Classical Music as a Hobby
Strings plucked away at their strings as students shuffled into their seats. Shouts were thrown across woodwind sections as kids messed with each other’s instruments, spitballs and the like launched like cannonballs across bassoon reeds and cello bows. I warmed up playing my major scales and some of the solos I was working on for college auditions. One of the guys sitting next to me heard the passage I was shedding and gave me a smirk.
“Dude, that part is such a bitch.”
I smiled back. “Yeah, tell me about it.”
We traded tips on trombone playing until the conductor took to the podium. Music folders flew onto the stands as people collected themselves and took to their seats, instruments in hand and ready to play.
“Scheherazade, movement 2 please. Let’s start at rehearsal 14, with the flute solo.”
The melody started in the flute and carried on for a few somber minutes, and after a while it was difficult to cover up the tears welling up in my eyes. The piece we were rehearsing, Scheherazade, was one of the first pieces of classical music I ever truly digested; hours spent relistening to the same passages, trying to dissect the masterful orchestration and the various nuances of each recording. Any performance I could get my hands on was voraciously consumed within hours, and pretty soon I needed to reference a score whenever I heard the piece to get the best understanding I could of what was going on. On this day, in the Hankinson Rehearsal Hall at the SMTD, I had the chance to play it with the University of Michigan Youth Orchestra before I had to go into college. I could finally pay tribute to the lushous sounds evoked by this piece and lay witness to the momentum it carried.
The strings carried the music as various solo instruments began to peak throughout the texture; the bassoon sang while the french horns wailed, the cellos cried while the flutes laughed. Trombones yelled (and so did the conductor…), and each instrument dutifully attended to their responsibilities in the group. Yeah, the violins did get to play most of the pretty stuff, but at least we got to watch them do it and enjoy the fruits of their labor. The conductor stopped us at various points to work on precision, accuracy, and phrasing.
“Come on, guys, how many times do we have to rehearse this before it’s in tune??”
“WOAH WOAH WOAH, there’s a ritardando there, let’s go back and do it one more time.”
Sometimes it was exhausting. The smallest details were covered, some of which I would’ve never noticed had the conductor not made such a point about it. The students wrestled with each other in the orchestral sound, not knowing how to balance the colors of the instruments with the music. You could tell that no one was exactly in sync with one another; that even though each player was somewhat competent at their instrument and how to play it, they still didn’t quite know how to play with each other and make that thing we were all there for, music. Was music meant to be something that was only for the concert, a very tangible product? Or was it something that existed all along and surfaced at various qualities?
Well, whatever it was supposed to be, the conductor never seemed too happy with what it ended up as. He bickered at the strings each rehearsal, lamenting their poor intonation and sloppy rhythms. As a trombonist, I spent many rehearsals sitting back and observing without having to play much. I felt, I don’t know, disposable. Why am I here if I’m just going to sit on my phone and become a cultural edifice while everyone else gets to make music and have some fun?
And then we reached the moment. Strings hushed to a quiet dynamic while vociferously strumming dissonant chords against one another. The conductor looked towards the trombone section and lifted his baton, beckoning us to play. We all took a simultaneous breath and came in with our clamorous and angry passage. Suddenly, the music took a dramatic shift, and the orchestra started to change moods as if it was a living organism taking on various forms.
This moment, the flushing of the strings and the amalgamation of colors from each instrument, specifically curated for this orchestral imagery, is what did it for me. I put my horn down and looked at my section mates. We all smiled at each other, even though we knew we weren’t going to play for a while longer, and took solace in our contribution to the orchestra.
Teamwork is what classical music provided for me. Hierarchies within the ensemble gave each player a role, and the best pieces are the ones that make everyone feel important. In school, I was never outstanding at anything; I was a good student, sure; I got mostly As and a handful of B+s, but I wasn’t exemplary in any particular discipline. It wasn’t until I first put the horn up to my lips in the orchestra that I felt that sovereignty.
Breath.
Blow.
Sing.
If I didn’t play, someone would notice. My section won’t be heard. Motifs might get lost in the texture. The conductor would say something. Whatever my role happened to be at that moment, it was something I needed to fulfill. It wasn’t like I was sitting in math class with the only objective of passing just so I can get into a decent college. My role there was completely expendable, and my presence there was practically negligible to the outcome of the class.
And that’s ok. Most classes are deindividualized for a reason; to be universal and provide the most amount of learning for the class size. Academia doesn’t exist as a canvas of expression for its applicants, it serves as an economic model. People don’t enter college with a naive assumption that there’s no strings attached, and everyone understands that universities are essential for job security and getting a decent salary. Not everyone wants to be their own superstar when they go into their biochem lecture or political philosophy discussion. Classical music is rife with all of these people; the prodigal piano celebrities, the ambitious but neurotic string players, and the narcissistic soloists among every instrument family.
Breath.
Blow.
Sing.
I’m not blind to the realities of the classical music industry. You can make decent income from doing various performing gigs, private teaching and tasks tangential to music (publishing, arranging, etc.), but there’s too few spots available in orchestras that pay good salaries to warrant a serious consideration of music as a career. So then why am I thinking this?
Because I just. Can’t. Help it.
Each morning I wake up and there’s a cacophony of orchestral colors in my head. My trombone sits in the corner of my room on its stand, glaring from a distance whenever I attend to my AP Gov homework or log onto Discord to play video games with my friends. I countdown the hours during the school day until I can get back to my major scales and youth orchestra rehearsals, and observe the conductor’s grin as I sit back in my chair and just-
Breath.
Blow.
Sing.
From youth orchestra rehearsals, I pile into a car with the other members of a section with our horns and we usually find a quiet outdoor area to play chamber music in. Solos, etudes and excerpts reverberate across patchy green fields for hours. We talk about music theory, our favorite recordings, and our favorite players. Critiques and comments are thrown between each other both in jovial competition and genuine support.
“Watch the intonation on those chromatics there, John.”
“BEAUTIFUL tone! Maybe just a little too bright?”
Above the teaching and the camaraderie, however, was the individual voice; the sovereignty of putting the horn up to your face and breathing, and then blowing, and finally singing, with no academic advisor lurching over your shoulder telling you there’s no future for you if you can’t get your pre-calculus grade up, or television screens littered with bomb castings and civilian casualties. When I’m playing, there is no “future” or “past”. There are only beautiful sounds for everyone to indulge in right now.
That’s pretty important to me. I’ve always had a hard time living in the present. I’m a product of my generation; the age of anxiety and overthinking. I constantly overthink. It can be in the classroom, the kitchen, the dining table, whatever. I have a problem with thinking harder, not smarter. That’s not to say that I don’t overthink trombone and music. Oh, believe me, I do. But it’s the one occasion where it’s truly better to NOT think. If the conscious mind and the ego get in the way of the sound naturally coming out of the bell, the music will falter and the mechanical, robotic side of music making will take precedence.
This became abundantly clear to me in one of my final lessons with my trombone teacher. I got ready to play the ending leitmotif of Wagner’s “Das Rheingold”, representing the mythological Germanic gods crossing a bridge of rainbows into Valhalla. I played all the right notes, articulations, and dynamics. I focused on my slide technique and keeping my sound open and dark, dropping my jaw low enough and keeping the tongue out of the way of the air. The final notes bellowed out of my horn, and I lowered the instrument to my side, expecting some praise for my attention to detail and meticulous character.
My professor put his score down and pushed his glasses up his face. “Avery,” he started. “You could be such a good player if you stopped thinking so much about everything.”
I was thrown back. “What do you mean?” I stammered.
“I can tell just by looking at you that you’re not thinking about your sound at all. You’re thinking about how to make sound, but not the kind of sound that you want to have. You know how to play the instrument, so let your body do what it knows how to do and let your brain do the rest.”
I was puzzled. What was I doing wrong? I thought I was getting the right sound, but the extra pair of ears in the room disagreed. I started the excerpt, frustrated and upset, and didn’t think at all about how I should be playing it. I simply played what was on the page and prayed that it would end fast so I don’t embarrass myself again. I paid little attention to my slide arm or my wind; I just focused on what the music should be.
I put the horn down once again to the exclamation of my teacher: “YES! That was it!”. I breathed a sigh of relief. This shit is exhausting, I thought to myself. Do I have to rewind like this every time I play? I’ve spent so many years crafting my technique, searching for the best sound that I can reasonably produce. Any rejection of that sound feels like a rejection of, I don’t know, me.
And yet, just as that lesson revealed, I’m perfectly capable of achieving the best sound possible. If I let my mind and my body get in the way, I defeat my own purpose. As soon as I let the music guide me, and I return to those three simple words:
Breath.
Blow.
Sing.
…..and then, it’s all ok.