SCHUBERT!!! WE SHOULD BE PLAYING SCHUBERT!!!

Strangely, I have lately run across a certain mentality in the orchestra business that I thought was heading into extinction.  Silly me.

With a heavy sigh I report a sighting of that creature that we had all hoped had died out – the Convince-sualist.  These are the people who believe that Classical Music is Sacred.  Our Music is obviously Superior to yours, and you need to come to the Orchestra to be Convinced of our Superiority.  As so, there should be No Talking Ever at an Orchestra Concert as it disturbs the Holy Concert.  Clapping between Movements is strictly VERBOTEN!  At no point should an Orchestra stoop to the level of the poor audience and actually Entertain them – Mahler Forbid – but we should Convince them of our Artistic Brilliance and the Genius which is the One True Music.  If we would just play MasterWorks at every Worship … uhh…… I mean Concert, and never ever EVER play anything that is remotely identifiable as having been influenced by those lesser noises (I even shudder to mention the word Jazz or, Mahler Forbid, Pops), then the Great Unwashed Heathen will flock ….. FLOCK I SAY!!! ……… to our doors and bow themselves down before The Brilliance which is our Sonic History.

Proof positive that denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.

If it wasn’t so sad I would be tempted to laugh, but at least in our business the only harm this attitude does is destroy our audience base and make the industry even more irrelevant to more people.  Out in the real world this approach to life causes some serious damage.  This is the same attitude which is biting Ben XVI in the tuchus because he forgot to check the ramblings of that crazed holocaust denying bishop before he sent him his “get out of excommunication free” card.  No matter how hard the Holy See pushes that particular nut isn’t going to admit that 6 million Jews were victims of the Nazis, and he’s going to base it all on his pre-Vatican II orthodoxy.  Yikes.  Politics has the same strain of True Believer, and God help us if they make it into the seat of power.  Please rf. The Administration of George W. Bush.

At least in our business the Convince-sualist doesn’t have the power to invade countries, but that they still exist is really mind boggling.  Does not every shred of evidence point to the fact that Classical Music has been marginalized over the past 40 years precisely because of the appearance that we take ourselves way, way, way too seriously? Is that not the general perception of our business out in the world? Perhaps we should just lighten up.

Several years ago I remember doing some kiddie shows with the (ensemble to remain nameless) Symphony Orchestra.  There was this old guy in the violin section whom I knew, and we were civil with each other despite the fact that it seemed to be his mission in life to show up every morning and make everyone else’s life miserable.  He had survived the Holocaust, made it over to the States, and had a long career with this orchestra, but I always wondered if music still made him happy.

The kid show was for Junior High students and they were from the “less priveleged”  section of town.  Knowing that we tried what we could to make some kind of connection with them, anything we could think of.  A little dancing from a local troop, some music written by non-White Central European Dead Guys, some back and forth – anything to try and reach them just a wee bit.  After the concert I was backstage and Violin Guy came hobbling past me.  As he went by he turned to me and snapped:

SCHUBERT!!!! WE SHOULD BE PLAYING SCHUBERT!!!!!

For two minutes I stood there and tried desperately to think of anything, any little thing, that I could have said about Franz Schubert and his glorious music that any of these kids would have given a flying damn about.  But Violin Guy was utterly convinced that if we played Schubert then they would all get down on their knees and Praise God.  Maybe 50 years ago in Europe, but certainly not in Middle America at the turn of the millennium.

Funny enough I was reminded of another episode quite recently.  The Canadian composer Gary Kulesha was in Edmonton and he conducted his 3rd Symphony with the ESO.  In the midst of the week we had a kid show and he mentioned to the kids how affected he was by the 2nd side of Abbey Road, and how it really inspired him to become a composer.  My heart started to beat fast and I had to follow up on that because I had my own experience with that phenomenal chunk of music.

Back at the end of my freshman year at the Eastman School of Music I remember that they called all the freshman theory classes together in the lecture hall up in the annex.  By this time we were so tired of chasing chordal progressions through boring early Baroque chorales that nothing could ever excite us about music theory.  Then the chief nerd on the music theory faculty got up and quietly announced that this class was going to be about the 2nd side of Abbey Road.  Stunned silence falls over the room.

Over the next hour this guy proceeded to dissect, explain, and bring the 2nd side to life.  He mapped out the chord progressions, how the keys of the songs were all related, how the structure was all interconnected, right down to the fact that the last two notes – the A and E in the bass of Her Majesty – were actually not a false cadence, but rather a clue to the entire harmonic structure of the side.  He then played the whole side as we followed along with his analysis.  At the end the whole room was dead quiet.

I will never, ever forget what happened next.  100 thoroughly jaded, music theory hating freshman, rose to our feet as one, and gave this guy the only standing ovation I had ever seen in a classroom.  We couldn’t help it.  Wild cheering, foot stomping, outright amazement.  Finally, FINALLY, here was proof that all that terrible music theory we had suffered through had a practical purpose!  To this day I can’t hear anything from Abbey Road without thinking of that lecture, and that has led to a personal fascination (nerd fest?) when it comes to progressive Rock.  Motific Development in Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick?  Been there.  Arch Form and Harmonic Analysis in The Gates of Delirium by Yes?  Done that.  Through Composition and Text Painting in The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway by Genesis?  Hold on, let me pdf you a copy.  For me it’s all just music, and I consider it all great music, and because of what I was shown that day in music theory I have the tools to understand it all better.  What I happen to perform is classical music, yes, but I’m not arrogant enough to consider my art form so very superior to everyone elses.

It’s a shame we’re still fighting this battle but I guess we must.  Hopefully the Convince-sualists will die away, but the next best scenario is that they stay in classical music because if they ever get into politics or religion then they can do some real damage to the world.

17 thoughts on “SCHUBERT!!! WE SHOULD BE PLAYING SCHUBERT!!!”

  1. It’s always a great joy to see Yes mentioned here. This also led me to think about something here: the difference between how the desire for a particular repertoire is actually made reality, by an orchestra or by an individual performer. A performer, I believe, has a bit more of freedom to decide what he’s playing than an orchestra. Excluding the ‘the more famous you get, the more choices you can make’ thing (less choices, maybe?), performers can earn enough from smaller audiences, which also means one can dare on his choice more. How much is that far from the truth, Bill?

    • Hmmm…… good question. Certainly if you’re Yo-Yo you can pretty much call your own shots. There have been concerts I’ve involved with that an orchestra absolutely has to have a certain rep. As long as it isn’t something I despise I usually go along with it. Orchestra members, generally, don’t have that much of a choice since playing in the orchestra is The Gig. I guess this is why so many of my friends play chamber music – just to stay sane. Somewhere I’m sure an enterprising Grad student has done a paper on this subject.

  2. With all due respect,I think you’re setting up a straw man here. That elderly violinist is hardly typical of orchestral musicians, nor are orchestral concerts the kind of stuffy,boring affairs that many claim they are just because audiences there don’t behave the same way as the audiences at Rock or pop concerts.
    Young people (or not so young ones) who are not familiar with classical music may sometimes be hostile to it because it’s just something that is totally different from the music they are accustomed to,and they also have no frame of reference. And there is also the myth that classical music is stuffy,boring and”elitist”. If we could debunk this myth, we might be able to get more people,of whatever age,to enjoy classical music.

    • Greetings Robert,

      Thanks for your post, but I will go to my grave proclaiming that the “Schubert! Schubert!!” incident actually happened. I will never forget it and I can picture it right now. I could provide more details (which would be confirmed by others) but perhaps that would be unkind. Suffice it to say – it happened!

  3. With all due respect,I think you’re setting up a straw man here. That elderly violinist is hardly typical of orchestral musicians, nor are orchestral concerts the kind of stuffy,boring affairs that many claim they are just because audiences there don’t behave the same way as the audiences at Rock or pop concerts.
    Young people (or not so young ones) who are not familiar with classical music may sometimes be hostile to it because it’s just something that is totally different from the music they are accustomed to,and they also have no frame of reference. And there is also the myth that classical music is stuffy,boring and”elitist”. If we could debunk this myth, we might be able to get more people,of whatever age,to enjoy classical music.

  4. With all due respect,I think you’re setting up a straw man here. That elderly violinist is hardly typical of orchestral musicians, nor are orchestral concerts the kind of stuffy,boring affairs that many claim they are just because audiences there don’t behave the same way as the audiences at Rock or pop concerts.
    Young people (or not so young ones) who are not familiar with classical music may sometimes be hostile to it because it’s just something that is totally different from the music they are accustomed to,and they also have no frame of reference. And there is also the myth that classical music is stuffy,boring and”elitist”. If we could debunk this myth, we might be able to get more people,of whatever age,to enjoy classical music.

  5. With all due respect,I think you’re setting up a straw man here. That elderly violinist is hardly typical of orchestral musicians, nor are orchestral concerts the kind of stuffy,boring affairs that many claim they are just because audiences there don’t behave the same way as the audiences at Rock or pop concerts.
    Young people (or not so young ones) who are not familiar with classical music may sometimes be hostile to it because it’s just something that is totally different from the music they are accustomed to,and they also have no frame of reference. And there is also the myth that classical music is stuffy,boring and”elitist”. If we could debunk this myth, we might be able to get more people,of whatever age,to enjoy classical music.

  6. Great subject!!

    One of the standout new (not so new anymore) phenomena in the NYC area is the Wordless Music project. Now, what are all of our favorite symphonic composers creating but wordless music? No matter. These concerts, aimed at bringing younger folks into the classical music sandbox combine old Classical and new adventurous classical and other genres.

    The main point is that they work.

    Our school education systems are not teaching music. I think they never did. They produced at best horrendous band concerts with everything transcribed for and voiced in reeds and brass.

    I am 68, so I had music in school. It did nothing for me, not even in a rudimentary way. I learned to love Classical music because it was constantly playing in my house. My father had a great LP collection, and we had a decent WQXR and WNCN.

    These are new times.

    The culture needs to awaken itself. The Wordless Music project is an example of something that works.

  7. Bill—-you have got it totally going on!! If we aren’t able to reach out to the youth of today and capture their attention, classical music audiences will go the way of the dinosaurs!! I don’t care what side of the tracks the kids are from, Schubert is just not sexy for most high school kids. What excites them and pulls them in might be the Beatles or Metallica or Trans-Siberian Orchestra which then allows us to open their ears and minds to all sorts of other musical possibilities. I am a full-time symphony musician who does a lot of teaching/conducting. My students were totally geeked up when I had the opportunity to play with TSO. (Who knew somebody as old as their orchestra teacher could still rock??) Then they wanted to know more about what the Symphony was playing and what I thought was cool—hmmm, very interesting!!! I really think that people, and kids in particular, need to see classical musicians as “real” people, not as some type of deity in a world that they’ll never understand. There is something out there for everyone–and who knows, it might just be Schubert!!

    Meliora!!

  8. William Eddins– you rock! This issue of classical music and its elitism is something I’ve been thinking about for YEARS! I think there is an inherent elitism in the history of the music (created and funded by white, European, upper class well-educated society) that we don’t necessarily address, think about or claim. This elitism is tricky to talk about because this connection to high society lives on in much of the way we still present the music– i.e. the dress, the funders, the dinner parties and events, and as you mention the attitude that this music is lofty and somehow better.

    Of course, that’s not to say that classical music doesn’t speak across cultures or socio-economic class, or that it is not relevant today. I think it is! In fact I don’t think I’ve met a child who liked classical music any less than any other kind of music (i.e. see music education message from another writer).

    There are so many ways to listen to music. Couldn’t we change our 19th century performance format and dress code, and etiquette to fit the context of today? And if we want to find new listeners and that means dropping the elitist overtones shouldn’t we drop the elitist 19th-century conventions that signal back to the 19th century???? And could we do that without losing the established audiences and funders and supporters who like it just the way it is?

    An let’s be totally RADICAL: in addition to more casual attitudes from the performers, conductors, presenters… could we also look at the format of the concerts? Why do we have to listen in a segregated way? Why are classical concerts for classical audiences and popular music concerts for the others? You yourself mention that you listen to lots of stuff, as do I, as do most people I know. Leonard Bernstein was a fabulous example of how to present music from lots of styles respectfully and creatively…. There are ways to present music around a concept, idea or exploration of a theme that would make a multiple style concert coherent (like a performance version of the music theory class you wrote about. Let’s break the mould….. Let’s have classical geeks and nerds be wild and crazy and out of the box!!! Oh yeah and maybe less defensive too. Did I mention YOU ROCK?

    Just some thoughts……………….

  9. People forget that Schubert was quite unknown in his lifetime. There was a reason for that. His music is juvenile, gimmicky, meretricious etc. He was truly flatulent. His flatulence led to Bruckner which led to Mahler which led to Shostakovich…a very gaseous pedigree.

    The beginning of wisdom is to recognize Schubert’s limitations. There is something about Schubert that drives off the good and replaces it with bad.

  10. In his autobiography, Frank Zappa tells of his debate with a collaborator conductor…do we leave out names here?…(first name rhymes with Bent). Frank’s point was that ALL music should be entertaining, whereas the conductor felt that symphony orchestras must play “Serious music”. But Frank pointed out that even what YOU think of as serious needs to be entertaining, because after all,

    …..”what’s the opposite of entertaining music…PUNITIVE MUSIC?”

  11. Hey, Bill–long time no see. I can verify that this did indeed happen–I was backstage at the time. Nobody in the unnamed orchestra would have the slightest doubt that this happened. I have to disagree with you, though, up to a point. Certainly, our tradition has no monopoly on works of genius, and without question our condescension towards our audience is suicidal.
    But…I also have an abiding faith in the masterpieces those dead Europeans left us. You write: “For two minutes I stood there and tried desperately to think of anything, any little thing, that I could have said about Franz Schubert and his glorious music that any of these kids would have given a flying damn about.” Well, as it happens, I play concerts in the public schools in the very city in which the “Schubert” incident you describe transpired, for kids nobody could remotely consider privileged. One of the pieces we always play is an excerpt from Schubert’s “Death and the Maiden” string quartet. I tell how in the song, the Maiden is seduced by Death, sleeps in his arms at the end. The kids eat it up, especially because we do our damnedest to give a great performance of that extraordinary music. We also play Ravel, Bartok, Mozart, lots of Beethoven–and an arrangement of “Meet the Flintstones”, another tune that one of my colleagues lifted off an old “Simpsons” episode, and, depending on the school, Mexican folk songs or “Lift Every Voice and Sing”. But the old fashioned stuff is the main attraction. And the reason I have devoted my life to this archaic old music is because I believe with all my heart that if we let people into our world and give it the performance it deserves, this immortal music can speak to anyone.
    Peace, Bill—-
    Max

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