Accumulating interest
The BSO frees up resources from a rarely used fund to celebrate Elliott Carter
For more than a half century, the money sat largely untouched, accruing in a bank account managed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. This summer, the BSO has tapped into the now $2.4 million Horblitt Fund.
The cause: composer Elliott Carter, who turns 100 this year.
Carter's work has been championed by BSO music director James Levine for years. Now, drawing as much as $400,000 from the fund, the BSO is pushing to spread word of Carter beyond the close-knit symphony world.
It's not as easy as it seems to get to the money, which was given in 1945 with restrictions that meant the BSO could rarely dip into it.
But thanks to a legal ruling that loosened up its usage, money from the fund is being used largely to promote this year's four-day Festival of Contemporary Music, which is dedicated solely to Carter and opens today. By adding promotion and outreach, the BSO hopes to sell more than the 2,040 tickets purchased at last year's festival, which featured the works of William Bolcom, John Corigliano, and John Harbison, among others.
"Elliott Carter is an important figure in classical music, and my peers in the music world think it's kind of humorous because it's not big box office," said Kim Noltemy, the BSO's director of marketing. "This was a unique opportunity for me to work on something that was truly an artistic mission because we have the resources to do it."
The focus on Carter is no surprise to those who have followed the BSO during Levine's music directorship. Though he's conducted Beethoven, Mozart, and Gershwin, Levine has never shied away from less popular and more challenging works, from Arnold Schoenberg to Milton Babbitt.
And no living composer has been given a bigger lift than Carter, whose works have been commissioned and performed by the BSO.
This week, the Carter tribute is in full swing. The BSO's summer campus will feature four days of concerts and panels. Carter himself will be on hand, and take part in an onstage interview Thursday.
Levine won't be at Tanglewood. Doctors removed one of his kidneys last week, and he's recuperating at home. That's left the Carter festival largely in the hands of Oliver Knussen, the Scottish-born former head of contemporary music at Tanglewood who, before Levine's abrupt exit, was to have played a lesser role.
Knussen didn't know about the extra money being invested in the festival. When told, he shied away from the idea that the festival could convert the masses. He noted that the performances are mainly scheduled at the 1,200-seat Ozawa Hall, not the larger Koussevitzky Music Shed.
"This is a celebration rather than an attempt to do a Billy Graham on Carter," he said.
The Horblitt fund, established in 1945 thanks to an initial contribution of $20,500 from Boston lawyer Mark C. Horblitt, was meant to "foster and promote the writing of Symphonic compositions by composers resident in the United States . . . and thus to enlarge and enrich the fund of good music suitable for rendition by symphony orchestras."
While those terms sound broad, they are actually limiting, requiring that money go to further the career of a single composer. For the first 10 years, money from the fund went to Aaron Copland, Leonard Bernstein, and Lukas Foss. After that, the BSO found the terms so restrictive it rarely used the fund.
"These were, in fact, terms we would never agree to today," said Mark Volpe, managing director of the BSO. "It was absolutely unusable."
For example, the amount of the award to a composer could not be changed or indexed for inflation. That made it hard to do much, and certainly to spend it on a festival as far-ranging as this year's Carter celebration.
This changed in 1984 when the BSO went to a state probate court to make it easier to tap into the money. The court established that income from the fund could be spent on activities that had to do with an award given under the fund's name. In 1988, Carter was honored. In 1993, John Corigliano received the recognition. But for the past 15 years the money has been left alone, growing to $2.4 million - a small portion of the BSO's overall $400 million endowment.
Just what is the BSO using the money for? It has taken out more ads in publications ranging from the New York Times and Village Voice. It has also decided to film an Internet TV episode on Carter, viewable from the BSO's website, and will record some of the festival. Typically, Noltemy said, the promotion budget for the festival is around $50,000. This year, it's about $250,000. Some money is also being spent on the guest artists coming into the festival.
Knussen said the event demonstrates the BSO's rare commitment to living composers.
"The last time I can remember any orchestra devoting any kind of a festival to a single living composer was the New York Philharmonic with Stravinsky in about, what, '67?" he said. "What one would hope is there will be a core audience of the many Carter admirers . . . and some people who have not experienced Carter's music before would have some sense of what makes his work very special."
Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com. 