Potential Buyers Serenaded

From the "Big Deal" column in THE NEW YORK TIMES by JOSH BARBANEL

Published: February 17, 2008

You never know what a broker is going to find when showing a Manhattan apartment.

Sharon E. Baum of the Corcoran Group came across the unexpected when she opened the door of an apartment at 27 West 67th Street, owned by the estate of Albert Fuller, a harpsichordist and influential figure in the revival of early instrumental music. The co-op was as a haven for artists at the turn of the 20th century.

Ms. Baum and her client were greeted not by dirty laundry or even sweet-smelling cider bubbling on the stove, but by the strains of a work by Heinrich von Biber, a 17th-century composer, played on a Baroque-style violin with gut rather than steel strings by Colin Jacobsen, accompanied by a lute, harpsichord and cello.

Mr. Fuller’s apartment, a five-room duplex with a double-height living room and a barrel-vaulted 17-foot ceiling, had been used for decades as a musical salon and performance space, and while it was on the market, it was still being used for rehearsals.

Mr. Fuller died last September at the age of 81.

Since the first showing, Ms. Baum and James Roe, the executor of the estate and artistic director of the Helicon Foundation, which was founded by Mr. Fuller in the 1980s to support the early instrument movement, have been coordinating schedules. Now, musicians play when many potential buyers walk through.

“The kind of people who look at an apartment like this want to be near Lincoln Center and Juilliard,” Ms. Baum said. “Everyone who walks in doesn’t want to leave; they want to stay.”

The apartment, owned by Mr. Fuller since the 1970s, is decorated in an exuberant style. “The residence retains many prewar details awaiting restoration to their original glory,” Ms. Baum wrote in the listing.

Mr. Roe said that the foundation was supported in its early years by gifts from Alice Tully, a soprano and philanthropist, who died in 1993. Now, he said, a part of the proceeds of the sale will go to the foundation.

Article by violinist, Anthony Martin published in "Early Music America" Winter 2007

Albert Fuller (1926–2007) in memoriam vitae bene peractæ et spiritus semper viventis (an article by Anthony Martin from “Early Music America Magazine,” Winter 2007, Latin courtesy of Otto Steinmayer)

Performer, teacher, conductor, thinker, catalyst, eloquent speaker and sympathetic listener, Albert Fuller was mentor, guide, and friend to the generations of students and colleagues he influenced and inspired and brought together. Among his many accomplishments was the creation of Aston Magna, where performers, artists, and scholars would work, play, and eat together—oh! the heavenly meals created by the virtuosi that Albert installed in the kitchen! One memorable summer there he brought forth the first performances and recordings in America of the complete Brandenburg Concertos. His Helicon Foundation will continue that multi-disciplinary exploration in New York. Albert taught at the Juilliard School for over forty years, seeking always to put technique and repertoire into a wider, humanistic context. Many who heeded him are now at the center of early music activities throughout America. His book on Alice Tully is also his own spiritual autobiography.

There is little I could add to Albert’s legacy, except to quote his own words, taken from various sources dating back to the beginning of our friendship. Most touching were his holiday letters, in which he shared his hopes and his fears, readings and poems that had excited him, and his feelings of love and connection with his worldwide family of friends. I hope this selection gives some idea of what moved Albert, who so moved us.

"We know where we have been: in high spirits, on a flight without always knowing where we will land and, with only a few and happily rare exceptions, in a collaborative effort characterized by kind words, hard effort and joyous feelings at the moment of performance." (1978)

"Our desire to contribute to the stylistic discernment of the various musical periods, and hence the true meaning of the music, is unique, strong and revelatory in new and unexpected ways. That you can share this adventure with us is a source of the deepest satisfaction of comradeship in the feelings of which all artistic works are the metaphors." (1978)

"In these hard times I feel that adding anything of good, even whatever little drop we may have of our good feelings and our benevolent aims, adding that to the rampant evil such as the confrontation of nuclear war, is a valuable thing." (1982)

"The love that we all share has been the real glue of our work together. The musical products of that work are themselves the testimony of the power of exercising that love. In addition many other facets of our lives have been illuminated by the brightness of all that loving effort together." (1983)

"To Aston Magna’s musicians as well as to those spiritually close to them, there was an underlying dynamic focus to the effort that was more important than the aural exoticism [of “original instruments”], a focus that was not so apparent to a large segment of the public nor even to many close to the foundation’s support. That was the feeling of newness of discovery or better, re-discovery, that attached itself to each performance. This new feeling derived not so much from the simple exercise of the “original instruments” themselves; rather, and more importantly, the instruments, as the true starting line, were the new tools that beckoned and prodded the players to exercise their art within a further and hitherto unsuspected spectrum of musical expressivity. This new territory was in effect the rediscovered chambers of psychological perceptions and emotional preoccupations of segments of our inherited past, of our own direct 17th- and 18th-century musical ancestors … Those who participated in this expansive growth of physical gestures and psychological conceptions formed into a network of musicians bonded and characterized by the intense camaraderie of initiation. Love for one another was fueled by the effort of new learning, and was fired on a regular basis by the excitement, the thrill, the frisson of participating, each with all, in the living performance results of the work." (1983)

"Although I can’t think of any time when I have been busier, nevertheless, it is almost 1991 and, boy, does that ever cause me to pause and to think over so many years of knowing people and working hard at what I love! I conclude that the work will be here long after I have departed hence and, thus, in the end it is the people who have shared what we love together that matters most to me." (1990)

"Gratitude is on my mind for all the musical experiences that continue to demonstrate the mysterious workings of the human spirit and heart, especially in the manner that only musical art can reveal." (1992)

"As we all hurtle toward the new millennium I suspect, I pray, I may know a little bit more than previously about what to do about each day." (1995)

"My 70th birthday isn’t a surprise; after all, you know I’ve been counting! Nevertheless, I can easily say that it’s the happiest birthday I have thus far celebrated. According to my parents, getting old was a drag. Not so here! I know more, I understand more and I love it more." (1996)

"My own problems over the past year have been far outweighed by the blessings of understanding and experience. In whatever the future brings I pray that our spirits may intertwine in some productive fashion to bring us all the measure of personal freedom that we can use for our benefit and that of our brothers and sisters." (1997)

"The cement that binds us together is our understanding that music holds an almost supreme place in our bodies, in our psyches and in our life’s study and work. What a great joy and comfort it is for each of us, and for those friends with whom we share the precious and unique understanding: the meaning of musical art!" (1998)

"I thank God, whoever she may be, that the Internet is really founded on the network of friendship that has held us all together." (1999)

“'Insanity is when we keep doing the same thing and go on expecting different results.' It turns out that, from my earliest years, this particular dictum has been the major reason for my growth in coming to terms with my own life, and for my success, if I may call it that, in being a teacher. Now, as an old geezer, I’m disappointed that I couldn’t have passed this idea on to more than I have." (2000)

"Sharing the heartfelt beauties of music and the other arts encourages me to continue to cling to my normally optimistic view: good finally triumphs over evil and mankind will one day fulfill the role to which all sages have always pointed us!" (2002)

"Now that the late century is behind us, I pray that each of us will do his/her part in attempting to 'calm the waters,' and pass the word and example of loving one another amongst us all, each in his own way. What else can an individual do except to offer one’s unique and individual energy in an attempt to steer the mass of humanity toward a truly creative and joyous existence?" (2003)

For Albert Fuller, music, the arts, and the sciences were all means to the end of uniting all human beings of the past, present, and future into one continuum of love and understanding. His faith in that project was the foundation of his life and work. Let us each endeavor to carry it on!

Remarks given by James Roe at Albert Fuller's Tribute Concert, 12 Nov 2007, The Juilliard School

Ladies and gentlemen, I am so pleased to see a full house tonight. My name is James Roe, I am the Artistic Director the of The Helicon Foundation, an organization Albert Fuller founded in 1985 to explore the use of period instruments in chamber music from the 17th, 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Emailing last week with Albert’s long time friend, Frank Heller, he mentioned how much Albert would have loved this program; indeed he would have. All the performers tonight are ones he loved dearly and with whom he had long fruitful association and so we thank them for being a part of this tribute. While I’m thanking people, let me express gratitude to President Polisi and Juilliard for hosting this event. On the Helicon side, I have to thank Matthew Herren for his indispensable assistance in planning this event. I also thank Helicon Board Member Karen McLaughlin and her friends at Live from Lincoln Center for producing and editing the recording of Albert speaking and for making the DVD included in your program. On a personal note, everyone who loved Albert owes a deep gratitude to Patrick Rucker, who in the last year of Albert’s life, and especially during his final illness, provided him with care, comfort and dignity as he lived out his final days in his own home.

I met Albert Fuller in 1990 as a student in his Juilliard Graduate Seminar called “Performance Problems in 18th-Century Music.” Seventeen years and two months ago, fresh and green from northern Michigan farm country, I was sitting just upstairs in Karen Wagner’s office planning my course work. “Why don’t you take Albert Fuller’s class?” she said, “I think you’d enjoy it.” Well, Karen, I’d say that was a terrific suggestion . . .

Albert referred to his graduate seminar as his STYLE CLASS. Any of us who spent any time with Albert, knew that his very life was a class in style — and his style was in a class all by itself.

His course didn’t follow the usual or expected linear format—usual, expected, and linear were never his abiding interests—rather it wended its way, equal parts Socratic and rhapsodic, through issues important to him: the power of artistic self expression to unite humanity, the development of an individual voice, and the recognition of historical music’s vernacular power. This last point was a great motivator in his exploration of period instruments and performance practice, the stripping away of grimy layers of interpretive build-up on centuries-old music could reveal audacious power in the original. But he also approached this question from the completely opposite direction, through popular music. For Albert, the question of cultural relevance was uncomplicated by category. He was touched by Madonna and Monteverdi, The Beatles and Bach, Aretha was divine, “Elvis was the translator,” and all music basically came down to singing and dancing!

From time to time, Albert would ask me to proofread his new Seminar materials. One day he handed me a nearly blank piece of paper, “Jim, take a look at my new final exam.” There was only one printed line which read: “Question: What have you learned from this class during the year? (Use both sides only of this one piece of paper.)”

This fall, I found a file full of answers to his final exam from 1998. Reading them, I was struck at the intimate and touching picture they painted of Albert as a teacher. He inspired these young musicians. They really got him. I would like to read you some excerpts from their answers. I happen to know that at least two people in the audience today were members of this class, and I’m going to read from both of their exams, but I won’t reveal any names. Don’t worry; you both got “A”s. So, here they are:

_

I feel that today, musicians rely too heavily on technique. It seems that fast, clean playing with lots of vibrato is what we strive for. But from this class, I have confirmed in myself that music comes first and technique is only a tool. Now I try to think about how singers would sing phrase and I imitate that on the cello.

_

In this class, we learned the importance of what earlier artists had to say and how to pass on their message by making music alive in the way it was alive for those who heard it for the very first time.

_

We should keep in mind that the audience we face is not of the past, but of the present. You have to look not only to the past to find music’s fundamental meaning, but also you have to look inside yourself for your own interpretation, which must inevitably reflect the psyche of your age.

_

This year, you didn’t once say, “You must agree with this interpretation,” you said, “This moved me, does it move you?” I don’t want to make your class sound like a therapy session, but now that it’s over, I feel that was its effect on me. In the past, I would pick up a new piece and say, “Where’s the hardest lick?” Now I think, “WHY did the composer write this? And WHAT does it mean?” You got me to confront getting on stage and saying something outrageous, something dark, something much more wild than the audience expected. This class has made me want to stop being a student and starting being an artist.

_

I think this class should be required for all Juilliard students. Everyone knows about music history and theory, but so few musicians know about themselves.

_

Your coaching me in the Beethoven C Minor Violin Sonata was particularly memorable. As you worked with us, I realized that I had never been taught to truly respect or create a logical interpretation of the set of instructions written down by the composer. I have also learned that there is a great deal of good French music.

_

I grew up in communist China and was taught early on to think like everyone else and to play the violin like everyone else. But you told me to become the artist of my own life and listen to my own heart. When I walked out of Juilliard after your class, I felt the sun shining on my face for the first time in my life. Thank you, Mr. Fuller.

_

All of this, of course, begs the question: what did you and I learn from Albert’s class and from his style? As we grapple with this question over the course of the next months and years, channel the Positive Bar: don’t give much heed to self-doubt, do not censor yourself, remember, fantasy precedes fact and your most precious possession is your own creativity.

The work and the joy of remembering Albert begins now. We’re all charged with it, and I can think of no better group of people to undertake it. I hope the champagne at the reception in a few minutes will charge up a bunch Albert stories. I have one would like to leave you with you that best describes what I learned from his class.

During my first years with Helicon in the early 1990s, Carnegie Hall presented us in a series called, Vintage Originals. Before one of these concerts, Albert gave a preamble that he ended by reciting the opening seven lines of the poem, “Peter Quince at the Clavier” by Wallace Stevens. The New York Times critic (I will refrain from naming him) complained in the paper the next day that Mr. Fuller had spoken of personal matters rather than technical. Therein is Albert’s lesson: technique is itself meaningless without something personal to say.

Here are the lines of Wallace Stevens that Albert so loved:

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music.

Understanding the Invisible Art

[In the late 1980s and early 90s, Albert Fuller conceived and produced a television pilot called "Understanding the Invisible Art" in the hope it might provide an outlet for Helicon on PBS. Alas it didn't, but the materials he created give a wonderful distillation of his thoughts. The following is an excerpt from the introduction. More to come.]

General introduction to program:

Those of us who toil in the field of music know that we are somehow different from artists of other disciplines. The eye is involved in painting . . . in sculpture . . . in dance, but music depends entirely on the ear. It's an invisible art. That invisible essence of music is nowhere better described than in the poem "Peter Quince and the Clavier" by Wallace Stevens, the 20th-century American Poet.

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the selfsame sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.

Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,

Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music.

It is not then just a coincidence that Galileo, considered the founder of modern science, was himself the son of a musician. Just at the beginning of the 17th century, when the new musical style of opera was created in Italy, the world received Galileo's convincing notion that there are invisible worlds "vital to our being, that cannot be comprehended by our unaided senses"

Since then music has grown into the vast world that we know, that can be viewed as the invisibly expressed art of the imagination. Today at the end of the 20th century, all our new technological tools show us ever newer realities that our other senses cannot perceive. Therefore we are not surprised to learn that music has always been a window into the unconscious mind.

We cannot be surprised as well with the notion that the most important musical instrument of this entire century was invented over a hundred years ago by Thomas Edison. That instrument is, of course, the phonograph.

The invisible power of electricity has allowed us to make the acquaintance of and to experience through recording ever increasing amounts of music of the past. Doing this unveils whole new, thrilling layers of our psychic inheritance.

Many of us musicians have found that by using the instruments and techniques of playing them that the composers of the music had in mind, we musicians can come even closer to the psychic thrill of perceiving something from the composers' unconscious minds. When you add to that the social contexts of the past, that is the art, the politics, the behavior of society, the ways people danced, the architecture and literature that they held dear, when we focus on all that, then we feel enabled to experience our music in a way that makes us feel still closer to the composer.

photo: AF with Paul Festa and Pedja Muzijevic

This was April 1993 after a Helicon symposium. If I ever find Albert's compendium of Helicon programs I'll look up what we played.

BACH RECORDING RATIONALE by Albert Fuller

In preparation for his 1992 recording of harpsichord music by J. S. Bach, Albert produced the following document as a conceptual guide.


BACH RECORDING RATIONALE

I have long felt that all the music I love is in some way a direct metaphor for the human activities of singing and dancing, the gifts of the Muses!

Bach, a personality whom I adore, was, according to this reasoning, likewise inspired in his human physicality by his own understanding of the human need for singin' and dancin'.

The raison d'être of this present recording is to show my own, personal understanding of how this proposition illuminates the harpsichord works that Bach himself created and in what he loved in the works of others.

The Italians first developed the violin as a surrogate voice, allowing those who could not sing to possess the high c's of the sopranos on the stages of their beloved opera houses. Inspired by this idea of surrogate voices and with Vivaldi as his model, Bach demonstrated that the concerto concept, normally realized by seven to a dozen people, could also be a viable expressive vehicle for one person alone at the harpsichord. This Italian Concerto in the Italian style was the result.

At the same time, the French had long been seized by balletomania, the love of dancing. Louis XIV's passion furieuse influenced every house of noble pretensions throughout Europe for almost three hundred years, permeating the entire diplomatic world with the need to dance. Hence the appropriateness of such a work here as the French Set (Suite) of dance pieces with a prélude.

The desire to play the fugal game of musical interweaving came to Bach from German organ writing, derived and developed from vocal church music styles. Unwilling to present the unprepared listener with such a demanding mental musical chess game as is a fugue, Bach wrote introductions or préludes for each of these fugues. The preludes serve as "stage settings" for the fugal interplay. Often these scenes were inspired by images from Bach's own contemporary world: in the F minor, the operatic stage of the aria; in the D Major, the orchestral music of a great potentate.

Bach, however, was also a homebody, with two wives and twenty children . Think how he must have understood diapers and the joys and griefs of siring and supporting his own children through their many young deaths as well as their lives, some quite ordinary and some others fueled by their own, personal musical genius. Therefore, the private music, beloved by his adored wife, Anna Magdelana, and played by his own children forms the most personal sector of this recording. With two exceptions, all these works are dance pieces loved by his family. Louis XIV's beloved Menuet, the polonaises of the internationally set, a bagpipe piece, an aria, and finally a prayer closes this section and this record.

The order of the final section, Bach at Home, has not been decided. The pieces are arranged here in their numerical order in the book. A more affective, emotional arrangement will be conceived to close the recording.

(update) Hannah Walsh, Gregory Smith's granddaughter

Anyone who knew Albert knew the late Gregory Smith (a.k.a. Grisha) through Albert' frequent and affectionate Grisha stories. In addition to being a great friend, Gregory was instrumental in launching Helicon and remains, with Alice Tully, a Helicon Muse (it's on the letterhead).

Here are some pictures and correspondence from the Smith family:

Hannah Walsh (fka Hannah Smith) writes: Gregory was a very dear friend of Albert's and I have no doubt they are now reunited in heaven. This has been the one happy thought that has gotten me through today after I stumbled this morning across Albert's obituary in yesterday's Boston Globe.

I have missed Albert deeply since leaving NYC in the summer of 2005. He has been a part of my life since I can remember, as a sort of second grandfather at first, and then a friend and storyteller who could keep my grandfather's memory alive in my mind and heart. I could go on and on about what Albert's stories of my family have provided for me.

I've attached a picture of Albert, me and my firstborn son (Jedidiah). I think this picture was taken in the spring of 2004 in front of Nick & Toni's (where else?).

Mardie Smith (Gregory's daughter-in-law) writes: Hannah was very close to her grandfather and developed a very close relationship with Albert after Gregory’s death. In this photo, she is pregnant with Gregory’s second great-grandson, Owen. It was taken two years ago in front of Shun Lee by Albert’s apartment. Jedidiah is now four years old.

(UPDATE)
Grisha was a certainly a fascinating father-in-law. Our visits with him usually coincided with visits from Albert, Zoltan, Bobby White, C. Ray Smith and a few others. Dana and I have been together for 35 years so I entered the scene at the summer home in Stonington, Ct and went on to those in Maine and East Hampton. You can imagine the settings, the dinners, the stories, and the laughter! But Albert was his best friend; Gregory once told me that he and Albert spoke on the phone every day, no matter where they happened to be in the world.

photo: Albert Welcomes Guests to Helicon

For 21 years, The Helicon Foundation presented a series of intimate chamber music concerts performed on period instruments in Albert Fuller's apartment near Lincoln Center. (The series moved across the park in 2006-7 and continues there in our new home, The Kosciuszko Foundation, 15 E. 65th Street.) His generous music room, which has 22 foot ceilings and seats upwards of 80 (70 comfortably, 90 when certain stars performed), took the appellation, The Helicon Studio for these events, becoming "The Rendezvous Lounge" afterwards, as musicians and music lovers mingled in the afterglow. (Cue the conga music, thank you Mr. Kozinn.)

Here is Albert welcoming guests at the second floor entrance probably around 1999. Vivacious Helicon Members Dennis Reiff and Patty Otis Abel took the photo.

photos from 1992 and 1993

In 1992, Albert led and played this concert by the Helicon Ensemble in Weill Hall.

Playing on gut strings in public scared the daylights out of me, but I was grateful to Albert for the opportunity nonetheless.

After Alice Tully's stroke in 1993, Albert brought his students the Italian pianist Marco Rapetti, the Swedish cellist Johan Stern and me (whom Albert had collectively introduced to his Helicon audiences as the "Testosterone Trio," or "The Testostertones") to Miss Tully's apartment in the Hampshire House to play for her. I'm almost certain we played Brahms, though Albert has it as Schumann on p. 147 of his Alice book, among other elaborate improvisations on the facts of that extraordinary afternoon.

photos: HELICON CONCERTS AT CARNEGIE HALL, c. 1990

press: New York Times Profile

A Musician Studies the Past's Realities

By ALLAN KOZINN

Published: February 17, 1989

''You know, there's a lot of talk about authenticity these days, and I think it's nonsense,'' said Albert Fuller, the harpsichordist and director of the Helicon Ensemble. Mr. Fuller and his group have been presenting an early-music festival at Weill Recital Hall since Wednesday, with the final concerts scheduled for this weekend. ''The authenticity I'm interested in is our contemporary sense of the reality of the past, and what the music we have inherited has to do with us today. I believe that music is a window into the unconscious, and the miracle of it is that it lets us get close to what Beethoven, Bach and Mozart were thinking.

''This kind of psychic investigation is really a 20th-century phenomenon, something we would not have thought about in pre-Freudian times. And I think it's the whole point of the original-instrument movement. By hearing the music of these great geniuses performed with the timbres and in the styles that they heard, we get a clearer idea of how their mental mechanisms worked, and of what they wanted to share with other people. Of course we can play Beethoven on a modern, steel-strung violin, in a Russian performing style. But if we do that, we're laying on the music a lot of 20th-century associations: pogroms, revolutions, czars and Stalin. Beethoven didn't know anything about that.''

Mr. Fuller may take a more philosophical view of the early-instrument movement than some of his colleagues. But in a practical sense, their goals are the same. By researching the details of performance style (tempos, ways of phrasing and so on), and by returning to the gut-strung violins, natural-valve horns and wooden flutes of earlier times, they hope to make the music of the Baroque through early Romantic eras sound as fresh as it did when it was new.

Fast-Growing Movement

Two decades ago, early-instrument performers were regarded as a bit eccentric by many mainstream concertgoers, and by musicians who saw the abandonment of technically more hardy and reliable modern instruments as a retrograde step. But the movement has grown quickly. Today, early instruments are the norm rather than the exception for Baroque music performances. And in the 1980's, incursions have been made into the Classic and early Romantic eras, with ventures as far into the 19th century as Berlioz and Schumann.

For fanciers of these antique instruments with their robust, gamy sounds, there are several concerts to choose from this weekend. Each of the Helicon Ensemble's remaining Weill Recital Hall programs offers music from the 17th through 19th centuries. Tonight at 8, the group is playing rarities by Bartolomeo Montalbano and Mario Uccellini, and better-known works by Couperin (the Concert Royal No. 4), Boccherini (a quintet) and Mozart (the Clarinet Quintet, with Lawrence McDonald as the soloist). Tomorrow evening at 8:30, the Helicon group will play two of Biber's ''Mystery'' Sonatas, a Handel Trio and the Beethoven Septet (Op. 20). The concerts are sold out but return tickets, at $12, may be available at the box office before the performances. Information: 247-7800.

The ''Schubertiade'' at the 92d Street Y, at Lexington Avenue, is not an early-instrument endeavor as such, but its programmers occasionally glance in that direction. Tomorrow evening's installment, at 8 o'clock, includes some of Schubert's early keyboard music, performed on the fortepiano by Malcolm Bilson. Tickets are $17.50. Information: 996-1100. A Handel Anniversary

John Eliot Gardiner, one of the most highly regarded British early-music conductors, will be in town with his English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir to mark the 250th anniversary of Handel's ''Israel in Egypt'' with a performance of that oratorio at Avery Fisher Hall on Sunday at 3 P.M. Tickets are $25. Information: 874-6770.

A recorder ensemble from Holland, the Amsterdam Loeki Stardust Quartet, will play Renaissance and Baroque music (the composers include Frescobaldi, Jenkins, Boismortier, Purcell, Bach and Vivaldi) at Corpus Christi Church, 529 West 121st Street, on Sunday at 4 P.M. Tickets are $10. Information: 666-0675. And the Oberlin Baroque Esemble is playing works of Couperin, Forqueray, Rameau and Dornel at the Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, on Sunday at 5 P.M. Admission is free. Information: 288-0700.

Of these, Mr. Fuller's Helicon Ensemble is offering the widest-ranging musical overview. ''The point,'' Mr. Fuller said, ''was to offer a grand tour through 200 years of music. Traditionally, a 'grand tour' was a journey through Italy, France and Germany. So my idea was to put something from each of those countries, and from the 17th through the 19th centuries, on each program. That way, if you can only attend one of the concerts, you still get a nice musical banquet.''

Familiar Faces

Depending how you look at it, the Helicon Ensemble is either a newcomer to the early-music scene or a fairly venerable troupe. This week's series marks the group's first public performances, but concertgoers who follow New York's early-instrument world will see many familiar faces in the ensemble. Among the players are the violinists Jaap Schroder, Stanley Ritchie, Linda Quan and Nancy Wilson; the cellists Myron Lutzke and Loretta O'Sullivan; the oboist Marc Schachman; the hornist William Purvis, and the bassist Michael Willens, all regulars in early (and modern) instrument chamber groups and orchestras that perform here often.

Many of these players were Mr. Fuller's students at the Juilliard School or at Aston Magna, the summer institute and touring ensemble he founded in Great Barrington, Mass., in 1972. And Mr. Ritchie and Mr. Schroder were among the Aston Magna faculty from the start. Mr. Fuller directed Aston Magna until 1983. That year, after a dispute about the organization's direction (Mr. Fuller wanted to forge ahead into the 19th century; other members of the board wanted to keep the focus on the Baroque and Classic repertories), the harpsichordist and Aston Magna parted ways.

The Helicon Foundation - named after the mountain where Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, conceived the Nine Muses - was established in 1984. Until now, the foundation has held private symposiums at which the players in the current ensemble presented their latest findings, with performances open only to the foundation's subscribers. After a few seasons of these, Mr. Fuller decided that it was time to go public again.

A Utopian Goal

''I admire musicology very much,'' Mr. Fuller said, ''but to me, musicology is not the flame. The flame is performance. Buckminster Fuller, who is no relation to me, said that the goal of knowledge is to let everybody on earth know everything there is to know. That's utopian, but you have to face in some direction if you're going to move down the path, and that strikes me as a pretty good goal.

''What we have done, by studying early instruments and early performance practice, is find out as much as we can about where we've come from and who we are. And the knowledge we can share with our audience is that the great composers of the past were human beings, more like us than not. However weird Beethoven might have been, we could have lunch with him, and it would be fun. We have to recognize that the fun, the joie de vivre, is also in the music, and has to be brought out.

''This is the most important thing our original-instrument investigations can make a point of: the brotherhood of human beings across time.

The First Mannes/Helicon Historical Performance Weekend Key Note Address by Albert Fuller 13 May 1995

The goals of this weekend were outlined in our brochure, which read: "Musicians of appropriate accomplishment are invited to apply as participants in the First Mannes/Helicon Historical Performance Weekend, joining Albert Fuller and our Artist-Faculty to take 'A Closer Look' at:

1. What music in general has to say about composers, their audiences and about us.

2. What the original-instrument movement has taught us thus far about European musical art.

3. How present-day performances often disregard the expressive content which is the heart and purpose of musical art.

4. Ways by which we can revitalize the often ignored expressive content of great composers' music.

5. The means by which "original-instruments" can guide our search in each of these endeavors and can lead us to richer, more meaningful musical experiences."

And, so I want to address each of these issues here with you now, in order to focus on and clarify what it is that we intend to do, and, we hope, to make more precise just what it is that has brought about our present view of music’s magic.

Point I

Now, the first point invites us to look at what music in general has to say about composers, their audiences and about us today who love music so very much. Before we do that I want to suggest that we think about music in terms of our own responses to it. In that case, “What is music?” is then the very first question.

I propose, for our purposes this weekend, that we think of music as “an externalization of human emotion.” Why? How?

1) Listening to music performed by others elicits responses within ourselves.

2) We conceive these responses as emotional images that more or less represent the original externalized emotion.

3) This takes place whether we are conscious or not of these images.

4) Today we know that the mind and body are one, and, thus the emotional images that we form from listening to music cause physical reactions in us, ones we associate with feeling happy, disappointed, sad, or any other similar psycho-somatic sensations.

Now these musical images that have brought each and every one of us together here are not in their truest nature visible. Yet, especially in America, we say “Oh, I forgot my music,” meaning my notes or my score or my partition. Then, we also say "Oh, last night I saw Alicia de Larrocha. She was wonderful!" But, some of us may ask ourselves what a person who speaks that way wants to experience when hearing such a fine musician. What is it we "see" when the artistic product that has made her so famous all over the world is so quintessentially invisible. Consider: music is not the vibrations in the air (measured now by the latest technology); it is not resultant movements of the tympanic membrane (the ear drum); rather, and insubstantially, it is the feelings that these vibrations work on our souls, transforming our interior imaginations, working changes that are welcome, provoking new associations, ones that remind us of our inherited humanity.

I will add here parenthetically my remembrance of a fine performer’s admonition to me as a youngster: "Never forget” said Virgil Fox to me, “they see you before they hear you!" We all know that when a musician walks on stage scowling, or in dirty clothes, or shuffling his feet, an audience is made nervous and wonders if this person, for whom good ticket money may have been spent, really wants to appear in public as a musician. This is not a good beginning!

Times change and we change with them. People speak somewhat differently in every decade. Principal preoccupations of thought and conversation change as well as slang. All the arts change as does speech, humanity’s powerful communicative tool. Now, in 1995, it has been almost a century since Sigmund Freud began to speak of his own perceptions about emotions. Through his work, and that of those who toiled in similar fields, many aspects of human thought and behavior have now been brought out from the unconscious darkness where they have lain since the beginning of humanity. An elaborate vocabulary about the unconscious has developed, allowing us to speak of previously unspoken emotions. Knowing this, none should be surprised to discover that the emotions of Brahms are not the emotions of Bach or Ravel or Prokofiev. Therefore, when we attempt to externalize the emotions of these very different composers by performing their music, we screw up terribly when we don’t recognize the profound differences between them, and their means of projecting their own emotions.

Not recognizing the direct connection between the composer and his music, and its relationship to the emotional life of every other human on earth, has been one of the causes of the great gulf that has come to exist between what we call popular and classical music today. But that is an inappropriate subject for us here now. What is more to the point, is now, many of us understand that when music is updated to please contemporary tastes it can lose the message of its own time, the sense of its own individualism, and becomes subsumed into the most ordinary emotions of today. (Stoky’s D minor T&F) This is how so much music has become boring to conductors, performers and audience alike. As we look around watching opera directors and orchestral conductors, wondering what they can do to revive a faded piece, the last thing most of them usually think of is trying to re-approach it as if were new, using what Freud and his followers have taught us to let us know about the constant unfolding of the human soul.

Point II

The second point of our historical performance weekend asks us to consider what the original-instrument movement has taught us thus far about European musical art.

For one thing, the original-instrument movement has shown us much further than we had previously understood how to distinguish musics of different times and different places: how Italian music is different from French music, and when these differences occurred. That in turn opens the door for us players to bring the uniqueness of French style to French music, or, more simply, to sing French pieces with a French accent, and Italian works in their Italian accents.

Consider the following social example: we New Yorkers, with so many different nationalities making up the population of our city, and with so many varieties of cuisine distributed through our city, we are able to flit around among restaurants with cuisines of so many different countries, maybe all within a few blocks’ radius, and that seems natural and quite normal for us. But food can be seen and smelt before it is tasted. Music is invisible, and before it is heard, it exists only in the imagination or ever so frailly in the dots of ink on paper.

If we understand "seeing" musicians perform as perceiving the stimulated interior imagination, then we are in another quite different ballpark. J. Bronowsky, the great 20th-century thinker, believed that it is the possession of imagination that distinguishes human beings from all else on this planet. That, at least for now, seems axiomatic. A great performer in any artistic sphere is great because he can activate the imaginations of his audience. They, in turn, leave the performance with a sense of having been engaged in new experiences; they are somehow different, and will most likely return until this stimulation of the imagination is no longer operative. Horowitz, Callas, Landowska, Toscanini, Pinza, Heifetz, Kreisler, Aretha, Madonna, and on and on—these and all great performers have excited the imaginations of their listeners to become followers of the ever-changing imaginations of the best performing artists.

Music's invisible nature has made it a tough nut for human understanding throughout the ages. Whatever records we have of music of the ancients are either so skimpy as to be meaningless, or they are confined in large numbers to visual depiction. Thus, we know that musical performances, treasured as they were in the distant past, were all memorized, not unlike most 20th-century jazz. In the same manner were all the tales of ancient bards passed on. All of what we call Homer had been created before it was written down, being handed from generation to generation by those who memorized it. Finally, I posit, when some poet/singer bards simply gave up on trying to memorize more, but at the same time wanting to go on performing more, what was to be done? They borrowed the system developed by Phoenician commerce to keep track of goods bartered and exchanged, and began to take notes to aid their memory. These notes developed into what we call the alphabetical, written realization of our spoken language. The identical situation overcame the memorization of melody, and ‘notes” began to appear, slowly developing over the centuries into what we call musical notation.

Now, in spite of our feelings about its permanence, our 20th-century musical notation is young, indeed, very young, quite modern, especially when compared to Egyptian hieroglyphs, or even Greek and Roman letters. At the same time, the most ultra-modern contemporary musical notation is scarcely intelligible to many contemporary musicians, unless one knows the music, that is, and has some idea of how it goes. Likewise, only the new, electronically produced, notational, maddeningly detailed version of a 'blues' or 'jazz' performance can indicate what the real tradition of their performance sounds like. The notation of “swing” is, likewise only possible in the fashion of this new technology. Thus, our notation of music, like that of spoken language always lags behind the practice of it. And that relates absolutely directly to the French conventions of, as François Couperin says, not playing as the notation suggests, but rather with notes-inégales, unequal notes. Maybe it’s not coincidental that New Orleans, la Nouvelle Orléans, is the birthplace of American jazz.

The ultimate lesson here is to learn that our present musical notation is not, as we are invariably taught, a precise set of recreative directions. Our notation never means only just what we are taught it says. Teaching on that order is much too narrow in meaning to be strictly obeyed, especially when we intend to achieve the maximum of richest and most satisfying performing results.

You must understand that I am not making a call to renounce modern-day technology. Without it none of us would be in this room together, especially those on the cutting edge of Internet. I speak of all the electronic tools that are the foremost examples of the new communication in our lives. The scores, and original manuscripts of previous composers, some entirely ignored or scarcely known, others of the best known like Beethoven can now be studied in different manners. According to different publications of the same materials, we can see how a composer changed his mind in growing with his idea. On the other hand, we can see how publishers, in the interest of sales, sometime incorporated previous errors, even to distort the composer’s original intent.

Our knowledge today of all this could not remotely have happened without the Xerox machine. And just as the greatest peaks, such as Mt. Everest, cannot exist without their lesser neighbors, so we have had Etienne Nicolas Méhul (1763-1813) and his symphonies reintroduced into our consciousness. So what, you might say? I respond that Beethoven wouldn’t sound the way he does to us if Méhul had not existed. A number of traits that we consider echt-Beethoven were directly inspired by passages in Méhul. Thus we see the influence of French taste in the German giant that is Beethoven. My experience shows endless examples of such cross-fertilization. The investigations of the original-instrument movement has been responsible for producing them to our great joy by the dozens.

Point III

The third point of our weekend together asks us to look at how present-day performances often disregard the expressive content which is the heart and purpose of musical art. Oh, let me count the ways!

I would like to start with an oversimplification but one that does, indeed, describe a general trend. After the heyday of the baroque giants, whose phrase structure were all relatively short, composers of the past began a long experiment in creating longer and longer musical phrases. Originally instrumental phrases were all modeled on the relatively short phrases created for singers who generally used one breath per phrase, as in today’s pop style. As composers increased their phrase length, the attention span of audiences was also increasing, and listeners were able to focus their imaginations, and, as we say today, they were able to dream, while listening to music for longer and longer periods. The musical phrases, even in their smallest parts, became ever longer, taking even more time, while the movement or flow of musical ideas began to be expressed in slower and slower tempi. The short, concise phrasings of Bach, Handel and Couperin, (delineated so aptly by gut strings and baroque bows) were rejected by Bach’s sons and Grétry and their contemporaries, and the new 'classical' style of Mozart and Haydn passed on ever-longer phrases to Beethoven and Berlioz. It wasn't long before audiences were able to admire along with Schumann his description of the 'heavenly lengths' of Schubert’s C Major Symphony.

The works of Bruckner from the second half of the 19th century prepared for the climax of size and lengthiness of the symphonies of Mahler. By 1907 Mahler produced his Symphony No. 8, the so-called “Symphony of a Thousand.” The second part of this symphony can be described as a vast synthesis of forms and media, embodying his setting of the final scene of Goethe’s Faust as an amalgam of 1) dramatic cantata, 2) oratorio, 3) song cycle, 4) Lisztian choral symphony and 5) instrumental symphony.

With this and other similar works, the patience and attention spans of early 20th-century 'avant garde' composers and listeners finally snapped. Their intolerance created new and quite different ways of musical expression, invented as absolutely necessary to convey contemporary thought. The old patterns had ceased to inspire new creativity. The old was not bad; it had simply been carried to its limits. Now Schoenberg and Stravinsky burst upon the scene with their own new languages to express new ideas, just at the time when Einstein, Edison and Freud did the same thing in their worlds. The new thought of the 20th century was now in full swing.

Obsessed, as was the entire world with the concept of progress, there were even many musicians who felt that ever-greater musical art was being created, and that the Edwardian period of the 20th century before WW I, was the glorious apotheosis of the 18th-century Enlightenment. As happened with so much human behavior across the centuries, up-to-date musicians tended to forget all about the music written before Beethoven.

There were, of course, a few outstanding exceptions to that. Mendelssohn, for example, inaugurated the modern appreciation of Bach by performing a much truncated and rearranged version of the Matthew Passion in 1826. The Benedictine monks of Solesmes became the center of the Gregorian chant revival since its abbey’s re-establishment in 1831. The Bach-Gesellschaft was founded in 1850, and produced an edition of the composer’s entire works that served as a model for subsequent editions of it kind. Brahms collaborated as editor of the first modern edition of the harpsichord works of François Couperin, and let us not forget Wanda Landowska, who began to play the harpsichord in public in 1903.

Apart from figures such as these, our early-20th-century musical forebears behaved like the 17th-century Venetians. They gave no thought to blowing up Athens’ Parthenon in 1687, thinking it was old and, therefore, no good any more.

When the music of the past was forgotten, so was what that music told of the human psyches of those who made it. With that psychology forgotten, the precious concept of the continuity of growth of human understanding developed, yet again, a big hole. This period of musical works that were forgotten was precisely the period of musical creativity that brought about what is called The Enlightenment. (To refresh our memories, the Enlightenment was the 18th-century philosophical movement characterized by a reliance on reason and experience rather than dogma, superstition and tradition, while emphasizing humanitarian political goals and social, emotional progress.) Yes, by the end of the 19th century, the glorious, always startling new musical creations of those who participated in the Enlightenment were no longer a matter of public consciousness. With a very few notable exceptions such as Handel’s Messiah and Mozart’s Don Giovanni, most 17th- and 18th-century music was thought to be old, used up and no longer relative to modern, industrialized society.

Meanwhile, another factor, of future world-wide importance entered the picture at the early part of the 19th century. Then, when the French revolution seemed finished and the prosperous middle-class of citizens burgeoned in influence, the idea arose that many more, almost anyone, might possess the artistic abilities that had previously been at the beck and call of only the noble, rich and powerful. The new society was ripe for the idea of a Conservatoire, and its new methods devised to teach “fundamental music appreciation,” along with understanding of the grammar and rhetoric of music.

Ear-training and solfège came into being, in an attempt to show to those who did not have the natural skills of invisible music memory, how to break down and analyze the musical components—how correctly to parse them. This, in turn, brought about a method of how to commit them to memory, and thus, how to be able, through Cartesian methods of logic, to allow those, even of the least talent, to reiterate the outward manifestations of musical performance—to play the correct notes in time.

Many of today's centers of musical learning continue to instruct with these aims in mind. Beneficent as such intentions are, nevertheless, they have focused on the outward signs of performance—the playing of the right notes in the correct time. That is, the focus has almost exclusively been on creating the package, the outward, visible sign of music, without regard for the contents of the package, what we might call the inward, spiritual grace. In doing this, the understanding of the emotional feelings or affects that music contains, was shoved to the side. These feelings, or affeti as the Italians say, are the raison d’être, at the very center of the entire world of musical expressivity. It is by forgetting this that the common complaint has arisen that so many performances sound 'alike,' that they are devoid of the spontaneity of lively emotional interchange. It was just this situation that provided the rich, fertile soil for the emergence of the original-instrument movement and the possibility that it can do much to restore music’s messages to the coin of the soul.

This descriptive phrase, the original-instrument movement, seems to focus on the instruments used, as does the other common phrase “period-instruments.” Meanwhile, those of us who have undergone the experiences of learning to make meaningful musical performances with the instruments for which the music was written have come to understand that it is not so much the instruments themselves that are important. Rather, and much more important, it is the world of musical affects that they reveal to us. The ENRICHMENT OF OUR AFFECTIVE PERCEPTIONS is the golden benefit of the original-instrument inquiry.

The treasure of this newly revealed world, is, of course, not new at all. This treasure consists of a world of emotional affects that have been ignored or set aside in the race to invent the new, especially in America, where “new and improved” and “bigger is better” have been such common guiding principals. Present-day large crowds of people are unthinkable without the presence of electrical amplification. Meanwhile, young musicians have been goaded to project, project to larger and larger audiences, with messages that are strong enough to be heard in vast spaces by crowds. Larger and larger halls for larger and larger audiences for our concerts have been the result of such thinking. No wonder we are evermore on quicksand when we bring into the immense halls music that was intended to express intimate thoughts to audiences gathered in intimate spaces.

The scale of human musical communication has grown beyond human capacity and the newest instruments are all dependent on amplified electrical current to make their statements. Thinking thus, electrical amplification is the next logical step for our own instruments. Think of the immense rock concerts with their immense TV screens, set up with the sole purpose of allowing the performers, who look like a flee circus to the naked eye, to be visible by visual amplification to the thousands who are their immediate audience. I think of this as an ironic fantasy precisely because, even in the world of international Olympics, we cannot do very much if anything (outside of using steroids) to alter the size of our bodies. Therefore our world’s understanding of the words “human scale,” is related to everything we produce, conceiving every chair, every automobile, every street and the rooms of every building in terms of the size of the human body. We forgot human scale. The original-instrument has helped restore that.

Point IV

Point four of our weekend five-point program addresses ways by which we can revitalize the often ignored expressive content of great composers' music.

The problems encountered here are more complex than they seem to be at first glance. Consider: only a few years have passed since many well-intentioned performing musicians developed what we think of today as attitudes of personal superiority to our great creative geniuses. Many of them often followed such astonishingly arrogant dictates as: “we know better about some of these things than did their creators (sic!).” “Well,” you might say, “who on earth would want to act that way?” I give you here three examples:

By any who ever came in contact with them, it was always admitted that Bach's works for solo violin were excellent examples of the composer's art. Nevertheless, the general thinking went that many of Bach’s directions for bowing were poorly considered by the genius who brought these very works into being. Yes, many performers and teachers meant to say that Bach’s own bowings were inadequate to express the music that he conceived. Consequently, many teachers and performers alike have changed the composer's bowings to conform to the way they liked them.

Alas, doing this often altered important parts of Bach's musical message. Those that did this said something like “After all, he didn't know of our 'new and improved' understanding of the modern bow!” Such “improved” understanding could alter and distort a dance movement so as to make it unrecognizable to those, like Bach himself, who knew how to do all the dance steps of the world in which he lived. Yes, Virginia, old Bach understood and loved dancing, and the simplest way to draw closer to what old Bach had in mind is to use the kind of bow for which he wrote his glorious, albeit difficult, solo violin works! The concept of “new and improved” has been a false goal here, leading many who loved the works ultimately to abandon them as being hopelessly irrelevant to us and our world. What a pity that is!

A second example shows how it became a general habit to believe that Beethoven, being somewhat crazy and certainly deaf, couldn't know what sixty seconds in a minute were in human experience, and therefore he couldn't possibly have understood what his metronome marks meant. (And don’t forget: Beethoven also was personally acquainted with J. N. Maelzel who refined and patented the metronome in 1815.) Consequently, Beethoven's unique tempo markings were not only completely ignored as irrelevant, but rather they weren't even noticed. (In fact, in many editions, new editors have even substituted new metronome indications for the original ones, new ones they felt were more appropriate for the composer's own creations!). Behaving thus, much of Beethoven's expressivity was quite altered, along with traits that tell so much of how his music related to human movement, both then and now. Efforts to learn from his metronome marks are laughed at by musicians and critics alike. The vast majority of them can play no instrument whatsoever, and can’t artfully perform anything for an audience gathered to listen.

A third example of this kind of misrepresentation comes to mind, this time with the erosion of meaning in the works of Brahms. Brahms, one thinks, is so close to our own time we couldn't possibly not know what his intentions were. Wrong, again, at least in my experience! Today, the general tempo of performances of the first movement of the B major piano quintet (Op. 8) is approximately ? When I produced a recent performance of this work, one of my own previous pupils, a successful musician who should have known better, asked me why the tempo of this first movement was “so fast.” I responded that it seemed just right to me, the complainer asked me how I arrived at that conclusion. I pointed out that Brahms, without a metronome marking, had written this piece with an alla breve time signature, that is, C with a vertical line through it, and wrote the movement direction Allegro con brio! Now, Allegro is taken generally today as meaning fast, although its literal translation from Italian is simply merry. Alla breve indicates two half notes in a bar, and thus a quickish tempo, its time signature being 2/2 and not 4/4. And finally, con brio , literally translated as “with vivacity or energy or fire” indicates a playing style of brilliance and dash. Therefore, Brahms’ directions cannot be construed as “leisurely” in any body’s language. Familiarity has indeed bred contempt.

The situation I have just described comes as a great shock to those to whom I am forced to point it out. Even my former successful pupil was amazed, once again, to discover what he had seen before his eyes and had so completely ignored. When those whom I coach behave similarly I often say “Now, without turning the pages of your scores, can you tell me what are the original time signature and tempo markings?” Almost always, those who make such complaints are forced to admit that their understanding of the piece in question had fallen in a slump and they didn’t know the time signature or the written descriptions of the character. This example shows to what extent we must rethink so much of what we think we already know. It can sometimes be dangerous, or at least arrogant, to assume we know what it’s all about. As Daniel Boorstin has pointed out, “ the history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.”

Point V

The final point asks us to understand how the world of "original-instruments" can guide our search in answering the questions prompted by the previous points, leading us to richer, more meaningful musical experiences. After all, none of us wants thinner, weaker musical performances. We all want to be touched and spiritually moved. We all want music, and all artistic human communication in its richest, most colorful and most memorable form. Learning more about the various messages that are in our music for communication to others, takes nothing away from us. Rather, it enriches our reception and transmission of the messages themselves.

It is unlikely that the three “misconceptions” I demonstrated under “Point IV” would have been righted without the kind of reappraisal that the original-instrument movement has forced us to undergo. It can be seen how such simple changes, ones that certainly draw us closer to the composers, can produce performance results little short of “astounding,” especially to those who were sure they knew the three Bs: Bach, Beethoven and Brahms, and knew them well enough so that little else of importance was needed for their own recreations of the composers’ musical messages.

I will finish up here by offering to you a very personal recipe, one I have used to help students create for themselves an historically informed performance, a "HIP" performance we can now say.

In the end, outside our own absolutely essential and supremely important contemporary music, and I mean all of it, including the world of Earl "Fatha" Hines, Satchmo and the Duke, Aretha and Madonna, the musical messages from our dead composers remain there for us performers to quicken once again with our imagination. What a glorious task to see the immense variety of character and expression from across time and space, from what we call then, and to see how that variety of then corresponds to the different and to the same variety that we see around us now. If we learn everything humanly possible about the expressed genius of Bach, Beethoven and Brahms who dwelt in the then, and, if we add to that everything that we can learn about our own needs and our own personal style in the now—at that point, we will be prepared to become a bridge to anyone who has ears to hear.

Our bridge will cross time, plugging the 17th-, 18th- or 19th-century messages into our contemporary experience. Our bridge will cross space, plugging even more French, or German or Italian sensibility into our American consciousness. Our bridge will also be able to go far toward healing the wounds of ignorance and lack of self-awareness that disfigure so much of the musical psyche of our civilization, and even those psyches that lie outside the world of music.

Remember, it is true that music hath charms! The bridge itself of which I have been speaking is imaginative persuasion, and our motto as we build it in our own now might very well be the advice of the Latin author Horace from 16 B.C., his own then:

If you want me to cry, than you yourself must grieve.

Here we are talking about human feelings, not the physical realities of the universe, which we have come to learn so much about during the past few centuries. In the end, as we sow, so shall we reap. We cannot give to others what we ourselves do not possess. Alice Tully said publicly that the object of our efforts is continuous emotional growth and study, which never ends, and should not end. I agree with her, and, therefore, wish to say in closing that for us musicians the now of then is inescapably us to us!

Daniel Boorstin has pointed out that “the history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge. . . Perhaps we could call ours an age of negative discovery. Marc Davis, Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the University of California, Berkeley, has provided us with a convenient summary of the progress of cosmology over the last four hundred years:

The Earth is not the center of the Universe.
The Sun is not the center of the Universe.
Our galaxy is not the center of the Universe.
Our type of matter is not the dominant constituent of the Universe (dark matter predominates instead).
Our Universe (seen and unseen) is not the only Universe.
Our physics is not the only physics. There might exist separate universes with completely different physics.

You are always entitled to be nervous the first time you approach the creations of great geniuses. You may find that this nervousness continues in some form always. This is where one feels the risk factor. But feeling such risk is always necessary in order to move forward.

In the beginning it may seem like fear and, in this case, it can lessen one’s ability. However, the struggle to join the great geniuses and to perform their music in spite of it ultimately lessens its threat. We must all remember that everyone has experienced nervousness, and we are not alone when we are conscious of it. It should be used as the great emotional drive which carries us all—the life-giving connection.

The object of your efforts is continuous emotional growth and study, which never ends, and should not end.

INTRODUCTION (Feb. 06)

After I made my New York recital debut in November of 1957 I got swept up into the local music scene as I had hoped. I had known for a long while there were virtually no local harpsichord players, with the exception of the international giant artist, Wanda Landowska. Thus, I came to be involved in a great deal of important musical works I had never previously had a chance to become acquainted with. Among them was Handel’s Julius Caesar in Carnegie with no costumes or scenery, but it was Montserrat Caballé’s debut alongside the already well-established Elisabeth Schwarzkopf. It was in this performance that I had my first experience with personal competition among performers of such glorious music.

Because, as harpsichordist, I was required to accompany all the recitatives in the Handel work, my position in the orchestra was at the very front. This allowed me to observe before my very eyes the audience’s wild reception of Caballé’s first New York performance and the unusually large number of curtain calls she was demanded to make. Before each of these Schwarzkopf stood aside, stamping her foot, and shouting at the conductor, Ich bin die nexte, i.e., “I’m the next one (to take the bow).” This ever-smiling fury between the two sopranos continued for 20 minutes at the least. This was my introduction to the fact that glorious singing didn’t require glorious personalities to bring a musical work to life.

Through the many performances of such splendid compositions I met and befriended many musicians at a rapid rate. At that time (1950s-1960s) most harpsichordists, or pianists who were pretending to be harpsichordists, performed from scores written out by 19th-century editors, while the original practice was that the harpsichordists improvised all of what they played. They were said to “realize the figured bass” i.e., create what they played by reading the bass lines of the scores. These were only sometimes accompanied by numerals or other signs to indicate what the composer expected the harmonies were to be. Having had no experience in playing thus, this became a challenge that I took on with great delight. It wasn’t long before it was clear that I was very gifted in this enterprise and had no competition among the “free-lance” musicians in the New York area.

Soon I was playing more chamber music requiring a facile harpsichordist than I could have hoped. Much of this was music that I came to love, even adore; this set me up in our music world as having taste and special understanding of the styles of performance, often of music many people had never heard a note of. And many happy concerts were the result of all of this.

But that does not mean that all was happy; my harpsichords were made in the authentic 18th-century French style. Over the years I have owned twenty-two harpsichords. “Why on earth?” some would ask. The answer was that builders (most of my instruments were made by William Dowd of Boston) were coming more and more to understand that the fine 18th-century instruments were a result of several hundred years of continuous experimentation until the superb results that were expected were almost always achieved. Naturally there were differences in the instruments of different countries but I stuck almost entirely with the French models.

The unhappiness came from the fact that all my colleagues played modern versions of all their instruments; these had all grown much louder in order to sound well in the ever-enlarging 19th-century halls. Musicians complained that I was too soft and I complained that they were too loud, creating an artistic confrontation something like a Picasso not being entirely appropriate in the Galérie des Glaces at Versailles. What to do? One of my colleagues, Stanley Ritchie, was not at all reluctant to try gut strings on one of his violins. (Gut strings had been used on all string instruments —violins, violas, cellos and double basses—from their very beginning.)

But halls had been getting larger and larger, so that by the time of WWI players and makers alike began to be drawn to steel strings because they were louder and stayed more easily in tune. Hence the sharp discrepancy between my sounds and that of my colleagues. Note also, that the bows of all Western string instruments have always been made of horsehair. When horsehair meets gut it recognizes a material that it knew from birth; but with steel it encounters something like a piece of avant-garde modernistic architecture. Thus, rubbing horsehair on slippery steel required all string players to make vast changes in the manner of using their bow arms.

When my ‘cello friend, Freddie Arico, had no objections to trying out gut strings, Stanley and I could play 17th- and 18-century sonatas on instruments close in sound and techniques to that expected by the composers of the music that we all had come more and more to love.

But then an idea straight out of the blue hit me: if we could find another violinist not only could we more than double our repertory but we could have the basics to begin to form an orchestra. I mentioned this to one of my students, Helen Katz, and she said she had met a Dutch guy at Aspen who was dying to play on gut strings; his name was Jaap Schröder. When I wrote to him in Amsterdam to invite him to join us he responded with instantaneous enthusiasm.

But, having only dreams and no money and no place to situate such a new organization, my old Yale friend, C. Ray Smith introduced me to one Lee Elman. Over lunch at the Great Shanghai restaurant of my dear friend Sheila Chang, Lee told me he had purchased the former residence of Albert Spalding, of tennis ball fame, and he wanted to have a concert in Spalding’s former studio in order to introduce himself to the music lovers of Western Massachusetts’s Berkshire region where he wanted to be accepted by the often powerful locals, Mme. Koussevitzky, etc.

I organized a concert, Lee invited the “swells” he had wanted to impress and it was all a big success, especially the viol da gamba piece of Marin Marais describing the operation for removing a gallstone (c.1690). Lee’s home was called “Aston Magna,” after an ancient Roman town in England where the original builder of the house had lived. In 1972 Lee and I decided that we would start a foundation in honor of his dead sister and simply call it The Aston Magna Foundation for Music. We would raise money to invite students who wished to learn how modern music performance differed from that of the 17th- and 18-centuries, and hence meant something different to the hearts of the performers and listeners that we 20th-c. music lovers had never known or completely forgotten about. The results were regularly new and often stunning to all concerned.

This Aston Magna venture grew very successful not only as a school, but also as a performing group in Great Barrington, Mass. By 1977 we had enough players to do the famous Brandenburg Concerti, with the exception of someone who could play the trumpet of Bach’s time. After much inquiry I found a guy named Friedemann Immer in Germany who said he could do it and we hired him immediately. Bach’s beloved works became the centerpiece of Aston Magna’s festival of 1977, and places in Great Barrington’s St. James’ church, which had become our concert hall, were all sold out weeks before the performances. These were the first complete public performances on Bach’s instruments in the world, ever, and naturally they brought a certain unique prominence to the name, Aston Magna. The National Endowment for the Humanities supported us to the extent that we were able to invite scholars in all fields relating to 17th- and 18th-century musical performance intentions. Thus the invisible art of music drew many, often surprising relationships into sharp alignments where most of us had never known them to exist.

Later we were invited to open the Tanglewood Festivals for two years in a row and the future looked more exciting than we could ever have imagined. But—the board of directors and I had some serious disagreements: they thought I was spending too much money. I thought that was a really stupid concept because it was I and my closest colleague, Raymond Erickson (who had been at my side from the very beginning, first as a student and then crowned “Dean of Students”) who had raised all the money while the board had supplied almost none. Finally, at a board meeting in November of 1983 at a meeting I kissed the hands of the ladies, shook those of the men, and told them all good-by, and to “shove it”—and forever.

Oh, oh! I had just left the precious garden that I had planted and didn’t know what to do next. I asked Alice Tully’s lawyer, Jim McGarry, if I should start another foundation; he responded, “If you want to raise money you’ll have to.” And thus, with the help of dear Alice, and blessed Gregory Smith, and McGarry’s legal associate, William (Bill) Simon, the Helicon Foundation became an honest-to-God 501 (c) 3 organization in the state of New York in the spring of 1985. And, although a few of our cherished companions have gone to what Alice called “My next act,” we’re still here and that alone in my life is the single, happiest and unexpected gratification.