertoire, especially when compared to other genres of classical music.

The canon most valued in academic music communities consists overwhelmingly of works by men

(most of whom are dead). In the introduction to her book Gender and the Musical Canon, Marcia J.

Citron introduces the concept “double vision” to describe the historiography of female composers:

because the canon is gendered male, they are often discussed both as composers within the

mainstream and separately as women composers. Citron explains, “The inclusion of works by

330 Bonnie G. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998),
103.
331 Smith, The Gender of History, 105.
332 Smith, The Gender of History, 108.

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women and the new kinds of historiographic and evaluative questions they imply not only pertain to

women, but permeate the canon as a whole and thus affect mainstream traditions.”333 Like the

connections von Ranke drew between masculinity and the professional study of history,

composition and professionalism are linked by a conception of male genius, in part to mark the

composer apart from the rest of society.334 Originality and innovation shape the historiography of

music, and these are both traditionally gendered male, largely because historically, women have had

neither the time nor the educational opportunity to develop innovative creativity outside the

domestic realm. Citron’s discussion of the ways these issues shaped the gender of the musical canon

demonstrates how problematizing the gender issue in classical music benefits contemporary women

composers.

To begin solving the asymmetry in gender representation in the canon, Citron’s concept of

“double vision” first had to be addressed. Today, like Kirsten in her article “The ‘Woman

Composer’ is Dead,” many musicians, scholars, and critics argue that the term “woman composer”

is obsolete. Kirsten, drawing in part on Citron’s research to highlight the historic relevance of the

term, argues that the term “woman composer” is now “nothing more than the residue of struggles

past.”335 Her argument for programming composers based purely on their music, rather than taking

gender into consideration, suggests a desire to escape the double vision applied to women

composers. Others, however, including Kuster and Duke University Director of Bands Verena

Mösenbichler-Bryant, agree with Citron in advocating for the importance of considering the gender

of composers of classical music. In “Taking Off My Pants,” Kuster acknowledged, “For both the

men and women among us, there is an inherent bitonality in the woman-composer label.”336 Yet

333 Marcia Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, paperback edition (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 13.
334 Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 185.
335 Amy Beth Kirsten, “The ‘Woman Composer’ is Dead,” NewMusicBox, 19 March 2012,

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/the-woman-composer-is-dead/ (accessed 29 December 2017).

336 Kuster, “Taking Off My Pants.”

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despite the challenges of being labeled a “woman composer,” Kuster argued that acknowledging the

role that gender plays in a composer’s background is required to achieve a balanced gender

representation in classical music. In the wind ensemble genre, female composers face the

hierarchical challenges related to genre and canonicity discussed in the previous chapter as well as

the challenges associated with gender; they are perhaps better placed to understand both challenges

more thoroughly than male wind ensemble composers or female composers who do not write for

genres outside of the canon. Although writers like Citron have been addressing the gender

imbalance in classical music for three decades, it is only recently that acknowledgement of the huge

asymmetry in gender representation among composers within the wind ensemble community has

emerged.

Female conductors face challenges similar to female composers; a canon of works by male

geniuses requires a competent male conductor to interpret these works, or so it would appear. While

male conductors still outnumber female conductors in both orchestra and wind ensemble genres, an

increasing number of women are being appointed to important positions in the conducting world.

In a study conducted by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra that gathered data from eighty-five

major American orchestras to locate trends regarding conductors, soloists, and repertoire, Ricky

O’Bannon found that in the 2016-2017 season, women conductors led 8.8% of all concerts,

although the number dropped to 5.2% when focusing on the twenty-three largest orchestras in the

country.337 One of these women conductors is Marin Alsop, who directs the Baltimore Symphony

Orchestra. In the twenty-first century, Alsop achieved two significant milestones in the history of

women conductors: in 2005 she was appointed Music Director of the Baltimore Symphony

Orchestra, becoming the first woman to lead a major full-time orchestra, and in 2013 she became

337Ricky O’Bannon, “By the Numbers: Conductors,” Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, 5 November 2016,
https://www.bsomusic.org/stories/by-the-numbers-conductors/ (accessed 29 December 2017).

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the first woman conductor to conduct the Last Night of the BBC Proms. What is perhaps most

significant about these achievements is how recently they occurred, revealing the glacial rate of

change regarding equal gender representation in the conducting world. Reactions to Alsop on the

podium from the youngest generation of audience members, however, demonstrate the importance

of female representation in conducting and composition. Joel Puckett spoke of his seven-year-old

daughter who watched Alsop conduct children’s concerts until the most recent one, which was

conducted by one of the male conducting fellows; according to Puckett, she said, “Daddy! Did you

know that boys can be conductors, too?”338 In addition to Alsop, JoAnn Falletta, music director of

the Buffalo Symphony, is especially outspoken about encouraging women conductors and, like

Alsop, is one of the most important role models for women in the orchestral world. New

generations of American women orchestral conductors like Beverly Everett and Xian Zhang

represent the increasing number of women in positions of power. The growing presence of female

role models helps to accelerate the movement towards gender equality in historically male

communities.

Gender and Instrumental Music: A Brief Historical Overview

As women have entered the music profession in increasingly higher numbers, the

importance of researching the relationship between gender and music has grown. In recent decades,

gender studies in the fields of music education, music performance, music theory, and musicology

gained new prominence. In addition to Citron’s Gender and the Musical Canon (1993), foundational

studies from the 1990s include Susan McClary’s Feminine Endings (1991), the essays in Ruth Solie’s

Music and Difference: Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship (1993), and Lucy Green’s Music, Gender,

338 Joel Puckett, Skype interview with author, April 26, 2017.

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Education (1997). These studies provide needed background regarding the historical challenges faced

by female musicians and their place in American musical culture; I use their work to situate my

understanding of the contemporary wind ensemble community. This section focuses specifically on

the relationship between gender and instrumental music in the careers of both composers and

conductors. To tell the full story of women in the band world is beyond the scope of this study, but

understanding the historical roots of women in a variety of instrumental ensembles, including

military bands, concert bands, wind ensembles, symphony orchestras, and new music groups, is

necessary to appreciate the entrenched gendered practices of the wind ensemble community and

why it is so difficult to change attitudes and behaviors within that world.

Many of the challenges facing twenty-first-century women conductors, and women

musicians in general, have been part of the Western musical tradition for centuries. Throughout this

history, one of the greatest obstacles confronted by women pursuing careers as instrumental

musicians is the traditional association of certain instruments, especially most wind instruments, with

masculinity. Lucy Green finds that cultural expectations that reduce women to bodies are further

complicated when adding instruments to the equation:

Because the musical sound-source of the woman singer is her body itself, her vocal
display appears to remain locked within a self-referring cycle from body to femininity
and back again. The body is affirmed and celebrated. Contrastingly, the female
instrumentalist, although her body is nonetheless either intentionally or
unintentionally on display mediates the whole scenario through a piece of
technology. The instrument which she wields or controls interrupts the centrality of
the appearance of her in-tuneness with her body.339

When playing an instrument, a woman engages in an activity traditionally regarded as fundamentally

masculine, thus reducing or overwhelming her femininity. Wind instruments disrupt the

performance of femininity beyond that of string instruments since they require the player to form an

embouchure with her mouth. Gendered distinctions between vocalists and instrumentalists, and

339 Lucy Green, Music, Gender, Education (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 53.

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between string/keyboard and wind instrumentalists were prevalent in the nineteenth century and are

still evident today, although they have changed over time. In a presentation at the Society for

American Music Conference in 2018, Joshua Gailey addressed the advertising used by instrument

manufacturers to promote school bands in the first half of the twentieth century; he found that the

advertising was largely focused on boys.340 Several studies throughout the second half of the

twentieth century demonstrate the changing gender associations of wind instruments; by the mid-

twentieth century, the flute and clarinet were considered more “feminine” instruments, while brass

and percussion instruments were considered “masculine.”341

In the nineteenth-century United States the emergence of professional women instrumental

musicians took place largely in female-only ensembles. This was in part the result of economic

conditions, as men did not want women to take professional instrumental positions they might

occupy.342 But it was also believed by nineteenth-century critics that women were not capable of

performing at the same level as men; for example, concerns about stamina arose. In her book Women

Performing Music: The Emergence of American Women as Classical Instrumentalists and Conductors, Beth

Abelson Macleod cites an 1895 article published in Scientific American in which that point was made

clear: “Her physical incapacity to endure the strain of four or five hours a day rehearsal, followed by

the prolonged tax of public performances, will bar her against possible competition with male

performers.”343 Others simply did not approve of women playing instruments, still believing it to be

340 Joshua Gailey, “‘And He Sells Clarinets to the Kids in the Town’: Band Instrument Manufacturers’ Impact on the
Development of the School Band in the United States,” (presentation, Society for American Music, Kansas City, MO, 3
March 2018).
341 Jason Zervoudakes and Judith M. Tanur, “Gender and Musical Instruments: Winds of Change?” Journal of Research in

Music Education 42, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 58-67. See also: Hal Abeles, “Are Musical Instrument Gender Associations
Changing?” Journal of Research in Music Education 57, no. 2 (July 2009): 127-39.
342 Christine Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music, 3rd ed. (Portland: Amadeus Press, 2016), Kindle

edition, location 2528.

343 Beth Abelson Macleod, Women Performing Music: The Emergence of American Women as Classical Instrumentalists and

Conductors (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland, 2001), 15.

172
to unladylike. Another writer cited by Macleod, in a 1935 New York Sun editorial, wrote, “Does

anyone wish to see a woman playing a bass drum or an E flat tuba?”344 These prejudices were often

heightened for wind instrumentalists; women who played wind or percussion instruments in bands

engaged in traditionally masculine activities.

In addition to types of instruments, restrictions on genre existed. Citron writes about the

gendering of genre hierarchies regarding female composers in the nineteenth century: “Like

canonicity, genre is a powerful category of categories that shapes values through preevaluation and

exclusion, and tends to perpetuate itself. Hierarchies of genres carry gendered associations, and site

and function form two of the major criteria in the determination of relative worth.”345 Chamber

music was viewed as a domestic genre appropriate for women to pursue in the home; in contrast,

nineteenth-century orchestras performed publicly in large concert halls, while bands performed

outside, generally to large audiences. Both of these settings were gendered male. In addition to the

juxtaposition of public concerts and domestic performances, Citron discusses the hierarchy in the

arts between “high” art and “low” art, explaining that in the nineteenth century, women were

associated with forms of art that are more likely to be considered “craft.”346 As referenced in the

previous chapter, Citron points to genres of music that are performed in smaller spaces and pieces

that are shorter in duration, but questions the presumed superiority of music composed for the

symphony orchestra and our historical equation of domestic or parlor music as less worthy music.

The band’s historical ties to the military reinforced masculine associations of the ensemble.

In the United States, the band has been tied to the military since the birth of the nation; until very

recently the military has traditionally been a man’s world. Women were not allowed to enlist in the

344 Macleod, Women Performing Music, 16.

345 Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 10.
346 Ibid., 129.

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U.S. military until World War II, and even then, they could only enlist in separate, women’s-only

corps.347 Because of associations with the military and prejudices against women playing wind

instruments, women who wanted to play in bands in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries

were forced to play in women-only bands. Most likely because of the popularity of American bands,

all-women brass bands predated the first all-women orchestras, with the earliest of these groups

forming in the 1850s.348 They usually performed in tea shops and music halls and were

predominantly made up of lower- and middle-class women; playing a wind instrument was not an

acceptable choice for an upper-class woman of this time. It should also be noted that such bands

were not military bands, but were more like amateur town bands, generally performing popular

music. By the end of the nineteenth century, amateur brass bands proliferated in the United States;

Christine Ammer observes that in 1895 the Musical Record “commented that this ‘hobby’ seems to

prevail to a considerable extent in the West.”349

In addition to those performing in bands, women musicians in the late nineteenth century

performed in American orchestras, sometimes professionally. Early all-women professional

orchestras include the Fadette Women’s Orchestra of Boston, founded in 1888 and conducted by

violinist Caroline B. Nichols, and the Los Angeles Women’s Symphony, founded in 1893, and

conducted by Henry Hamilton. The Fadette Women’s Orchestra was especially notable in that it

toured throughout the United States and Canada until it disbanded in 1920; Ammer writes that they

were the only all-women professional orchestra to successfully compete with men’s orchestras.350

The Los Angeles Women’s Symphony began as an amateur group and progressed to professional

status; it disbanded in the 1960s. Unlike Nichols’s group, the LA Women’s Symphony did not tour.

347 U.S. Army, “Women in the U.S. Army,” http://www.army.mil/women/history/timeline.html (accessed February 28,
2016).
348 Green, Music, Gender, Education, 69.
349 Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music, 3rd ed., Kindle edition, location 2588.
350 Ammer, Unsung: A History of Women in American Music, 3rd ed., Kindle edition, location 2670.

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In the first three decades of the twentieth century, at least twenty-four professional women’s

orchestras, most led by women conductors, were founded in major cities throughout the United

States, a survey of which can be found in Shelley Jagow’s article “Women Orchestral Conductors in

America: The Struggle for Acceptance.”351 Jagow’s article, published in 1998, is important for its

documentation of women orchestral conductors throughout history, but its greatest takeaway

perhaps is how much progress has been made in the twenty years since its publication.

Around the same time as the growth of all-women orchestras, Helen May Butler founded a

professional all-women’s band, usually referred to as Helen May Butler and her Ladies’ Military

Band, which toured under her baton from 1898-1913. Butler’s Band performed at such respected

venues as Willow Grove Park, where Sousa’s Band performed every summer from 1901-1927.

Butler, the earliest example of a successful, well-regarded professional woman band conductor, was

known as the “female Sousa” and her band as the “Waltz Queens.”352 Her band toured under the

banner “Music for the American people, by American composers, played by American girls.”353

Butler herself was one of these American composers; her march “Cosmopolitan America” was a

crowd favorite and was even selected as the official march for Theodore Roosevelt’s presidential

campaign.354 Unlike bandleaders such as Gilmore and Sousa, who led their bands until their deaths,

Butler rarely engaged in musical activities between 1913 and the year of her death, 1957. Part of this

was due to events in her private life; she divorced her manager-husband John Leslie Spahn in 1908,

becoming a single mother until she remarried in 1911. After her second divorce in 1921 she turned

her home into a boarding house and once ran unsuccessfully for the Senate. Despite no longer

351 Shelley Jagow, “Women Orchestral Conductors in America: The Struggle for Acceptance—An Historical View from
the Nineteenth Century to the Present,” College Music Symposium 38 (1998), 129-30.
352 Brian D. Meyers, “Helen May Butler and her Ladies’ Military Band: Being Professional during the Golden Age of

Bands,” in Women’s Bands in America: Performing Music and Gender, ed. Jill M. Sullivan, 15-49 (New York: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2017), 24.
353 Jill M. Sullivan, “A Century of Women’s Bands in America,” Music Educators Journal 95, no. 1 (September 2008), 35.
354 Meyers, “Helen May Butler and her Ladies’ Military Band,” 25.

175
leading a band, her legacy was acknowledged for the rest of her life; Sousa wrote to her in 1925, “I

remember the days when you were up and down the land with a band of your own, but a mothers

[sic] duty made you give it up.”355 Then, as now, domestic responsibilities have ended many women

musicians’ professional careers. Articles published during her Senate run highlighted her former

musical accomplishments. Although Butler enjoyed fame throughout her life, she is rarely

remembered outside the band community today, unlike her contemporary male counterparts.

During World War II, many of the women who had played in all-women professional

orchestras filled the openings left by men in the male orchestras; after the war, however, they

struggled for the right to play alongside men in these ensembles rather than reorganize all-women

orchestras. In most cases they lost. Women did not begin to win orchestra positions with any

regularity until the 1970s, when blind auditions became more common; most positions that went to

women were string positions. Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse analyzed personnel rosters and

audition data to demonstrate that the use of a screen provides a 50% increase in the probability of a

woman advancing from preliminary rounds and “increases by severalfold the likelihood that a

woman will be selected in the final round.”356 Today, screened auditions are required for most

orchestras who contract union musicians.

In the band world, all-women military bands were formed during World War II to fulfill the

state-side performing duties while men were overseas. Jill M. Sullivan interviewed many of the

women who got these jobs for her book Bands of Sisters: U.S. Women’s Military Bands during World War

II, including a few of the women conductors. She noted that the women spoke of their times in the

military bands as among the happiest of their lives. At the end of the war, however, the women

military bands were disbanded and their musicians forced to return to their former jobs or lives of

John Philip Sousa, quoted in Meyers, “Helen May Butler and her Ladies’ Military Band,” 33.
355

Claudia Goldin and Cecilia Rouse, “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of ‘Blind’ Auditions on Female
356

Musicians,” The American Economic Review 90, no. 4 (Sept. 2000), 738.

176
domesticity. Dorothy Sue Cobble writes in Feminism Unfinished, “Rosie lost her riveting job, but her

sense of what she deserved and what was possible forever changed. . . . More women now knew that

they too could do a ‘man’s job’.”357 Sullivan makes the same point, explaining that the women who

performed in these bands “certainly added to the redefinition of who could play in and conduct

bands.”358 For women, more opportunities opened in college concert bands than in professional

groups, and an increase in women’s professional music careers occurred after the decline of the

professional concert band.

In the decades following Frederick Fennell’s founding of the Eastman Wind Ensemble in

1952, similar groups emerged in academic institutions across the country, providing a new kind of

position for band conductors and new opportunities for performers and composers. Through the

1970s the university was still overwhelmingly a male bastion, and the large performing ensembles

were almost exclusively led by men, especially wind ensembles. Although women’s studies topics

had found a home in academia by the 1970s and increasingly more women began teaching at

colleges and universities, women who wanted to study conducting or composition lacked the role

models that women in many other fields now had. Christina J. A. McElroy found in her 1996 study

“The Status of Women Orchestra and Band Conductors in North American Colleges and

Universities: 1984-1996” that percentages of women in instrumental conducting positions did not

grow at all over the twelve-year period under investigation.359 Even choral conducting, which was

considered more acceptable for women than instrumental conducting, fell behind fields outside of

music in terms of gender representation. Lori R. Hetzel and Kay Norton observed in 1993:

357 Dorothy Sue Cobble, “More than Sex Equality: Feminism after Suffrage,” in Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising
History of American Women’s Movements (New York: W. W. Norton, 2014), 24.
358 Jill M. Sullivan, Bands of Sisters: U.S. Women’s Military Bands during World War II (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2011),

131.
359 Christina J. A. McElroy, “The Status of Women Orchestra and Band Conductors in North American Colleges and

Universities: 1984-1996” (DMA diss., University of Missouri-Kansas City, 1996), 48-137.

177
 Across the nation, feminist scholarship continues to flourish, women augment and
administer editorial boards and boards of directors, and universities incorporate
Women’s Studies in collegiate curricula. . . . All these advances notwithstanding,
young women musicians still must search carefully to find female models in some
areas of the college or university environment. In 1987, the College Music Society’s
Committee on the Status of Women in Music reported that only 14% of tenure-
track, and 33.4% of non-tenure track choral conducting positions at the collegiate
level were held by women.360

Although reflective of conductors thirty years ago, an imbalance this significant among choral

conductors, who do not contend with the same historical gender-based prejudices faced by

orchestral and band conductors, is startling. Meanwhile, in the college band community, the gender

imbalance is even greater. McElroy’s 1996 study placed the percentage of women band directors at

just over 5%. Deborah A. Sheldon and Linda A. Hartley studied trends in instrumental music

education leadership between 1996 and 2008, focusing on the representation of women and people

of color. Their data came primarily from the Midwest Clinic archives, graduate student information

from CBDNA symposia and workshops, and the College Music Society directory. The results of

their study were published in 2012 in an article titled “What Color Is Your Baton, Girl? Gender and

Ethnicity in Band Conducting.”361 Alarmingly, they found that during this time period “increases in

the number of women and minorities conducting college bands have been virtually undetectable.”362

Although the number of women earning undergraduate degrees in instrumental music education is

almost equal to that of men (sometimes surpassing it), the number of women who then go on to

earn graduate degrees and obtain college band directing positions is significantly smaller.

Gender imbalance is even more noticeable when one considers the history of the band and

wind ensemble community as represented in its professional organizations. As discussed in Chapter

360 Lori R. Hetzel and Kay Norton, “Women Choral Conductors at the Collegiate Level: Status and Perspectives,” College
Music Symposium 33/34 (1993/1994), 23.
361 Deborah A. Sheldon and Linda A. Hartley, “What Color Is Your Baton, Girl? Gender and Ethnicity in Band

Conducting,” Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, no. 192 (Spring 2012): 39-52.
362 Sheldon and Hartley, 39.

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2, ABA only allows membership through nomination and election. The organization was founded in

1929, but no women were elected to membership until 1984, when Gladys Stone Wright was

admitted. Wright, the founding president of Women Band Directors International (WBDI), led

renowned high school bands in Oregon and Indiana; although she had a master’s degree, she never

taught in an institution of higher education.363 Barbara Buehlman was the second woman elected to

membership a year later in 1985 after being nominated by John Paynter, who was her college band

director at Northwestern University in the 1950s and mentored her throughout her career. Like

Wright, she never taught at the college level, but Buehlman was recognized for her exemplary high

school and junior high school bands, her arrangements for band, and her role as Executive

administrator of the Midwest International Band and Orchestra Clinic from 1980 to 1997.364 Wright

and Buehlman were the only women members until 1996, when Patricia Hoy was elected.365 Hoy

was the first female ABA member who had earned a DMA degree in conducting and directed a

college or university band; beginning in 1985 she was the Director of Bands at Northern Arizona

University for seventeen years. That the most prestigious band organization was an all-male

institution until the end of the twentieth century reveals how long it took women band and wind

ensemble conductors to be recognized for their accomplishments, and it speaks to the continuing

gender imbalance in the field. Today, there are seventeen women members of ABA out of 311 (just

over five percent).366 In 2010, Paula Crider, the former Director of the Longhorn Band at the

University of Texas at Austin, was elected the first, and so far only, female president of ABA.

363 Dawn M. Farmer and David A. Rickels, “Legacies of Leadership: Lillian Williams Linsey and Gladys Stone Wright,”
in Women’s Bands in America: Performing Music and Gender, ed. Jill M. Sullivan, 127-51. (New York: Rowman and Littlefield,
2017), 128.
364 Timothy Todd Anderson, “Barbara Buehlman: A Study of her Career in Music Education and as a Pioneer of the

Female Band Director Movement,” (Ed.D. diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2010), ii.
365 Ibid., 191-92.
366 Thomas Fraschillo, e-mail message to author, 23 January 2018. Fraschillo expressed hope that the number would rise

after the 2018 elections to membership.

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 Gender in the Contemporary Wind Ensemble Community

As the data makes clear, it is difficult to discuss wind ensemble composers and conductors

without considering the gender imbalance that exists. For many members of the contemporary wind

ensemble community, gender plays an important role in conductor-composer relationships. In the

following discussion, I approach this aspect of community in three ways: first, using recent research,

I summarize the advances and perspectives of contemporary women conductors in the field; second,

using the 2017 CBDNA National Conference as a case study for the representation of women

composers, I focus on the discussion provoked by the gender imbalance in programming; and third,

I consider the perspectives of contemporary women composers who write for the wind ensemble,

how they are programmed, and the challenges that remain.

Women Wind Ensemble Conductors: A Summary

The challenges faced by female band conductors have been discussed regularly in studies

reaching back to the early 1990s; most of these studies were authored by women band directors

themselves. In 2017 when looking at the most reputable university and college wind ensembles, it

becomes evident that very few female conductors lead those groups compared to the number led by

male conductors. Women band conductors face a myriad of obstacles that are historically bound to

the tradition of their profession. The university wind ensemble becomes additionally challenging; it

is still more typical for women conductors to teach at the middle school and high school levels,

perhaps because these are sometimes viewed as more nurturing positions and women are assumed

to be natural nurturers. For many years, Mallory Thompson was the only prominent woman

conductor in a major university director of bands position. Thompson has been the Director of

Bands at Northwestern University since 1996, a position previously held by John Paynter, one of the

most important twentieth-century band conductors and her former conducting mentor during her

master’s program. As part of her responsibilities she leads the Northwestern Symphonic Wind

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Ensemble, which historically has been one of the premier wind ensembles in the country. Twenty

years after her appointment the ensemble has, if anything, become even more prominent.

Throughout this time Thompson has been an important role model and boundary breaker for a

generation of women conductors who aspire to follow her example.

The importance of role models for women professionals has been discussed by many

scholars; as in any career, the absence of a role model makes it difficult to know how to progress

through a profession. Whereas Thompson quickly became a role model for future female

conductors, she had to make her own way. She was the only woman in her master’s program at

Northwestern University; the only woman in her doctoral program at Eastman, where she studied

with Donald Hunsberger; and after graduation was one of a very small number of female college

band directors. Her appointment at Northwestern in 1996 made her the only woman in the country

in charge of a leading wind ensemble. There was no precedent for this. Thompson has been the lone

female at the very top of her profession for years; however, just as more women conductors are

attaining new heights in the orchestral world, more women are obtaining band positions at some of

the most reputable university programs in the United States. These women have the benefit of

seeing someone like them navigate a career. Today, conductors including Verena Mösenbichler-

Bryant (Duke University), Rebecca Phillips (Colorado State University), Mary Schneider (Eastern

Michigan University), Cynthia Johnston Turner (University of Georgia), and Emily Threinen

(University of Minnesota) provide additional role models for aspiring female college wind ensemble

conductors.

The significance of Thompson as a role model is evident when discussing the wind

conducting profession with other conductors, both male and female. In Cheryl Ann Jackson’s 1996

study of the imbalance in numbers of women and men college band conductors, an anonymous

informant commented on the optimism prompted by Thompson’s new appointment, describing it

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as “really the most encouraging thing that’s happened in our profession.”367 In a similar study dealing

with gender-specific role models and women college band conductors, Denise Elizabeth Grant

interviewed a respondent who discussed the importance of Thompson as a role model in the wind

ensemble community: “I realized that everyone I had watched conduct and who I respected was

male. I couldn’t picture a female standing on the podium. … Watching Mallory stand in front of a

group of people and be feminine and have everyone’s respect was a real revelation for me.”368 Most

of Grant’s respondents identified Thompson as a role model.

In the wind ensemble community, even in 2017, there are still so few women conductors

that it is unusual to see a woman succeed in the profession the way that Thompson and her few

prominent women colleagues have. At CBDNA 2017 the wind ensembles of Thompson and

Johnston-Turner were both featured; at the previous national conference in 2015, the Temple

University Wind Ensemble, under the direction of Threinen, and the Illinois Wind Symphony (from

the University of Illinois), conducted by Linda R. Moorhouse performed. There are usually about

ten performing groups invited to perform at CBDNA; this means that for the past two national

conferences, approximately 20% of the conductors have been women. Two conductors per year is

still a small number, but apart from 2001 and 2009, when one woman conductor performed at each

conference (Thompson and Virginia Allen, respectively), there have been no women conductors

leading a performing ensemble at the CBDNA national conferences in the twenty-first century. If

there were more women conductors in leading roles, the presence of these women would not be

such a novelty; like the term “woman composer,” the term “woman conductor” will persist until a

more equal balance is achieved.

367 Cheryl Ann Jackson, “The Relationship between the Imbalance of Numbers of Women and Men College Band
Conductors and the Various Issues that Influence the Career Aspirations of Women Instrumental Musicians” (Ph.D.
diss., Michigan State University, 1996), 106.
368 Denise Elizabeth Grant, “The Impact of Mentoring and Gender Specific Role Models on Women College Band

Directors at Four Different Career Stages” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota, 2000), 79.

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 Conductor-scholars, including Brydie-Leigh Bartleet and Elizabeth Gould, have engaged in

extensive studies of the perception of women conductors within the band and orchestral world.

Bartleet’s article “Women Conductors on the Orchestral Podium: Pedagogical and Professional

Implications” and Gould’s articles “Cultural Contexts of Exclusion: Women College Band

Directors” and “Nomadic Turns: Epistemology, Experience, and Women University Band

Directors” are especially helpful to parsing many of the challenges faced by women conductors,

including those stemming from their physical beings—their bodies and voices and those derived

from centuries of ingrained gendered behaviors.369 In a particularly strong argument, Gould points

out that in the movement begun by Fennell in the 1950s, in which bands were reimagined and

renamed, with new instrumentations, repertoire, uniforms, and performing venues, one tradition

remained unchanged: “the almost complete dominance of men on the podium.”370

In the conducting world, the male body is the normative template for what a conductor

looks like, and this includes a uniform-like tuxedo that emphasizes a male’s broader shoulders.

When a woman conducts, the immediately obvious differences in her body invite specific types of

scrutiny and comment. The positioning of women’s bodies on the conducting podium raises some

of the most frequently discussed ideas in gender studies. Judith Butler, in her writings on gender

performativity, refers to the historic association of the mind as male and the body as female. Bartleet

offers another perspective, explaining that women are restricted by a Cartesian mind/body split, in

which “dominant social patriarchal discourses encourage [women conductors] to pursue their

femininity through their bodies, while dominant conducting conventions suggest that they need to

369 Brydie-Leigh Bartleet, “Women Conductors on the Orchestral Podium: Pedagogical and Professional Implications,”
College Music Symposium 48 (2008): 31-51; Elizabeth Gould, “Cultural Contexts of Exclusion: Women College Band
Directors,” Research & Issues in Music Education 1, no. 1 (2003): 1-17; Gould, “Nomadic Turns: Epistemology, Experience,
and Women University Band Directors,” Philosophy of Music Education Review 13, no. 2 (Fall 2005): 147-64.
370 Gould, “Cultural Contexts of Exclusion: Women College Band Directors,” 7.

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renounce their femininity and adopt a surrogate masculinity.”371 Bartleet observes that when women

use gestures that are perceived as effeminate, they are perceived as weak; when men use these same

gestures, they are lauded for their sensitivity.372 In an interview from 2016, Caroline Hand, Associate

Director of Bands at Ball State University, discussed this issue, explaining that “women who don’t

[make direct eye contact] can be seen as too meek. Then again, women leaders can also easily be

labeled as too aggressive, so we often get caught in a double bind.”373 Women are forced to think

about the way they are perceived on the podium, not just by the ensemble they conduct but also by

the audience and critics, who view them from behind.

Because women conductors must focus on their physical presentation to a much greater

extent than the typical male conductor, it seems possible that one result is a greater awareness of

gesture and podium presence.374In a personal conversation, James Chang, a former student of

Mallory Thompson, shared videos with me of Thompson teaching him; the level of detail in her

comments about gestural vocabulary is remarkable. I immediately wondered if this focus on detail-

orientedness stemmed in part from her own experience: as someone who was almost certainly the

smallest person in her own conducting classes, as well as the only woman, did Thompson have to

heighten her awareness in order to learn from a male-oriented way of teaching? Thompson herself

makes it a point to leave gender out of the classroom; she considers gender just one aspect of a

student, one that is “no more important than other aspects like a person’s weight or their hair

color.”375 Chang confirmed this; he never witnessed Thompson refer to gender while working with a

371 Bartleet, “Women Conductors on the Orchestral Podium: Pedagogical and Professional Implications,” 39-40.
372 Ibid., 44.
373 Caroline Hand, e-mail conversation with author, 25 February 2016.
374 This is not to say that male conductors do not possess this same awareness; conductors like Leonard Bernstein,

Leopold Stokowski, and Michael Tilson Thomas in the orchestral world, and Jerry Junkin, Alan McMurray, and J. Eric
Wilson in the wind ensemble world are similarly known for their focus on gesture in conducting.
375 Mallory Thompson, interview with Michelle A. Rakers, in “The Female Conductor: Shattering the Glass Ceiling”

(DMA treatise, Peabody Conservatory of Music, 2014), 89.

184
student. In an interview with Michelle Rakers, however, Thompson discussed issues that related

specifically to her female students: “I don't think I have ever worked with a woman conducting

student who hasn't had to overcome this idea that she couldn't be demanding. They are generally

apologetic in their approach and I try to get them to believe that they deserve to get what they are

asking for.”376 It is possible that she would work with a timid male student in the same way, but her

comment makes it clear that generally, female students are less comfortable on the podium than

male students. This, of course, relates back to centuries of socializing, standards of acceptable

behaviors, and the problem of there being so few female role models.

Based on the responses of my interview subjects and on the research of scholars like Bartleet

and Gould, it appears that normalizing the woman conductor would benefit more from a greater

emphasis on diversity in general rather than on gender specifically. Hand speaks of the importance

of the diverse teaching perspectives she was exposed to in her master’s work at Baylor University

and her doctoral work at the University of Minnesota, where she studied with both men and women

from different backgrounds. She firmly believes that it is important for all students to work with a

variety of teachers, including people who are different from them.377 In a recent article about women

orchestral conductors, Chaowen Ting expressed similar thoughts: “I believe it is time to assert a

more diverse and inclusive image on the podium. Female conductors might use different

movements and gestures, but only in the same way that shorter or taller male conductors make

adjustments according to their own body types.”378 Like Thompson, Ting acknowledges that gender

is not as much a determining factor in conducting as body type. In the context of a conducting

classroom, everyone benefits when a more diverse group of conductors learns together.

376 Thompson, interview with Michelle A. Rakers, 91.

377 Caroline Hand, phone interview with author, 15 November 2016.
378 Chaowen Ting, “The Education of Women Conductors: Could An All-Girls Club Be the Answer?” Journal of the

International Alliance for Women in Music 22, no. 2 (2016), 9.

185
CBDNA 2017: A Case Study in Gender Representation

Steven Bryant, alongside composers David Biedenbender, Cody Brookshire, John Mackey,

Zhou Tian, and Peter Van Zandt Lane, was one of six speakers on the second composers’ forum at

the 2017 CBDNA conference. Each composer introduced himself: Bryant was third in the line-up

and remarked semi-sarcastically on being pleased to be a member of the “very diverse, all-male

panel.” His comment was initially met with laughter, and the first part of the session went as

planned, with the composers discussing their works being performed at the conference. At the

beginning of the question portion of the session, however, Van Zandt Lane said he would like to

steer the questioning back to Bryant’s comment. A lively discussion of gender breakdowns among

composers consumed almost all of the next twenty minutes. The six composers made it clear that

they considered the lack of equal gender representation a problem; they all had ideas about how to

fix it, and it seemed that most of the audience agreed. One conductor seated in the audience

questioned, however, whether there was still work to be done. The fact that there were so many

women at the conference and that we were even having this discussion, he explained, surely

demonstrated that the work was complete. The panelists responded quickly and emphatically,

arguing for increasing support for women composers, especially student composers.

While it was heartening to see six well-regarded composers discuss gender and advocate for

female composers, it was also frustrating to see no women on the panel. In a way, it rang hollow and

brought to mind a term used increasingly in popular news coverage: “virtue signaling.” Borrowed

from evolutionary biology, virtue signaling is a term that refers to the expression of beliefs and

values that mark the speaker’s moral code, usually in a way that enhances his or her social

position.379 By the end of 2017, this term regularly appeared in the news media in reference to men

379Mark Peters, “Virtue Signaling and Other Inane Platitudes,” The Boston Globe, 24 December 2015,
https://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2015/12/24/virtue-signaling-and-other-inane-
platitudes/YrJRcvxYMofMcCfgORUcFO/story.html (accessed 29 December 2017).

186
who spoke out against those who were accused of sexual assault without taking any action to change

the culture or their own behavior. In a conversation the day after the panel, Mackey spoke about his

concern that it did not look good having six men discussing how to help women. He had asked his

wife, Abby Everett Jacques, who is ABD in the philosophy program at MIT (another predominantly

male field and institution), what he should do in the future. She recommended that he refuse to be

on another composers’ panel unless there are women included, and if he did find himself discussing

gender among a group of men, he should invite a woman composer from the audience to talk about

her music, rather than asking her what it is like to be a woman. Jacques’s suggestion is the most

immediate way for one individual to counter the problem of unequal gender representation: using

one’s influence to advocate making space for women’s voices and focusing on the woman as a

“composer” rather than a “woman composer.”

It could be argued that the ensembles invited to perform at CBDNA and the pieces they

programmed dictated the structure of the composer panels rather than any philosophical belief or

organizational oversight, but the traditional formulaic structure is a symptom of a larger problem

and one that cannot be excused. Of the thirty-nine composers programmed on eleven CBDNA

concerts, twenty-seven of them were living composers, or just under 70%. Twenty-one of these

composers spoke on the four forums at CBDNA; as the only woman programmed, Jennifer Jolley

was the sole female representative on the panels, and as her piece was programmed for the final

concert, she did not speak on a composers’ forum until the last day of the conference. The rationale

behind the organization of composers’ panels is to provide the conference attendees with the

opportunity to hear living composers speak about the works they composed that will be performed

on that day’s afternoon and evening concerts, which is especially important for works receiving their

premieres. At the 2017 conference, however, the panels also presented four opportunities to observe

the gender imbalance in programming.

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 Jolley is a young composer who is relatively new to the wind ensemble community; in

addition to composing, she teaches at Ohio Wesleyan University. Her work The Eyes of the World Are

Upon You was commissioned by the University of Texas Wind Ensemble, led by director Jerry

Junkin, and was premiered on the final concert of the 2017 CBDNA national meeting. She initially

thought that she was the only woman programmed on the UT concert, which she was accustomed

to; when she found out that she was the only woman on the entire four-day program, she was

dumbfounded: “I remember [thinking I was] mishearing [Junkin]—because why on earth would I be

the only woman programmed on the entire conference?”380 Jolley emphasized her surprise at the

juxtaposition of the extreme gender imbalance in programming with the general welcoming nature

of the community: “I think we composers—and I’m being genderless here—we think band is

awesome, they treat us like family. So it blew my mind.”381 Other composers expressed similar

outrage: when the concert programs were announced prior to the conference, Jonathan Newman

said, “The fact that she has to represent her gender is ridiculous.”382

After the concert repertoire was announced, Jolley was invited to participate on one of two

panels dedicated to the theme “bridging the gender gap.” The presence of these panels on the

conference program was another surprise to many attendees, as gender had never been formally

discussed at a CBDNA conference. Before learning about these panels, I expected gender would be

a difficult interview topic; based upon previous experiences discussing gender with members of the

wind ensemble community where I found that many took the position “things were changing, so we

don’t need to take any further action” or “I personally have never experienced any issues related to

gender,” I anticipated more of the same. The inclusion of the panels focused on gender, then,

promised an enormous change in the culture of the wind ensemble community. While many of the

380 Jennifer Jolley, Skype interview with author, 28 August 2017.

381 Jolley, Skype interview with author, 28 August 2017.
382 Jonathan Newman, Skype interview with author, 9 February 2017.

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issues enumerated in these panels have been typical of musicological discourse since the 1990s,

witnessing a historically male community consider and confront the unequal representation of

women within their community was encouraging.

Studying specific topics covered at each of the panels illuminates the thoroughness of the

change in the wind band community. The first panel dedicated to gender was titled “Bridging the

Gender Gap: Developing Strategies for Creating Equity in Ensemble Programming” and featured

panelists Jennifer Jolley, Jacob Wallace (Director of Bands at South Dakota State University),

Chester Phillips (Associate Director of Bands at Georgia State University), and Courtney Snyder

(Associate Director of Bands at the University of Michigan). The panel members provided statistics

from the 2016 study by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra referenced earlier in this chapter. The

study found that of the eighty-five orchestras studied, the works of female composers made up 1.3%

of the music performed in the 2016-2017 season; the number rose to 10.3% when looking only at

works by living composers.383 The second percentage is the one more relevant to the wind ensemble,

as most of the works performed by wind ensembles are by living composers. Phillips drew a

connection between this data and a statistic of his own: only 2.6% of the works on CBDNA concert

programs from the past decade were composed by women, which is considerably less than the

percentage of orchestral works composed by living composers. The percentage for 2017 was in line

with this statistic; only one work of forty-six performed at CBDNA was composed by a woman, or

just over 2%.

The panel focused primarily on strategies for achieving more diverse programming, as well

as repertoire blindness and the importance of role models for women composers. Snyder introduced

two programming strategies: horizontal programming, or intentionally programming one work

383Ricky O’Bannon, “By the Numbers: The 2016-2017 Orchestral Season,” Baltimore Symphony Orchestra,
https://www.bsomusic.org/stories/the-data-behind-the-2016-2017-orchestra-season/ (accessed July 26, 2017). The
statistics regarding women conductors were not discussed during the CBDNA panel.

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composed by a woman per concert, and vertical programming, or designing an exclusively female

concert. In an interview with Caroline Hand (Associate Director of Bands at Ball State University)

that took place a few months before CBDNA 2017 she spoke about her own attempt at horizontal

programming, in which she programmed at least one work by a woman composer on each concert.

Allowing her students to come into contact with women more regularly begins to normalize the idea

that women composers are equally important to men. Hand had received grant money to work

toward programming female composers of band music, and she presented on the topic at the

Indiana Music Educators Association with the hope of introducing band conductors to more female

composers.384 In addition to programming strategies, the panel members also identified the

challenges faced by many wind ensemble conductors, including repertoire blindness, a term referring

to the condition in which conductors are generally unaware of works by female composers because

very few have entered the canon. Conductors must take the time to familiarize themselves with

works outside of the canon, but the panelists acknowledged that the time-consuming responsibilities

of university faculty prevent them from doing so. For overworked conductors in academia, it is

easier to fall back on works that they already know. Jolley also identified the shortage of well-known

role models for women composers. I address these topics in the following section.

The second panel, “Bridging the Gender Gap II: A Forum on Women Composers,”

featured panelists Carolyn Barber (Director of Bands at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Jeffrey

Boeckman (Director of Bands at the University of Hawaii at Manoa), Jennifer Higdon (composition

faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music, and 2016-2017 Barr Institute Laureate at the University of

Missouri-Kansas City), and Chen Yi (composition faculty at the University of Missouri-Kansas City).

Like the first, this panel also used data, in this case gathered by Boeckman, to make their points.

Higdon and Yi spoke in detail regarding their experiences as well-known female composers who

384 Caroline Hand, phone interview with author, November 15, 2016.

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write for orchestra. Higdon observed that in the orchestral world, there are two fronts to the

struggle: as I have argued, not only do women composers fight to be heard as women, but they also

must fight to be heard as living composers. This is one advantage that wind ensemble composers

have over orchestral composers; in the wind ensemble community, living composers represent the

majority of programmed composers, although the number of women composers on band-related

programs is similarly fractional.

The two “Bridging the Gender Gap” panels were extremely well attended, and according to

my interviewees, they were discussed enthusiastically in the months following the conference. In

light of this success, future panels discussing topics that were not brought up in 2017, like

intersectionality and motherhood, will continue this conversation. Jolley explained that although

panel members had touched on intersectionality behind the scenes, they concluded that the purpose

of the panel was to address gender only. In an e-mail conversation, she reflected that the

community’s tendency to categorize their music (by grade level or instrumentation) is perhaps a

factor in their desire to categorize composers, too. She concluded, “CBDNA has a long way to go

with regard to intersectionality.”385 Given the focus on gender, it was surprising that motherhood

was not addressed at either of the panels. In an article titled “Composing and Motherhood,”

composer Emily Doolittle pointed out, “Though not all women become mothers, all women may

find themselves affected by anti-mother bias.”386 These biases include everything from being passed

over for positions because of assumptions regarding pregnancy and childcare to concerts that are

scheduled at times inconducive to parents of small children (a bias that affects both mothers and

fathers, although women are disproportionately the primary caretakers of children). Doolittle offers

several ways to combat these barriers and to make musical communities more welcoming to parents,

385Jennifer Jolley, e-mail conversation with author, 20 January 2018.

386Emily Doolittle, “Composing and Motherhood,” NewMusicBox, 26 April 2017,
https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/composing-and-motherhood/ (accessed 1 February 2018).

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such as providing childcare or even measures as simple as listing the timing of pieces on the

program.387 Although the CBDNA community has only begun to address issues relating to gender,

topics such as intersectionality and motherhood are important for continued progress.

In an interview after the composers’ forum and the first gender panel, Mackey said, “My

worry on hearing things like ‘it’s fixing itself’ is that we will reach a tipping point where things start

to get a little better, but if it doesn’t actually get better it can fall completely the other way. Having

one woman played this week is not okay. It doesn’t make it worse than if there were none, but it

makes you very aware that there’s only one.”388 Overall, CBDNA 2017 suggested a significant

change in awareness within the wind ensemble community regarding questions related to gender.

The women I spoke to, especially those from the youngest generation of professionals, felt that

discussing the gender gap prominently within the community would lead to future empowerment,

although that remains to be seen. In a late 2017 interview, Mösenbichler-Bryant emphasized the

importance of not only the women conductors whose names appeared on the program along with

Jolley’s, but also the visible presence of female attendees. We discussed how the real proof of the

effectiveness of CBDNA 2017 in making strides regarding the representation of women would

come at the next national conference in 2019.389 While programming may diversify, the community

may see a decline in conversation about gender-related issues without continued efforts, especially if

many feel that the events of CBDNA 2017 were sufficient to address these issues.

Women Composers and the Wind Ensemble: Challenges and Advances

CBDNA 2017 and my interviews with several members of the wind ensemble community

reinforced a number of issues related to gender: first, challenges regarding repertoire blindness and

387 Doolittle, “Composing and Motherhood.”

388 John Mackey, personal interview with author, 17 March 2017.
389 Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, phone interview with author, 5 December 2017.

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the programming habits of conductors, especially male conductors; second, the strategies women

employ to negotiate their own double vision; and finally, the importance of role models. CBDNA

2017 clarified and reinforced all of this; it also revealed that many members hesitate to acknowledge

there is any problem at all. Resistance, and in some cases, outright denial, are the most significant

challenges.

Examining CBDNA concert programs from the national conferences held in the years since

2000 reveals that 2017 was not a fluke as regards the programming of works by women composers;

rather, it represented another year with appallingly low numbers of female representation. Figure 5.1

highlights the numbers of women represented each year, separated into numbers of composers,

head conductors (the primary conductor of the performing ensemble—usually the institution’s

Director of Bands), and guest conductors who conducted one piece on the concert (usually the

institution’s Associate Director of Bands). Approximately fifty-five total composers and conductors

were featured on each year’s program.

Table 5.1. Representation of Women at CBDNA National Conferences, 2001-2017.390

CBDNA National Number of Women Number of Women Number of Women

Conference Year Composers Head Conductors Guest Conductors
2017 1 2 2
2015 2 2 0
2013 0 0 1
2011 2 0 2
2009 3 1 0
2007 2 0 0
2005 2 0 0
2003 2 0 1
2001 2 1 1

390 I gathered this data from CBDNA programs, which are available online. CBDNA: National Conference Programs,
http://www.cbdna.org/cgi-bin/about85.pl (accessed 31 December 2017). The 2017 conference program, unlike the
other years, did not include the repertoire or any guest conductors for each concert. Since I attended the 2017
conference, I could consult the 11 individual concert programs for this research. For the names of the women counted
in this chart, see Appendix E.

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Clearly, the worst year for women at CBDNA since the beginning of the twenty-first century was

2013, in which the only woman represented on concert programs at all was Rebecca Phillips; she

was the Associate Director of Bands at the University of South Carolina at the time. Phillips

conducted one work on that band’s program, the world premiere of John Fitz Rogers’s Narragansett.

CBDNA 2017 had the greatest representation on concerts of any conference program in the past

sixteen years, with five women on the program: Jennifer Jolley, Mallory Thompson, Cynthia

Johnston Turner (Director of Bands at the University of Georgia, Caroline Hand, and Jaclyn

Hartenberger (Associate Director of Bands at the University of Georgia). While an improvement,

and the largest representation of women in the century, five women is still a small and

disproportionate number, less than 9% of the fifty-six composers and conductors programmed that

year. Regardless, it was the programming of only one woman composer at this year’s event that

sparked the community’s realization of their problem. Six of the twenty-nine women counted in

Figure 5.1 were people of color, although Chen Yi was counted twice, as she was programmed in

both 2009 and 2011. As in many other communities, women of color make up an even smaller

proportion of an already small number of women. The data and the public conversation spurred by

the 2017 conference underscore the necessity of addressing programming habits, the challenge of

women’s double vision, and the dearth of role models.

The majority of conductors I interviewed for this project were male, which reflects the

reality of the community. Although the male composers I interviewed were all in agreement about

the problems inherent in the unequal representation of their female colleagues, I encountered a

variety of perspectives from conductors. Junkin acknowledged his own quite recent realization that

he had not considered gender when programming. Reflecting on a conversation from about two

years ago, when a student pointed out to him that he had not programmed any music by women in

the last five years, he explained, “My immediate reaction was that’s not right! Of course I have! And

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then she told me the last time I did a piece by a female composer, and I have to say that for me that

was a bit of a wake-up call, because I wasn’t thinking about it enough. . . . I think that conversation I

had heightened my sensitivity about it.”391 Junkin’s acknowledgement of the issue is important, and

although he insists he did not program Jolley because she is a woman, the fact that he was the only

conductor at CBDNA to program a woman perhaps speaks to the significance of being made aware

of one’s behavior. Junkin’s encounter with his student suggests the unconsciousness of many

programming practices: he was certain he did program women composers. Discussions within the

wind ensemble community generally avoid direct accusations that conductors intentionally plan

male-only programs. The assumption is that many of them do not think about it; or that since

traditional networks of conductors are male, it is easier for male composers to become part of this

network. For male conductors, repertoire blindness toward female composers is common and thus

must be actively addressed and corrected. Alan Theisen, a composer and music theorist who teaches

at Mars Hill University and has composed six works for wind ensemble, pointed out, “If you

program/perform a concert/recital where all the composers are white men, that’s your right. But

know that it’s not a default. It’s a choice. And that choice communicates something to your

audience, students, and fellow artists.”392

Although there are, no doubt, a variety of reasons for conductors’ repertoire choices, they

seem to approach programming women composers in one of two ways: either they actively seek to

diversify their programming, or they focus on what they call “great” music without considering

gender (or race, nationality, age, sexuality, or any other identity marker). As addressed in the

previous chapter, traditional understandings of “great” music rely on aesthetic values born in the

nineteenth century; as Citron points out, these values give priority to what is considered male.

391 Junkin, Skype interview with author, 9 October 2017.

392 Alan Theisen’s Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/alan.theisen (accessed 1 February 2018).

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Furthermore, the argument of greatness overlooks the reality that conductors often privilege works

composed by their friends or colleagues (for example, at the University of Michigan, as discussed in

the previous chapter). Mark Scatterday asserted, “I don’t give preference to diversity if it’s not great

music.”393 He argued that programming composers because of their background, rather than focusing

on their music, can often work against progress: “If I play a great program, but my minority

composers on the program really suffer in comparison to everything I play, what does that do for

the whole movement? It moves it backwards.”394 Scatterday provided the names of women

composers whom he has programmed recently, including Tonia Ko, Sally Lamb, and Augusta Read

Thomas, and pointed out that he considers them all great composers of great music. One of the

fundamental problems with his argument, however, is its assumption that the choice is often

between a “great” piece by a white man and a lesser piece by a minority composer, a woman or

person of color, an assumption rooted in unspoken prejudices. Junkin explained, “I’ve heard people

say, well I’m not going to play a bad piece just to have a female composer represented. But you

know what? People play plenty of bad pieces by male composers, and they don’t seem that bothered

by it.”395 Junkin’s observation recalls Pauline Oliveros’s 1970 article, “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’

Composers,” in which she wrote, “It is still true that unless she is super‐excellent, the woman in

music will always be subjugated, while men of the same or lesser talent will find places for

themselves.”396 It is telling that almost five decades later, the same problems have not been resolved.

393 Mark Scatterday, phone interview with author, 5 October 2017.

394 Scatterday, phone interview with author, 5 October 2017.
395 Junkin, Skype interview with author, 9 October 2017.
396 Pauline Oliveros, “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Composers,” The New York Times, 13 September 1970

http://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/and-dont-call-them-lady-composers-and-dont-call-them-lady-
composers.html (accessed 1 February 2018).

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 An insistence on programming purely based on the quality of the music is, on the surface,

seemingly unobjectionable, but it is founded on unacknowledged assumptions that privilege an elite

few. In the same article, Oliveros addressed composers and “greatness”:

Critics do a great deal of damage by wishing to discover “greatness.” It does not

matter that not all composers are great composers; it matters that this activity be
encouraged among all the population, that we communicate with each other in non-
destructive ways. Women composers are very often dismissed as minor or light
weight talents on the basis of one work by critics who have never examined their
scores or waited for later developments.397

Zoë Madonna, music critic for the Boston Globe, encapsulated this view in a tweet that read, “You say:

We don’t look at composers’ gender when we program the season, we program on how good the

music is. I hear: All Pieces Matter.”398 The last line of Madonna’s tweet adapts a common response

to the Black Lives Matter movement, in which objectors who claim, “All Lives Matter”

misunderstand or ignore the purpose of the movement. Too often, conductors claim there are too

few “great” pieces composed by women or people of color and use that as an excuse for their

mono-culture programming. As discussed by the CBDNA gender panels, however, repertoire

blindness is a major cause of imbalanced programming; preventing repertoire blindness requires

work, getting beyond comfortable networks that perpetuate themselves.

The idea of integrating compositions by women into the standard repertoire recalls Citron’s

discussion of double vision. Citron advocates for a combination of approaches when discussing any

music composed by women: incorporating women’s works into the mainstream is crucial to

achieving equal representation, but cultivating a separate canon of pieces composed by women

provides essential opportunities, at least in the initial stages. Citron writes, “Like the arguments

advanced on behalf of women’s colleges or black colleges, separatists believe that only through

397 Ibid.
398 Zoë Madonna, Twitter post, 9 October 2017, 12:36p.m., https://twitter.com/knitandlisten.

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distinct structures can minority interests be preserved against the imperialistic tendencies of the

mainstream.”399 In an overwhelmingly male community, like the band community, there are

advantages to creating spaces for women’s music to be heard by itself, which is the idea behind

vertical programming. Although a handful of conductors, including Mösenbichler-Bryant, have

programmed all-women concerts at their home institutions, this approach may be perceived as too

radical by the general membership to accept for a CBDNA national conference, even though

programs made up entirely of works by only men have been the norm for the history of the band

community.400 Scatterday explained his perspective: “As a woman, you wouldn’t want the next

CBDNA president to say, okay, next year we’re only programming women composers. That would

be a great advantage to some women. But would people really consider that as an advantage?”401

With many in the community likely opposed to this kind of action, integration into the mainstream

repertoire is the ideal strategy; doing that, however, still requires a community that embraces

diversity in real, and not merely rhetorical ways.

The idea of double vision is also relevant to observations from the second “Bridging the

Gender Gap” panel. Barber, Higdon, and Chen discussed being invited to compose or conduct at

various events solely as representatives of their gender. They explained that such invitations,

although well-intentioned, often compounded their marginalization as women. In addition to trying

to succeed on their own terms, they are also evaluated in the context of a “woman’s only” sub-

community. As Citron observes, separatism has both advantages and disadvantages, and today,

many composers, like Amy Beth Kirsten, reject the disadvantages and speak out against the term

“woman composer.” In her article “The ‘Woman Composer’ is Dead,” Kirsten wrote, “I would hate

399 Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 219.

400 Even though it is unlikely, it would be interesting to see the reactions if in the future a conductor chose to program
their own institution’s concert vertically, with all the pieces composed by women.
401 Scatterday, phone interview with author, 5 October 2017.

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to think that my work had been programmed simply because I’m a woman—and in fact, I’ve

declined concert and recording opportunities that were gender-based.”402 Her comment aligns with

Scatterday’s belief that women would not want to be featured at a women’s-only concert at

CBDNA. Kirsten believes that women benefit more from competing as composers than as women

composers, which is difficult to argue with. Oliveros argued a similar idea: “Rightly, this expression

is anathema to many self‐respecting women composers. It effectively separates women’s efforts

from the mainstream.”403 Jolley reflected on her experience as the sole representative of her gender

at the conference and explained, “I really hope that never happens again.”404 Yet despite her desire

to never again be the only female composer, Jolley acknowledged that her presence on the CBDNA

program, combined with the heightened awareness of the importance of representing women, has

contributed to numerous inquiries about her music since the conference. Her anxieties regarding

being the token female composer paired with the excitement of new career opportunities such

focused attention has brought her demonstrates the difficulty of navigating the community as both a

composer and a woman composer.405

One result of Jolley’s presence on the CBDNA program is her emergence as a highly visible

role model for young women composers wanting to write for wind ensemble. The signifance of role

models has already been discussed as among the most important conditions in improving the

presence of women composers in the wind ensemble community. In addition to the women

composers who already write for the group but are not programmed regularly (many of whom are

listed in Appendix F), there are more women who would like to but do not feel as if it is an option.

402 Kirsten, “The ‘Woman Composer’ is Dead.”

403 Pauline Oliveros, “And Don’t Call Them ‘Lady’ Composers,” The New York Times, 13 September 1970
http://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/and-dont-call-them-lady-composers-and-dont-call-them-lady-
composers.html (accessed 1 February 2018).
404 Jolley, Skype interview with author, 28 August 2017.
405 Jolley explained that by the end of the conference, she had adopted the line “I see myself as a Jennifer composer” to

summarize her perspective on being a woman composer. Jolley, Skype interview with author, 28 August 2017.

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During both her panel and our interview, Jolley explained that providing female role models for

composition students is one of the most effective ways to support them. Many composers are eager

to provide their students with a variety of role models: Joel Puckett regularly invites female

composers (and other composers from diverse backgrounds) to be guest speakers via Skype in his

composition classes at the Peabody Institute, including Jolley, Susan Botti, Viet Cuong, and Carlos

Simon.406 The classroom represents just one space where representation matters. Jolley, however,

also emphasized the “huge responsibility” of publishers, who function as repertoire gatekeepers. The

largest distributors of band music usually publish music by established composers, most of whom

are men.407 For many emerging composers, publicizing their works is one of the greatest challenges;

this challenge is often heightened for women and other composers who are outside the white male

majority. Mackey, who advocated for greater support of women composers at CBDNA, moved

beyond mere virtue signaling and did something concrete. In December 2017 at the Midwest Clinic,

the largest international band and orchestra conference in the world, Mackey provided free

exhibition space for nine self-published composers, all of whom identified as women and/or

persons of color.408 Mackey explained that as a result of a Midwest Clinic rule requiring publishers to

buy a booth in the exhibit hall if they have three or more pieces performed on the Midwest concerts,

he ended up with a booth that he did not need:

My spouse and I had the idea of turning the exhibit space over to composers who do
need the opportunity, namely composers who are people of color, or women. Look
at the program for just about any band or orchestra concert, and you’ll see nothing
but names of white men. . . . What I wanted to do was find some composers who
aren’t just boring white guys and give those composers the opportunity to meet the
music educators around the world who could program their music.409

406 Puckett, Skype interview with author, 26 April 2017.

407 Jolley, Skype interview with author, 28 August 2017.
408 The composers included Katherine Bergman, Kevin Day, Erin Paton Pierce, Nicole Piunno, Jennifer Rose, Omar

Thomas, Denzel Washington, Evan Williams, and Haley Woodrow.

409 John Mackey, quoted in Melinda Stotts’s “Wyandotte Composer Hears What Others Only See,” The Miami News

Record, October 20, 2017 http://www.miamiok.com/news/20171020/wyandotte-composer-hears-what-others-only-see

(accessed 29 December 2017).

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Mackey leveraged his status to help underrepresented composers access conductors who can further

their careers. Although Mackey’s actions may still be perceived by some as virtue signaling, the

composers he aided (and many others) recognized his actions as an example for others to build

on.410 In her article “Stepping it Forward at the Midwest Clinic,” one of these composers, Katherine

Bergman, wrote about the opportunity, emphasizing the severe imbalances that Mackey’s action

hopes to rectify; she pointed out that of the 500 pieces performed by fifty-one bands, orchestras,

jazz bands, and chamber groups, only twenty-three were composed by women, and seventy-one by

composers of color.411 She wrote, “But what about the band concerts on their own? With such

enthusiasm for new music, surely the wind ensemble programming would be more diverse than that

of the orchestra, right? Alas, of the 212 pieces performed by bands during the Midwest Clinic, only

seven (a measly 3.3%) were written by women, and twenty-six (12.3%) by people of color.”412

Bergman wrote of the reactions to the nine composers at Mackey’s booth, “While some people were

initially confused that there was no music by John Mackey at the booth, they were almost always

content to discover something unexpected from the composers who were present.”413 Like the

members of CBDNA, music educators who attend Midwest are realizing at last that direct action

must be taken to rectify the gender imbalances proliferating in these communities.

In addition to composer role models, representation of women composers will likely also be

aided by increased numbers of female conductors. The relationship between conductors and

composers is paramount in the band community. Jolley explained, “It’s something that should be

discussed at CBDNA—we don’t have enough women conductors, and therefore, how do you

410 One of the issues accompanying positive change in presentation on band programs is the ease of writing off such
actions as virtue signaling. This is perhaps why some conductors argue so vehemently against programming for the sake
of diversity.
411 It is unclear how much overlap there was between these two groups.
412 Katherine Bergman, “Stepping it Forward at Midwest,” NewMusicBox, 10 January 2018,

https://nmbx.newmusicusa.org/stepping-forward-at-the-midwest-clinic/ (accessed 12 January 2018).

413 Ibid.

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expect your programming to change unless you also have diverse conductors?”414 Citron explains the

power of women being visible in the field of musicology: “Their visibility as well as the climate

surrounding women working in music influence general receptiveness to modification of the

canon.”415 Just as women musicologists can help raise the level of attention given to women’s varied

roles in music history, more women conductors likely means more attention given to living women

composers. This is not to say that women conductors will automatically program women composers

by default (and women conductors should not be made responsible for the burden of achieving

equally balanced programming), but as Citron explains, having more women present in all aspects of

a musical community means that the presence of women is normalized, and this makes change more

likely. The importance of conductor role models as noted by Cheryl Ann Jackson and Denise

Elizabeth Grant applies to the representation of female composers, too.

Educating musical communities to the large numbers of unknown female role models also

helps to combat repertoire blindness. Rob Deemer, head of composition at the State University of

New York at Fredonia, created a Women Composers Database, which he and his team continually

update; users are invited to complete a form to notify him of composers who should be added.416

Explaining the impetus for his project, Deemer said,

One common response to the criticism that conductors and performers don’t
program enough music by women composers is basically “we don’t know who they
are or where to find them.” In order to address this knowledge gap, my team and I
have endeavored to create a Women Composers Database that is both searchable
and browsable along several different data points for over 3000 composers.417

414 Jolley, Skype interview with author, 28 August 2017.

415 Citron, Gender and the Musical Canon, 228.
416 Rob Deemer, Women Composers Database. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vD-hWsQYvi6j-

6NP_HCLRtmLKdPX08IXmCOeAPV7ESY/edit#gid=0 (accessed 1 January 2018).

417 Rob Deemer, “A Fully Operational Women Composers Database,” Adaptistration: Drew McManus on the orchestra

business, January 2, 2018, https://adaptistration.com/2018/01/02/an-operational-women-composers-database/

(accessed 2 January 2018).

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As of January 1, 2018, the database names 3,004 women composers. Deemer’s database includes

birth and death dates, genres composed, race, and city/state and country of residence; these

categories aid conductors and performers in finding composers who fit their programming needs.

As of this writing, Deemer is also in the process of constructing a Composers of Color Database.

Even with the names of over 3,000 women composers readily available, however, there are

still challenges left for women composers. In the case of CBDNA, achieving equal gender

representation will require rethinking traditions. When it comes to the conference structure, this

could mean inviting composers beyond those who have pieces being performed to participate in

forums. In reflecting on the 2017 conference program and the apparent reluctance to feature people

outside the norm, Junkin noted, “Some of [the program] was a little formulaic. . . . We have to do a

better job of reaching out to people.”418 He expressed surprise that even though Jennifer Higdon

and Chen Yi were already attending the conference since it was located in Kansas City, Missouri, and

they were both on the faculty at UMKC (Higdon as the 2016-2017 Barr Institute Laureate), the only

panel they were featured on was one of the gender panels.

Regarding the concert programs and the importance of conducting and performing for one’s

peers, Scatterday noted that programming for a CBDNA concert requires conductors to make

different choices than for any other type of performance. Almost all the community members

represented in this dissertation emphasized the significance of the concerts at the CBDNA national

conferences, explaining that they provided a rare opportunity for conductors to perform for their

peers and for new music to be introduced to the community. Traditionally, repertoire at CBDNA

leans toward premieres of new music (usually by composers already known to the community) and

performances of canonical repertoire. Because of these demands, Scatterday believes that the

CBDNA programs alone present an inaccurate view of wind ensemble programming: “Just because

418 Junkin, Skype interview with author, 9 October 2017.

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a national conference isn’t highlighting what they say they’re doing doesn’t mean they’re not doing it

on a daily basis.”419 His point has merit; most CBDNA programs feature three to six works, and

deciding which works to program requires substantial thought about several issues. The variety of

competing demands may mean that considerations of diversity fall far down the list, even for

someone who makes it a priority in other concerts.

I argue, however, that diverse representation is an even more important consideration for

the high-profile concerts staged at the CBDNA conferences. If diversity is an important value to

members of the wind ensemble community, it must be apparent at the community’s most prominent

and prestigious showcase. When considering how programming affects women’s double vision and

the visibility of role models, it is clear that programming a woman (or person of color, etc.) at the

highest national level should be paramount. An all-male program is no longer an acceptable default

program for bands. Of all the conductors I interviewed, Mösenbichler-Bryant spoke most

emphatically about the possibility of changing the way CBDNA concerts are traditionally

programmed:

I certainly think there should be spotlights on female composers and different races.
I think we just need to put it in front of their faces. Put it on concerts. If someone
does a work by a Latin American composer, for example, this audience will respond
to that. You don’t just program random things at CBDNA, you program something
because you believe in it. I’m sure that that piece will then get programmed a whole
lot more. So I think it’s a matter of—who is applying to CBDNA? Maybe there’s a
requirement on there in the future to make sure that people think about the gender
gap and diverse programming. It doesn’t have to be “you must program a female
composer” but can it say maybe something more flexible, like, “we encourage
diverse programming.”

Mösenbichler-Bryant’s reflections touch upon many of the issues expressed by other conductors, in

particular that, contrary to some assumptions, programming diversely does not compromise the

overall value of the program. Although musicologists have argued this point for decades, the wind

419 Scatterday, phone interview with author, 5 October 2017.

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ensemble community has only recently reached the point of publicly advocating the value of

diversity. Junkin explained that in two separate conversations he was told that of all the pieces

performed at CBDNA 2017, people enjoyed Jolley’s piece more than any other because of how

fresh and different it was compared to others.420 In Gender and the Musical Canon, Citron explores

whether the gender of a composer affects how a piece is composed; this is a question that has been

addressed by musicologists repeatedly over the past few decades. Regardless of where one stands on

that issue, Jolley’s piece reflected a perspective that was not heard anywhere else on the CBDNA

program. It could not have been; there were no other opportunities for it to be heard. Diverse

programming, like diverse conductors, does not just benefit the composer alone by calling attention

to their work; it benefits the entire wind ensemble community, including audience members,

performers, and conductors. As a community that is structured around embracing new ideas and

practices, it is only logical for wind ensemble conductors to welcome composers who represent a

variety of perspectives.

Conclusions

One of the most revelatory aspects of studying gender imbalances in academic musical

communities was observing how musicians navigate diversity and representation within their own

professional environments. It is often difficult to objectively critique one’s home community, but for

the reasons enumerated in this chapter, the value of the discussions that occurred at CBDNA 2017

is clear. While the organization is just beginning, it is exciting to see a community that has

historically excluded women confront their own behaviors and attitudes toward the equal

representation of women. This type of discussion is one of the most important qualities of an

420 Junkin, Skype interview with author, 9 October 2017.

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affinity community, where the bonds created by a shared interest supersede differences in identity.

These connections are necessary to overcome the exclusively male descent processes that still exert

disproportionate power and shape today’s band community. When considering the band as a

descent community, as discussed in Chapter 2, women were excluded as the result of tradition.

When considering the contemporary wind ensemble community, most strongly identified by its

processes of affinity, it is easy to assume that a community whose membership surpasses traditional

boundaries of age, race, and gender will have similarly inclusive practices, but it is clear that this is

not the case. Although I do not discuss other aspects of representation in this dissertation, it is

important to be aware of equally important concerns relating to race, sexual orientation, and age as

well as gender. The same focus on female role models and programming works by women should be

applied to people of color, LGBTQ, and differently-abled members of the wind ensemble

community. During Bryant’s composers’ forum, a young audience member posed a question

regarding intersectionality; she received a dismissive answer from one of the panelists—along the

lines of, “Well, identity is complex.” The refusal to discuss intersectionality revealed how far behind

many other musical communities the wind ensemble community has fallen.421 To truly make space

for all voices in this community, it is not enough to advocate for women; we must also acknowledge

the way gender intersects with other identities.

Because a musical affinity community is bounded most strongly by a shared love of a

particular kind of music rather than by a single tradition or heritage, in theory it is freer to advocate

for a community in which all voices are heard. But practice trumps theory. Whether the utopian

ideal of an affinity community is achieved depends on the community’s leaders, institutions, and

421This is not to say that other musical communities do not have to address continuing problems related to diversity; at
the time of this writing, major symphony orchestras in the United States are facing excoriation at the hands of
musicologists, composers, performers, and critics for the absence of women and people of color on their upcoming
2018-2019 seasons. And while the symphony orchestra and wind ensemble communities have fallen behind those
surrounding choral music, new music, and musicology, all areas of today’s larger classical music community are being
forced to address issues relating to the representation of women, people of color, and other marginalized identities.

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community members making room for other voices. As Puckett pointed out, if the people who hold

the most power within a community do not speak out for those who hold less, change will be

gradual, if it happens at all; even more important is sharing the power so that no one has to speak

for anyone else. CBDNA 2017 included more voices in the discussion about gender imbalance than

have ever been invited to speak—not only the men who spoke out at the composer forum, but also

the women invited to speak on the two gender panels. As Jolley and Mösenbichler-Bryant both

expressed in interviews, the real test will be to see the repertoire programmed at future CBDNA

conferences, as well as the kinds of voices represented in the composer forums and research

presentations. The number of female conductors on the stage is also a factor: conductors and

composers must work together to make real change. If the conversation about representation

continues and expands to include other identities in addition to gender identities, progress will have

been made, but it will require continued action from a majority of community members to be

sustainable. In expressing his surprise at the lack of change between 2015 and 2017, Junkin

commented, “With as much conversation as there has been, I just thought it would be a natural

evolution.”422 Others simply accepted that change would not happen in their lifetimes.

Mösenbichler-Bryant had a different attitude, one likely born of the higher stakes she has in the

situation: “We definitely can’t just sit back and watch evolution happen.”423 Rather than watching

and waiting for change, actively changing the culture is the only sure way to achieve a diverse wind

ensemble community within our lifetimes.

422 Junkin, Skype interview with author, 9 October 2017.

423 Mösenbichler-Bryant, phone interview with author, 5 December 2017.

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 CONCLUSION

At the beginning of her article on musical communities, Kay Kaufman Shelemay identifies a

recent change in historical musicology, in which scholars have moved away from traditional studies

of individuals and toward broader studies, “moving emphatically into collective cultural domains.”424

This emphasis on the community provides insights that are more widely applicable to contemporary

musical culture than what can be glimpsed from the study of one composer or conductor, especially

in areas that represent a great variety of musical styles. Shelemay continues, “Musicological attention

to the presence of multiple and diverse musical communities has been especially prominent in the

work of scholars of American music who were from early on sensitive to cultural pluralism and its

manifestations in American musical life.”425 Like other communities formed around different

American musical styles, the contemporary wind ensemble community is unique within national

musical culture, especially as regards composer-conductor relationships. When the individuals I

interviewed were asked about the community, they all emphasized its shared goals of serving

students, growing the repertoire, and demonstrating the integrity of the ensemble. Verena

Mösenbichler-Bryant explained:

I definitely think the wind ensemble has a unique community. It feels like across the
country we are this huge family of conductors that are all working very hard to
expand the literature of the wind ensemble and the band world, and we all have a
common goal, first of all about education, but also to take our medium to the next
level.426

The conductors I interviewed all stressed the importance of their relationships with composers;

likewise, composers described their working relationships with conductors in ways that underscored

the importance of the wind ensemble community as a locus of these relationships. Puckett drew

424 Kay Kaufman Shelemay, “Musical Communities: Rethinking the Collective in Music,” Journal of the American
Musicological Society 64, no. 2 (Summer 2011), 353.
425 Ibid.
426 Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, phone interview with author, 5 December 2017.

208
attention to his relationship with Haithcock as a central influence in his career; Jolley cited the

support she received from Junkin; Mackey identified Clary, Junkin, and Kevin Sedatole of Michigan

State University as the conductors who have most actively shaped his career.

These relationships form the backbone of the wind ensemble community shaped by

processes of affinity. Using Shelemay’s terms as a guide for tracing the development of the band

community helps illuminate how the community has changed, especially over the past century.

Originally a community shaped primarily by processes of descent, the band world changed as the

innovations of Gilmore and Sousa pushed it toward an affinity community. Fennell’s wind ensemble

concept introduced processes of dissent; today, there are still elements of descent and dissent

processes within the affinity community. Elements that have shaped these processes include the

nation’s heritage, the unique sound palette introduced by Fennell, and the hierarchies that permeate

the community and its repertoire, including gender hierarchies. These elements also affect the

relationships that form the backbone of the community.

Despite the changes over the past century, the band community’s support for contemporary

American composers is strong if selective. Without the composers who contributed repertoire that

utilized Fennell’s wind ensemble concept, the wind ensemble community would have struggled to

establish itself as a home for new music. Today, new generations of composers choose to write for

wind ensemble. Voices speaking out for increased diversity in the repertoire continue to grow

louder, especially after the events at CBDNA 2017; increased diversity will only strengthen the

repertoire and ultimately the community. The elements of a descent heritage that originally shaped

the community mean that conductors will continue to honor the canonic works of the wind

ensemble. The dominant processes of affinity, however, mean that the community will continue to

welcome composers who demonstrate a shared passion for wind ensemble music.

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 In the future, it will be important to continue studying the wind ensemble repertoire to trace

the continuing changes. For example, Mösenbichler-Bryant observed that as the wind ensemble

repertoire grows more quickly, the boundaries between the band and other ensembles are becoming

increasingly blurred.427 She believes the wind ensemble canon will extend into the future, and that

conductors will continue to program Hindemith’s Symphony for Band and Sousa’s marches, but

also that as traditional boundaries fade, more different kinds of music will become part of the

repertoire, and potentially part of the canon. Steven Bryant agrees: addressing the freedom he is

enjoying with his current commission, in which he plans to add non-band instruments and use

electronics and lighting effects, he explained, “It’s really exciting, but it’s no longer band. That aspect

of this community and this ensemble is extraordinarily exciting, because then we’re just one step

away from the ultimate flexible ensemble.”428 As wind ensemble conductors and composers

continually expand the aesthetic possibilities of their groups, it is possible that the wind ensemble

will become more integrated with the rest of American musical culture. It is also likely, however, that

much of the wind repertoire may never be adopted into the mainstream canon, but as traditional

concepts of “greatness” give way to other methods of identifying important repertoire, the canon

may become an anachronism. As long as composers are drawn to the opportunities provided to

them by the ensemble, the wind ensemble repertoire will continue to provide a home for innovative,

interesting works.

As someone who has achieved great success in the wind ensemble community, Bryant looks

forward to new challenges. In addition to his forthcoming premiere with the Detroit Symphony

(scheduled for April 2018), he has also started work on a project with the Pittsburgh New Music

427 Mösenbichler-Bryant, phone interview with author, 5 December 2017.

428 Steven Bryant, Skype interview with author, 16 January 2018.

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Ensemble. I asked if the wind ensemble offers enough artistic flexibility and interest to him now that

he has spent so many years writing successfully for the group; he replied:

Well, you’ve gotten to the core of the question that I’m asking myself all the time! I
got to make my dream projects, Ecstatic Waters and the Concerto for Wind Ensemble.
I got to make them! I got them played by amazing musicians, more than I ever
dreamed of. What happens when you get everything you want? It’s extraordinary.
But I’ve been trying to branch out, and that’s why I’ve been looking for different
things to do with the ensemble. I only take commissions that will lead me down that
sort of path.429

One of the major aims of this project was to demonstrate the support for living American

composers within the wind ensemble community, especially emerging composers whose names are

not yet known. It can appear to outsiders that the wind ensemble is a training ground that prepares

young composers to move on to other genres; this perception is reinforced when composers like

Bryant, Mackey, and Puckett enjoy great levels of success as wind ensemble composers prior to

gaining a firmer foothold within the orchestral or operatic genres. But these composers are clear in

their belief that the wind ensemble community provided them with the resources and the support to

achieve their musical dreams.

My goal at the start of this project was to prove that the wind ensemble represents a

valuable, if overlooked, part of American musical culture. In achieving that goal, however, it is

difficult to argue for its value without comparing it to other genres of instrumental music, especially

the symphony orchestra, which has influenced many of the conductors who shaped the wind

ensemble community. The history of the American wind ensemble is more intertwined with the

symphony orchestra than I had believed, especially in its emphasis on values like virtuosity and

complexity, as well as in its focus on and dominance by white men at the expense of women and

people of color. The way in which wind ensemble conductors support contemporary composers is

arguably one of the most important aspects of the community; while they may share the symphony

429 Ibid.

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orchestra’s problem of repertoire diversity in respect to gender, race, and nationality, their

comparatively younger repertoire means that they are significantly more effective at supporting

living American composers.

Mösenbichler-Bryant believes that as American society changes, large ensembles of all kinds

will become a crucial part of musical life. Speaking as an educator, Mösenbichler-Bryant sees the

value of her work in relation to her students: “Making music with each other is an opportunity to

interact socially, and that social interaction is going to be a really valuable tool that they’ll learn in

our ensembles.”430 Since bands function primarily as educational groups, this is especially true in the

wind ensemble world. Furthermore, it is likely that the wind ensemble community will remain

primarily within the confines of the university, although professional groups like the Dallas Winds

could inspire the founding of similar organizations. When asked directly, however, my interview

subjects anticipated that the wind ensemble would maintain its relatively isolated position within the

larger university community. The band as a place for social interaction, whether the setting is

academic, professional, or amateur, reinforces the need to advocate for equal representation within

the community; as discussed in Chapter 6, all members of the community will benefit from

increased diversity.

Overall, the wind ensemble community represents a vibrant part of American musical

culture: one that is worthy of further study and of attention from outsiders of the community.

Throughout this project, the composers and conductors I interviewed were welcoming and eager to

talk about their work. Their enthusiasm about the community of which they are a part emphasized

the value and vitality of wind ensemble music. While American musical culture is changing rapidly

and the clout of the symphony orchestra and its canon decline, the band’s adaptability and resilience

430 Verena Mösenbichler-Bryant, phone interview with author, 5 December 2017.

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over the course of the nation’s history suggests that the tradition of wind music will continue to

thrive if its community actively and enthusiastically changes with the times.

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 APPENDIX A

GLOSSARY OF ABBREVIATIONS

ABA: American Bandmasters Association

AWSO: American Wind Symphony Orchestra

CBDNA: College Band Directors National Association

CMS: College Music Society

EWE: Eastman Wind Ensemble

MENC: Music Educators National Conference

NBA: National Bandmasters Association

NAfME: National Association for Music Education

UCBCC: University and College Band Conductors Conference

WASBE: World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles

WBDI: Women Band Directors International

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 APPENDIX B

INSTRUMENTATION OF SELECTED BANDS

Below are selected instrumentation lists for American bands in the nineteenth, twentieth, and
twenty-first centuries. The lists represent the maximum size for each band; in the case of the wind
ensembles (including the Ithaca Concert Band and the Florida State Wind Orchestra),
instrumentation for each piece is selected from this list. The 2017 University of Texas Wind
Ensemble, for example, never appeared onstage at CBDNA with the full 66-player band. In
contrast, the 62-piece Goldman Band would have performed every piece on their program using the
same instrumentation.

American Band of Providence, 1851431

1 E-flat bugle 2 tenor [horns]

1 E-flat cornet 2 basses [tubas]
1 B-flat bugle 1 side drum
1 post horn 1 bass drum
1 trumpet cymbals
2 alto [saxhorns] Total: 14 players

Gilmore’s Band, 1878432

2 piccolos 1 E-flat soprano cornet

2 flutes 4 B-flat cornets
2 oboes 2 trumpets
1 A-flat sopranino clarinet 2 flugelhorns
3 E-flat sopranino clarinets 4 horns
16 B-flat clarinets 2 E-flat alto horns
1 alto clarinet 2 B-flat tenor horns
1 bass clarinet 2 euphoniums
2 bassoons 3 trombones
1 contrabassoon 5 bombardons (basses)
1 soprano saxophone 4 percussion
1 alto saxophone Total: 66 players
1 tenor saxophone
1 bass (baritone?) saxophone

431
Richard Franko Goldman, The Wind Band: Its Literature and Technique (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1961), 44.
432 Richard Franko Goldman, The Wind Band, 59, 62.

215
Sousa’s Band, 1900433

4 flutes/piccolos 6 cornets/trumpets
2 oboes/English horns 2 flugelhorns
2 E-flat clarinets 4 horns
16 B-flat clarinets 2 euphoniums
2 alto clarinets 4 trombones
2 bass clarinets 4 tubas/Sousaphones
3 bassoons 3 percussion
5 saxophones Total: 61 players

Goldman’s Band, 1930434

4 flutes/piccolos 4 trumpets
2 oboes/English horns 5 horns
2 bassoons 6 trombones
1 E-flat clarinet 2 euphoniums
19 B-flat clarinets 4 tubas
1 bass clarinet 2 string basses
1 alto saxophone 1 harp
1 tenor saxophone 3 percussion
4 cornets Total: 62 players

The Eastman Wind Ensemble, 1952435

2 flutes and piccolo 3 cornets

2 oboes and English horn 2 trumpets
1 E-flat clarinet 4 horns
8 B-flat (or A) clarinets 3 trombones
1 alto clarinet 2 euphoniums
1 bass clarinet 2 tubas
2 bassoons 6 percussion
1 contra-bassoon 1 harp
2 alto saxophones 1 keyboard
1 tenor saxophone Total: 46 players
1 baritone saxophone

433 Paul Bierley, The Incredible Band of John Philip Sousa (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), 251.
Bierley includes the changing instrumentation of Sousa’s Band between 1892 and 1921 in Appendix III: The Makeup of
the Band.
434 Richard Franko Goldman, The Wind Band, 89.
435 Fennell, Time and the Winds, 57.

216
University of Michigan Symphony Band, 1960436

17 flutes 1 baritone saxophone

4 oboes 10 cornets
2 English horns 4 trumpets
1 E-flat soprano clarinet 8 horns
25 B-flat soprano clarinets 6 tenor trombones
5 alto clarinets 2 bass trombones
3 bass clarinets 4 euphoniums
2 contrabass clarinets 6 tubas
3 bassoons 2 string basses
1 contrabassoon 6 percussion
4 alto saxophones Total: 117 players
1 tenor saxophone

Ithaca High School Concert Band, 1964437

1 piccolo 1 bass saxophone

1 E-flat flute 5 horns
4 flutes 6 cornets
2 oboes 2 trumpets
1 English horn 4 trombones
10 B-flat clarinets 2 euphoniums
1 alto clarinet 2 tubas
1 bass clarinet 1 string bass
1 contrabass clarinet 1 timpani
3 bassoons 4 percussion
2 alto saxophones 1 piano
1 tenor saxophone Total: 59 players
1 baritone saxophone

University of Texas Wind Ensemble, 1991438

5 flutes/piccolos 4 trombones
3 oboes/English horns 2 euphoniums
10 clarinets/bass/contrabass 2 tubas
3 bassoons/contrabassoon 1 string bass
4 saxophones 6 percussion
4 horns 1 keyboard
7 trumpets Total: 52 players

436 Frank Battisti, The Winds of Change: The Evolution of the Contemporary American Wind Band/Ensemble and its Conductor
(Galesville, MD: Meredith Music Publications, 2002), 349. Part of Appendix 4: Instrumentation of Selective Wind Bands
and Wind Ensembles from 1952-1999.
437 Ibid., 351.
438 Ibid., 3 53.

217
Florida State University Wind Orchestra, 1995439

4 flutes 6 trumpets
2 oboes 5 horns
1 English horn 3 trombones
1 E-flat clarinet 2 euphoniums
4 B-flat clarinets 2 tubas
1 alto clarinet 1 string bass
1 bass clarinet 6 percussion
1 contrabass clarinet 1 piano
2 bassoons Total: 48 players
1 contrabassoon
4 saxophones

University of Texas Wind Ensemble, 2017440

4 flutes/piccolos 2 euphoniums
4 oboes/English horn 2 tubas
15 clarinets/bass/contrabass 7 percussion
4 bassoons/contrabassoon 2 string bass
4 saxophones 1 piano
7 horns 1 harp
7 trumpets 1 organ
5 trombones Total: 66 players

439 Ibid., 355-56.

440 University of Texas Wind Ensemble, CBDNA National Conference Tour Program, 2017.

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 APPENDIX C

DISSERTATIONS ABOUT WIND BAND REPERTOIRE

Bodiford, Kenneth G. “Evolution of Contemporary Wind Band Repertoire and Programming in the
United States: 1800-2010.” DMA diss., The University of Alabama.

Cardany, Brian M. “Attitudes Toward Repertoire and the Band Experience Among Participants in
Elite University Wind Band Programs.” DMA diss., Arizona State University.

Gilbert, Jay Warren. “An Evaluation of Compositions for Wind Band According to Specific Criteria
of Serious Artistic Merit: A Replication and Update.” DM diss., Northwestern University,
1993.

Halseth, Robert Edmore Powell. “The Impact of the College Band Directors National Association
on Wind Band Repertoire.” DA diss., the University of Northern Colorado, 1987.

Honas, Kenneth. “An Evaluation of Compositions for Mixed-Chamber Winds Utilizing Six to Nine
Players: Based on Acton Ostling’s Study.” DMA diss., University of Missouri-Kansas City,
1996.

Hopwood, Brian Keith. “Wind Band Repertoire: Programming Practices at Conventions of the
College Band Directors National Association.” DMA diss., Arizona State University, 1998.

Kish, David Lawrence. “The College Band Directors National Association Commissioned
Compositions, 1961-2001: A Survey and Analysis.” DMA diss., The University of North
Carolina at Greensboro, 2003.

Nicholls, William. “Factors Contributing to the Commissioning of American Wind Band Works
Since 1945.” D.M.A. diss., University of Miami, 1980.
Ostling, Jr., Acton. “An Evaluation of Compositions for Wind Band According to Specific Criteria
of Serious Artistic Merit.” DMA thesis, The University of Iowa, 1978.

Rhea, Timothy. “An Evaluation of Wind Band Compositions in the Texas Public School Setting
According to Specific Criteria of Artistic Merit.” DMA diss., University of Houston, 1999.

Thomas, Raymond. “An Evaluation of Compositions for Wind Band, Grades III and IV, According
to Specific Criteria of Artistic Merit.” Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 1998.

Towner, Clifford N. “An Evaluation of Compositions for Wind Band According to Specific Criteria
of Serious Artistic Merit: A Second Update.” DMA diss., The University of Nebraska, 2011.

Wiggins, Timothy D. “Analytical Research of Wind Band Core Repertoire.” Ph.D. diss., The Florida
State University, 2013.

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 APPENDIX D

TOWNER’S WORKS OF “ARTISTIC MERIT”

The following table lists the 144 pieces from Clifford Towner’s study that were determined to be
works of “serious artistic merit.” The 89 works that were also listed in both Acton Ostling’s original
study and Jay Warren Gilbert’s update are in bold font. Works that are transcriptions (by the
composer) of works for other genres are in italic font.441 Only two women (Susan Botti and Sofia
Gubaidulina) are included in this list.

COMPOSER TITLE YEAR

Adams, John Grand Pianola Music 1982
Amran, David King Lear Variations 1967
Badings, Henk Concerto for Flute and Wind Symphony 1963
Bartók, Béla Concerto for Piano No. 1, second movement 1926
Bartók, Béla Concerto for Piano No. 2, first movement 1931
Concerto Grosso (for brass quintet, wind and percussion
Bassett, Leslie 1983
ensemble)
Bassett, Leslie Designs, Images and Textures 1966
Bassett, Leslie Sounds, Shapes and Symbols 1977
Bennett, Richard
Concerto for Trumpet and Wind Orchestra 1983
Rodney
Bennett, Richard
Morning Music 1985
Rodney
Bennett, Robert
Suite of Old American Dances 1949
Russell
Benson, Warren Concertino (for alto saxophone and wind ensemble) 1954
Benson, Warren Symphony for Drums and Wind Orchestra 1963
Benson, Warren Symphony II, Lost Songs 1982
Benson, Warren The Leaves are Falling 1963
Benson, Warren The Passing Bell 1974
Benson, Warren The Solitary Dancer 1969
Chamber Concerto for Violin, Piano and 13 Wind
Berg, Alban 1925
Instruments, Op. 8
Berlioz, Hector Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale, Op. 15 1840
Bernard, Emile Divertissement pour Instruments à Vent, Op. 36 1894
Bernstein, Leonard Prelude, Fugue and Riffs 1949
Botti, Susan Cosmosis 2005
Brahms, Johannes Begräbnisgesang, Op. 13 (chorus and wind ensemble) 1858
Brant, Henry Angels and Devils 1931

441Clifford N. Towner, “An Evaluation of Compositions for Wind Band According to Specific Criteria of Serious
Artistic Merit: A Second Update” (DMA diss., The University of Nebraska, 2011), 143-154; 177-185.

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COMPOSER TITLE YEAR
Bruckner, Anton Mass No. 2 in E Minor 1882
Colgrass, Michael Arctic Dreams 1991
Colgrass, Michael Déjà Vu (for four percussion soloists and wind ensemble) 1987
Colgrass, Michael Urban Requiem 1995
Colgrass, Michael Winds of Nagual 1985
Copland, Aaron An Outdoor Overture 1942
Copland, Aaron Emblems 1964
Corigliano, John Circus Maximus: Symphony No. 3 for Large Wind Ensemble 2004
Corigliano, John Gazebo Dances 1978
Dahl, Ingolf Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Wind Orchestra 1949
Dahl, Ingolf Sinfonietta for Band 1961
Del Tredici, David In Wartime 2003
Dello Joio, Norman Variants on a Medieval Tune 1963
Druckman, Jacob “Engram” from Prism 1987
Dvořák, Antonin Serenade in D Minor, Op. 44 1878
Etler, Alvin Concerto for Clarinet and Chamber Ensemble 1962
Sept Dances from the ballet les Malheurs de Sophie
Françaix, Jean 1972
(10 winds)
Françaix, Jean Papageno (piano and winds) 1984
Gilmore, Bernard Five Folk Songs for Soprano and Band 1965
Gould, Morton Symphony No. 4 (West Point Symphony) 1952
Gounod, Charles Petite Symphonie in B-flat, Op. 90 1888
Grainger, Percy Colonial Song 1918
Hill Song No. 1 (for wind ensemble of 14 instruments, 7
Grainger, Percy 1923-24
single string instruments, percussion and harmonium)
1907/
Grainger, Percy Hill Song No. 2
1948
Grainger, Percy Irish Tune from County Derry 1918
Grainger, Percy Lincolnshire Posy 1937
Hour of the Soul: Poem for Large Wind Orchestra and
Gubaidulina, Sofia 1976
Mezzo-Soprano
Le Bal de Béatrice d'Este (for piano, two harps and
Hahn, Reynaldo 1906
wind orchestra)
Handel, George Music for the Royal Fireworks, ed. Jerry Junkin 1749
Harbison, John Music for 18 Winds 1986
Harbison, John Olympic Dances 1996
Harbison, John Three City Blocks 1991
Hartmann, Emil Serenade, Op. 43 1885
Hindemith, Paul “Geschwindmarsch” from Symphony Serena 1946
Concerto for Organ and Wind Instruments:
Hindemith, Paul 1927
Kammermusik No. 7, Op. 46, No. 2
Hindemith, Paul Konzertmusik, Op. 41 1926

221
COMPOSER TITLE YEAR
Hindemith, Paul Symphony in B-flat 1951
Holst, Gustav Hammersmith (Prelude and Scherzo), Op. 52 1930
Holst, Gustav Suite No. 1 in E-flat 1909
Holst, Gustav Suite No. 2 in F 1911
Honegger, Arthur Le Roi David (original version) 1921
Husa, Karel An America Te Deum (baritone voice, chorus, band) 1976
Husa, Karel Apotheosis of this Earth 1971
Husa, Karel Concertino for Piano and Wind Ensemble 1984
Husa, Karel Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Concert Band 1967
Husa, Karel Concerto for Percussion and Wind Ensemble 1970-71
Husa, Karel Concerto for Trumpet and Wind Ensemble 1973
Husa, Karel Concerto for Wind Ensemble 1982
Husa, Karel Les Couleurs Fauves 1996
Husa, Karel Music for Prague 1968
Jacob, Gordon William Byrd Suite 1924
Kurka, Robert The Good Soldier Schweik: Suite, Op. 22 1957
Lindberg, Magnus Gran Duo 2000
Lopatnikoff, Nikolai Concerto for Wind Orchestra, Op. 41 1963
Mahler, Gustav “Um Mitternacht” from Aus den Rückert Lieder 1901
Maslanka, David A Child's Garden of Dreams 1981
Maslanka, David Symphony No. 4 1993
Maw, Nicholas American Games 1991
Mendelssohn, Felix Ouverture für Harmoniemusik, Op. 24, ed. John Boyd 1826
Messiaen, Olivier Colors of the Celestial City 1963
Messiaen, Olivier Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum 1965
Oiseaux Exotiques (for piano solo and small wind
Messiaen, Olivier 1955
orchestra)
Milhaud, Darius La Creation Du Monde 1923
Milhaud, Darius Suite Française, Op. 248 1944
Mozart, Wolfgang
Divertimento No. 3 in E-flat, K166 1773
Amadeus
Mozart, Wolfgang
Divertimento No. 4 in B-flat, K186 1773
Amadeus
Mozart, Wolfgang
Serenade No. 10 in B-flat, K370a 1781-95
Amadeus
Penderecki,
Pittsburgh Overture 1967
Krzysztof
Persichetti, Vincent Divertimento for Band, Op. 42 1950
Persichetti, Vincent Masquerade for Band, Op. 102 1965
Persichetti, Vincent Symphony No. 6, Op. 69 1956
Aubade (choreographic concerto) (piano and 18 wind
Poulenc, Francis 1929
instruments)

222
COMPOSER TITLE YEAR
Suite Française (for harpsichord and 9 wind
Poulenc, Francis 1935
instruments)
Rakowski, David Ten of a Kind (Symphony No. 2) 2000
Rands, Bernard Ceremonial 1982
Reed, H. Owen La Fiesta Mexicana 1949
Reynolds, Verne Scenes 1917
Rodrigo, Joaquin Adagio 1966
Schmitt, Florent Dionysiaques, Op. 62 1914-25
Lied et Scherzo, Op. 54 (solo horn and small wind
Schmitt, Florent 1910
ensemble)
Schoenberg, Arnold Chamber Symphony, Op. 9a 1906
Schoenberg, Arnold Theme and Variations, Op. 43a 1943
Schuller, Gunther Eine kleine Posaunemusik 1980
Schuller, Gunther On Winged Flight: A Divertimento for Band 1989
Schuller, Gunther Symphony for Brass and Percussion 1950
Schuller, Gunther Symphony No. 3, In Praise of Winds 1981
Schuman, William George Washington Bridge: An Impression for Band 1950
New England Triptych: Be Glad Then, America; When
Schuman, William 1956
Jesus Wept; Chester
Schwantner, Joseph …and the mountains rising nowhere 1977
Schwantner, Joseph Concerto for Percussion 1994
Schwantner, Joseph From a Dark Millennium 1980
Schwantner, Joseph Sparrows 1979
Stockhausen,
“Luzifer's Tanz” from Samstag aus Licht 1981-83
Karlheinz
Strauss, Richard Feirlicher Einzung der Ritter des Johanniter-Ordens 1909
Strauss, Richard Festmusik der Stadt Wien, AV 133 (brass and timpani) 1943
Strauss, Richard Serenade, Op. 7 1881
Sonatine in F “Aus der Werkstatt eines Invaliden,” AV
Strauss, Richard 1943
135
Strauss, Richard Suite in B-flat, Op. 4 1884
Strauss, Richard Symphonie for Winds “Fröliche Werkstatt,” AV 143 1944-45
Stravinsky, Igor Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments 1924
Stravinsky, Igor Ebony Concerto 1945
Stravinsky, Igor Mass for Chorus and Double Wind Quintet 1948
Stravinsky, Igor Symphonies of Wind Instruments 1920
Stravinsky, Igor Symphonies of Wind Instruments (revised edition) 1947
1930, rev.
Stravinsky, Igor Symphony of Psalms
1948
Stucky, Steven Fanfares and Arias 1994
Stucky, Steven Funeral Music for Queen Mary (after Purcell) 1992
Tippett, Michael Concerto for Orchestra: First Movement (Mosaic) 1962-63

223
COMPOSER TITLE YEAR
Torke, Michael Adjustable Wrench 1989
Van Otterloo, Willem Symphonietta for Woodwinds 1948
Varèse, Edgard Deserts 1954
Varèse, Edgard Hyperprism 1923
Varèse, Edgard Intégrales 1925
Vaughan Williams,
English Folk Song Suite 1923
Ralph
Vaughan Williams,
Toccata Marziale 1924
Ralph
Wagner, Richard Trauersinfonie, rev. Erik Leidzen 1844
Weill, Kurt Concerto for Violin, Op. 12 1924
Das Berliner Requiem (tenor, baritone, bass soli and
Weill, Kurt 1928
wind instruments)
Weill, Kurt Little Threepenny Music 1928
Weill, Kurt Songspiel (6 voices and wind ensemble) 1927

224
 APPENDIX E

REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN AT CBDNA NATIONAL

CONFERENCES, 2001-2017

CBDNA National Women Head Women Guest

Women Composers
Conference Year Conductors Conductors
Mallory Thompson
Caroline Hand
2017 Jennifer Jolley Cynthia Johnston-
Jaclyn Hartenberger
Turner
Jennifer Higdon Emily Threinen
2015 0
Julie Giroux Linda R. Moorhouse

2013 0 0 Rebecca Phillips

Chen Yi Caroline Beatty

2011 0
Julie Giroux Joan de Albuquerque
Kathryn Salfelder
2009 Kristin Kuster Virginia Allen 0
Chen Yi
Augusta Read Thomas
2007 0 0
Sofia Gubaidulina

Felicia Sandler
2005 0 0
Susan Botti
Judith Lang Zaimot
2003 Dorothy Chang 0 Sharon Lavery
Joan Tower
Joan Tower
2001 Mallory Thompson Lois Ferrari
Cindy McTee

225
 APPENDIX F

WIND ENSEMBLE WORKS BY WOMEN CONPOSERS

The following table includes selected women composers and works for wind ensemble. This is not a
complete list of all women who have composed for wind ensemble, and it does not include
composers of music for developing/amateur bands.442 Some of these composers and/or their works
were mentioned in this dissertation; others are included based on interviews with conductors and
composers, CBDNA programs from 2001-2017, and personal experience. Only two composers
(Susan Botti and Sofia Gubaidulina) appeared in the chart from Appendix D. Works that are
transcriptions (by the composer) of works for other genres are in italic font.

COMPOSER NAME REPRESENTATIVE WORK YEAR

Archer, Kimberly Common Threads 2016
Bergman, Katherine Dream Machine 2016
Botti, Susan Cosmosis 2005
Chang, Dorothy Sunan Dances 1995/2003
Chen Yi Dragon Rhyme 2010
Etezady, Roshanne Points of Departure 2010
Garrop, Stacy Quicksilver 2017
Giroux, Julie Symphony No. 2: “No Finer Calling” 2006
Gotkovsky, Ida Symphonie pour Orchestra d'Harmonie 1965
Greene, Joni Circean Waters 2009
Gubaidulina, Sofia Hour of the Soul 1976
Hagan, Jocelyn Gloria 2016
Higdon, Jennifer Mysterium 2011
Jolley, Jennifer The Eyes of the World Are Upon You 2017
Ko, Tonia Dwellings 2011
Koh, Emily diverse(city) 2015
Kuster, Kristin Interior 2006
Lamb McCune, Sally Caveat 2015
McTee, Cindy Timepiece 2000/2001
Musgrave, Thea Journey Through a Japanese Landscape 1994
Salfelder, Kathryn Cathedrals 2007
Sandler, Felicia Hysteria in Salem Village 2005
Shapiro, Alex Immersion 2011
Tailleferre, Germaine Suite Divertimento 1977
Tower, Joan Fascinating Ribbons 2001
Thomas, Augusta Read Dancing Galaxy 2004
Zaimont, Judith Lang Concerto for Piano and Wind Orchestra 2009
Zwilich, Ellen Taaffe Ceremonies 1988

442See Rob Deemer’s Women Composers Database for the most up-to-date information about women composers in all
genres, including wind band music. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vD-hWsQYvi6j-
6NP_HCLRtmLKdPX08IXmCOeAPV7ESY/edit#gid=0 (accessed 27 January 2018).

226
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233
Interviews

Bryant, Steven. Skype interviews with author, 5 February 2017 and 16 January 2018.

Clary, Richard. Personal interview with author, 24 October 2016.

Daugherty, Michael. Phone interview with author, 29 March 2017.

Haithcock, Michael. Phone interview with author, 28 February 2017.

Hand, Caroline. Phone interview with author, 15 November 2016.

Jolley, Jennifer. Skype interview with author, 28 August 2017; e-mail interview with author, 23
January 2018.

Junkin, Jerry. Skype interview with author, 9 October 2017.

Mackey, John. Personal interview with author, 17 March 2017; Facebook Messenger interview with
author, 29 December 2017.

Mösenbichler-Bryant, Verena. phone interview with author, 5 December 2017.

Newman, Jonathan. Skype interview with author, 9 February 2017.

Piece, Vincent. Skype interview with author, 22 November 2017.

Puckett, Joel. Skype interview with author, 26 April 2017. Facebook Messenger interview with
author, 18 January 2018.

Scatterday, Mark. phone interview with author, 4 October 2017.

234
 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Kate Sutton Storhoff is a musicologist currently living in Tallahassee, Florida. She was born

in Bedford, England, grew up in Missouri City, Texas, and holds a Bachelor of Music Education

degree from Baylor University. She received a Master of Music in historical musicology from Florida

State University in 2014, an Early Music Certificate in 2017, and a Ph.D. in musicology in 2018.

While at FSU, Kate taught classes in music history, music literature, modern popular music, and

world music cultures. She also directed the FSU Collegium Musicum crumhorn, recorder, and

shawm ensembles. She has presented her research at regional and national conferences.

235