A BRIEF HISTORY OF
MONDAY EVENING CONCERTS
“Has anyone anywhere ever done anything like this?”
(Peter Yates, April 23, 1939)
Founded in 1939 by Peter Yates and Frances Mullen in their modest Rudolf Schindler-designed Silverlake home, Monday Evening Concerts (MEC) is the world's longest-running series devoted to contemporary music. Originally envisioned as a forum for displaced European emigrés and virtuoso Hollywood studio musicians to sink their teeth into the most daunting solo and chamber music of the day (such as the works of the then-revolutionary Charles Ives, Alexander Scriabin, Erik Satie and Béla Bartók), MEC has blossomed its way to international acclaim for its presentation of demanding, uncompromising, philosophical and poetically-charged music – whether new or ancient.
For eight decades, musical history has been made at MEC, whether it was the American conducting debut of Pierre Boulez, world premieres of compositions by Igor Stravinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, John Cage and Harold Budd, the early-career performances of future classical music icons such as Michael Tilson Thomas and Marilyn Horne, or the first Los Angeles appearances of artists like Marino Formenti, the Arditti and JACK Quartets and Steve Reich and Musicians.
Monday Evening Concerts is a seven-time national winner of the ASCAP/Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming. The series is discussed in Eve Babitz's I Used to be Charming and Eve's Hollywood, Susan Sontag's essay Pilgrimage: Tea with Thomas Mann, and is the subject of a full-length book entitled Evenings On and Off the Roof: Pioneering Concerts in Los Angeles, 1939-1971 written by Dorothy Lamb Crawford.
HISTORIC STATEMENTS
ON BEHALF OF M.E.C.
PIERRE BOULEZ:
“To my knowledge, Monday Evening Concerts are the concerts best known in Europe for their work in the field of contemporary music and for their remarkable performances. Each year, we wait impatiently for the publication of their programs so as to be informed of their activity … I will always be delighted to follow the activities of this organization, and I am sure that it will always contribute an element of the great vitality to American musical life, and cast its light toward Europe like a star of special intensity.”
ELLIOTT CARTER:
“To many of us here in New York the programs that have been presented by Monday Evening Concerts have been of the greatest interest, having consistently made the best contemporary music available to the public in outstanding performances.”
KARLHEINZ STOCKHAUSEN:
“I am personally grateful to the Monday Evening Concerts for several first performances in America of my own works … these concerts are unique in the States … and could provide a good model for the whole musical life.”
ROMAN VLAD:
“I can say in all conscience that you are presenting the most beautiful and interesting programs that I have seen in recent times. How I regret that I am too far away to hear them.”
IGOR STRAVINSKY:
“I am happy to say that I hold Monday Evening Concerts in the highest esteem, and that I count it among the most important musical groups in the USA.”
AARON COPLAND:
“Monday Evening Concerts have more than local significance. Because of their proven accomplishments over a long period, they are known wherever contemporary music is of significance throughout the world. They do honor to their sponsors and to the city of Los Angeles.”
LUCIANO BERIO:
“Monday Evening Concerts is very well known in Europe and considered to be one of the most outstanding series for the presentation of the music of our time.”
LUIGI DALLAPICCOLA:
“I cannot tell you how much I admire the courageous way in which you bring together old and new music in an interesting and well-balanced relationship … you are doing a great work for music and for this reason I offer you many, many good wishes.”
PIETRO SCARPINI:
“I wish to tell you how much I admire the high quality of the programs, the great interest of the repertoire, and the juxtaposition of compositions of such diverse epochs and tendencies. I wish for your concerts the success that is merited by an initiative so courageous and illuminating.”
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Eve BABITZ - Eve's Hollywood
Eve BABITZ - I Used to be Charming
John CAGE - The Selected Letters of John Cage
Tony CONRAD - Writings
Dorothy Lamb CRAWFORD - Evenings On and Off the Roof
Dorothy Lamb CRAWFORD - A Windfall of Musicians
Martin IDDON - John Cage and Peter Yates: Correspondence
Lawrence MORTON – Arts & Architecture Magazine
Peter YATES - Arts & Architecture Magazine
Ian PACE - New Music : Performance Institutions and Practices
Joan PEYSER - Boulez : Composer, Conductor, Enigma
Susan SONTAG - Pilgrimage: Tea with Thomas Mann
Peter YATES - An Amateur at the Keyboard