The
Young Lutheran's Guide to the Orchestra
by Garrison Keillor
To each person, God gives some talent,
such as writing, just to name one, and to many persons He has given
musical talent,
though not as many as think so. For the young Lutheran the question
must be: Do I have a genuine God-given musical
talent, or do I only seem gifted in comparison to other Lutherans?
If your talent is choir or organ, there's no problem. Choir members and
organists can be sure their gift is from God because
who else but God would be interested? Just like nobody gets fat on
celery nobody goes into church music for the wrong
motives.
But for a Lutheran who feels led to play in an orchestra, the first
question must be: Are you kidding? An orchestra?
In the Bible, we read about people singing and playing musical
instruments, the harp, trumpet, psaltery, but always in praise
of the Lord, not for amusement. We do not read that our Lord Himself
ever played an instrument or enjoyed hearing others
play theirs. The apostles did not attend concerts or go to dances. Are
you sure this is what you want? Do you know what
you're getting into? Opera?! Is that anyplace for a Christian? Don Juan
and Mephistophiles and Wagner and all his pagan
goddesses hooting and hollering, and the immorality -- I mean, is
anybody in opera married? You play in an orchestra,
you're going to wind up in opera and the next thing you know, you're
going to be skipping Sunday mornings.
If you steer clear of opera and stick to orchestral concert music,
where are the Christian composers? Modern ones are
Existentialists, the Romantics were Secular Humanists, the eighteenth
century was all Rationalists, and the seventeenth was
Italians, except for Bach, and you can't make a living playing Bach.
You go in an orchestra, you're going to be devoting
your life to a lot of music that sort of swirls around in spiritual
mystery searching for answers that people could find in the
Bible if someone showed them where to look.
But if you're determined to play in an orchestra, then you ought to ask
yourself: Which instrument is the best one for a
Lutheran to play? If our Lord had played an instrument, which one would
he have chosen? Probably not a French Horn. It
takes too much of a person's life. French horn players hardly have the
time to marry and have children. The French Horn is
practically a religion all by itself. Should a Lutheran play the
bassoon? Not if you want to be taken seriously. The name says
it all "bassoon." Maybe you'd do it for a hobby (Let's go bassooning
this weekend, honey!") but not as your life occupation.
Many Lutherans start out playing clarinets in marching band and think
of the clarinet as a Christian instrument, clear and
strong and almost human, but a symphonic clarinet is different from the
band clarinet: it's sardonic, skeptical and definately
wordly. The English horn sounds Christian, maybe because we think of it
as the Anglican Horn, but it's so mournful, so
plaintive. And so are English Horn players. They all have incredibly
complicated problems, they're all depressed, especially
at night, which is when the concerts are. The Oboe is the sensualist of
the woodwind section, and if there's ever a wind a
Lutheran should avoid, it's this one. In movie soundtracks, you tend to
hear the oboe when the woman is taking off her
clothes, or else later, when she asks the man for a cigarette. The
flute is the big shot of the wind section. Jean-Pierre
Rampall, James Galway, both millionaires (How many millionaire
bassoonists are there?), because everyone knows it's the
hardest to play. To spend your life blowing across a tiny hole -- it's
not really normal is it? The flute is a temptation to pride.
Avoid it. The last member of the woodwind family is the flakiest, and
that's the piccolo. No Salvation Army Band evey
included a piccolo and no piccolo virtuoso ever did an album of gospel
music. This is not a devotional instrument.
We come now to the string section. Strings are mentioned in the
Scripture and therefore some Lutherans are tempted to
become string players, but be careful. Bass, for example. An extremely
slow instrument, the plowhorse of the orchestra, and
bass players tend to be a little methodical, not inventive, not quick,
not witty or brilliant, but reliable. This make the
instrument very tempting to Lutherans. And yet, Bass notes have a
darkness and depth to them that, let's face it, is sexual.
And when Bass players pick up their bows, I don't think there's any
doubt what's going on in their minds back there. The
'Cello section seems so normal, and 'cellists seem like such nice
people. The way they put their arms around their
instruments, they look like parents zipping up a child's snowsuit. They
seem like us: comfortable, middle-range. And yet
there is something too comfortable, maybe too sensual about the cello.
The way they hold the instrument between their
legs: why can't they hold it across their laps or alongside themselves?
The viola section is not a nice place for a Lutheran
and you're just going to have to take my word for it. I know violists
and they are fine people until, late at night, they start
drinking a few bottles of cheap red wine and roasting chickens over a
pit in a vacant lot and talk about going to Yucatan
with a woman named Rita. Don't be a part of this crowd. The violin is a
problem for any Christian because it is a solo
instrument, a virtuoso instrument, and we're not solo people. We
believe in taking a back seat and being helpful. So
Christians think about becoming second violinists. They're steady,
humble, supportive. But who do they support? First
violinists. You want to get involved with them? The first violins are
natural egotists. The conductor looks to them first and
most first violinists believe that the conductor secretly takes his cue
from them, that he, a simple foreign person, gets
carried away by listening to the violins and falls into a romantic,
emotional reverie and forgets where in the score he is and
looks to the concertmaster, the No. 1 First Violin, to find out what's
going on: this is what violinists believe in their hearts.
If the conductor dropped dead, the rest of the orchestra would simply
follow the violin section, while the maestro's body
was carried away and nobody would know the difference. Is this a place
for a Lutheran to be? In the biggest collection of
gold-plated narcissists ever gathered on one stage? No.
Let's be clear about the brass section. First of all, the rest of the
orchestra wishes the brass were playing in another room,
and so does the conductor. His back is toward the audience, so they
can't see what he's saying to the brass section. He's
saying: You're too damn loud, shut the fuck up (in Italian, this
doesn't sound course at all). The brass section is made up of
men who were at one time in the constructions trade and went into music
because the hours were better. They are heavy
dudes, and that's why composers wrote so few notes for them: because
they're juveniles. The tuba player, for example, is a
stocky bearded guy who has a day job as a plumber. He's the only member
of the orchestra who bowls and goes deer
hunting. It's not an instrument for a sensitive Lutheran, and anyway,
there's only one Tuba player and he's it. The trombonist
is a humourist. He carries a water spray gun to keep his slide moist
and often uses it against other members of the orchestra.
A Shriner at heart, he knows more Speedy Gonzalez jokes than you
thought existed. The trumpet is the brass instrument
you imagine as Christian, thinking of Gideon and of the Psalms, but
then you meet a real trumpet player and realize how
militaristic these people are. They don't want to wear black tie and
play Bach, they want tight uniforms with shiny buttons,
and they want to play as loudly as they possibly can. Most of the
people who keel over dead at concerts are killed by
trumpets.
There are two places in the orchestra for a Lutheran, and one is
percussion. It's the most Lutheran instrument there is.
Percussionists are endlessly patient, because they don't get to play
much. Pages and pages of music go by where the violins
are sawing away and the winds are tooting and the brass is blasting but
the percussionist may have to wait for twenty
minutes just to play a few beats, but those beats have to be exact and
they have to be passionate and climactic. All that the
epistles of Paul say a Christian should be -- faithful, waiting,
trusting, filled with fervor -- are the qualities of the
percussionist. The other Lutheran instrument, of course, is the harp.
It is the perfect instrument for a Christian because it is
like living with an elderly parent in poor health -- it's hard to get
them in and out of cars, impossible to satisfy them. A harp
takes fourteen hours to tune and remains in tune for twenty minutes or
until someone opens a door. It's an instrument for a
saint. If a harpist could find a good percussionist, they wouldn't need
an orchestra at all; they could just settle down and
make wonderful music, just the two of them.
