What does it mean to live a life in music?I remember having completed my first year of study on my Masters degree in Composition. I was in a wonderful and supportive environment at the University of Colorado. My teachers were exceptional, my program dedicated, and I had developed the friends and support system to see me through. In truth, my time at Colorado is the standard by which all other academic (and professional) experiences will be measured. Many institutions could learn a great deal from the way CU runs her music program...
Yet I was profoundly unsure of what I was doing. I was exploding with creativity, yet my craft remained weak, and I had felt battered by opposing viewpoints on aesthetics since beginning my undergrad years. Somehow, regardless of intellectual realization, I was unable to accept pure modernism and abstract art on a soul level. My body rejected it like bad food, which left me utterly confused. Something was not right, and I began to doubt whether or not the musical world had a place for me.
As I entered that second year of graduate study, I knew that my resolve -- and my career -- hung in the balance. I sought guidance on the issue, and prayed feverishly for a clear path forward. As always, answers come from unexpected places.
At the end of a long and exhausting week, ready to go home, my friend Trudy asked if I would volunteer at a conference about Nadia Boulanger. She promised great networking opportunities, lunch, and a free concert of sacred music, so I flippantly agreed. The experience would change my life.
In to the U-of-C poured over 200 of Nadia Boulanger's former students, and the school was suddenly awash in a new kind of energy. I met one of Nadia's last students, now teaching in San Fransisco. I met a sweet old nun who studied with her in the 1930's, and was partly responsible for her conversion.
Nadia Boulanger's students, regardless of their religion, were united in the belief that music was a fundamentally important and fundamentally human excercise. They made no apologies for their rejection of much modernism as mere intellectual drivel, and their music -- as well as the force of their personalities -- all testified to the strength of their position.
I learned of Nadia and Lili Boulanger, and how Lili's death silenced Nadia's compositional voice while unleashing her love of pedagogy. I learned of Nadia's influence on over 1200 musicians, including Lenny Bernstein, Carter, Piston, Thompson, and a certain Igor Stravinsky (pictured above.) I learned of her reversion to Catholicism, her attendance of daily mass, and her incredible piety.
Boulanger, it seems, was a secular nun of music, chaste and faithful, and rigorously demanding of her students.
Truth be told, I don't know if my rather fragile demeanor at the time would have fared well under her strict tutelage. Truth be told, I don't think I would have had the musicianship to last two days in her studio. Yet I remain grateful for the fact that she existed.
"Ye shall judge the tree by its fruit." From the centerpoint of Nadia Boulanger sprang much of the greatest music of the 20th century. Being surrounded by her students, I found myself reinvigorated about both music and humanity in general.
Most shockingly, the name of God and his desire for us was invoked repeatedly by various composers of various beliefs. These people were convinced not only that music was good, but that God wants us to write more of it. As a person of belief, I was honestly shocked to hear such a thing spoken aloud, at a liberal University, by a gathering of composers no less. Yet it pointed to the key missing ingredient in my creative search.
It was a great weekend, and it may have saved my life, let alone my career.
While I hate to write this, I am afraid that if the weekend had consisted of a gathering of former Schoenberg students, I would have likely quit.
What does it mean to live a life in music? Perhaps when I'm 70, I'll have a coherent answer to this question. Yet I'm quite sure I know what such a life is not meant to be, and by knowing the negative, the positive can begin to reveal itself.
Posts
