This is the week. The musicians arrived over the weekend and set to work yesterday with rehearsals from mid-morning until after 9:00 in the evening. Today has been similar, and the first concert is tomorrow night.
As I worked in my office yesterday evening, listening to several hours of rehearsal on the Dvorak string quartet as they worked in the choir room just outside my door, it hit me: this is their RSCM week.
These musicians are all young professionals in their late twenties and thirties; they teach at colleges and universities across the country, play in orchestras, sing in operas (for one of them is a soprano). The core of the group returns here summer after summer for the festival; this week is the one time of the year that they can be together and make music.
With that perspective, I enjoyed listening to them even more – their obvious enjoyment of working together, the laughter, their departure from the church at the end of the evening for a late dinner – together, after having worked together all day. Yes, this is what I know very well from RSCM.
Notably, it is not just that they enjoy being together; it is the music, as it is for us at Todd Hall. And the hard work, the many hours of rehearsal. Other shared activities can build similar bonds, but there is something special about making music together.
For how many generations has it been that musicians have gathered whenever they could – on a particular front porch up in a Kentucky holler with guitar and fiddle on a summer evening after a long hot day in the fields... in an “upper room” somewhere in the city with saxophone and clarinet and a beat-up old piano... teenagers in the garage with guitars and amps and drums... in a prison camp, learning a Quartet for the End of Time... in old Vienna, or Paris, or Milan, or Prague, or modern-day Beijing and Tokyo and Singapore, with violin and viola and violoncello -- or clarinet and oboe, flute, horn and bassoon... Haydn and Mozart played together in such a string quartet purely for their own satisfaction. Schubert met almost every evening with some friends for a “Schubertiade,” often bringing a new song that he had composed that morning, shivering in bed under the blankets because he could not afford coal or wood for heat. And these gatherings were perhaps the most important thing in their lives, or so it must have seemed on many days. No matter how badly things had gone at work or school or out in the fields, no matter how hungry or tired or cold they were, there was the Music. And the making of Music together.
All of us who attend the RSCM Course sing in choirs at home, often multiple choirs. But back home, the choirs are only a part of the day, perhaps only one or two rehearsals a week. At RSCM, it is all, and that makes it somehow more special, more powerful.
So it is for these chamber musicians, here again in the choir room this evening as I write, this time working on a Janacek quartet while the soprano and pianist work upstairs in the church on Barber's song cycle "Knoxville: Summer of 1915". Back home they play in ensembles and orchestras, sing in a variety of settings both solo and ensemble, but much of their days are filled with lessons and faculty meetings and e-mails and family commitments and rush hour traffic. Here, they can make music all day, and as far into the evening as they wish.
Yes, there is responsibility; starting tomorrow night there will be a large audience, a church-full of people who bring their own hunger and need for Music, hoping for a glimpse of Eternity. And these players are indeed professionals; they understand that, and they will do a fine job. But I think that the rehearsals are what they will remember when they get on their flights to go home this weekend.
My part in all of this? I welcome them, help them feel comfortable, help to ensure that the concerts go smoothly. This year it is a complicated week at the church. We have an ordination this Sunday and a Harry Potter-themed Vacation Bible School starting Monday.
Thus, the choir room/quartet practice room has been transformed into the Potions Classroom at Hogwarts, deep in the lowest dungeon, complete with spiderwebs and a giant spider hanging from the ceiling, flasks and beakers of mysterious substances. The musicians all have experienced Harry Potter, so all four of them giggled the first time they walked in. I think they will for many years remember rehearsing in such a space, with three skeletons looking on from the corner.
And they will remember playing in the church. Without exception, these chamber musicians over the years – like the university students who play and sing here – have praised the acoustics, telling me that it is one of the finest chamber music venues they have experienced. That is why they choose to play here rather than several other venues where they could, and where the large audience would fit more comfortably.
Now, they are almost done for the day. Again, they plan for a leisurely (and late) supper, on this night in the Summer of 2015. But not just yet; they are sitting around, talking. It reminds me very much of some Friday evenings at Todd Hall, outside in the parking lot under a starry sky.
An die Musik
Franz Schubert, D. 547 (1817)
Text: Franz von Schober (1798-1882)
Du holde Kunst, in wieviel grauen Stunden,
Wo mich des Lebens wilder Kreis umstrickt,
Hast du mein Herz zu warmer Lieb entzunden,
Hast mich in eine beßre Welt entrückt!
Oft hat ein Seufzer, deiner Harf entflossen,
Ein süßer, heiliger Akkord von dir
Den Himmel beßrer Zeiten mir erschlossen,
Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir dafür!
Thou gracious art, in many a gray hour,
When life's wild swirl held me ensnared,
Hast thou enflamed my heart to ardent love,
Hast borne me off to a better world!
Oft has a sigh, outflowing from thine harp,
One dulcet, sacred consonance from thee,
Unlocked for me the heav'n of better times,
Thou gracious art, I give thee thanks for this!
(Copyright © Philipp Naegele, Marlboro School of Music, Inc. See German Vocal Texts in Translation, linked in the sidebar among my favorites)
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