Legacy

Donald Erb has died. I am saddened to hear about the passing of this very interesting American composer. I have the feeling that there is a certain passing of an era going on these days, and it’s confirmed by Mr. Erb’s biography. This is a “first generation” that is saying their last goodbyes, and I wonder if my fellow Americans realize how much this generation, and American music in general, owes to one woman.

Buried deep in the obituary of Donald Erb is the line: “He briefly studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the early 1950s.” Of course he did. Everyone did. The pilgrimage to study with Madame Boulanger was a ritual amongst young American classical musicians, performers and composer alike. Whether they actually needed it or not isnt relevant; it was important to make the pilgrimage since it gave a certain legitimacy to one’s career. After all, Nadia Boulanger almost single-handedly jumpstarted classical music in this country after WWI.

If you google “students of Nadia Boulanger” the first website that pops up is a list of American students of Nadia Boulanger. It doesn’t read like a Who’s who, it IS the Who’s who of classical music. Besides the late Mr. Erb there is Leslie Bassett, Easley Blackwood, Paul Bowles, Elliott Carter, Aaron Copland, Irving Fine, Ross Lee Finney, Arthur Frackenpohl, Philip Glass, Adolphus Hailstork, Karel Husa, Thea Musgrave, Daniel Pinkham, Robert Shafer, Elie Siegmeister, Stan Skrowaczewski (ok, he’s Polish, but he lives in Minneapolis), Virgil Thomson, George Walker, etc. etc. I would also like to mention my fabulous piano teacher Yvar Mikhashoff with whom I studied during the late 1970s in Buffalo, N.Y. Many of the aforementioned have passed on, and many of the rest are quite elderly. I fear that it is time for this generation to leave us.

I do not know what the reader of this post thinks about these composers. Many of them I admire and some I certainly could live without. That does not mean that I think that those whose music I don’t like didn’t have a profound impact on music. This is important. These composers were exploring, and they used their experience from the rigorous training they acquired under Madame Boulanger to hone their art. Because of her there is no one American Classical music, and that allows all of us who are performers to explore many different types of music, all of which legitimately fall under the American label.

Look at that list. I’ve performed works from almost all of them but if you didn’t tell me straight out I wouldn’t know that they were all American just from hearing their music. This allows us Americans to spend a lot of time arguing over which composers we consider worthy. For example, perhaps I’ve read this wrong but my colleague Allan Kozinn @ the NY Times seems to adore the music of Elliott Carter. Anyone who knows me well knows that I could happily live the rest of my life without hearing any more of his music. This is a personal choice and I will not deny the impact that Carter has had on American music. But what’s important here is that Allan and I have the liberty to disagree. In many countries their is a hegemony past which one cannot go. I am reminder of what Simon Rattle said upon receiving his knighthood, something along the lines of finally being able to conduct Elgar with impunity. In American we have so many composers, so many different “schools” as it were, and almost all of them can be directly tied to Nadia Boulanger. They were her students, or the students of her students, like myself.

So as we look at American music, and realize how vibrate it has been, is now, and probably will be for quite a while, it behooves us to give a nod to this wonderful lady from France. Donald Erb’s legacy should remind us of this. If we all pay close attention to the obits in this business over the next few years I bet we will frequently see that line – “……. briefly studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.” We should give thanks for that.