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Thirty years ago, President Bill Clinton and his Congressional opponents, Sen. Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, came to an agreement. Congress approved House Joint Resolution 239 and forwarded it to the president, authorizing him to concur.
Clinton agreed and on Aug. 22, 1994, issued Proclamation 6716, designating September as Classical Music Month. No money, you understand, but it’s nice to be reminded that our leaders once formally acknowledged that classical music is worth public notice.
Not that the public really noticed. As one who has long been in thrall to the art form, I used this space to spread the news about it immediately and am at it again. Some news bears repeating.
I am sure that neither Clinton nor Congressional leaders authored the text, but they signed off on the idea that classical music “is a unifying force in our world, bringing people together across vast cultural and geographical divisions,” speaking “both to the mind and to the heart, giving us something to think about as well as to experience.” Not a bad function to serve in these divisive, deeply polarized days. I grew up in a world where classical music was accepted as the standard.
We listened to music of the moment, but the classics were part of the common experience, primarily through piano scores, but also a fixture in radio broadcasting, even in early television. In the 23 years of Ed Sullivan’s pioneer TV variety show, opera stars were featured over 1,000 times. The first record I saw and heard - one of those early, heavy 78 rpms - was an aria by Enrico Caruso, played on a neighbor’s old victrola.
All of her recordings featured operatic stars whose names were universally familiar. The oldest music lodged in my memory is Roy Acuff’s “Night Train to Memphis’” (I still know the words). Country music was most familiar in those days, but swing was pushing its way into popularity.
My introduction to the classics was accidental. I have told this before, but, at my age, you can’t help repeating your stories. Abed one Saturday with a high fever, I was sliding in and out of consciousness.
Every time I came to, I turned on the radio, rotating the dial, looking for familiar soap operas, returning to sleep when realizing it was Saturday: no “soaps” on the weekend. On the third or fourth try, my search came up with a man singing the most beautiful melody I had ever heard, but in words that made no sense. Determined to understand, I stayed with it.
When he finished, a woman began to sing, in melody equally compelling. Then they sang together in an even more glorious song, also incomprehensible. This was followed by thunderous applause, over which Milton Cross announced it was act one of Puccini’s “La Boheme” from the Metropolitan Opera.
I turned off the radio and went back to sleep. Monday, sufficiently recovered to go to school (naturally), I trekked to the McLemore Branch Library after class to find out what this opera business was. It was astonishing to find a whole shelf of books on a subject this arrogant 7th Grader had never heard of.
Four books - the limit - went home with me and were devoured. I never missed another Metropolitan broadcast over the next five years, mining the downtown library for libretti, and eventually, vocal scores. My older sister, who introduced me to the magic of novels in the second grade, took me to see two live operas when the San Carlo Company came to town three years later: another transformative gift.
The thing is, I came to opera naturally, without preconceptions, and it has remained one of my deepest pleasures. I also remember the first stumble into orchestral music. Bob Moore and I were in his attic, fooling around with a chemistry set when we turned on the radio and heard James Fassett hosting the New York Philharmonic, introducing me to a musical form that was to overtake opera and transform my life.
My very first newspaper column, some 70 years ago, was a critique of new classical recordings. This was when long-playing record companies began stereo releases, flooding the market with them. The short-lived Westminster label alone put out 30 albums every month.
As a newspaper critic - one of the few to send tear sheets of their judgments to record producers - I received free copies of almost everything for several years, accumulating thousands of albums. My dream was, one day, to run a radio station that promoted classical music, one that came true in 1980 when WVIK went on the air, using 5,000 of my classical albums to start its library. The point of this autobiographical ramble is to suggest that classical music can work its magic if you listen without prejudice, bringing to it an open mind and attention.
Many consider it elitist, the province of the privileged. Nothing could be further from the truth. Given a fair chance, every person, regardless of education or social standing, can respond to the emotional and intellectual richness you find in classical music.
After all, something becomes a classic, not because it’s dull and affected, but because generation after generation finds in it something important, even essential to life. Music works best in person. The sound on radio and CDs is approximate and, on the internet, it is a shadow of its reality.
The best place is at a live concert; it is as much a physical experience as an aural one. Try the QC Symphony; its April concert will appeal to everyone. The single best intro may be the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s 7th symphony.
It is a simple melody - little more than a pulse - which grows in richness in its brief duration. Once absorbed, it can haunt you forever. For something of immediate pleasure, you can’t beat “The Planets’ by Gustav Holst.
One way or another, give this great art a try sometime this September. It’s worth the effort and, after all, this is classical music month. Don Wooten Don Wooten is a former Illinois state senator and a regular columnist.
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