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A quick followup from yesterday’s post, about joy in music.
I talked about Ronald Sherwin, from U Mass, who’d spoken at the northeast regional conference of the College Music Society, about pure joy in music. That inspired me to imagine Juilliard, where I teach — or other music schools — starting each academic year with a celebration of musical joy. A radical change!
Then today, just turning this over in my mind, I had a further thought. Why limit joy to schools?
When I was artist in residence a few years ago at the University of Maryland, I got friendly with the Gamer Symphony, a student orchestra that plays music from videogames. And that in many ways was the most successful musical group on campus, if you look at how many people came to their shows, and how much those people loved them. Or the long waiting list of musicians wanting to join! (Hope these things are still true.)
One of many things notable about this group (again, when I met them, a few years ago). Like other organizations, they had an executive director, a music director, and a marketing director. But also a social director. What was that for, I asked. And the answer was wonderful. It was the social director’s job to make sure that everyone had fun, at rehearsals and performances.
So…why shouldn’t symphony orchestras have this? Even the biggest ones. Or maybe especially the biggest ones. Why shouldn’t all musical institutions, however eminent, take steps toward making their work enjoyable for everyone involved?
Big orchestras need this. It’s no secret that, for so many of them, their culture isn’t exactly a hotbed of joy. Of course our attention goes elsewhere. Toward the glory of classical music, the complex logistics of running an orchestra, the someetimes conflicting needs of musicians and management. And, of course, the musicians’ frequent dislike of conductors. Etc.
But why forget about joy? And wouldn’t these other things be easier, if no one forgot the sheer joy of music? Wouldn’t even the choice of conductors be different — not to mention the conductors themselves — if joy was a priority right from the start?
Two observations: first, I have never experienced the joy of live music while listening to reproduction. I had a trajectory as an audiophile – joining societies, going to trade shows and conventions, designing, building and operating recording studios and listening to the most accurate recordings on some of the most expensive systems including prototypes of leading research organizations – but an arbitrarily large amount of money, talent and science do not provide the human connection. I am searching for the explanations why 99% of my society is perfectly content to sit at home and listen to computer music and miss out on the greatest source of joy.
Second, when I do experience peaks of joy from music it is in rooms of APPROPRIATE acoustics and the performers (no doubt inspired to higher levels by the good sounding room) were also joyful. It is always a notch or two down to listen to Jazz or Chamber music in symphonic venues, symphonies under proscenium arches or secular music in stone walled churches – and PA systems are a joy killer. I wonder why Program and Music Directors are joining board members chanting the mantra “mixed use” when it runs counter to human perception of composition and orchestration.