Klarinet Archive - Posting 000245.txt from 2000/01

From: jim and joyce <lande@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] job satisfactions among professional
Date: Sat, 8 Jan 2000 10:45:46 -0500

Back in 1974, I was sent to New York City on business. With
nothing much to do in the evening, I stood out on the sidewalk at 7th
Ave and West 50 and played my clarinet. There was a new and fancy hotel
on that corner and I watched a couple fairly classy looking hookers
strolling back and forth. I played Summertime and a few other ditties.

A thin older man came over to listen. When I finished a tune, he asked
if it was difficult to play a clarinet.. I suggested that it was not
especially difficult to play at my level. It would help, however, if
he had already played some other instrument.

Well, he was working as a printer, but for 25 years he had played in the
violin section of what was considered the second best orchestra in New
York. He quit and became a printer, he said, because he couldn=92t stand=

playing in the orchestra any more. His =93office=94 had been half of a
music stand which he shared with someone he disliked. Some classical
music, he said, was brilliant and uplifting and absolutely wonderful to
hear. Half of the repertoire, however, he felt was pedestrian. Even
in the great music his part might be plain and repetitive. There was
nothing to challenge the intellect. His job was to reproduce an exact
series of sounds, performance after performance. There was no
creativity for him. He and the other players in his section were on the
assembly line, automatons of the composer and conductor. Yes, the
conductor and the great soloists had great room to interpret and shade
and make the music their own. After a few years, however, he realized
that he was technically proficient but could not approach the talent of
the handful of soloists. He and the rest of his section were
housepainters. And, he added, temperamental ones who spent much too
long in a space much too small.

As far as he was concerned, the Rolling Stones were every bit as good,
musically, as his orchestra. The Stones. Janice Joplin, and the other
pop stars, he said, had more talent than most of the musicians he worked
with. Talent, he maintained, was more than technical proficiency. It
included stage presence and being able to engage and entertain and
challenge and play off of the crowd. In the orchestra, he was nothing
but a dab of paint in the backdrop.

When the violin held no more joy for him, he quit. Even though he had
little respect for technical proficiency, it hurt to feel his skills
deteriorate. He could not play for the sheer exuberance of playing but
instead to listen for his own mistakes. He quit playing altogether. He
loved being a printer. He liked getting ink on his hands. He loved the
internal quiet of being alone with the machine noise. But he missed
playing music, and wondered if perhaps he should get a clarinet.

jim lande

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