As I finish the first of my two years as Chair of the SAA Board of Directors, I’ve been looking back at my experiences and what I’ve written about them and can find some recurring themes: connectivity, the balance of tradition and innovation, love.
The Suzuki Method is the model for connecting children to music, to teachers, to parents and to each other, and our Association strives to connect all of these elements together through the Journal, Website, Institutes, Chapters, Retreats, and Conferences. The Method has as one of its core ideas the notion that one learns basic literature that is constantly reviewed and polished while new techniques and pieces are added. Similarly, the Association seeks to preserve the legacy of Dr. Suzuki’s teaching while encouraging (as he did) a constant flow of new ideas and innovation that build on the traditional core of the Method. All of this activity is infused with respect for the individual, with a deep love for music and for humanity. We see that love demonstrated everyday in the teaching studio and in family practice sessions. On the Association level, we witness that generosity in the unencumbered sharing of ideas, in the time and effort given to the volunteer activity that is the engine of the Association’s forward motion, and in the financial support you all provide for these programs.
The more time I spend as a Suzuki Dad and an SAA servant leader the more I see everything that happens to me through Suzuki-colored glasses. At the beginning of October, I was involved in the premiere of a very unique piece whose success might be attributed to my triangle of recurring Suzuki themes (connectivity, tradition/innovation, love). The piece was entitled “Milestones: For Jung-Ho” and was the brainchild of Maestro Jung-Ho Pak. Maestro Pak is a Suzuki Dad, serves as the conductor of the New Haven Symphony and Interlochen’s World Youth Symphony Orchestra, and was recently appointed the artistic director and conductor of the San Diego Chamber Orchestra. In order to introduce himself in his first concert as the Chamber Orchestra’s permanent conductor, Pak asked five of his closest composer friends from around the country to each contribute a movement to “Milestones.” The only restrictions were that the movement could not be more than two or three minutes long, that it would in some way describe Pak, and that the composers use as a motive the three musical pitches—G, H (B natural), and A—present in the letters of his name. I was one of the five composers. My colleagues in this endeavor were Michael Albaugh, Larry Groupè, Bruce Donnelly and Anthony DeRitis.
On receiving this commission, my first thought was “what a lunatic idea!” Five very different composers combining to produce a coherent piece of music? A recipe for disaster. Well, I was wrong. Each movement of the piece had its unique character, but miraculously segued organically from and into the surrounding movements. Those movements combined to produce a satisfying dramatic arch, and best of all, the audience really seemed to enjoy it—a rare reaction at a modern classical music premiere.
Looking at the experience of the piece through my Suzuki triangle glasses, I see connectivity as one of the primary reasons for its success. The simple but powerful restriction of a shared three-note motive insured a commonality to the pieces as well as a linguistic base that could center the piece but allow for an individual vocabulary. That three-note motive is the “Urlinie” or basic line of a diatonic scale, and, as such, is the building block of Western classical music that theorist Heinrich Schenker claims is present at all levels of a successful piece of tonal music. The notion of a single piece written by five different composers was certainly innovative, but it was balanced by the use of a very traditional melodic motive and the familiar harmonic language it suggests. Most of all, love insured the piece’s success. All the composers shared a great respect and fondness for Maestro Pak, a conductor who has championed our music and works diligently to insure that the composer’s intentions are clearly realized in performance. Moreover, Pak knew that the five composers were “audience-friendly,” that they felt their job as composers was to engage, nurture, and entertain their listeners.
Since being introduced to the Suzuki Method, I have continually found that its basic values, when applied in any situation, yield positive results. Those values, and Maestro Pak’s faith in them, were certainly at work in the evolution of this unique composition. Suzuki’s faith in human potential, his necessary response to the horror of war, allows us to connect, to share a set of values, and to move forward as both artists and humans.
