Greetings Stockton Youth Symphony musicians,
I wanted to write about my recent happiness, that spectacular pane of glass we carry around in our heads, and when we’re lucky, we peer at the world through. And you ask, why so happy? It’s my fabulous fortune to be chosen to conduct the new SYS.
I know of little, in analogue creation, that rivals the symphony orchestra. I tell musical neophytes that it’s akin to an extraordinarily-in-sync basketball team, but instead of 5 players, there’s 32. Concord in concourse. Unity in motion. Remarkable passing and scoring.
I’m reminded of Thomas Tallis. He was the court composer back in jolly old England to King Henry VIII (remember him and the six wives?). Tallis wrote a glorious piece entitled “Spem in Alium.” (“Hope in All Others.” As a rowdy grad-schooler, my friends and I called it “spam in aluminum.”) It’s a marvel of 40 independent, polyphonic voices, and in its time the height of musical complexity. But it pales compared to the romantic orchestra, which is as deep as a double bass, as tall as a piccolo, as rich as a cello, as human as the violin, as noble as the horn. This is why I smile.
Or I think of the orchestra evoking a waterfall, which from low to high contains the entire range of human hearing—but it’s still all water—unlike the orchestra: myriad in timbre, articulation, dynamic and sentience. Its source is you. And its essence is emotion: the panoply of pathos and joy, despondency and resurrection, boredom and consort. Life distilled in sound. And this sonic, architectural distillation is the genius known as the classical canon. Our gift to perform. The great map of time travel, like Austen or Dickens. This is why I’m glad.
Out of 8 billion people on the Earth, perhaps, generously, there are 100,000 orchestral musicians, individuals who can wrestle the canon into beauty. That’s a rarity. That’s you: 1 in 800,000. Imagine my luck.
You can see why I’m happy.
Looking fwd to meeting you, hearing you, and building a new cataract of sound called the Stockton Youth Symphony.
Soooooooooon,
Teddy