Leonard Slatkin - Leading Tones: Reflections on Music, Musicians, and the Music Industry

Copyright 2017 by Leonard Slatkin

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2017 by Amadeus Press

An Imprint of Hal Leonard LLC

7777 West Bluemound Road

Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices

33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Lynn Bergesen, UB Communications

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Slatkin, Leonard author.

Title: Leading tones : reflections on music, musicians, and the music

industry / Leonard Slatkin.

Description: Montclair, NJ : Amadeus Press, 2017. | Includes index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017019204 | ISBN 9781495091896 (hardcover)

Subjects: LCSH: Slatkin, Leonard. | ConductorsUnited StatesBiography. |

MusicAnecdotes.

Classification: LCC ML422.S536 A3 2017 | DDC 784.2092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017019204

www.amadeuspress.com

For my brother, Fred,

with love, appreciation, and music

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

Ludwig van Beethoven

Experience is something you dont get until just after you need it.

Steven Wright

I dont think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.

Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.

William Faulkner

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

Leonard Bernstein

For that matter, were all fools though we dont know it.

Plautus, Pseudolus

Contents

Part One

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

Victor Hugo

My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what other people do not know.

Arthur Conan Doyle,
The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle

You never know where life is going to take you. We begin with dreams, and if we are lucky, a few of them come true.

For me, there was never a question of my career path. It was music, music, music. With a family completely immersed in this profession, I was surrounded by the best and the brightest in the field. Occasionally people from other walks of life visited the Slatkin house, but they were few and far between.

When my father suddenly died, I was just nineteen years old, and my life changed. Not that we were close, but his influence on me was profound. My musical hero was gone, and I ceased my instrumental studies. I decided to become a teacher of English literature.

Eventually I came back to the musical fold. But somewhere in the back of my mind there were these little reminders of what might have been. I began to write articles for magazines and newspapers. At first they were amateurish and without a personal voice. Experience and time helped me refine my style.

In 2012 my first book, Conducting Business , was published. Very few people knew that I entertained an interest in the printed word, and I did not think any publisher would be interested. Nevertheless, it was received very well, by both the public and journalists, and had stronger sales than usual for a book about classical music. Some of those who encouraged me to write the initial work now wanted more.

Leading Tones is the result.

It had never occurred to me that at least one more book was in the offing. I thought the first tome was it; there was nothing else to say. However, when I went back and began looking at the notes and drafts for the first volume, I found that I had more ideas than could comfortably fit into 300-plus pages.

This time around I have chosen to write about some of my favorite collaborators, the state of the music industry, and odds and ends that I hope you will find interesting.

Although Conducting Business contained chapters about some of the people who taught or influenced me, it did not give me enough opportunity to write about the many musicians who were so special to work with. Whether it was Isaac Stern, Nathan Milstein, John Browning, John Williams, or other luminaries in the field, setting down reminiscences of these and other artists seemed a must. As it was not possible to include everyone, I chose just six.

It has been my good fortune to have worked with some of the greatest musicians on the planet. When I began my conducting career in the late 1960s, there were still legends around. Sadly, I never had occasion to collaborate with Horowitz, Rubinstein, Heifetz, or Piatigorsky, although I heard them often and came close to an engagement with each one. Still, I consider myself blessed to have heard them as well as many other musical giants.

In this book I have also tried to define and consider some of the difficulties that have been encountered by so many. Controversy has always surrounded the artistic experience. It was my idea to write in a way that encompassed every side of an issue, whether that meant considering the perspective of female conductors, union leadership, or the orchestral musicians themselves.

During the first part of the twenty-first century, the music business underwent some radical rethinking as well as major paradigm shifts. Some of these concepts were born out of economic necessity, but equally important has been the changing mores of society. In some areas we have become more accepting of the new, but in other ways we are mired in convoluted rules and regulations.

Whether in the area of labor negotiations, audition procedures, discrimination in the workplace, or any number of other topics, there is still a long way to go in remedying the ills that confront us. Yes, we are not as repressive as we were even twenty years ago, but dichotomies and inconsistencies remain in how we conduct business in the arts. Much of this seems at odds with the mostly liberal thinking among artists that pervades the industry. However, it is not always they who have the last word.

Most of what we do is appreciated by a select audience, one with a bit of training that started with their childhood education. It is our job, however, to broaden our reach and make what we do available to as many people as possible. How we teach our children is crucial to growing the arts.

As for actual music making, there are sections devoted to programming and debuts, and even an attempt to choose ten pieces I cannot live without as a conductor. Comparable to my take on the issues confronting the industry as a whole, these selections are highly subjective. They also provide a context in which to view my musical thought process as it has progressed during my life as a conductor.

I both love and hate top 10 lists. They provide a form of entertainment that sometimes can be helpful in sorting out material pertaining to one subject or another. Frequently they are annoying. One must be wary of how they were put together and who was overseeing the project. No such danger in my own compilations. They are highly opinionated, filled with my own preferences.