Downey Symphony

  First, Sharon demonstrated, with a power point presentation, that at the beginning, the job of the leader of a group of musicians was keeping time, to be a human metronome.

  Pictures of a Greek with a long iron-topped stick, led up to medieval groups with a leader clapping, both audible and visual signals of meter.  In Elizabethan times a long staff with an iron ferrule, or cap for the base, appeared, and with it, in France, the story of one of music’s great tragedies. 

 Jean-Batiste Lully, enormously popular Court Musician for Louis XIV, created ballet, chamber music and opera, introduced new instruments, such as the oboe, and teamed with Molière in presenting comedie-ballets such as le Bougeois Gentilhomme. One night performing for the Sun King, Lully brought the great stick emphatically down on his big toe, instead of the floor.

Gangrene set in but the great composer refused an amputation, and within ten weeks he had died, to the consternation of the court and the musical world.

Take-away lesson: conductors, beware of occupational hazards.

  By the late eighteenth century the leader of an ensemble can be spotted in old engravings, holding a white roll of paper, a scroll which was again a visual signal.  In one picture a man was shown holding two scrolls, one pointing to the choral group and the other to the instrumentalists.  We were soon to learn respect for the impossible difficulty in directing two different groups at once.

    In some newer pictures the concertmaster, or first violinist, is using his bow tip to keep time.   As larger ensembles appeared, roles became specialized and the conductor as we conceive of the role, appeared.  Mendelssohn was the first to use a baton, and he and Verdi wrote treatises to define the role of conductor as separate from simply one of the musicians.  In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Wagner and Berlioz developed techniques for the conductor, and showed that interpretation had replaced merely keeping time.

  Next, to bring us up to today, on the screen we saw the unmarked first page of a symphony score, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony.  Next Sharon showed her own copy of that funereal first movement’s first page, thickly covered with black marks annotating what she wanted from the orchestra: where the most prominent sound should come from, where the gliding effect of the bows.  She played it, and it was difficult for an outsider to read, but was an elaborate code for her.

 Sharon said she thinks the conductor’s role is to try to convey what the composer means.  For example, in a Cuban Danzon piece by Marquez which the Downey Symphony recently performed, she played for us two different conductors with the same orchestra.  She said she felt more percussion should appear in some phrases.  Five additional percussionists would cost the Downey Symphony $1,000 for just that piece, and here is where the active collaboration with the Symphony Board comes in

 The music director has to come to the Board for permission to engage the percussionists, which means spending more for the piece than had been budgeted.  The Board has to decide if there are enough funds, first, and second, how far to go to grant the artistic desires of the conductor.  Could the same effect be achieved by 3 additional percussionists instead of 5?  Is there enough money in the contingency fund to cover this?  The answer, for this performance, performed here in Downey last October, was yes.

   (Before each concert Sharon gives a lecture in the Theatre from 7:15 pm to 7:45 on the pieces to be played.  Many patrons consider this an essential part of their evening.)

Then came the moment all had been waiting for.  Everyone had been eying the actual batons placed at each table, wands with a cork ball at one end (On a few tables, chopsticks had been added, to reach the number called for by the membership).

   We were all asked to stand, and then, without batons (“I don’t let my students touch the baton for at least the first six months” said Professor Lavery), attempted with one hand to learn how to give the down beat and then successive hand motions for a 2/4 beat, a 4/4 march and then a ¾ waltz.

 So far, so good.  We even were allowed to pick up the batons and conduct a rousing “Row, row, row your boat.”

 Then came the difficult part: adding the left hand (or right hand, for lefties).  This hand does not beat time.  Oh no, it is used for all the other interpretive moves the conductor imparts.  In our case, we learned the cresecendo and the dimenuendo, louder and softer.

  Practicing it with just one hand, it seemed easy to do the graceful lift, palm up, of the hand, and then at the height of the sound during the measure, to turn the wrist and show the “no” side of the palm to the orchestra as the hand was lowered and with it, the volume of the sound.

  Now to put both hands together, and here was where the real difficulties began.  Rubbing the head while patting the stomach does not begin to express the difficulties in beating time in an arc with one hand, and raising and lowering the other.

The exercise ended, for many, with a desire to attend a symphony and this time instead of watching the violins or the trumpets perform, to watch the conductor’s hands and arms, with a new understanding of what special abilities it takes to make beautiful music.

  Sharon also announced the concert season for 2012-2013: the free Pops concert in the Wednesday Twilight Series in Furman Park at 7 pm on August 8, with movie music and TV themes.  On Saturday Oct 20, for the first concert of the season in the Downey Theatre, the world-renowned Norman Krieger will play Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto.  Colloquially know as “Rach 3,” it is famous for the technical and musical demands it makes on the piano soloist.

  Further concerts will be Jan. 21, 2013, and April 6, 2013.  We can count on Harold Tseklenis and this reporter to announce the exciting programs and offer the Club tickets at special member prices.

  The Downey Symphony Society also offers the Music in the Schools program, essential for students since music has been cut from the elementary curriculum. A quintet from the Symphony goes to each of the 13 elementary schools, and private schools such as Our Lady and St. Marks, teaching tempo and motif and other musical elements.  All this comes from subscriptions, donations and grants raised by the Symphonic Board and events put on by the Guild.

 The Downey Kiwanis Club has long been the generous sponsor for a concert in the Theatre for every Fifth Grader in Downy, in cooperation with the Downey Unified School District, which arranges the busing of the students in a major logistics operation.

  The Symphony is looking for a sponsor to renew the similar Third Grade Concert in the Theatre, to introduce our children to their first genuine taste of symphonic music.  Our Rotarian member Art Morris for years was able to get Downey Savings to allocate a grant for that, but the bank was a victim of the economy, and thus so was the yearly concert.

  Dr. Mary Stauffer buys rows of seats in the balcony and offers them to middle school students, and many attend, thanks to her generosity.