"Danger and goodness, difficulty and meaning"

American Music Teacher, August-Sept, 2004 by Alan Fletcher

We've recently been experiencing another wave of dire statements about classical music: ifs dead, it's dying--the audience is aging, standards are decaying, support from governments, patrons and societies is disappearing; it's almost all over now.

I say "another wave" because people have been saying this at least since the time of Beethoven. Just as one of the regular features of any alumni gathering is the statement, "It's all gone to the dogs," one constant preoccupation of social observers and cultural commentators is to pronounce classical music's demise.

And there's plenty to be alarmed about since orchestras are in trouble, recording companies have drastically cut back and are pursuing bizarre marketing concepts that many serious artists deplore, Broadway theaters are looking for robots to play in the pit and music education for our children is threatened everywhere.

And yet, each winter in the School of Music we hear hundreds and hundreds of wonderful auditions from young people totally committed to this life, and each fall an amazing new group arrives in Kresge Recital Hall at Carnegie Mellon, full of enthusiasm and commitment.

Why is this, and what will become of us?

The impulse to make music is truly a need to make music--it is a fundamental condition of humankind. Our earliest ancestors made--among the first things they ever made--articles of bone, branches, reeds, stones and clay: musical instruments. They sang and played to express love, mystery, pride and identity; to nurture, celebrate, soothe, excite, mourn and carry their present into the future, making something permanent out of memory.

Many of these purposes are served by 'all kinds of music--every mother singing a lullaby is a great musician. But that last element belongs to art that we call "classical." It speaks with an unmistakable intention, across generations of human experience, across boundaries of society, race and class. It carries the present into the permanent.

A really great pop song also preserves a moment in time--"They're playing our song," is a phrase that captures the essence of the moment you first heard a tune, and sociologists agree we tend to love best the pop music styles of our late teenage years, no matter what they were (mine was disco, and I have to adroit ifs true; something that has nothing to do with judgment and everything to do with feeling). A classical work does something different. It changes over time and means something different each time you play it and hear it; each performer has something new to say through it.

A.R. Ammons wrote a wonderful poem, "Corson's Inlet," about a walk he used to take along the beach, through a salt marsh beside a tidal waterway--the pathway changing as the tides change, and the seasons change but also are always the same. Ifs an image of classical art as well: permanent and ever new.

This boundary between popular and classical isn't rigid, and one can argue that some pop music is classical ("Sergeant Pepper'?), and some classical music is pop ("Nutcracker"?). But when you find music that holds your attention through all kinds of experiences, that changes and deepens the better you know it, that changes in a good way when others play it, then you have found something classical.

One of the most important things about classical music performance is that it is difficult. It takes preparation, technique, mastery, determination, discipline, sheer staying power. It's often observed that 11o form of education takes as much teaching time and learning time as music--students of medicine prepare with basic science, but the real work begins after college, while college-age musicians have already spent a dozen years of practice and intensive work with the highest level of teachers, one-on-one, and their families have spent tremendous resources as well! The classical musician is someone who knows the fascination of the difficult and knows there are results that can be achieved no other way except through a kind of dedication most people seldom know.

Another thing we do every day is take risks. To throw yourself into the cadenza of Rachmaninoff III or play the opening horn figure of Brahms 11; to unleash the roulades of a Mozart aria or put the bow on the string to start a Paganini Caprice is to take an exciting risk---and the thrill for performer and listener when the risk results in a dazzling success is very great. Jacques Attali has suggested that this thrill is related to prehistoric practices of ritual sacrifice: the performer is the surrogate victim offered up for the community. They're out for blood. It's an intriguing thought, though it makes for ugly audiences. The fact is, when you feel our audiences in Kresge and Carnegie Music Hall supporting the performers, cheering them on, delighting in their achievement, you have to believe Attali had this wrong at least in part: the performer stands for us in terms of what is best, and most lasting, and truest, so his or her triumph in the face of danger then becomes our own triumph. But he was right to see that this ritual is as old as history and as important.