Last Tuesday afternoon I was scheduled to attend a concert rehearsal at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in my capacity as a gallery attendant. I had done this before, so I was expecting an easy task where I could do a bit of recreational reading and hear a spot of music. The Pulitzer and the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra have done many of these collaborative shows in order to promote contemporary art and music. The Pulitzer building provides a great modern space and surprisingly amazing acoustics for such an event, and they are very popular with our visitors. In fact, the concert series from this past weekend was sold out.
So, I went down into the Lower Gallery where I found two grand pianos patiently waiting to be played. I at once developed more enthusiasm for how I was about to spend the afternoon. Though I never excelled myself at playing keyboard instruments, the piano and the harpsichord happen to be my two favorites. The piano for its stoic figure trouncing out delightful pulses of sound, and the harpsichord for being more playful and sending out pleasant vibrations in its plucky way. When the pianist arrived with the event coordinator, I sat up and listened. From the moment he began playing I replaced my bookmark and shut my historical non-fiction book, How The Scots Invented the Modern World, and that is how it remained. Sorry Scotland, but I did give you a year of my life, so you can wait until this rehearsal is over.
First the pianist was trying to figure out which of the two grands to utilize for the concert. Option number one was well tuned and sounded great. Option number two also sounded amazing in addition to having a much more delightful feel to it. The sound was warmer and the reverberating notes just hit my chest in a more agreeable way than the first. The two men discussed and compared the two pianos, and I was thrilled when the pianist turned to me and asked for my opinion. It just made me feel like I had a larger role in the whole process. I told him the second, and they were both in agreement.
Then the pianist began to play. The piece is an approximately one hour long composition entitled The People Will Never Be Defeated! by Frederic Rzewski. I had never heard this music before and I was not even familiar with the composer, but by the time the pianist hit those final keys I felt I knew him. I think perhaps Rzewski was trying to tell a story. It starts with a march that fragments off into a series of rapid fire notes that have the qualities of both a nuclear physicist's mathematical equations and the unpredictable trajectories of shrapnel. In other words, it's complicated and it's all over the place. It kind of sounded like someone took the sheet music of Beethoven, Bach, and Debussy and shot it out of a cannon. Then someone sent an intern around to gather up all the paper fragments, glued them together, and then increased the tempo by ten times. The pianist's ability to play this piece is awe-inspiring since it was so fast and so mentally and physically difficult to play. I think I may have even seen smoke rising off his head at one point. In the end, the piece returns to the nationalistic melody of the march, but includes many of the complex patterns of notes that dominated the middle of the piece. I think a perfect analogy for this music is that of a boy who grows up within a safe and set structure, then he becomes a young man and goes off into the world trying anything and everything that is new, finally, once he has matured he returns to the safety and comfort of home bringing all his experiences with him. That's why I say the piece makes me feel like a know Rzewski. I have to ask myself, did he compose his autobiography in musical form?
I only got to watch the rehearsal, since I did not work the concert, but I feel I got the better of the two shows (though the pianist says the actual performance was the best he'd ever played it). I think I got the superior show because I got to interact with the pianist, discuss the piece, hear certain parts more than once, and help pick the piano. That just tickled me, really. Very cool. Experiences like this are the reason why I have always enjoyed working at the Pulitzer. Music in the Pulitzer is unlike any music you have ever heard. And others have noticed this as well, which is why the concerts sold out months ago.
Have you ever attended a musical performance at a museum or gallery? How do you feel the environment and the music compliment each other?
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