To be the very best
I often remind myself (and you) of my start in church music. Dad, the Episcopal priest, the organist/choirmaster who was a harpsichord maker in real life, singing in the choir, and taking organ lessons . . . The culture of the music department of that wonderful church, charged with the excitement of the burgeoning movement of historically informed performance, and the revival of classic organbuilding, so active in the Boston area in the 1960s. I was hooked. I spent most of my after-school hours in local churches, practicing. I had paying jobs playing the organ in church from the age of thirteen, and I set my sights on attending the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin.
In my early teenage years I spent one summer washing dishes (saving up my earnings to buy a Zuckermann harpsichord kit), then two summers working for a landscape company on Cape Cod, pushing lawnmowers around the estates of the rich and famous. I played the organ for a summer parish in our town on the Cape and spent most evenings there, practicing and messing around with the organ.
Since those three summers, everything I’ve done has been with the pipe organ. My sons were troubled by this when they got old enough to be wondering what they might do with their lives—“if Dad knew when he was fourteen, what am I supposed to do?”
I know many other musicians who came through high school knowing exactly what they wanted to do with their lives. Those players who spend their adolescent years developing the techniques, embouchures, musculature (AKA chops) necessary for playing their instruments, hopefully nurtured by enlightened and caring teachers, have an incredible leg up. Just as it’s easiest to learn a second language as a toddler (my grandson Ben, at nearly two, has the advantage of parents speaking with him equally in English and Portuguese), the musician who reads music fluently and sets the foundation for a comfortable technique at a young age will have a big advantage later on.
Our system of higher education is set up that way. You’re not going to be accepted as an incoming student in a serious music school when you’re just out of high school unless you have some credible ability with your chosen instrument. I was pretty sure of my organ-playing prowess as an eighteen-year-old freshman entering Oberlin, and I learned a lot about that “big fish in a small pond” syndrome in my first days on campus. Everyone there had been a star in high school, and I was startled to learn that during those first days there was to be a “Freshman Orientation Concert” showcasing new students who had been singled out as exceptional. Funny, they didn’t ask me! The gauntlet was laid down that night.
In the first few days of classes, I learned a thing or two about teachers who expected a lot from their students. One stands out in my memory. Robert Melcher taught Music Theory, notably the cornerstone, two-semester course intended to ground freshmen in musical analysis and four-part harmony. And I mean ground freshmen. He ground up freshmen.
Melcher was a diminutive elderly man whose gait made his head arrive before the rest of him. My classmates reading this will snicker as they recall his tremulous little tenor voice singing symphonic melodies “on loo.” The opening cello melody of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony sticks out in my mind. Loooooo-Loo Loooooo-Loo Loo Loo Loo Looooooo-Loo Looooooo.
Robert Melcher sure did know music theory, and he was a relentless teacher. And he was as mean as a rooster with his tail on fire. Early on he set organists at ease, saying that we were “theory prone” because of the way we understood bass lines. Part of the curriculum included the notation of figured bass, right up our alley. Made us feel great, but must have been hard on the others. When he called on someone in class who couldn’t answer his question, he made them squirm. And he deliberately called on people when he knew they wouldn’t know the answer—and he gave them hell for not knowing.
In particular, he had it out for singers. He generalized, he profiled, and he terrorized them. It was horrible to watch. Today, fully forty years later, I’m grateful that he was my teacher. He gave me a firm foundation in that critical subject that I still value. But I’ll never forget him finishing one of those Loo-loo melodies and then whipping around to pounce on some unsuspecting daydreamer, humiliating them to the point of tears in front of their peers.
How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
That’s the lead to an old joke—the punch line is “Practice.” I had it in mind that it came from the old comedian Henny Youngman.* When I googled, I found that there is controversy, even a few squabbles about who first came up with it. Candidates include Jack Benny, Jascha Heifetz, and Arthur Rubenstein. The Carnegie Hall website states that it was violinist Mischa Elman, grumbling to a pedestrian as he left a frustrating rehearsal, the story as told by Elman’s wife.
How is it that the promising young talent finds his way to the right instrument and, knowingly or not, devotes his life to it while still a teenager? What does it mean to forsake at least part of whatever constitutes a normal childhood to strive to excel in a chosen field? And what is the responsibility of the teacher to acknowledge the student’s sacrifice, to encourage his ambition, and to challenge him in a way that honors his talent without affecting his emotional wellbeing?
The new movie Whiplash tackles this conundrum in the brutal story of Terence Fletcher (played by J. K. Simmons), a brilliant but abusive teacher in an exclusive jazz school. He notices the exceptional talent of a first-year student, a drummer named Andrew Neyman (as played by Miles Teller). Fletcher sees greatness in Neyman and uses intense verbal, physical, and emotional abuse to encourage it. He even abuses Neyman’s fellow students, especially other drummers, in his effort to bring out Neyman’s innate greatness.
In the course of the film we learn that one of Fletcher’s former “great” students had died young—Fletcher told the students in the band that it was a car accident, but we learned that it was, in fact, suicide, encouraged by Fletcher’s brutal methods. We see Andrew make a shy and embarrassed attempt to have a first girlfriend, whom he later enrages when he breaks off the relationship, predicting that he will ultimately be bitter because she’s holding him back from greatness. In Andrew’s eyes, it’s Nicole’s bad luck to simply be a liberal arts student without having declared a major—incomprehensible to him who has been driven to be the world’s greatest drummer since he was a little boy, as we see in his home-movie clips.
Andrew puts tremendous pressure on himself, practicing until blood pours from his blistered hands and defending his drive to greatness in the eyes of his doubting family. Having been awarded “the part” as the school’s premier ensemble participates in an important competition, Andrew wriggles badly injured out of an overturned wrecked car and sprints to the concert hall where he plays his heart out until he collapses. Fletcher rewards his effort by expelling him from the school.
Wendy and I saw Whiplash a few days after it was released. While I never experienced anything like the brutality of Fletcher’s philosophy of teaching, I left the theater with memories of conductors who pummeled me, of friends who gave up their musical passion in despair, and of students being humiliated in front of each other. A week later, I invited a friend who is a great performer to see the movie with me. The second viewing was harder for me to watch because knowing what was coming next in each scene, I was cringing in advance.
Late in the film, Fletcher is brazen as he talks about his methods. He refuses to apologize, even though we know that his style had led directly to the suicide of a student. For much of the film, it’s hard to tell who is the main character. Fletcher is an “equal opportunity” abuser who thinks nothing of shredding the hopes of a promising student in front of his peers. And Andrew is a vulnerable young man with exceptional talent. Part way through the film, Andrew throws in the towel. But his burning, bleeding desire to be the best hurtles him back into the fray.
The lowest common denominator
After seeing Whiplash twice, I’m fascinated by the dilemma of how one finds the balance between Fletcher’s manic desire to spot and encourage greatness and the physical and emotional limits that must be imposed on how teachers relate to their students. Fletcher does things that would have him in jail in a heartbeat if he had been teaching in a public high school. But he’s the leader of the award-winning premier ensemble in the rarified world of the highest levels of education in a splinter-thin pursuit. It’s a cutthroat atmosphere, and Fletcher teaches us the origin of that phrase.
I had the inverse experience when working as director of music at a suburban Congregational church. In staff meetings, the associate pastor was outspoken about being sure that the church treated people equally. Fair enough, as we’re taught that we’re all equal in the eyes of God. But I think she took that too far when she suggested that I should not single out children in the Youth Choir by giving them solos. I should think about how that would make others feel less significant. I was dumbfounded, but I was not found dumb, at least in sense of at a loss for words.
I told her that when I was a kid singing in the Youth Choir, I was given solos to sing. When I was a middle school and high school student, I got all the gigs playing the piano to accompany choruses. That’s why today I’m the director of music. Other kids who sang in that 1960s Youth Choir are now doctors, attorneys, scientists, professors, even priests. I know this because I was reunited with many of them at my father’s memorial service last spring. Wouldn’t I have failed as a mentor if I hadn’t encouraged the children with special talents? And doesn’t it work out that someone who is passed over for the solo on Sunday gets handed the ball in a Little League game?
There are ordinary lawyers and star lawyers, ordinary doctors and star doctors. They might be equal in the eyes of God, but I’ve been treated a couple times by ordinary, even mediocre doctors, and I’ll choose the star any time.
Walking the line
There’s a balance in this conundrum, a line that separates teaching methods that are too harsh and abusive from those that treat all levels of talent equally. Star students should rise to the top. Their teachers should expect the best from them. And the best teachers have both methods and instincts to encourage the students to do their best.
I know that many readers of The Diapason were exceptional students as they forged their way through adolescence, and that many were lonely and outcast because of their devotion to an art form that requires intense discipline. I recommend strongly that you see Whiplash. The film is intense, fast moving, startling, and sometimes scary. It tells the story of the value and the trials of working hard on a specialized education. And it ultimately shows the reward of real devotion to a challenging art.
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In March of 2012, I had a bad fall at work. I was tuning in a lovely old Hutchings organ in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the support for a ladder gave way. I came down from about six feet up and landed flat on my back. Made some kind of noise. My colleague Joshua, sitting at the keyboards, whispered, “What was that?” The wind was knocked out of my lungs, and I had to lie still for a few moments before I could draw breath. I had a cracked vertebra and later had a wicked bout with sciatic pain as that critical nerve has received quite a tweak.
I cringe when I think about what might have happened. I was lucky. I can walk. I know that my right leg and foot are not the same—that sciatic nerve is something like the strings of a marionette—it holds you, and you don’t know anything about it until it goes funky, but I got off easy.
Ironically, a couple years earlier I had participated in a panel discussion at a convention of the American Institute of Organbuilders about organ maintenance, and one of the panelists had spoken at length about workplace safety.
It’s the middle of November as I write, and across the country and around the world, organ technicians are stocking their tool-bags and sharpening their tools, putting fresh batteries in flashlights, and making a round of phone calls and e-mails to clients as they schedule seasonal cold-weather tunings (please be sure the heat is up). As we fan out to do battle against ciphers, remove moths from shallots, adjust contacts, and set temperaments, we remember the hazards of the trade. All of the ladders and walkways in a hundred-year-old organ are a hundred years old. The organ in which I fell was built in the 1880s, around 130 years old.
We climb off the ladder onto the walkboard and feel it sag under our weight. The walkboard is covered with dust and feels slick underfoot. We reach out to the sky-rack of the façade pipes to stabilize ourselves, and it moves sickeningly, the pipes rattling in their loose hooks.
After I fell, I singled out a half-dozen churches whose organs presented special hazards to technicians. I wrote to each of them, telling of my accident, and proposing the installation of new ladders, handrails, supports, and stabilizers. They all responded positively, and that work is now complete. It’s a pleasure to walk out on that precipice, holding on to a sturdy new steel railing. Somehow, it makes me hear better.
I encourage my colleague organ techs to identify those situations that are unsafe and propose remedies to your clients. We can have a new professional organization, the Society for Prevention of Injuries to Tuners (SPIT).
This is on my mind as my Facebook page is alive with posts from fellow tuners hitting the road, offering prayers and salutations. And it’s on my mind because of a dramatic event in New York City. Last week, the Freedom Tower at One World Trade Center was formally opened. Among the first tenants is Condé Nast, publisher of the popular magazines, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. Built on the iconic site, it has 104 stories, and is 1776 feet tall. Freedom Tower, get it? 1776?
Around 8:00 am on Wednesday, November 12, two window washers climbed into their scaffold—a mechanized walkway hung from davits on the roof of the building that lowers the workers down the side of the building. Something went wrong with the system of pulleys and lines, and the rig wound up hanging vertically at the 69th floor, rather than the more comforting horizontal. The workers were securely tethered to the machine, as was all their equipment. News reports mentioned liquids falling from the platform, which would be bad enough for someone on the sidewalk, but no buckets, squeegees, brushes, or whatever other gear they might have had on board fell.
Within about an hour, a special team from New York Fire Department was inside the building at that floor, cutting through three layers of special tough glass to make an opening that would allow the stranded window guys to climb to safety inside.
That site is sacred to us all, especially to those New Yorkers who witnessed the original calamity there. And the NYPD gained a special spot in the national consciousness through their heroic response to the disaster.
As I watched the drama unfold on television, I was struck by the remarkable preparation involved. Thinking back on it, of course the NYPD would have teams specially trained and equipped to deal with high-rise emergencies. There are a lot of tall buildings in this city. But it was very moving to watch the firefighters handling those sheets of glass a thousand feet above the sidewalks, leaning through the opening and helping those guys inside.
NYPD Battalion Chief Joseph Jardin was quoted saying, “It was a fairly straightforward operation.” Some teacher saw the good in him and encouraged him to be the best.
* I was right remembering a story connecting Henny Youngman to Carnegie, but it was the Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets in New York, around the corner from Carnegie Hall. It was a favorite “hangout” of Henny Youngman, and when owner/founder Leo Steiner died, Youngman eulogized him as the “deli lama.”
