When I read this article about DeMatha Catholic High School’s music program, I was first depressed. Then I was irritated. Once I got over myself and started considering the implications of music at DeMatha, my depression lifted and a calm satisfaction began to set in.
In case you didn’t lunge right into the article: DeMatha has developed a successful music program on the back of its sports achievements. DeMatha is a high-end Catholic boys’ school that makes a fuss over athletics and positively drips with banners and accolades. I would have been utterly miserable there. The sporting world is a closed book to me and will ever remain so; I am about as interested in sports as your average jock is in Palestrina. I played a bit of sandlot baseball as a kid, but without any particular passion or interest. I just did it because that’s what the kids were doing. Since high school the only balls I’ve touched have been wrapped in scrota.
DeMatha created what was at first just your basic half-time band. The players huddled wanly in the shallow end of the social gene pool, just like band kids in American high schools everywhere. But the band improved, success followed, and nowadays band membership isn’t a ticket to instant ignominy. Those chaps who play both sports and an instrument seem to have the best time of it—we may assume that they would be the ones who were getting all the chicks, if there were chicks to be gotten.
My original irritation-cum-depression stemmed from the dour thought that music could bloom in a private American high school only as an adjunct to sports. There it was again: an American teenager can be blessed with an astounding intellect and artistic gifts worthy of Beethoven, but nobody cares. Unless he can pass that goddamn football, he’s an embarrassment. Why couldn’t he grow up normal, i.e., stupid and big and horny and aggressive? Why did my kid have to be a geek brain nerd faggot pansy artist?
DeMatha planted basketball seeds and got some musical flowers in the mix more or less by accident. But I’ll bet that there have been some calls to weed.
As I said, calm set in and I clambered down off my soap box. I flashed on the Mannheim court, where Elector Karl Theodor established what was to become the finest orchestra in Europe and the progenitor of today’s great civic orchestras. But Karl Theodor wasn’t particularly motivated by artistic passion; his purpose was earthier. The lavish kapelle at Mannheim was conspicuous consumption in the grand manner, deliberate ostentation meant to impress and intimidate, matching the elaborate complex of buildings begun in 1720 under Elector Karl Philipp. Schloss Mannheim—nowadays home of the city university—stands to this day as one of Germany’s most splendiferous palaces. Glamor was just as critical to political standing in the 18th century as it is today, and the Mannheim orchestra was part and parcel of calculated public display. However, it wasn’t the Mannheim orchestra until Johann Stamitz came along in 1741; this underrated master musician transformed not only the orchestra’s musical quality but also its public standing. Stamitz’s death at 39 cut short a career that very well could have rivaled Haydn’s. That’s sad.
It has only been recently that we tend to think of “great” music as existing somehow apart from everyday life. We forget that the St. Matthew Passion was written for Good Friday services at Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche and Thomaskirche, or that Brahms wrote the Academic Festival Overture as a thank-you note for an honorary doctorate from the University of Breslau. Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony was premiered at a celebration of a military victory. The vast bulk of Haydn’s works were written on spec for his aristocratic patron, Nikolaus Esterházy. Bach wrote his clavier concertos for Zimmermann’s Coffee House—outdoors weather permitting, indoors otherwise.
And the Mannheim Orchestra played for social events, state dinners, and card games.
Music was typically written and performed under distinctly utilitarian auspices. Most of that music has properly vanished into the void, its obscurity fully justified. But good stuff will rise above its humble origins. Many of George and Ira Gershwin’s songs have achieved immortality, but most of them began life as part of flimsy, leggy Broadway shows devoid of theatrical or dramatic merit. Girl Crazy alone gave birth to “Embraceable You”, “But Not for Me”, “Sam and Delilah”, and “I Got Rhythm”—but the show is a hopeless mosh, cowboys and cowgirls on a dude ranch, about as genuine as a five-dollar Rolex.
Somewhere along the line we acquired the notion that Great Music comes from Great Composers working in Great Autonomy. It’s not that unusual today for new compositions to result from hefty grants and lavish commissions. The finished products are considered Big Events performed in all solemnity by Big Orchestras and allotted reverential media coverage. But that’s not how most of our great masterpieces came about. Typically the music was written to a specific purpose, even if just to earn some bucks via publication. Most so-called “classical” music came about from the same force that propels “pop” music today—commerce.
A line from the musical A Chorus Line: “Dancing for my own enjoyment, still collecting unemployment. That ain’t it, kid, that ain’t it.” You probably remember her solution: “Tits and Ass! Got myself a fancy pair, tightened up the derrière. And the nose with it, all that goes with it.”
Steve Jobs: Real artists ship.
In short, music needs to be rooted in reality. If DeMatha Catholic High has an award-winning band that has grown beyond its merely utilitarian intentions, then I say bully for DeMatha. They’re doing the right thing and they’re doing it the right way. Music that threads through daily life, serving a concrete purpose and devoid of prissy pretension. That’s as it should be. Go, team!