Klarinet Archive - Posting 000255.txt from 2001/06

From: Bill Hausmann <bhausmann1@-----.com>
Subj: [kl] Fwd: A PERSPECTIVE ON PROFESSIONALISM IN MUSIC
Date: Tue, 5 Jun 2001 17:25:45 -0400

This article was quoted in part earlier on the list. Here is the whole
thing. It is worth it!

>BBC Music Magazine: April, 2001
>
> From his comfortable position as a well-known author,
>Garrison Keillor feels every sympathy for his underpaid,
>overworked violinist wife. (He read this over the air
>(BBC) over Easter weekend, 2001.)
>
>My wife is a violinist, a freelancer, a foot soldier in
>God's floating orchestra, who waits for the phone to
>ring, and then goes off and plays the Faure Requiem at a
>Presbyterian Church at 7 PM on the 21st, rehearsal at 5
>PM, or six rehearsals and eight performances of the
>Montagues and Capulets, or a concert of African-American
>composers for Black History Month, and comes back to
>tell me stories about the soprano with the big diva
>attitude and major pitch problems, and the timid
>clarinetist, and the blatty trombone player, and the
>French horn player who dropped his mute during the quiet
>passage.
>
>For her work, which is highly skilled and requires years
>of exacting preparation, and is stressful, being so
>unforgiving of errors, she is paid a fraction of what a
>rookie waiter of modest charm could earn on any Friday
>night in an upscale restaurant. But she is glad for the
>work, and her complaints about the pay are always good
>natured. Of course, it helps that she married well.
>
>When she was 14, she left the little town that we both
>grew up in, and went off to music school, and to
>violinist boot-camp, and landed in New York City, where
>she worked for 20 years, bopping around from opera tour,
>to regional symphony, to Broadway pit orchestras, to
>church gigs, and off to Japan with a pick-up orchestra,
>to do Vivaldi and Bach. And then tour the South with
>Madame Butterfly.
>
>My wife has played for Leonard Bernstein, and she has
>played for the Lippezaner Stallions. She is a pro. I
>love to sit up and wait for her to come home after a
>performance, and hear how it went. Usually, it went
>just fine. Sometimes she is ecstatic about what they
>played, or about some singer who was especially fine.
>
>Sometimes she grits her teeth. The trumpets were bad,
>or the baritone dropped a wine glass on the stage and it
>rolled into the orchestra pit and almost creamed the
>harpist. Often she has something pithy to say about the
>conductor or the soloist. If she says, "I thought he
>was very unprofessional," it's a real slap. A famous
>soloist who is haughty toward the commoners backstage--
>that's unprofessional--it's just not done! A conductor
>who glares at someone who just played a bad note--
>unprofessional! Worse than the bad note.
>
>Orchestra professionalism is a world apart from mine:
>mine prizes attitude and a rakish hat, and star quality,
>and interesting underwear. But the true musician's
>concept of professionalism prizes ensemble playing, and
>precision, and a sort of selflessness--and this concept
>of professionalism can be expressed in certain
>principles. You won't find this list posted backstage,
>but, my wife tells me, that's because everybody knows
>this stuff right out of music school:
>
>1. You are, of course, on time. Always! Don't come an
>hour early (amateurish) but never come late. Never!
>This is an orchestra and you are Violinist, you're not
>some paper-pusher at Almalgamated Bucket. (Orchestra
>musicians are experts at finessing public
>transportation, and if they do drive, at finding parking
>spaces no matter what, legal or illegal. Everybody has
>a strategy for "Getting to the Gig;" and a back-up
>strategy in case the area is cordoned off for a
>Presidential motorcade; and an emergency strategy, in
>case of earthquake or civil disorder, or an invasion of
>the body snatchers.)
>
>2. Don't show off, warming up backstage. Don't do the
>Brahms Concerto. Don't whip through the Paganini you
>did for your last audition. Warm up and be cool about
>it.
>
>3. Backstage you hang out with the other string
>players, not brass or percussion. You don't get into a
>big conversation with the tuba player, lest you be
>lulled into relaxation. He is not playing the
>Brandenburg No. 3 that opens the show--you are. Stick
>with your own kind, so you can get nervous when you
>should.
>
>4. You never chum around with the conductor too much.
>Likewise the contractor who hired you; you can be nice
>but not fawning, subservient. If one of them is perched
>in the musicians' common backstage, don't gravitate
>there. Don't orbit.
>
>5. You never look askance at someone who has made a
>mistake. Never! If the clarinet player squeaks, if the
>oboe honks, if the second stand cello lumbers in two
>bars early, like lost livestock, you should keep your
>eyes where your eyes should be. You are a musician, not
>a critic. String players never disparage their stand
>partners to others. Stand partnership is an intimate
>relationship, and there should be a zone of safety here.
>Actually, you shouldn't disparage any musician in the
>orchestra to anybody, unless to your husband (or spouse)
>or very good friends. But you never say anything bad
>about your stand partner.
>
>6. If the conductor is a jerk, don't react to him
>whatsoever. Ignore the shows of temper. If he makes a
>sarcastic joke at the expense of a musician, do not
>laugh, not even a slight wheeze or twitter.
>
>7. Try to do the conductor's bidding, no matter how
>ridiculous. If he says, "Play this very dry, but with
>plenty of vibrato, go ahead and do it, though it's
>impossible. If he says, "This should be very quick but
>sustained," then go ahead and sustain the quick, or
>levitate, or walk across the ceiling, or whatever he
>wants. He's the boss.
>
>8. Don't bend and sway as you play. Stay in your
>space. You're not a soloist, don't move like one. No
>big sweeps of the bow. And absolutely never, never,
>never tap your foot to the music.
>
>9. Go through channels. If you, a fifth stand violin,
>are unsure if that note in bar 143 should be C natural
>as shown, or B flat, don't raise your hand and ask the
>maestro, ask your section head, and let him/her ask Mr.
>Big.
>
>10. You do not accept violations of work rules
>passively. When it's time to go, it's time to go. If
>it's Bruno Walter and the Mahler Fourth, and you're in
>Seventh Heaven, then of course, you ignore the clock.
>But if it's some ordinary jerk flapping around on the
>podium, put your instrument in the case when the
>rehearsal is supposed to end. It was his arrogant
>pedantry that chewed up the first hour of rehearsal, and
>now time is up, and he's only half way through The
>Planets, and is in a panic. If he wants to pay
>overtime, fine. Otherwise, let him hang, it's his
>rope. At the performance, you can show him what
>terrific sight-readers you all are.
>
>It's all about manners and maintaining a sense of
>integrity in a selfless situation, and surviving in a
>body of neurotic perfectionists. And it's about holding
>up your head, even as orchestras in America languish and
>die out, victims of their own rigidity and stuffiness
>and a sea of change in American culture.
>
>Perhaps in a hundred years orchestra musicians will seem
>like some weird priestly order akin to the Rosicrucians
>or the worshippers of Athens. But in the rehearsal for
>the Last Performance, the players will arrive on time,
>and take their places and play dryly but with vibrato,
>and not tap their feet. And one violinist will come
>home and have a glass of wine, and say to her husband,
>"Why can't they find a decent trombonist?"

Bill Hausmann bhausmann1@-----.com
451 Old Orchard Drive http://homepages.go.com/~zoot14/zoot14.html
Essexville, MI 48732 ICQ UIN 4862265

If you have to mic a saxophone, the rest of the band is TOO LOUD!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org