One of the aspects (one of the few aspects) I do dearly miss about playing in a major orchestra is an element that is seldom discussed anywhere– it is the collective spiritual continuity that exists in the people who play in them.
I had grown up occasionally hearing grand romantic tales about the Boston Symphony playing Beethoven, being conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. Then, when I first began playing the bass for money (I was a mere stripling, just 19 years old), I found myself working with a lot of musicians who were nearing the end of their careers/lives. And when this happened, the once distant fairy tale fantasy started to become amazingly real.
For example, when I was in high school I studied with a guy . . . who knew a guy . . . who knew Beethoven. Well, at least, this guy had heard a concert conducted by Beethoven (and by the way, he claims when Beethoven conducted his Fifth Symphony, he did the opening 4 notes in a grand largo style before jumping into the allegro tempo.)
Then when I was playing the Boston Opera, Sarah Caldwell was fond of hiring retired BSO players– and I met and worked with Richard Burgin (concertmaster of the Koussevitzky era), and a bass player in his 80's who also played for years with the BSO in that era. And of course when I played with the Boston Pops, I met all these guys, some in their 80's and 90's, who had been born in the 1800's and had of course played all through the twentieth century with all the big names that I only knew as print on 78's.
I played for Arthur Fiedler, and there are few people younger than me who can make that claim. (I almost got to play under Stokowski when I was in high school, but sadly he was too ill to conduct the national youth orchestra– sigh, the guy in Fantasia. Sorry I missed that connection.)
Of course, now I am in my 50's and I am connecting to the new threads of the tapestry– trying to share the “culture” with the new kids on the block who have proven themselves worthy of membership. It’s an exclusive club.
In a world where a sense of real personal connection is becoming rarer and rarer, classical musicians have the privilege of being able to do a completely different sort of genealogical chart, as well as having a sense of family connection through one’s work. Unlike many workplaces of late, where people come and go on a dime, in the orchestra business, people tend to stay right where they are for a long time– it gives a sense of grandma’s house, being an eternal dependable temple of place where one belongs.
For all the advantages of our lightning fast communications, there is something being lost in the shuffle in our modern world, which is a sense of continuity and connection that we have evolved to expect. Yes, classical music is a world made of wood, horsehair, the intestines of cows, lambskin, and hand-shaped pieces of brass. It is rather slow and old fashioned, it changes slowly if at all, and in this all too ephemeral world I am a richer person for having connection to this larger family . . . and that has nothing to do with the notes.
© Justin Locke
