A couple of notes resulting from two recent posts over at Reflections in d minor:
:: Lynn gives several choice quotes from Sir Thomas Beecham, one of the finest orchestra conductors to ever come out of England. Beecham was one of those erudite wits who seem to breed like rabbits in England. I first read about Beecham in Harold Schonberg’s book The Great Conductors (now out of print, I believe), and two of the Beecham quotes related by Schonberg have stayed with me years after reading that book.
To a trombone player Beecham suspected of lackadaisical effort: “Are you certain that you are producing as much sound as is possible from that piece of antiquated plumbing which you are applying to your face?”
And to a tenor while rehearsing an operatic love-making scene: “Observing your grave, deliberate motions, I am reminded of that quintessential quadruped, the hedgehog.”
:: Lynn also points to an article denoting the stages of classical music collecting. These stages really do exist – – I’ve had to explain to other people just why I own five different recordings of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, for example – – and it certainly is true that after you spend a number of years exploring music far and wide, you do return to the Beethoven symphonies or the Bach Masses or the Mozart concertos or the Strauss tone poems and recognize them anew for the works of genius they are.
What differentiates some collectors, in my view, is how willing they are to roam afield. Some classical collectors will pretty much stick to the Germanic symphonic tradition, and restrict their “roaming afield” to lesser works by the greats in that one tradition. Others will take in more – – adding the Russian Nationalist tradition, or the English tradition, or French Impressionism, or twentieth century serialism, and so on. Still others will divulge even farther afield, taking in film music as well, and trying to come to grips with that genre’s peculiar set of demands and constraints. Or you can note the rise of nationalism in classical music, and delve therefore into the folk and native traditions on which the nationalist schools are based, thus coming to study Celtic and world music. And then one can leave Western cultures entirely, and take in the fascinating world of Asian classical music as well. Or one can move forward instead of backward, and see how Celtic music has influenced American folk music, and then country and rock in turn.
Many collectors tend to be insular, deciding that once they’ve reached a certain point, they’re happy to set up their boundaries and stay within them, achieving a depth of familiarity with a relatively small number of works. Others take a much wider approach, preferring to know a smattering about a wide variety of music. Both approaches work, and it’s a shame that often members of each camp will look down on the other.
