« When Value Becomes Cost | Main | Rodney Dangerfields of the Arts »
Why I'm Optimistic About Classical Music
Seldom a day goes by that I don’t hear about the imperiled state of classical music. Like a character in some tragic opera, classical music seems to be in the thrall of a long-drawn-out death scene replete with those who are impatient to begin mourning. Something weird has happened. It’s almost as if the most persuasive evidence of one’s affection has become the amplitude of one’s keening. I wonder if, as in Mark Twain’s case, the reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated.
There is much hand-wringing and gloomy importuning that “something must be done.� The question is, what is that “something?�
There are no shortages of “answers� being peddled or promoted these days. Some people tout arts education as the answer. Some promote encouraging people to play an instrument or to sing. Many believe passionately in providing opportunities for audience experience. Clearly, there are a lot of people doing some hard thinking on the subject. I confess that I am one of them.
Like so many of us, I cannot help but try to learn something from my own journey towards affection for classical music. We all hope that some useful and truthful nugget might be mined from our own experience. Some people would argue that anybody learning to like classical music is as improbable as cultivating a taste for rutabaga. It happens, but it isn’t all that common.
To help make my point here, I’ve dredged up one of my earliest, vivid experiences.
A kid growing up in Cody, Wyoming is not accustomed to seeing grown men shod in black patent leather pumps with red ribbons attached to their toes. I vividly remember those shoes and Igor Gorin – the elegant operatic baritone who wore them with his white tie and tails.
Igor Gorin, Baritone
Men in Wyoming wore boots. My dad wore Red Wings or a bench-made pair of boots crafted by M.L. Leddy of San Angelo, Texas. No red ribbons.
Gorin mystified me. First off, I pitied him for having had to grow up being called “Igor.� Who wanted to share a name with Doctor Frankenstein’s assistant? He was a big, handsome man whose countenance changed almost as fast as Rocky Mountain weather. As he moved from phrase to phrase, song to song, language to language, his face transformed from sunny to stormy to gloomy to hopeful to despairing. On balance, I mused, baritones probably spent more time in cloudy weather than did most people.
The sounds he produced reminded me of a bugling moose: resonant and more than a little dangerous to anybody who crossed it. Gorin, it turned out, was dangerous.
Teddy Blair, a good but rambunctious kid, evidently misbehaved in some way intolerable to the singer. Gorin interrupted his performance, bounded off the apron of the stage, grabbed a bug-eyed Teddy by the scruff of the neck, and hurled him out one of the side exit doors into the Wyoming Winter. Gorin lept back up onto the stage, glared challengingly at the rest of us adolescent boys, smoothed his pearl-studded vest, and resumed singing.
He may have been wearing red-ribboned shoes, but he was no dandified pushover. I had a whole new appreciation for Community Concerts. Some of them were interminably boring and completely foreign to my callow experience, but the odd baritone could be counted upon to make things interesting.
As an inmate at Cody Junior High and a listener to the town’s sole radio station, KODI, and its cowboy-booster broadcast personality, Lyle Ellis, my ears were better suited to the tormented whine of Patsy Cline than they were to the pleadings of Pagliacci. I had discovered music and played my Gibson guitar incessantly.
Like so many others of my day, I craved learning the songs sung by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. If some alien spacecraft had hovered over Rattlesnake Mountain and pirated KODI’s broadcast frequency to transmit classical music, it could not have seemed weirder to me. I distinctly remember pondering once how it was like a hymn that went on forever, only without singing.
How is it then, that I fell hopelessly in love with classical music?
It is a question I am sincerely trying to answer, precisely because my passion for it is so improbable. I am not the issue of an erudite family, nor was I raised among fine arts cognoscenti. My best friend’s parents played in a country music band at a night club (Cassie’s) that was once a brothel frequented by no less a luminary than the town’s namesake – William F. Cody (or Buffalo Bill as he is better known).
My peers’ tastes ran to the Beatles, the Dave Clark Five, Johnny Cash, and Loretta Lynn. Mozart and Brahms were nowhere within earshot.
There were, however, a few people who made a profound difference in the development of my tastes. Two teachers in particular, Paul Hanselmann and James Hager, who were both choral musicians and music teachers, taught me to love classical music. Both were convincing, charismatic men whose alternating proclivities to discipline, inspire, soothe, and terrorize their rowdy students left a lasting impression on me. I learned to love music because I loved and respected them. The simple fact that they said something was worthy made it so.
The same thing happened with my love of reading. Rose Olson, my fourth grade reading teacher, taught me to savor great books. The list of individuals who have shaped my tastes and aspirations is remarkably similar to the list of people I have loved and respected most in my life.
For all my obsession on the subject, how one builds audiences seems a process that remains a mystery to me. Of what little I do know, experience has taught me that audiences are built one person at a time. Audiences are built through relationships that have deeper forces at play than education or exposure. If there is some other efficient industrial model for replicating audience members, it is beyond my knowing.
Daggers, mourners, and hand-wringers notwithstanding, I believe that classical music’s third act is far from over. So long as there are people with taste and character who are able to persuade those within their sphere of influence of its value, classical music will remain a cherished legacy. I believe that this is especially true of teachers. It is why what teachers are in character terms – and what they love – is as important as what they know and transmit.
I harbor considerable hope and optimism for classical music. If it could get its hooks into me during that time of my life – growing up in Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin with trout fishing, deer hunting, horseback riding, skiing, camping, hiking, canoeing, and cavorting as competition – then it probably has more than a few deep breaths left in its bony, sunken chest.
Posted on March 13, 2006 10:04 AM | Permalink
Bookmark with: 
del.icio.us, 
StumbleUpon, 
digg
Comments
Neill - while I agree with your sentiment that classical music isn't on its last leg, I believe there's a flaw in your illustration.
You see, although you shouldn't have been a classical music lover (i.e. family, environment), you became one because of music teachers.
What is happening in the schools today? Music education is being cut from the curriculum. So, less music teachers equals less "ambassadors" introducing the music we love to the kids of boot-wearing fathers; like you and me.
Just an observation...
Igor Gorin, real name was Ignatz Greenberg. In one of the movies, he was listed as Charles Igor Gorin. But what;s in a name he was the possesor of one of the most beautiful baritones ever.
Hey, Neill, thanks for the comments about my husband, Paul Hanselmann. That was a perk! Sounds like you are doing very well.
I was surprised and happy when I read this - Igor Gorin also sang in the small town where I grew up in Tennessee and this brought back many good memories.
Your description is excellent. He sang in my town during the heydey of the Grand Ole Opry, under George D. Hay.
I also remember those patent leather pumps. No doubt if Gorin had been persuaded to sing with the Opry, Judge Hay would have pulled those fancy patent leather pumps and silk socks off the dignified and dapper baritone's feet so fast his head would spin, steal his razor, put a straw hat on his head and force him to swap his impeccable white tie and tails for dirty bib overalls. Even the great talents who played the Opry were humbled that way, and anyone old enough to remember Hay knows what I mean!
But Gorin didn't go near the Opry. He played in a theatre near my home, and he was as compelling and impressive as your describe. His dignity and power opened up the possibilities of classicial music. For the first time I associated power and dignity with great music.
Sure, he looked different, but he had respect for his music and his audience - and wouldn't take off those fancy patent leather shoes and sing in his bare feet just to fit in.