On Maslanka, TÁR-like figures (or the lack of them), the velvet glove, Quality, and the Unrelenting Spirit
A musical college reunion brings many thoughts...
Recent films such as Whiplash and TÁR have placed the role of abused power and tyrannical teachers into the public discourse. While anyone who has dealt with such a despotic personality can certainly attest to the need to expose such unhealthy relationships to the light — and the classical music world certainly has had no such lack of tyrants — what is lost today is any discussion of teachers and leaders who were unrelentingly demanding without being despotic. And as any current teacher capable of an honest assessment of the culture around them will tell you (that is, if they’re not drowning in the proverbial kool-aid or afraid of being fired) — despotism is not a major issue in today’s educational and musical environments; the velvet glove is. Simply put, today’s teachers are the end point of a recent history which has long since over-reacted to abuse by instituting a culture of coddling. Today’s teacher must be very careful in making demands, lest precious feathers be ruffled and carefully manicured young egos be punctured, as nobody has the courage to deal with Johnny’s hovering Mommy, let alone Johnny’s emerging pint-sized despotic demands. (That fathers are often absent from these scenarios is also telling).
And yet there remain professional domains which somehow maintain their natural meritocracy, and where the unrelenting demands for quality can only serve their aspirants. Professional sports retain a natural purity: fan bases would dry up instantly if sports were centered in modern concepts of equity as opposed to hard-earned merit. And while the world of music and the arts has been suffused and soaked-through with the most unfortunate of politics, a meritocracy remains: your diversity hire may indeed sneak into an orchestra section, but ultimately the section leader — and the person waving a stick at them — is the most competent person available, and likely the person who is both least compromising with themselves and most appreciative of the director who has the spinal fortitude to still push them.
Little wonder then, that when our old college band director Dr. Stephen Steele gave the call (for the second time) to assemble an alumni ensemble, people literally came from across the country - and as far away as London - to reunite our old college wind ensemble for a new hurrah. Dr. Steele was one of those uncompromising figures a young musician needs in their life: he wasn’t always right, and he could sometimes rub you the wrong way, but his demands created the storied Wind Symphony legacy at Illinois State University, one which regularly punched far above its weight and was entirely better than it had any business being. As to myself, I not only had one such instructor at the time, but three — including my saxophone professor, Jim Boitos, and my first composition teacher, Stephen Taylor, all of whom in their own unique ways refused to accept mediocrity. And once such teachers saw that you had potential, they were unrelenting. I sought these teachers out, yes, and respected their earned expertise. I often wonder where I would be today if I did not have the good fortune to be able to find them at my institution at the time, or the good sense — inculcated in me by my parents — to humbly accept their guidance. I suppose this is what the kids call “privilege” nowadays, but I just saw it as good fortune which should be far more common than it is.
My own association with the ISU Wind Symphony came on a briskly cold Spring morning in 1998: I had just transferred in, and some friends of mine strongly encouraged me to attend a dress rehearsal of the Wind Symphony under Steele, putting the final touches on Maslanka’s towering Mass. I had arrived sorely under-prepared musically, and had just been accepted into Jim Boitos’s saxophone studio on a trial basis. Boitos scared the hell out of me at that time, and suddenly walking into Steele’s rehearsal - with the dark, beautiful, vital new music playing and the clear striving for elite status in that dimly lit Church - well, that scared the hell out of me too. But I was under the sway of another voice but fear, one which said: “why can’t I hit that level too? Why only others?” I resolved right there to make that ensemble, and a year later I did. I’m not writing this to toot my own horn, as I’ve had plenty of ambitious failures as well. I’m writing it to point out a simple truth: young students need real heights and standards to aim towards, because it turns out that what seems like an Everest in one’s youth is only a significant foothill on the travels of a longer artistic career. But you don’t get to see farther until you’ve clambered up onto that first height.
It was Steele who, two years later, called our section into his office and laid before us the terrifying looking score for James Syler’s “Minton’s Playhouse.” He asked us if we could do it, knowing full well that the answer was “no”, but that we’d do it anyhow. We learned it over the next six months — doing little else — and were rewarded with a slot on the Wind Symphony’s first commercial CD, featuring Maslanka’s freshly commissioned fifth symphony.
It should be clear, then, that the former students who reunited for a week of rehearsals and a rousing concert in the western suburbs of Chicago last week were not just coming to see old friends: that is not enough to endure the inconvenience of travel, the preparation of difficult parts, the partaking in long and hard rehearsals, the paying of hotel bills, and the navigating of paused family and professional lives. We came for another taste of that culture of over-achieving excellence, and we also came to play David Maslanka’s music under the baton of his most faithful champion.
Maslanka, ever a gentle giant by repute, and sometimes called the “Mahler of the concert band”, was a composer who earned mixed reviews along with his many sterling accolades. Some may think some of his musical moments too transparent and even occasionally saccharine, while others may be troubled by his rather unique and unflinching metaphysics. But he was indeed a God-fearing seeker who — when he got it right — got it really right. His music has a way of putting its pulse onto the burbling depths of human experience at any given moment in that human history he was sharing, and rending the earth until it overwhelmed the witness with a terrible Biblical flood-like fury. Certainly this is the experience of the final notes of his epic and now rightfully established fourth symphony, which concluded the Wind Symphony reunion program this past Saturday evening in Naperville.
The other two lesser-known Maslanka works on the program — Tears, and Hosannas — were much more subdued by nature. The former work certainly had a more mourning — and dare I say, morose — tone, while the latter was more restrained and liturgical in nature, including a gorgeous clarinet-based chorale setting and a rather surprising seventh and final movement, wherein a tenor voice intones a stunning simple yet transcendent poem by Richard Beale. In the case of our own concert, we were fortunate enough to have the voice of Lyric Opera tenor John J. Concepcion on hand, who found an appropriately sacred and chamber-like tone to complement a very fine performance of the work.
As a side note (and in keeping with the sometimes contentious themes in this substack), several days into the process I began to notice a particular calm and joy had settled upon me while rehearsing and socializing with my fellow alums. It struck me that we had managed to open a bit of a portal in time, reverting back to our memory of an era before rampant social media where — and I know some will find this nearly impossible to believe — politics and the culture war were not at the forefront of everyone’s minds. Certainly, we all had contrasting (and even violently contradicting) worldviews and had taken diverse paths in life. Certainly we all voted and worshipped and lived quite differently. Yet certainly it didn’t matter, as we had a shared vision of transcendent beauty to pursue, and precious little time in which to achieve it. To the average college student today, such a reality might seem an impossibility, but it was our shared student experience not so very long ago. What a blessing it was to be able to live it again for a few days.
In a state with a Northwestern, DePaul, and the University of Illinois, the School of Music at Illinois State University sometimes not only gets overshadowed, but entirely overlooked. Even within the school, Steele once told me that he received regular opposition from certain colleagues for how hard he pushed his program. “Why do you push so hard?” After all, “it’s only ISU.” Well, for anyone who attended the concert on Saturday, they may have learned that in certain quarters, “it’s only ISU” had become an uncompromising vision of excellence that, like a fine puzzle, could be reunited for one more blast of luminosity.
While it may seem paradoxical, oftentimes personal contrasts and divergences are what is necessary to create a unified vision and culture. Nothing truly worthwhile — nothing which exceeds previous bounds — can be created through anything but a shared and uncompromising vision. Maslanka and Steele were certainly two contrasting personalities and formed what on the outside may have seemed an unlikely partnership, but I suspect they were united on some deeper level in their search for the numinous and their ambition to raise the American wind band to prominence as a serious ensemble. Maslanka was the overt believer, Steele more the religiously undecided figure accompanying and realizing the music. I always got the feeling that Dr. Steele is adept at hiding the depths he possesses, which only clearly are expressed to the public when he holds a baton. Maslanka, by contrast, laid his spiritual experience out for the world to see.
Maslanka certainly came across in person as a peaceful and magnanimous man. Yet the gentle can accomplish great things, and anyone who has pursued large-scale creative projects knows the unrelenting spirit and uncompromising vision necessary to do something like compose (or lead) even a symphony. Nobody gets anywhere in a field as impractical as the arts by apologizing for their existence, or by hiding their aesthetic vision under a bushel basket. The world may seek to simplify and morally equivocate from time to time, but beauty - the real, objective reality of beauty - is uncompromising, and does not reveal her shattering secrets to any who would not pursue her fully.