Month: December 2017

Respecting the fact that many of my friends are not Christian, I have often thought that, if Christmas did not exist in the United States, the nation would have done well to invent it.

In broad strokes, there are three Christmases (at least) wrapped into one holiday. Of course they share a common origin. But their manifestations exist quite independent of one another. I suspect, People of a Certain Age, that your experiences are similar to mine.

The first Christmas is the birth story of Jesus of Nazareth. The scenarios involved in the Biblical story still hold magic for me. Start with the fact that the person around whom a major world religion is centered began his life in a stable, surrounded by barnyard animals. His dad, a tradesman, could have afforded lodging if he had just called ahead but…And when a baby is ready to be born, it is ready to be born!

The baby drew visitors. Shepherd’s, the age’s middle class like tradesmen, and rich people, wise men from the east. Angels provided the music. One time we saw the preparations for the Nativity Pageant at the Crystal Cathedral and realized what a show can be staged from these simple facts. There were even live camels!

Our friend, Mildred Joseph, our “Jewish grandmother,” (her words) who never failed to host us at the symphony when we were in New York, exclaimed how happy she was that “that little baby boy was born because so much wonderful music has been written for him.”

For the faithful, the celebration of this Christmas connects them with the ages and encourages us to think about wondrous things.

Then there is Christmas, the holiday that encourages spending money. Have we not all, at times, grumbled about the Christmas displays in stores going up just after Halloween? A local columnist wrote about friends who asked their toddler what holiday came after Thanksgiving, and he chirped “Black Friday!”

So many businesses depend upon annual upticks in spending at Christmas in order to enable them to finish the fiscal year in the black. Black Friday is now morphing into Black November, the headline roared a few weeks ago, and on-line retailers have their day on Monday after Black Friday. “Christmas is so commercial now” has been a frequent grumble for decades.

Perhaps two observations might help to shine another light on all that buying and selling. First, as retirees, our income is, in many ways, tied directly to a healthy U.S. economy. Consumer spending, for better or worse, is the linchpin of the economy. And several of the investments we have depend upon sales for the revenue they take in, some of which comes to me as a dividend. I’ve never relished cutting off my nose to spite my face.

Secondly, for whom do people buy things? At what other point in our year do we purposefully spend money to buy things for others? And some people fret mightily over selecting just the right thing for the gift-receiver. It is worth speculating about what our world and our country would be like if we spent more time thinking about others in the way Christmas makes us do.

A local TV ad this year exhorts people to make gifts of themselves in service to others. Note: stuff still might get bought.

The third Christmas can be the most personal. The season being distinct, it often helps us remember. I’ve written before about how a specific song by Keali’i Reichel puts me in the car with Mom, Chad, Sandee, and Judy in the chill, waiting to go into Mom’s church for the Christmas Eve service one year.

Seeing the depiction of angels calls to mind a story I don’t recall due to my youth. Apparently, during the annual Christmas Pageant at the Ruth and Joe White house, my sister was dressed as an angel. She came down the stairs majestically. Her six-month-old brother (that’s me) broke into what Mom described as the first real belly laugh of my life. I would apologize if I could confirm the story…

Seeing cowboy garb reminds me of the Christmas when someone outside the family gave me Hopalong Cassidy toy guns, a banned item in the White House. I don’t recall seeing them much after I unwrapped them and apparently did not miss them.

While in graduate school in Seattle, we helped assemble toys for our friends’ boys, with the orbiting of the moon as our backdrop on television.

Certainly, not every Christmas memory for every person will be a good one. Not everyone has been blessed with growing up in the warmth of family that I enjoyed or married well. Judy’s mom died on a Christmas Day. The annual return of the holiday can prompt unwanted memories and even depression for some.

So, for those memories that enrich our lives, remind us of good times with family and friends, and cause in us moments of reflection, we have cause to be grateful.

Three Christmases. Maybe there is a unifying theme after all; thinking about people other than ourselves. That does deserve a holiday.

Daniel E. White

December 25, 2017

These old dogs picked up a new trick a while back. We started going to the symphony an hour before the performance to hear the principal soloist and the guest conductor discuss the day’s music. It’s like an advanced Music Appreciation course in twenty minutes.

One such conversation preceded a program featuring the principal harpist of the Hawaii Symphony Orchestra who was be the soloist for Handel’s Concerto in B-flat for Harp, Op. 4, No. 6. She first explained her instrument.

Who knew that there were seven pedals to be manipulated on a harp for sharps and flats, and that there were more than 2000 moving parts? I thought a harp was just strings of various sizes strung to varying degrees of tautness in a frame that looked very—well—harpish. (I clearly need those Music Appreciation sessions!)

She went on to explain that the harp was not included in orchestras for much of the early period of classical music because it was not possible to be played in all keys. Through various adaptations, the harp evolved. By 1810, it was versatile enough for all keys and was incorporated into many more orchestras as a result.

Why was this relevant to the piece she would play? Because Handel wrote his Concerto for Harp before the harp had evolved to its current state.

This observation prompted the day’s guest conductor to discuss a challenge inherent in playing music written long ago. On the one hand, he said, you want to understand and respect the way the composer meant the piece to be played. On the other hand, you cannot ignore the changes in the world that have happened between the time the composer wrote and today. This includes lived experience, differences in technology, advances in particular instruments, and so on.

William Shakespeare took an old theme, star-crossed lovers, and fashioned Romeo and Juliet, setting the love story in the context of a family feud. Scores of directors and actors have produced the play, with myriad settings and costumes. A couple of fellows in New York took the story, changed the Montagues and Capulets to the Sharks and the Jets, wrote some great music and staged West Side Story.

Driving home one day, I listened to NPR’s program, Exploring Music, hosted by Bill McGlaughlin. The theme McGlaughlin had chosen for the week’s shows involved the metronome and how different conductors had adopted different numbers of beats per minute for each note. The featured piece was Dmitri Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony.

The piece premiered in the USSR in 1937, the year in which Stalin’s massacre of Soviet citizens for the political purpose of spreading terror reached its peak. The pacing of the Fifth Symphony in a 1937 performance McGlauglin played was slow enough to reveal the critique of the existing political scene the composer meant it to be. McGlaughlin described the final movement as “forced joy:” you WILL celebrate because Stalin says you will.

A 1959 performance of the symphony was conducted by Leonard Bernstein in the USSR with the composer in attendance. As measured by a metronome, the tempo of the final movement in the Bernstein performance was nearly twice that of performance in 1937. As a result, the sense of celebration in the music sounds real, unforced, quite different than in 1937.

Shostakovich came up to the stage at the conclusion of the symphony and embraced Bernstein.

I think Shakespeare would have hailed West Side Story as a masterwork. I think Handel would have led the “bravas” for the performance of our harpist using an instrument that did not exist when he wrote the music.

Artists such as these know what other creators and founders and originators also know; once out in the world, if one’s work survives over time, it will be changed by the times and by the life experiences of those who appreciate the creation.

People of a Certain Age, if you had children, you know this; your child will find happiness in his or her own way, whether or not that way is yours.

There are orchestras that use only the instruments available at the time of composition and follow the written instructions of the composer. These performances are quaint and, to some degree, a mild rebuke of the composer. Don’t artists who become famous over generations want and expect their works to adapt to whatever is the current context and still be considered great works?

We can understand the contexts in which great literature was written but truly great literature transcends its contexts to retain freshness in succeeding generations. Ditto great paintings.

I have been privileged to be part of founding programs and institutions. My expectation is that people in those programs and institutions will be true to the founding values and willing to adapt to current realities. I suspect you parents harbor similar hopes about your children.

Quaint is no compliment. Like Shostakovich, I feel the urge to rush to embrace those who have taken my “creations” as theirs to adapt, to play notes I have written with their instruments, to keep the composition fresh, even if that requires speeding up the notes.

Daniel E. White

December 11, 2017