“If anyone has conducted a Beethoven performance, and then doesn’t have to go to an osteopath, then there’s something wrong.” —Simon Rattle
“Whoa! I didn’t see that measure coming. Sorry about my reed; it’s playing like a two-by-four today. Check out the counting of that thing: thirty-second notes in twelve-sixteen time!”
My four comrades and I were bent over double in amusement at the haphazardly executed aleatoric sounds that had just been spewed out of our instruments during a first run-through of our piece. As our instrumental coach chuckled at our youthful giddiness, I was suddenly aware of the way in which the outside world would perceive my situation: it was a Tuesday night during the height of midterm week, and I had just driven lingeringly through a Rochester snowstorm to sit in a small room in the upstairs hallway of the Hochstein Music School and play my clarinet with my classical woodwind quintet. Many might ask why I engage in incredibly nerdy endeavors such as this and up to seven other rehearsals and lessons per week. Some could justifiably giggle at my hefty collection of compact disc recordings of myself, playing in various youth musical performances throughout the years. I have attended band camp–to the amusement of one misconstrued American Pie fan in my French class–orchestral retreats, all-county weekends, and dozens of music festivals. I have even been to Woodwind Quintet Camp, a title which seems to have been created by movie humorists from the eighties to represent a stereotypical activity that would practically beckon doom to the reputation of any male attendee, at the hands of snickering jock bullies.
I have grown accustomed to grueling, unappreciated dirty work as a pit band member, expected to adjust to singers’ preferred keys, and earner of medals and awards half the size of a middle school cheerleader’s. My high school honor flag and morning announcements exalt the victories of every Mendon athletic team throughout the year; when I was the only Mendon musician chosen to attend the New York All-State Music Conference this year, probably about eight people in the school knew it. Is this non-academic half of my life, hidden from many of my peers because of its subtle recognition within the school walls, truly worth the hours of discouraging practice for eight-minute auditions whose results are sometimes determined by subjectivity and the tragic effect of humidity conditions on the resonance of a reed? The answer to this occasional doubtful daydream materializes itself in the smiles of my audience members, whether they are appreciative concertgoers or my glowing extended family, gathered at Christmas to hear my little sister’s and my duet version of O Holy Night on the piano.
I would not trade this dynamic, self-gratifying hobby for anything. During the weekday hours in which I am not manipulating Hess’s Law equations or researching the significance of Andrew Jackson’s New Democracy, I am blessed to be able to engage in melodious art with my friends and musical peers, who demonstrate at least as much teamwork and share as much enthusiasm for life as any varsity swimmer or basketball player glorified everyday in my school.
Sometimes, I argue with my dad, our relationship confined to the classic stereotype of father-teenage daughter conflict. Here, I am the passionate teenage daughter who has existed in every story since the beginning of time. And my dad, fitting the character of authoritarian master of the house, labels me as simply another rebellious young person. Soon, he probably thinks, I will be using my newfound argumentative skills acquired in AP history courses to try to outdebate him, a successful lawyer, about the uncompromising necessity of staying up until 2:00 A.M during midterm week. But yet, there are other times which signify a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree deviation from this cookie cutter household scenario. One night last week, before I turned the lights out to go to bed, I stood stoically against my bedpost, silently concentrating on the exciting ending of Brahms’s Symphony #1. As he peered into my room, my father’s face quickly adopted a look of genuine concern for–and fear of–my apparently freakish departure into the state of mental eccentricity forever referred to as “my own little world.”
Anyone even remotely appreciative of the divine value of music knows that the buildup of accelerating chords at the end of this piece’s last movement far from embodies a “little world”. And if he, along with the rest of my relatives and classmates, could simply drop the serious, dull connotations of “genius” young musicians, they too could appreciate the superhuman thrill achieved not from watching a football game but playing the twenty-minute full score of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet, accompanied by peers overflowing with the same teenage emotions as any high school kid in America. This is my kind of fun: team art. The bassoonist sitting next to me may have broken up with his girlfriend or watched the Yankees beat his favorite team the day before a rehearsal, but it is these common emotions that fuel the expressive professionalism of the youth orchestra. Two young bassists might argue the presence of a certain chord progression in a passage one minute just as casually as they may drool over a discussion of sports cars in the next.
My peers who politely hide their doubt about the physical intensity and mental flexibility of music have never had the experience of playing a concert, an audition, and a rehearsal in one day. I would like to see them hold a thirty-two-beat long tone with the metronome set at one-hundred: the aerobic equivalent of holding one’s breath for over an entire minute! Advanced wind players learn that diaphragmatic pain after playing for hours is actually a good sign; this indicates the use of proper breathing from the bottom of the chest–not the shoulders. A clarinetist in the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra once told me something like this: “Professional wind players are basically trained to constantly adjust their upper breathing cycles—to test their lungs’ and lips’ limits to the point of extreme discomfort–so that they can create the most beautiful sound possible and fool the audience into thinking that their playing physically feels as easy as it sounds. This is what we’re paid to do everyday.”
The most heartfelt gift that I received this Christmas was not a pricey gift certificate, keys to a brand new car, or my own computer. It was a sleek, black music stand. Yes, my little sister was thoughtful enough to drag my mother to our favorite music store, Muzet, to pick up not only the usual items acquired on our regular biweekly visits–the hottest new brand of drumsticks or mallets for Nina and a stash of reeds for me–but also a clanging, cumbersome metal stand. This serious upgrade, which prevents the recurring tumbling of music caused by my pitiful, thin folding stands of the past, will contribute to my sanity while practicing long hours in my room. Many of my friends scoffed at my expressed excitement for this present, but some smiled understandingly. And it is these friends with whom I know I can share wonderful discussions about Berlioz and Beethoven, or Satie and Stravinsky, without the slightest twitch of a judgmental eyebrow.
* Quotation citations:
Simon Rattle, British conductor, b. 1955. Quotation #46020. The Columbia World of Quotations, ©1996, The Columbia University Press. Bartleby.com. 6 Feb. 2004 <ttp://www.bartleby.com/66/20/46020.html>.
John Ashcroft in “Enemies of Classical Music.” Article by Matthew B. Tepper, ©1995-2001. 7 Feb. 2004 <http://home.earthlink.net/~oy/enemies.html>.
Rebuttal
“I tend not to be an individual who has invested a great deal of my life in opera. Now the opera gets a subsidy from the National Endowment for the Arts, but…Willie Nelson and Garth Brooks don’t. Those of us who drive our pickups to those concerts don't get a subsidy, but the people who drive their Mercedes to the opera get a subsidy.” —John Ashcroft
While watching this year’s Grammy Awards on television, my faith in human intellectual and emotional capacity was threatened as I watched a cross-genre performance by jazz great Chick Corea and the Foo Fighters, a dishearteningly obvious attempt to catch young listeners’ attention and still give the old guy a chance to grace the stage again. The music business today must spread itself more and more thinly between the soprano sax melodies that fill airports and the posters of scantily clad blondes with microphones that grace middle school lockers. And the economic benefit of this diluted value of music is precisely the fact that most young people–who represent the majority of record companies’ consumers–judge the substance of their music as fleetingly as they would a style of jeans. Whether classical musicians like it or not, we must realize that we compose only a tiny percentage of the world’s listeners and truly bear no royal right to decide the legitimacy of popular music. If it pleases the masses’ rhythmic innards, it is art. The way to survive in the arts businesses today is with plenty of charm and taste not for the classics–but any taste that will satisfy the ephemeral yearnings of the American psyche.
Music is regarded as “frosting” on the edifice of education and rational everyday life.
- Low respect for orchestral jobs due to lack of direct need in society
- Classical music commonly associated with rich, elderly dull people
- Rock, pop, and country appeal to “the common man” while true appreciation of orchestral works requires education–and intense focus during concerts.
- RPO members unionized last year for higher pay (still earn less than teachers)
- Classical orchestras and radio stations are expensive to maintain and sponsor.
- Non-musicians lead busy lives and truly enjoy relaxing with the simple chords of rock and roll or the down-to-earth, ruggedly human “poetry” of rap.
People are drawn to the convenience and security of professional jobs.
- My dad’s dad said to him: “Med, law, or dentistry school–then music school.”
- Traditional expectations of the breadwinner have fed this perspective.
- Boys not encouraged to pursue artistic careers or hobbies
The arts have been censored for hundreds of years
- Everything representing liberal, revolutionary, or threatening ideas is “harmful”.
- Jazz, blues, rap–but also Baroque and Classical in their own time–censored
- McCarthyism: targeted and blacklisted artistic people (they spread new ideas)
- Even now, some politicians are pro-censorship (Lieberman, Gore)
- But Republican actors in liberal Hollywood atmosphere can feel criticized too, even in danger, for the expression of their contrastingly conservative views
Set definitions are still placed upon traditional social groups in high school.
- Instrumental musicians = bothered, strange, serious, introvert geeks who need to connect to art because people have rejected them!
Many young people attracted to the immediate, external awards of an athlete’s life are drawn in groups to sports teams instead of music.
- Much less expensive than costs of musical instruments, private trips, years of lessons, and seemingly superfluous equipment
- The aerobic and cardiovascular benefits of sports are more attractive to desperate parents and seem to easily solve any problems with childhood laziness or obesity.
- Long-term support systems of friends, teams, coaches, parties as social networks