Someone Listening

   What do my Grandma and Messiaen have in common? They have both listened to me.
  As a beginner I can remember taking my metal clarinet out of its long leather case, blowing into the mouthpiece and sounding a song of squeaks, squawks, and tones. 
  I was so fortunate that my parents, who really could not afford to spend money on private lessons, considered my relentless returning to that metal clarinet a sign that I should have a teacher. [I’ve written a remembrance of my first teacher, Mr. Howard Thompson, earlier in this blog] And with the family’s investment in lessons came my obligation to practice at home. My grandma’s bedroom was the one room at the end of our own tiny “shotgun“ apartment where the door closed.
   It became my after school practice room. My grandma sat ensconced next to the door and I played my clarinet next to the bed. She was my first audience - the most patient, the most quiet, and the least judgmental a young boy could hope for. Yet every time I started blowing into my horn, I knew she was listening. On occasion she might drift off, or if I paused to put up another piece of music she might open her eyes and say quietly, “That was nice”.
   Every scale and arpeggio I struggled with, every little étude I would try to master, my audience of one would attend and then let go. Now sometimes I think back to those early days and feel how healthy and natural it was for me to play the clarinet for a benign listener.
   As my teachers became more invested in my capabilities technically and musically, I started to develop a self who would criticize and analyze imperfections. Eventually I began playing for others to listen, first in elementary school and church. With my dad on tenor saxophone and my grandma playing rolled chords on the upright, we gave our first performances to the congregation of the Stewart Memorial United Presbyterian Sunday School. This was San Francisco, circa 1950.

TASHI: clockwise from top left: Fred Sherry, Ida Kavafian, Peter Serkin, Richard Stoltzman

40 years later, in New York, I was playing the clarinet in the Tashi group with Peter Serkin playing rolled chords (among many other things!), Ida Kavafian on violin, and Fred Sherry ‘cello, at John and Anne Straus’ Park Avenue apartment. The congregation consisted of Olivier Messiaen and Toro Takemitsu. Listening. I played my clarinet with the greatest passion I could muster while terrifyingly close to composers I most revered.
   I remember Messiaen listening to “Abîme des l’oiseaux”, “The soul of the bird”, for solo clarinet. He stood up, came over to me as I was beginning the return of the theme, now in the chalumeau register. “Lent, expressif et triste, désole”. Messiaen towered over me and spoke one word -“Noir”. I immediately stopped playing. “Noir”, he said again this time a bit more sternly. I began again but he stopped me within a few seconds and now loudly intoned “Noir”!  I was trembling, confused, scared and as I started to play once more he shouted, “NOIR”!  I stared at the music searching for some way out of this terrible impasse. I was playing the correct note, written F#, in the lowest range of the clarinet’s chalumeau. I was playing the composer’s written indication, piano, a soft dynamic. In desperation and with a little fear I tightened the muscles of my lips around the vibrating reed, squeezing it mercilessly, forced my breath through the tightened opening of my mouthpiece and aimed my forced stream of air down into the black bell at the bottom of my clarinet. I heard my sound come grinding through, painfully tortured with none of the beauty I usually attempted to find in the lowest register of the chalumeau. The composer turned back to his seat. I was left alone.