Hey Josh, You In?

OK—it’s one of those videos that Hallmark could have produced, and any diabetics out there should perhaps take a shot more of insulin. But for all of that, a lot of trite expressions have some truth in them. Remember, “today is the first day of the rest of your life?” Believe it or not, that poster was hanging on the studio door in Gunnar Johansen’s house. And Johansen was no sentimentalist, but rather the first Artist in Residence at any university, and a grand student of Liszt.

So what’s the video all about? Well, I first came across it—if memory serves—in some Malcolm Gladwell book. The Washington Post had decided to see what would happen if they put Joshua Bell, an extraordinary violinist who’s got a three million dollar fiddle (called the Gibson ex Huberman Strad), in jeans and a baseball cap, instead of a tuxedo, and in a Metro station at 7 AM instead of Carnegie Hall at 8 PM. Would anyone pay attention? Or is the truism that site and expectation dictate our experience…well, true?

Contrary to the video, the Post reports that 37 people stopped and listened. Right—but how many went by? Almost 2,000.

It leads to interesting questions. By and large, the street musicians I hear range from medium to awful. I have heard, however, a few absolutely world-class musicians—women and men who deserve the stage of any major hall in the world.

Maybe some will get there. But my suspicion? The road to Carnegie hall has both a lot of tricky exits and a lot of twists. There is personality, for example: for some people, the pressure of performing for hundreds of people, some who have saved for months to hear you, others who are tired after a day’s work and are being dragged to the concert by their spouse…well, some very good musicians can’t handle that pressure.

But Bell isn’t one of them: in fact, Bell said that the most disconcerting thing was the silence that followed the performance. And though not explicitly stated, the implication is that Bell wasn’t happy with his performance—he needed to feed off the energy of the audience.

In my case, I buckled miserably under pressure, and choked in every audition I took. Note for any readers wanting to pass a pleasant day: don’t walk onto a stage with your sweaty fingers, your roiling stomach, your Sahara mouth, produce horrendous sounds for two minutes, only to hear “gracias!” That being your cue to limp off the stage, avoid the eyes of your competitors, all of whom have left earprints on the stage doors, so ardent were they to hear every wretched noise you made.

Right—I’ve never done it, but still, given the choice of falling down a 200-foot elevator shaft and going through one of those auditions again? Wouldn’t be an easy decision.

So that meant that I put the cello down, and went off to work in the corporate world. And here I confess, I would have heard instantly how good a violinist Bell was: I’m conservatory-trained and have spent decades playing the Bach cello suites, and hearing the violin partitas. But would I have stopped? I didn’t have a time clock to punch, my boss arrived to the office hours after I did, nobody would have snarled if it had been seven AM instead of my usual 6:45.

But the sad truth? For me to listen to such beauty, to open myself to so much loveliness, only to tear myself away, close up again, put on the corporate face as I put on my tie every morning…I might not have stopped. I might have shuddered, remembered someone I came close to being but never became, and hurried away. Time to answer those emails!

My release came, and though the slip wasn’t pink, but a lawyerly-prepared package, I was escorted by “Loss Prevention” out of the building, the inside of which I have never seen again. So Lady, the owner of the café where I work, challenged me, when I proposed picking up the cello again, “why not do it here and let us be part of the process?” Meaning pouring a lot of DW40 on some very rusty fingers, and seeing what sounds would come from a decade-mute cello?  Why not play in the open mic area of the sister shop, where there are chairs and sofas? If it’s horrible, people can move on—otherwise, they can stay.

Casals once said (disclaimer—I think he said, but he’s not around to dispute it) that playing in a café is excellent preparation for a musician. Why? Because people are talking, laughing, clinking silver and plate, and generally treating you like you are the least important person in the room. So that first day in the café? Horrible, and made worse by the fact that my husband and his family were there to give me “support.” Guys? When you’re about to commit the musical equivalent of a seizure accompanied by projectile vomiting, you don’t want family and friends there….

I got through it, though it was 49.9% flight, and only 50.1% fight. And so I’ve done it for months now, and guess what? It’s no big deal, and if people listen, great. If they throw money into the cello case, I donate it to four excellent charities. And if, as happened a week ago, a young man of merciless beauty comes in (with his girl-friend, dammit) just as I had put the cello in the case, well, what else was there to do? He filmed me with his iPad, I gazing at him all the time, and the Bach?

…never sounded better!

It worked out, you see. The performance anxiety is—at least partially—over. But put me in Carnegie Hall, which was where Bell—at age 17—played with the St. Louis Symphony? Who knows? What I now know is that I could make the progression from café to church service to joint recital to….Carnegie Hall?

Because here it’s time to confess—I’m an excellent cellist. That, if I had anything to do with it, would be vanity. But as anyone who has felt the flow of playing well can attest, there’s an eerie feeling that someone else has borrowed your fiddle and your fingers. You’re less a musician than a medium….

So Bell has gone on to a distinguished career, though is he always going to be the “guy-who-played-in-the-subway?”

Yes.

And now he’s going back there, this time at noon, and with publicity at 12:30 on 30 September. And in addition to being there, he’ll be with nine young musicians, with whom he’s been working in the National Young Arts Program. Here—drawn from their website is what they do:

 YoungArts provides emerging artists (ages 15-18 or grades 10-12) with life-changing experiences with renowned mentors, access to significant scholarships, national recognition, and other opportunities throughout their careers to help ensure that the nation’s most outstanding young artists are encouraged to pursue careers in the arts. Support is offered in ten artistic disciplines: cinematic arts, dance, design arts, jazz, music, photography, theater, visual arts, voice and writing.

 Bell’s other point in going back underground? Well, classical musicians have got to get into the public arena and start playing in cafes, coffee houses, bookstores, bars, anywhere where real people are, and then something will happen.

People will love the music we play.

My dream? Get a cellist or violinist in every café in the country at 5 PM, when people are leaving work, not rushing to it. Let people buy a beer, drink it, and listen to Bach. Contribute whatever money you collect to the excellent organizations: here’s the link….

Josh—you in?

Honey, Pass the Kleenex

Well, I heard the statement that 90% of people surveyed had been moved to tears by a piece of music, but only 5% or so reported having wept at the sight of a painting or cathedral. For poetry, interestingly, it appears to go up to about 50 or 60%. So then I wondered—what about me? Have I ever wept on seeing a painting?

I’d like to say yes, but then, what would I say when asked, “what painting?” So it’s better to tell the truth, even if it makes me a Philistine. In my defense, however, I can say that some places have a history and a grandeur that almost spurs the lachrymal glands into action. There’s St. John the Divine in New York City, and there—for entirely different reasons, was the battlefield of Gettysburg. And a month or two ago, I felt something akin to awe by just being in Carnegie Hall.

But then I stopped to wonder—have I truly been moved to tears by a piece of music? And if so, was it really the music, or was it the circumstances around myself at the time, or the memory of particularly emotional moments with which I had associated the music?

Because, let’s face it: there are times of great pain and loss—deaths, divorces, job loss—when you are crying at anything. When my father died, just looking at the garlic press hanging next to the little wire that he used to clean it (it was perhaps his least imaginative invention, but who else keeps a little wire next to their garlic press? Everybody else just scrubs harder….) was enough to trigger wails. And if I had taken the press and the wire to my brother? We would have been wailing in each other’s arms.

The problem? There’s nothing intrinsically sad about a garlic press.

Then there’s music that somehow has gotten associated, either in your or in everyone’s mind, with a particular event. For a lot of people, Barber’s Adagio for Strings is 9 / 11, punto. And that, of course, makes sense, because the music exactly defines the wrenching sorrow of the event. That’s—news flash, here—why they chose it.

All right, but what about the music that is genuinely sad, gut-wrenchingly sad, music that makes you reach for the razor blades? Has anyone ever compiled a list? Surely the Internet could fly in some pieces, since at the moment I can only think of five or six that I would absolutely include.

Fortunately, the Internet came through, and with some surprising choices. Oh, and I must say at the outset that two of the three lists I consulted had ten selections, the other one had only six.

OK—time to guess: what was the piece—and the only piece—that made all three lists?

“Dido’s Lament,” from the opera Dido and Aeneas, by Henry Purcell.

In fact, it made my list as well, among other reasons because I cannot get through the piece, even if I’m manic, without sobbing.

Curiously, Dido is on all three lists, but not one piece of music is on any two lists, which is to say that there are no duplicates. And here, starting more or less from earliest to latest, is what there is:

Miserere, by Allegri—hmmm, absolutely beautiful, to be sure, but sad? Sad enough to move me to tears? In this period, I can think of wrenching music—an Amen, for example, from the Vespers of the Blessed Virgin by Monteverdi, or some of the William Byrd sacred music.

Bach, predictably, makes the lists, but different pieces. “Come, Sweet Death” is on one site—but the piece is for organ, and guess what? I neither like nor dislike organ music, it just doesn’t get in. So I skipped it, after a minute of listening. Then there was “Cum sancto spiritu” from the B Minor Mass, which posed an interesting question: are we to include music that is so joyful that it makes you weep? That’s what the site says, and I’m willing to buy in. But following that argument, I’d vote for “Et in terra pax,” also from the B Minor.

The rest were, if I may say so, outliers. OK—there was Albinoni’s Adagio, which is pretty sad. There was Mozart’s Requiem, as it was depicted in the movie Amadeus. Then, there was Adagio for Strings.

The rest was all over the map, from the lento movement of Shostakovich Fifth, to Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs to the fourth movement of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. Oh, and speaking of Tchaikovsky, his violin concerto—or at least the second movement—lands on another list. An interesting pick was Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen for strings; confession—I didn’t know it, I tried three minutes of it, and decided that not knowing was the preferred option.

Orchestrally, what’s not there? What piece would you expect that is strangely out behind the building, taking a cigarette break? Mahler’s Adagietto from his Fifth Symphony.—I just started to listen to it, in order to make sure it was what I thought it was, and yes, there are tears on the keyboard.

And what about opera, surely good for a cry or two? Well, La bohème makes it on two of the lists, but on one it’s the first aria of Rudolfo, and on the other list it’s the last aria of Mimi. On another list, Verdi’s V’ho Ingannato from Rigoletto appears; Wagner turns up with the funeral music from Siegfried on the third list.

Chamber music? Well, there’s the second movement of the string quintet of Schubert, which yes, definitely would be on my list. Besides that, there surprisingly little chamber music.

There were pieces I didn’t know—most particularly “Amor mío, si muero y tú no mueres,” from an astonishing poem by Neruda. Here, it’s sung by the composer’s wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who died less than eight months after the recording.

Lastly, there was a song by George Butterworth based on the text of A. E. Housman’s “A Shropshire Lad.”  The song did nothing for me, but it did lead me to Vaughan Williams’s treatment of an old folksong, “Whither Must I Wander” And if you are dry-eyed at the end of it?

Check for a pulse!!

(P.S.—here are the links:

http://www.classicfm.com/discover/music/10-classical-music-tear-jerkers/

http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2010/nov/07/10-best-classical-tear-jerkers-fiona-maddocks

http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2010/09/27/130157375/the-saddest-music-in-the-world-7-tunes-to-make-you-tear-up  )