·Individual's Guide Main

·Prelude

·How you can
Commission Music

·Guide to costs

IN THE TWIN CITIES, A DYNAMIC GROUP OF FRIENDS GETS TOGETHER AND COLLABORATES IN COMMISSIONING MUSIC. WHEN HELLA AND HER HUSBAND BILL JOINED THE CLUB, THEY FOUND FUN, FRIENDSHIPS, AND A NEW WAY TO OPEN THEIR EARS.

Born near Dusseldorf, Germany, Hella Mears Hueg grew up in an academic and musical household-her father was an historian and gifted amateur pianist. She was 14 when World War II ended and it was then she discovered theater and music, attended symphony and chamber music concerts and made friends with musicians. "When I was a teenager," she remembered, "the world opened up with exciting things that had been verboten, and that impacted highly on my political outlook."

The Commissioning Club

Trained as an actress, Hella enjoyed a professional career in the theaters of Germany. In the 1960s, she married her first husband, who was an inventor and industrialist, and together they settled in the Twin Cities and supported the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. They shared their love of music and traveled the world-he is now deceased. More than two decades ago, she married her second husband, Bill Hueg, an agronomist who, before his retirement, taught at the University of Minnesota. They have a large farm where they grow flowers and trees.

For Bill's 70th birthday, Hella wanted to give him an appropriate gift…

Libby Larsen

There are wonderful poems by Rilke translated into English and I thought how wonderful it would be to set those to music as a 70th birthday present for my husband Bill. I had met the composer Libby Larsen and she had become a friend so I proposed this idea. We read poems to find the right ones, including love poems by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose words became the cycle's title: Beloved, thou hast brought me many flowers. We worked hard to find good translations and rehearsals took time as well. It took a year for the song cycle to evolve. I love darker timbres, so I requested a mezzo soprano with a cello, and then a piano was also needed. Of course we wanted to keep it all a secret from Bill so whenever Libby phoned me at home, she used another name. And he never suspected!

The songs were sung at a surprise party at our home in 1994. Bill was delighted. Afterward, we held a public performance at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum. Libby is very generous and gracious and every time the songs are performed in the neighborhood, she lets us know and of course we attend.

At that time, I was aware of the Minnesota Commissioning Club in our community. It was formed by Jack and Linda Hoeschler and each member agrees to contribute a set amount of money each year ($2,000 each year per couple) for five years to commission five or more works of music. Some of the members were already friends of ours and when one couple rotated out, they invited us to join. Our meetings are always very noisy and funny. We are five couples-including three professional musicians and music lovers and supporters-and there is a lot of laughter.

We meet after dinner at each other's homes and we talk about potential projects, music and musicians we have heard, and about our families. We have refreshments and desserts. And often there are eight people talking at once! How in the world can something evolve out of such chaos? If you had a lot of hubris, you would say the universe was created out of chaos after all. But a stranger might think we were crazy.

Often one couple brings a project idea and we agree on it and pursue it. The others support it through whatever networking they can give. In the meantime, everyone is thinking three years ahead. As a group we want to have different kinds of compositions as well as spread our support around various musical organizations. Sometimes ideas come through someone's special interests-like, if you want to commission an oboe concerto, you probably already have an oboist in mind. Since I have a strong bias toward the darker sounds, Bill and I put our money where our interest is, so we also sponsor the principal cello chair for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra and the principal bassoon chair for the Minnesota Orchestra.

At our club meetings, sometimes ideas get shot down. Other times there is enthusiastic support but for some reason the project never takes shape. It's a process and never completely straightforward. But I love it and along the way you have a lot of fun and you really get to be intimate friends.

For one of our premieres, members of the group traveled together to Norway. My next project will be in Germany in 2004-5 and we'll get a group together to travel there to hear the premiere-we are putting the plans for that project through the wringer at our next meeting.

What's fascinating is that each person comes to the group with a different perspective. I started with a particular interest in the combination of words and music in song. Someone else might come with a passion for one particular instrument, whether it's viola or piano. They'd say, wouldn't it be great to have a new piece of music for this instrument, and from this first idea could grow a whole new understanding that can go beyond this piece.

A commissioning club can form like a book reading group. There is such a benefit in discussing new musical ideas and shaping them. You get away from your own tunnel vision when you hear other people's opinions and ideas, and it helps shape your interest, knowledge and vision.

My personal growth has been in appreciating contemporary music. I had no idea what I was missing. I had always loved and known music intimately, but through listening to new music and new composers, I find that now when I go to a chamber or orchestra concert, I'm most comfortable when there is a new piece on the program! Of course I still love Bruckner and Mahler, but now I hear contemporary music as taking their colors and making something new that challenges me. You must continue to grow as a person-the Commissioning Club has been a learning experience for us.