concert mania

[calimac]

patioboe alluded to this, but today's paper made it explicit: a wealthy egomaniac paid $15,000 for the privilege of leading Symphony Silicon Valley in a private performance of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, with an audience of a thousand of his closest friends (it didn't say how much he paid them to be there) looking on.

Of course, as patioboe points out, conducting stunts of this kind have been pulled before, but no rank amateur has ever paid to play the oboe part in Beethoven's Fifth. So how difficult can conducting be, anyway? Well, the vicissitudes of SSV's last season proves that it's not difficult to be a mediocre conductor, but it's still rare to be a really good one.

It's like writing. Any literate person can write, but that doesn't make great writers any more common or less valuable than great painters or great musicians or other things that relatively few people can do.

What struck me, though, was that conducting was this man's dream. I love music, but I wouldn't want to conduct. In a work I know, I can hear ahead of the music as a conductor must, but what a conductor has that I don't is the mind-hand coordination to express that physically. This is also why I'd never go on Jeopardy: I can respond to the clues well enough, but I wouldn't be able to press the buzzer at the right moment. Amateur conducting also requires a breed of egomania I don't have. I enjoy giving scholarly talks to audiences - I'd like being a professor, I'm sure - but I don't otherwise like being the center of attention. I was once randomly hauled up on stage from the audience to be the shah at a belly-dance performance. I sat on a cushion and they fed me grapes, and it was supposed to be luxurious but all I wanted was to get out of there. But if I'd walked off it would have made an even bigger fuss over me, you see?

If I had thousands of dollars free to spend on a whimsical artistic project, here's what I'd do. I'd go to SSV but I wouldn't ask to conduct. No. I'd offer to underwrite a full regular concert, their choice of conductor, they could sell tickets and keep all the extra revenue. I would just sit in the audience anonymously like everybody else. What I'd want for my money is the right to choose the works played. And what I'd choose are works I love on record but have never heard live and never expect to.

This would be my first choice, an all American music concert:

• Michael Torke: Ash
• Henry Cowell: The Seven Rituals of Music (Symphony No. 11)
• Alan Hovhaness: Saint Vartan Symphony

I love all these works, but I want to hear the Cowell in particular; it's been a favorite of mine for decades, it was performed once in 1954, given one tinny monophonic recording, and has apparently never been heard since. The recording is now on CD, which I have, thank you very much, but to hear it in live modern sound ...

So, what artistic project would you spend thousands of dollars on, if you were given the money and instructions to use it for that purpose? Nothing virtuous now, no donating the money to schools for arts programs or anything altruistic like that. We're talking self-indulgence here.

Comments

[orangemike.livejournal.com]

This is also why I'd never go on Jeopardy: I can respond to the clues well enough, but I wouldn't be able to press the buzzer at the right moment.

That's what I always feared; but in fact, when I was on Win Ben Stein's Money! I discovered that I was pretty darned good at timing the buzzer and the lights; surprised the heck out of me!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You are very fortunate. I did once participate in an sf con trivia game show, at which I did not understand the rules. I knew lots of answers, but I don't think I ever once managed to hit the buzzer when I was supposed to.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

This is a challenge I've never before considered, and I don't have a pat answer. I like yours, though. Not so much the particular pieces selected, but the entire concert concept: a peculiarly self-effacing variety of ego-mania, utterly characteristic of you.

It is so satisfying how much people are themselves, a thing I keep observing more and more as my friends and I age and distill ourselves into the essence of ourselves.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

I bet Beethoven's Fifth sounds wonderful from the podium. I just can't be critical of what the guy did. He obviously is an amateur, and paid for the privilege of conducting. The orchestra I'm sure was happy to take the money. It had to be flattering to them that someone would be willing to pay to conduct them. Meanwhile, we have an incompetent amateur gratifying his egotistical misconception that he can run the country. I've worked for companies with CEOs like that, too. Be glad this guy's aspirations were so limited, and could be met without causing the least bit of harm to anyone.

As for what I'd like, I'd put P.C. Hodgell on a stipend.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm not criticizing the conductor, just being snide. I do hope we need not give up our right to be snide at harmless amateurs because of the presence of harmful ones.

Were I invited to attend such a concert, then no matter how much I loved the man holding it, I'd attend more for reasons of curiosity than hope of artistic merit. In fact in situations such as this the musicians usually play the work by rote, while the "conductor" is just waving his hands to the music whether he realizes it or not. It takes knowledge and experience to imprint your concept of a work on an orchestra.

Your idea of paying a stipend to a good author has a distinguished history. The question of how to get the prickly and independent Sam Johnson to accept such a stipend occupied several philanthropic minds for some years before they came up with a successful plan.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Yes, it probably would be more accurate to say the orchestra was conducting him. But enough of that. If we keep going back on this subject any more, I will be forced to read the article.

Well, Pat Hodgell is the non-prickly (anti-prickly would be too much). Howard Waldrop, on the other hand, for such a swell all-around nice guy, could teach mules a few things about stubborn.

[redbird]

Is it too self-effacing for me to hand the money to the Tiptree Motherboard and say "This is for the Fairy Godmother Fund. You choose, but I'd like to know what you do with it." (I don't know if they'd accept that condition)?

The only other thing that comes to mind offhand would be to wonder if that would pay for a really good artist to do my portrait (preferably paint, but maybe photography). Note that I probably couldn't name a living portraitist without doing research first.

[(Anonymous)]

Haven't a clue what I'd do, and I'll never have that sort of cash. If I could purchase a lifetime supply of reeds I would be walking on air, though. As long as they worked, of course. ;-)

But ... somehow there was more to the concert than what we read in the Merc. At least we musicians were told something about his daughter and her cancer struggle. I'm not sure if it was a benefit or if it was "merely" to rejoice that she's still alive. But there really was something more than just an "I wanna conduct!" So while he may or may not be an ego maniac (most of us are in some way or another) I'm not certain this would be an all out ego thing. Could be, of course ... I didn't get to talk with the man much. I wish I had more info, but I don't. My poor brain is so muddled I can't remember any more than what I've told you.

Guess you should send your dream concert to Andrew Bales, eh? I've never played Torke. I've played Cowell and Hovhaness, but not those two works.

-p

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Interesting. That's probably cheap for a lifelong dream, actually.

B

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

If we give up our right to be snide the terrorists win.

K.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

I really would fund a program where poster copies of important local works of art are brought to the classroom and discussed by a trained arts educator. The kids would be given postcard reproductions, too, and would eventually get to go on field trips to see the works in person. I half-way have planned how this could work, but haven't done any legwork to investigate the possibilities. The costs would be in divising the curriculum, educating the teachers, and probably in creating printed matter. I assume several thousand dollars would do it, if the educators were either volunteers or already in the clasroom.

Just for me... well, Jubal Harshaw might get exact copies of famous statues, but I don't really believe that's possible. Having a rotating loan of various favorite paintings would be lovely, but it is not possible to get a Vermeer on loan in one's living room.

Maybe I'd get a top notch photographer to take my picture, just to prove a really good picture of me can be taken. Somebody like Annie Leibovitz.

K.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I wish there'd been such an art education program in my schools. I don't instinctively respond to visual art (except architecture, which is spatial art). My reaction to a fine painting is to look at it for 15 seconds, say, "That's nice," and go on to the next one, unless someone with a better eye than mine is talking with me about it.

Had I received training when young I might do better.

I'm pretty much self-training in understanding music, but I was motivated to do so because of a strong instinctive attraction to classical music.