The Missing String Quartets

Something unprecedented happened at the recent Coleman Chamber Ensemble Competition at Caltech: There were no string quartets in contention.

And no string players among the winners. Reviewing the winners concert, a Times critic commented: “Something is very, disturbingly wrong.”

Olive McDuffee, manager of Coleman Concerts, sponsor of the competition--which has produced, among its winners, the now-famous quartets touring under the names Tokyo, Meliora, Colorado and Ridge--says she is baffled by the lack of strings this year.

“I have no explanation,” McDuffee said, “We’re as shocked as anyone.”

She did, however, acknowledge that there was also a shortage of strings in the 1988 competition. And that, of the two string ensembles competing this year--one a sextet from Oklahoma, the other a trio from Southern California--neither made it to the finals.

“We are doing our best to find out what the problem is with string quartets in this country,” said McDuffee.

An officer at the Juilliard School in New York told the manager that its string students were down in numbers. McDuffee also spoke with music administrators at Indiana University, the Eastman School in Rochester and the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia.

“They all said that there aren’t as many string players now as 10 years ago. But hopefully, the cycle is changing.”

Maybe not. MaryAnn Bonino--impresario of the prestigious Chamber Music in Historic Sites series sponsored by the Da Camera Society of Mount St. Mary’s College and a music professor at the college--comments: “It’s a fact that music enrollments are down everywhere. I find that scary.”

The reasons may be sociological as well as musical, Bonino feels.

“We may be seeing the yuppie generation’s true values showing here--those values meaning: money. We all know that for years, the liberal arts have been in decline, while business degrees are increasing.”

And the long-term effects of cutbacks in music education at all school levels across the nation may now be showing up, she observes.

As far as the Coleman Competition is concerned, another local impresario, Eugene Golden of Music Guild, points out that the Pasadena-based organization is not the only one encouraging young ensembles.

“There is competition between the competitions,” Golden observes. “There are major chamber music competitions in Banff (in Canada), in Chicago, and in a number of other places. Some of these give a lot more money than Coleman does” (the top prize in the triennial Banff Competition is $20,000, as compared with $3,000 in Pasadena).

That might begin to explain the paradox voiced by McDuffee: “The strange thing is, there are so many new chamber ensembles sprouting up all over. And the attendance at chamber music events is up, also.”

ENDING WITH A SMILE: Announced recently, the demise of the Glendale Chamber Orchestra, after seven years of service to its community, came as a surprise to some. But not to Christopher Fazzi, the conductor and composer who founded the ensemble.

“We ended our latest season by breaking even financially on a budget of over $75,000,” Fazzi told The Times after the announcement. “We were within $100 of that point,” but with no surplus for next season. And small prospects.

“We had applied, as usual, for grants from city, county, state and federal sources,” Fazzi said. “And, this year, they all turned us down.

“So I had the choice of spending all summer trying to raise about $100,000 for next season, or throwing in the towel.”

With several commissions waiting on his desk, and other ventures pending--Fazzi is a film and television composer as well as a writer in classical forms--the conductor decided to go back to the creative side.

“I’m not bitter,” he said. “We’ve accomplished a lot, and have brought music to a lot of people--including 3,000 students we gave free tickets to in those seven years. What we’ve done has been positive. We just decided it was better to quit now, before we have a deficit.”