David Bean has sent me an absolutely rocking Convocation Address his teacher, Edward Steuermann, gave at the Julliard in 1964.
Arrogantly I am going to use its perception, realism, humanity and spirit to order this long and two-part post.
Is it worth it?
"We must consider out decision as a kind of sacrifice, and in the back of the restless human mind will always lurk the treacherous question: Was it worth it? Is it worth it to be a musician nowadays? We all here - composers, instrumentalists, singers, dancers - have one thing in common: out of all the forces and instincts of our body and our mind we have chosen one organ to be our guide - the ear! Nietzsche called the ear "the organ of fear", and fear is not a mean driving force in the adventures of the mind. But it is still more: out of the ambivalence of our instincts comes a counteracting force: hope! Perhaps music is just the magic to transform fear into hope. I remember many years ago having to write something about "the music of the future" (there was a time when one believed in such things). I ended with the sentence: "Music is always music of the future", and I hope sincerely for you that you all feel the same way. Otherwise, why make this choice?"
Almost nobody seems to think it a good idea to become a musician, yet our conservatoires, universities and the freelance arena are stuffed like never before. Other professions long in training (doctors, lawyers) enjoy respect: musicians often seem to bridge the social gap between street-sweepers and working girls. Why do we bother, to work all hours without security, wealth or good living? What keeps us at it, hiding from the taxman in dingy rented digs?
The adage knows we do it for love - and we do have to love what we do. But it is not the sort of love cooked up by those who think we'll enjoy working for nothing or less for as long as they want us. It is an ambiguous passion, real only, because it is not clear-cut.
The peacock who would be king
"You are entering school not only in search of inspiration and ideas, but to learn as well all those thousands of skills our art requires. How tempting it would be to reach out by spirit alone and try by inspiration and imagination to gain everything we need to express ourselves! Tempting, but would it be successful? It would be what is commonly called "amateurish". The word sounds almost insulting here, but if you excuse my dialecticism and contradictions, is it really so bad? After all, amare, to love, is the root of this word, and, as you know, love is "what makes the world go round. And if the proudest professional does not have this little prefix ama- in his equipment, he might command everything that can be seen, heard, tasted, all the variety, the colours: something like the plumage of the peacock, who probably would have been elected king of the birds if not for the one moment when he opened his beak and let us hear his voice. This comparison, not too serious, of course, is supposed to show the complexity of musical life, its ambiguities, and the multitude of ways in our almost labyrinthine world."
As my friend and I finally arrived at our digs last week (we had a map, but the residence had been cut off it, sitting uncomfortably alongside five words of Spanish which did not include "where is...") we were greeted by a noise unheard outside Dante's ninth circle. Because the bedrooms were being cleaned, all the harps had been shifted to the room downstairs: but, unwilling to lose a moment's practice, everyone was still playing them, together. Each contestant had to play louder and faster than the one before, to hear themselves and frighten the others, with the shaky intonation of 40-degree heat and simultaneously rendered Spohr fantasies.
I hate Spohr, even on one harp ably tuned, and after all music involves listening to what you are doing, so I went outside to look at the mountains. And call me inexperienced, but I think by the time you arrive at an international competition you should already know your repertoire. You should warm up, do any necessary technical exercises, rehearse mentally and stay fresh for your big moment. If you hammer the harp every minute you can, what are you doing except wearing your spirit away?
Some of the contestants I heard, not yet twenty, are already old women. They are worn out. And this is the tightrope music teeters along, between discipline and relaxation, rigour and freedom. Great artists align the wisdom of experience with the delight of a child.
The most difficult music requires the performer to balance the careful and the carefree most exquisitely. I have never found a piece more difficult than CPE Bach's G Major sonata, because of the tension between technically coping with the snappy, exact ornamentation, and using those ornaments to express delicate sensibility.
Through a similar dialectic of feeling and intellect I love the music of Britten. He knows, so well, Steuermann's complexity, ambiguity, and his clever, passionate music is the more moving because he perceives the real knottedness of things others cannot see. Recurrently his music posits innocence and delight, cruelty and fear: often a preoccupation with childhood, because it is as children we are most delighted and also sometimes most afraid. And, virtuoso composer though Britten is, he also recognises how difficult it is to walk the wire at once across joy and pain. In Death In Venice, as Michael Phaidon writes, "the danced games of Apollo are the trigger for the ensuing nightmare in which Aschenbach realises the conflict within him between an Apollonian love of beauty and a Dionysiac sensual passion, and that in its turn is the catalyst for the scene of his deepest humilation, when he allows the insinuating hotel barber to dye his hair and rouge his cheeks in a vain attempt at rejuvanation."
Uncertain and Obscure
"Having been asked so many times that fatal questions: "Do you think I can, do you think I should become a musician?" - my answer remains the same, "Only if you love music so much that you can stand a life of adversities." So many times repeated, today a banality, it still remains true; although again, the definition of love is uncertain and obscure."
Our relationship with music is bittersweet, strong equally in highs and lows, and perhaps artistry is, to handle these genuinely conflicting sides and create sense and meaning out of the muddle. Great art has many layers to it, but is also clear, and in its clarity it is beautiful, whether classic or romantic or avant-garde.
This is the middle of my long post. I will finish for today with Oscar Wilde's The Selfish Giant.
Every afternoon, as they were coming from school, the children used to go and play in the Giant's garden.
It was a large lovely garden, with soft green grass. Here and there over the grass stood beautiful flowers like stars, and there were twelve peach-trees that in the spring-time broke out into delicate blossoms of pink and pearl, and in the autumn bore rich fruit. The birds sat on the trees and sang so sweetly that the children used to stop their games in order to listen to them. "How happy we are here!" they cried to each other.
One day the Giant came back. He had been to visit his friend the Cornish ogre, and had stayed with him for seven years. After the seven years were over he had said all that he had to say, for his conversation was limited, and he determined to return to his own castle. When he arrived he saw the children playing in the garden.
"What are you doing here?" he cried in a very gruff voice, and the children ran away.
"My own garden is my own garden," said the Giant; "any one can understand that, and I will allow nobody to play in it but myself." So he built a high wall all round it, and put up a notice-board.
TRESPASSERS
WILL BE
PROSECUTED
He was a very selfish Giant.
The poor children had now nowhere to play. They tried to play on the road, but the road was very dusty and full of hard stones, and they did not like it. They used to wander round the high wall when their lessons were over, and talk about the beautiful garden inside. "How happy we were there," they said to each other.
Then the Spring came, and all over the country there were little blossoms and little birds. Only in the garden of the Selfish Giant it was still winter. The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. Once a beautiful flower put its head out from the grass, but when it saw the notice-board it was so sorry for the children that it slipped back into the ground again, and went off to sleep. The only people who were pleased were the Snow and the Frost. "Spring has forgotten this garden," they cried, "so we will live here all the year round." The Snow covered up the grass with her great white cloak, and the Frost painted all the trees silver. Then they invited the North Wind to stay with them, and he came. He was wrapped in furs, and he roared all day about the garden, and blew the chimney-pots down. "This is a delightful spot," he said, "we must ask the Hail on a visit." So the Hail came. Every day for three hours he rattled on the roof of the castle till he broke most of the slates, and then he ran round and round the garden as fast as he could go. He was dressed in grey, and his breath was like ice.
"I cannot understand why the Spring is so late in coming," said the Selfish Giant, as he sat at the window and looked out at his cold white garden; "I hope there will be a change in the weather."
But the Spring never came, nor the Summer. The Autumn gave golden fruit to every garden, but to the Giant's garden she gave none. "He is too selfish," she said. So it was always Winter there, and the North Wind, and the Hail, and the Frost, and the Snow danced about through the trees.
One morning the Giant was lying awake in bed when he heard some lovely music. It sounded so sweet to his ears that he thought it must be the King's musicians passing by. It was really only a little linnet singing outside his window, but it was so long since he had heard a bird sing in his garden that it seemed to him to be the most beautiful music in the world. Then the Hail stopped dancing over his head, and the North Wind ceased roaring, and a delicious perfume came to him through the open casement. "I believe the Spring has come at last," said the Giant; and he jumped out of bed and looked out.
What did he see?
He saw a most wonderful sight. Through a little hole in the wall the children had crept in, and they were sitting in the branches of the trees. In every tree that he could see there was a little child. And the trees were so glad to have the children back again that they had covered themselves with blossoms, and were waving their arms gently above the children's heads. The birds were flying about and twittering with delight, and the flowers were looking up through the green grass and laughing. It was a lovely scene, only in one corner it was still winter. It was the farthest corner of the garden, and in it was standing a little boy. He was so small that he could not reach up to the branches of the tree, and he was wandering all round it, crying bitterly. The poor tree was still quite covered with frost and snow, and the North Wind was blowing and roaring above it. "Climb up! little boy," said the Tree, and it bent its branches down as low as it could; but the boy was too tiny.
And the Giant's heart melted as he looked out. "How selfish I have been!" he said; "now I know why the Spring would not come here. I will put that poor little boy on the top of the tree, and then I will knock down the wall, and my garden shall be the children's playground for ever and ever." He was really very sorry for what he had done.
So he crept downstairs and opened the front door quite softly, and went out into the garden. But when the children saw him they were so frightened that they all ran away, and the garden became winter again. Only the little boy did not run, for his eyes were so full of tears that he did not see the Giant coming. And the Giant stole up behind him and took him gently in his hand, and put him up into the tree. And the tree broke at once into blossom, and the birds came and sang on it, and the little boy stretched out his two arms and flung them round the Giant's neck, and kissed him. And the other children, when they saw that the Giant was not wicked any longer, came running back, and with them came the Spring. "It is your garden now, little children," said the Giant, and he took a great axe and knocked down the wall. And when the people were going to market at twelve o'clock they found the Giant playing with the children in the most beautiful garden they had ever seen.
All day long they played, and in the evening they came to the Giant to bid him good-bye.
"But where is your little companion?" he said: "the boy I put into the tree." The Giant loved him the best because he had kissed him.
"We don't know," answered the children; "he has gone away."
"You must tell him to be sure and come here tomorrow," said the Giant. But the children said that they did not know where he lived, and had never seen him before; and the Giant felt very sad.
Every afternoon, when school was over, the children came and played with the Giant. But the little boy whom the Giant loved was never seen again. The Giant was very kind to all the children, yet he longed for his first little friend, and often spoke of him. "How I would like to see him!" he used to say.
Years went over, and the Giant grew very old and feeble. He could not play about any more, so he sat in a huge armchair, and watched the children at their games, and admired his garden. "I have many beautiful flowers," he said; "but the children are the most beautiful flowers of all."
One winter morning he looked out of his window as he was dressing. He did not hate the Winter now, for he knew that it was merely the Spring asleep, and that the flowers were resting.
Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in wonder, and looked and looked. It certainly was a marvellous sight. In the farthest corner of the garden was a tree quite covered with lovely white blossoms. Its branches were all golden, and silver fruit hung down from them, and underneath it stood the little boy he had loved.
Downstairs ran the Giant in great joy, and out into the garden. He hastened across the grass, and came near to the child. And when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, "Who hath dared to wound thee?" For on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet.
"Who hath dared to wound thee?" cried the Giant; "tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him."
"Nay!" answered the child; "but these are the wounds of Love."
"Who art thou?" said the Giant, and a strange awe fell on him, and he knelt before the little child.
And the child smiled on the Giant, and said to him, "You let me play once in your garden, today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."
And when the children ran in that afternoon, they found the Giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white blossoms.
