This solitary figure was going against the grain in so many ways:
- on the lawn versus in a practice room
- playing a big silver tuba, the unheralded member of the brass family vs. a piercing trumpet or stately french horn
- waging its own war against the dying of the light, which could not be won, but not yielding to it nonetheless
- and most dramatically: utterly, completely alone, versus in a classical ensemble, where we would ordinarily find a tuba
The mental picture stuck with me. It was equal parts serendipity, magic, and
ichigo ichie -- (Japanese for one time, one meeting, i.e. an unrecurring
encounter, an unrepeatable miracle). I
have never walked across a scene quite like it -- before, or since. (Though while a student at Ohio
State University
I once came across a bagpiper playing underneath a bridge, but that's another
story.)
But just now I have had an experience that put me in
remembrance. This past Friday night, Northwestern
U. dedicated its new $117 million
Patrick G. and Shirley W.
Ryan Center
for the Musical Arts, eight years in the making.
It is a remarkable edifice, trapezoidal, leaning in,
seemingly rushing forward into Lake Michigan as though some sort of musical
starship that was utilizing the campus as a runway. You can still get a lot for $117 million --
even today. It features a 400-seat
concert hall with a 50 ft. glass wall behind the stage, through which loom
stunning views of Lake Michigan and Chicago
city lights as backdrop. Another
150-seat hall is for opera workshops.
The building adds some 55 practice rooms, and countless other analog and
digital treasures to the music program of NU.
To 'consecrate' the house, on Sept. 25 and 26, 2015, 80 some
musicians from the Bienen School of Music gave a Midwest
premiere of Sila: The Breath of the World by John Adams (noted critic Alex Ross calls him "one of
the most original musical thinkers of the new century"). It took place on the lawn between the new
concert hall and the lake.
Adams writes of it: "The piece traverses sixteen harmonic
clouds, grounded on the first 16 harmonics of a low B-flat. All the other tones in the music fall
"between the cracks" of the piano keyboard -- off the grid of 12-tone
equal temperament."
There is no conductor.
Additionally, there is no melody, no rhythm, just these strange
harmonics wafting ever skyward, for some 70 minutes, a more than ample 70
minutes, my guest said.
A work egalitarian to the core, audience members were encouraged via the printed program to
walk around the players who were widely spread throughout the near football
field size field and hear the presentation from different viewpoints.
How times have changed.
From one somewhat renegade tuba on the grass of his own taking to 80
highly organized musicians, strings, brass, woodwinds, percussion, marimbas,
vocalists etc. Each one had a single
black earbud. Though there were no
"conductors," something was being communicated and/or controlled from somewhere. Or so it seemed.
Famous philanthropists, big buildings, knock-your-socks off,
impressive-as-all-get-out architecture.
Such is the way of the world.
Things get bigger and bigger. In
my own neighborhood, right-sized beautiful family homes are torn down,
seemingly every day, so that new family 'hotels' can take their place at a cost
of three to four times. This is
progress, of course. Of course, the deformation (to use David Stockman's term) of ZIRP helps enormously.
Nevertheless, Dr. Pangloss surely would have approved this best of all
possible worlds, where everything
happens out of absolute necessity, and that everything happens for the best. So, too, here.
We get it. This is
progress.
Yet in a world of declining interest in classical music, (see Slate feature) the
geriatrification of the classical audience, when 500 musicians routinely try
out for a single orchestral post, one has to wonder how many gigs it will take
to pay for a Northwestern music degree, which at this writing runs as follows,
straight off the web site: Full-time
Tuition; Tuition is billed on the first
invoice for each quarter;
$16,208/quarter (3 – 5 courses).
(That's nearly $200,000, just for tuition, for an NU music school
degree.) Then there's the minor matters
of text books, lodging, --- food.
So.....times 1.5, 2, x? Whatever
the case, the number is pretty staggering.
How about the payback?
Ay, there's the rub.
Teaching a master class at Ravinia Steans Institute several
years ago, Kiri Te Kanawa said the lack of potential for the payback was a
serious moral issue, this business of training the next generation of musicians
for jobs that simply don't exist.
She has cited the fabulously successful Met Opera HD Live!
broadcasts, for example, for being not that helpful to the opera world in
general. Why patronize the local opera
company when you can attend "The Met," "live" for a
fraction of the cost?
From the UK Observor (she lives a good part of the time
in London), we have this: "There is
little chance of building up a truly elite tradition of singing outside Europe,
she (Ms. Te Kanawa) argues, because the opera houses in New Zealand and Australia mount only a
few performances a year and are bedevilled with cash crises. "There are
great, dedicated young singers coming up all over the world, and yet there is
no space. No jobs, because there are only so many places at the top
table," she said.
No jobs.
No jobs.
Instead of jobs we have free classical: Spotify, Pandora, streaming and all the
rest. Is it any wonder that classical
record sales are so small (sometimes measured in the scores or hundreds for
major artists) when you have the entire catalog of recorded classical sound
available to you at a mouse click -- for free!?! Not just one recording of Fischer-Dieskau and
Winterreise, all seven that he made through his lifetime. Tons and tons of works, and renditions, impossible to consume in whole, by composers both immortal and obscure. A cosmological and ever-expanding miracle.
This is the blessing and the curse. This is the elephant in the room, the
unspeakable taboo which cannot be named or spoken of: the futility of it all. Classical lovers used to spend thousands on
recordings. Now, those few that are
left, spend ----- next to nothing.
No jobs for newcomers.
No jobs for newcomers.
That same air of futility was evident in Adams'
music; Sila: The Breath of the World, without rhythm,
without melody. Just floating harmonies. Not really going anywhere, like to the tonic, in Haydn or Mozart or Beethoven. Just.....being......there.....up........in.......the......................air........................
As the performance ended, the prodigious and somber concentration
on the part of the players gave way to smiles as they were approached by
family members, friends, and well wishers. The performance art piece thus ended, it was time for all to exhale.
Meanwhile, the suit-and-tie and high heel set who were
moments before wobbling through the grass, through whose largesse this was all
possible, retired through a side door into their magnificent namesake edifice
for a private dinner while the players packed up their instruments to do it all
over again the next night.
Postscript: I
played tennis yesterday with a good friend and noted physician.
His daughter, a talented musician, earned a M.M. in viola at the
prestigious Indiana University
School of Music. I learned she just recently gave up the music
business to re-tool as a journalist via the Georgetown
Journalism school. She is now a reporter
for the Baltimore
Sun.
Her musician husband is now attending engineering school.
