Unintentional Intimidation

Last night was dress rehearsal for the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus in preparation for tonight's Brahms Ein Deutches Requiem concert (to be repeated on Saturday night and Sunday matinee). As we moved through the work, Maestro Welser-Möst took no notes. But when we reached the end, he had us move backward to specific points and measures. He referred to no notes; he didn't turn to an assistant for reminders. He just knew exactly what we needed to fix. He knew what German diction was incorrect and what entrance was too loud and where a passage needed to be more espressivo or brighter.

Lisa, who sits next to me and is also new to the chorus, and I just looked at each other. She mused, "How can he remember all of that?"

I suddenly flashed back to sitting at the piano in my weekly Harmony lesson with Nadia Boulanger. I would play my 32-measure exercise. At the end, Mlle. Boulanger would correct me in her heavily French-accented English: "In the third measure, the tenor voice should have moved up by a third instead of down by a step. In the fifth measure, the alto voice . . . ." Whaaa? How did she do that? She wasn't looking at my manuscript paper. When I was studying with her, the summer of 1971, she was almost blind with cataracts. She just had this incredible, phenomenal, [insert other superlative here] musical sense and ability to remember what she heard.

She was, after all, Nadia Boulanger. How do you think she got to be as famous and influential as she was?!

I was telling Lisa about this, in response to noticing Maestro Welser-Möst's ability. I said, "I was in tears three days before and two days after my private lesson every week. I was totally intimidated."

Lisa asked if the intimidation was intentional. I thought for a moment, and then replied that I felt it was absolutely not intentional. It was an outgrowth of my having grown up the big fish in a small pond, and then reaching Fontainebleau, where I was a minnow in the ocean. (Okay, so minnows are freshwater fish and the ocean is saltwater. Change minnow to the smallest saltwater fish you can think of, and the analogy will be correct.)

And yet, I consider that educational experience, surrounded by some of the biggest names in the universe of music, to be one of the most important and formative of my life.

What did I learn? I learned how little I knew. And I've been trying ever since to fill in those holes. I'm not there yet. I'll never be there.

But I'll always keep trying and learning and growing.

[Note: While searching for a photo of Mademoiselle, I found the photo of her studio, taken in 1969, two years before I attended. A number of the people in that photo were in attendance the year I was there—which happened to be the 50th anniversary of the school. It was a mind-blowing summer. I was invited to dinner the night Soulima Stravinsky, Igor's son, was Mademoiselle's dinner guest. I met any number of world-renowned musicians. And I met and sang under the baton of Robert Shafer, whom I would re-meet in Washington in 1984, and sing under his baton for 15 years. And, through that association, meet my good husband. Isn't life funny?!]