EMA laureate Stan Ritchie's remarks on Albert Fuller

Stan Ritchie

Anthony Martin writes: 

Dear Paul, 

I read with interest the acceptance speech of Stan Ritchie for an award from EMA and thought part of it (actually, much of it) should be on your AF blog. 

Keep me posted!

apm

Stanley Ritchie received the Howard Mayer Brown Award for lifetime achievement in the field of early music at the EMA Annual Meeting in Boston on June 12, 2009. Mr. Ritchie, a pioneer in the early music field in America, has been a professor at Indiana University since 1982. 

Stan Ritchie's acceptance speech:

I’m deeply honoured to be standing before you today as recipient of the Howard Mayer Brown  Award and grateful to the Early Music America board of directors for having chosen me. I’m  told that Howard’s last words, when stricken by a fatal heart attack, were “Don’t worry – this  always happens!” Well, this doesn’t always happen to me! Indeed, this is the first time anything  like this has ever happened, and so, when I received the call from Ron Cook informing me of  the EMA board’s decision I was stunned.  

I also feel humbled because I’m really sharing this honour with the hundreds of young people  whom I have taught at Indiana University, the many colleagues in the world of Early Music with  whom I have been associated in the past four decades, and two very special people who  changed the course of my life. I have learned so much from all of these people, and in accepting this award I am their representative.

The two people to whom must pay tribute today are, in inverse chronological order, Thomas  Binkley and Albert Fuller, both of them visionary leaders in the world of Early Music. When  Tom Binkley wrote to Elisabeth Wright and me in 1982 to ask if we’d like to join the fledgling  Early Music faculty at Indiana University, I remember him saying, “If it can happen anywhere in  this country, it will be at IU.” Remarkable visionary and shrewd politician that he was, Tom  overcame numerous bureaucratic obstacles to create the Early Music Institute, and our  membership in its faculty for the past twenty-seven years has enabled us to work with gifted  and talented students, many of whom are now among America’s foremost Early Music  performers.

(Parenthetically, Elisabeth and I often reflect wryly on how successful we’ve been at creating  our own competition!)

It can often happen that an innocent question is the cause of a significant turning point in one’s  life. In the 1970-71 season, after escaping from the Metropolitan Opera, I joined The New York  Chamber Soloists, a modern-instrument ensemble, whose harpsichordist was Albert Fuller.  One day I mentioned to Albert that I’d like to learn more about Baroque music, and asked him  if we could get together sometime and read some sonatas. No New York freelance violinist  had ever said such a thing to Albert and he grabbed me and said, “When?” During our first  reading session he said, “You know what they’re doing in Europe now?” I said, “What are they  doing?” He said, “They’re tuning their instruments down a half-step and using gut strings and  old bows.” I said, “Why on earth would they want to do a thing like that?” And he said, “Well,  why don’t you try tuning down and find out?” Naturally, tuning a modern, steel-strung violin  down half a tone does not produce the most convincing result, but neither did a recording of  Leonhardt and the Kuijken brothers playing Rameau! Mine was a typical modern violinist’s  reaction: I said, “That doesn’t sound like a violin! It’s like some sort of viol!” However, Albert  was a very persuasive man, and soon I had had an old Tyrolean violin reconverted to Baroque  specifications and a copy made of an old bow and was on my way to becoming a Baroque  fiddler.

Albert Fuller was a remarkable man: an excellent keyboard player, a dedicated humanist, a  fascinating raconteur and a gifted teacher. One of the aspects of his teaching that inspires me  is something he frequently alluded to – he would refer to his teaching as “sharing”. For those of  us who were privileged to work with him there was never a sense of being talked down to, or  criticized for one’s shortcomings, but that he was sharing his ideas and experience and that he  was encouraging us to be ourselves. I try to emulate him in these respects, and he remains my  mentor. 

The late cellist and gambist, Fortunato (Freddy) Arico, and I teamed up with Albert and started  playing concerts in the New York area. Once in the summer of 1972 we played for an elite  audience in western Massachusetts on a property named Aston Magna. That evening the idea  of having a Baroque music workshop on the property was proposed, and the following summer  Aston Magna, the workshop, festival and, subsequently, academy was launched. 

In a very real sense, we, together with other members of the original Aston Magna family such  as Ray Ericson, Steve Hammer, Bernie Krainis, Judy Linsenberg, Anthony Martin, David Miller,  Loretta O’Sullivan, Ed Parmentier, Linda Quan, Jim Richman, Marc Schachman, John Solum,  Mike Willens and Nancy Wilson, and others across the country such as the Caldwells and their  colleagues in Oberlin, Malcolm Bilson, Sonya Monosoff and John Hsu at Cornell, Jim Weaver  at the Smithsonian, Alan Curtis and Laurette Goldberg in California, were “pioneers” in the new  field of Early Music in this country. The OED definition of pioneers is “foot soldiers”, specifically  those whose job it is to go ahead of the main body of troops to dig trenches and erect  fortifications, etc. We - pioneers all - motivated solely by curiosity about early versions of our  instruments and by dissatisfaction with traditional approaches to Baroque music (since there  was at the time no money to be made in this country playing the way we did!) following in the  footsteps of an earlier generation, broke new ground and paved the way for the army that has  followed.

Inasmuch as this is a Handel year, I would point out that, in a way, BEMF and our being here  together this afternoon, four decades after the birth of the Early Music movement in America  as we know it, symbolize Il trionfo del Tempo e del Disinganno, which means literally “the  triumph of time and disillusionment”. What we in America, and others throughout the world,  have managed to achieve in the past forty years is a reshaping of musical taste that has  resonated throughout our profession. Back in the seventies, those wonderful, exciting early  years of our at times tentative, and yet always enthusiastic exploration of the world of  Historically Informed Performance, and the bad old days of New York Times music reviews,  one of their critics snidely predicted, “This, too, shall pass.” Well, was he ever wrong! Whoever  it was who said that must be so disillusioned! Forty years later we’re still here, we’re here to  stay and we’re triumphant. This shall never pass! 

Thank you, EMA, for the honour you have conferred upon me today. This is a very special  moment, and this period in my life is very special for another reason as well – not two weeks  ago I became a grandfather for the first time!  But besides that, now that some of my ex-  students are also teaching, I‘m a musical grandfather as well! And I’m very proud to be both.     

Aston Magna tribute to AF

Aston Magna, the music festival in the Berkshires that Albert founded, posted this tribute to him along with the photograph above (with Jaap Schroeder, Fortunato Arico, and Stanley Ritchie).

Tribute by harpsichordist Skip Sempé

Skip Sempé

Pull Out for Handle – Push In for Mozart
Albert Fuller (1926 - 2007)

At the end of the day, and that day is sadly over, Albert Fuller was quite probably the essential American of the Baroque and Classical period instrument / repertoire movement. He died (as he lived) with dignity, at 81, in September 2007, at his New York residence - a home famous for both the music making and the social events which Albert hosted there for decades.

The New York Times obituary referred to Albert as a “Conductor”. Perhaps that is today’s idea of glamor and respectability. But, let’s remember that being a Conductor is a more or less effortless task next to being a Harpsichordist. The “distinction” from the New York Times is indeed a doubtful honor: Conductors are dime-a-dozen, but Harpsichordists are not. And, Albert Fuller was a harpsichordist, in the tradition of Landowska and Kirkpatrick.

I met him on Thursday, December 2, 1971, when I was living in New Orleans. He played a solo harpsichord recital on his William Dowd Boston (one of several that he owned over the years). The instrument flew, via air freight, with Albert for concerts all over the United States, and sometimes even to Europe. When I saw it being loaded back into the packing crate, I noticed a label on the side of the crate, which read “Pull Out for Handle”, next to which someone had hand written “Push In for Mozart”.

For this recital, Albert played Rameau, Couperin and Scarlatti. The result was that I decided that if I worked hard enough, I might one day be able to play those pieces with as much flair as he. Albert left a trace of all three of these composers on recordings: Rameau for Cambridge, Nonesuch, and Reference; Couperin for Nonesuch; Scarlatti for Cambridge and Reference. The Reference titles are currently available on CDs: there is also a Bach CD for Reference, which is not to be missed. If you have not heard these recordings, get a hold of each of them, have a good listen, and hear what was happening in America in the 1960s and 70s - the time when there was “only” Gustav Leonhardt, in Europe.

Albert taught and inspired many. His famous one-liner, “Fantasy precedes fact” particularly attracted those who did need to pose questions on this enlarged but real artistic concept.

Albert loved music and he loved his friends, and he did a remarkable job with both.

Albert engaged Jaap Schroeder to teach everyone in the United States what a Baroque violin and a Baroque bow were, and how to hold them. Not bad for a harpsichord player… The Aston Magna Academies, founded by Albert, were crucially important for the development of Baroque instrumental playing in the United States. Each and every “Baroque” instrumentalist, regardless of generation, who lives in the US and who plays on a Baroque or Classical instrument owes their livelihood to Albert Fuller. Believe me: I have a long and vibrant memory, and I well remember that Albert is the one who created the demand and the work for everyone in the US.

Albert was an outstanding example of the model of individual “no longer made” in America. He was an adventurous and courageous pioneer who went out on a limb because he knew that he was right. His reflections and interpretations were based on critical discernment, information and instinct, not on pedantry or political correctness. He used an incredible brain, he worked, and he was uniquely generous to his students, who treasured him as an “alternative” presence in their learning process.

Tribute by Classical Guitarist, Kevin Gallagher

I met Mr. Fuller when I took his class on performance practice in 1992. Tyically, one would think a Juilliard class such as this would be centered around "what kind of trills to execute" and "which editions of Bach's works are the most authentic". However, I'm happy to report that his class had very little to do with any of that.

His lectures reminded us how magical the invisible world of music really is and how fortunate we are to study it. He encouraged us to use our imagination, to question authorities, and to create our own rules and lives. He wanted us to understand that the master composers were not just statues and chapters in music history books. They felt what we felt - they were warmed by the same sun, breathed the same air, walked on the same earth. They felt love and lust, joy and sorrow, victory and defeat. We are all one.

I was so taken by his lectures that I signed up for private chamber music coachings with him - and he let me take them as a solo guitarist. One day I played a Bach Largo for him in a rather dry manner. He stopped me half way through and simply said "think hand mic" and then sang the melody freely as a jazz singer would - pretending to hold a microphone in his hand. It might sound humorous, but I tell you that this one lesson changed my entire perspective on music.

Albert wanted us to think outside the box - and to realize that the box was put there by someone else. I'm very grateful to have known this man for even a little bit of time. May he be joyous.

Here is Kevin's blog.

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!

Juilliard Journal Coverage of the Albert Fuller Memorial Concert

The December issue of The Juilliard Journal includes coverage of the Albert Fuller Memorial Concert, including photographs by Peter Schaaf and tributes by Andrew Appel, Barbara Bogatin, and James Roe.

For the article, "Celebrating the Life of an Extraordinary Musician," click here.

Bobby White's remarks at AF's Tribute Concert (12 Nov 07)

ALBERT FULLER - Thoughts in Passing
How do I celebrate the life of someone as remarkable as Albert Fuller? How do I explain those feelings of loss, the loss of truly one of my very closest friends, mentors, best, best buddies in the whole world?

Albert was unique. I--and virtually everyone I ever have known that came in contact with him in the glory years, in Albert's youth and very enlightened older age, before he got ill these past several years and slowed down--all agree that there was no one like him. His radiant sense of humor and appreciation of the offbeat and bizarre, informed so much of what made him special.

His words and insights could sometimes be 'sharp', but they were always to the point. This ability was apparent from early on. Albert loved to tell how he handled a stern headmaster's challenge when he was a mere 9 year old boy in his Washington D.C. grade school. The teacher glowered at Albert in his seat and said, "MASTER Fuller, did you give me a dirty look?" Albert replied, with great calm, "Teacher, you might have a dirty look, but I didn't give it to you!"

The experiences that I had through Albert's kindness, his loving friendship, his caring about me as a human being, as a musician.. as an artist..enhanced my life in myriad ways....Albert reminded any and all of us, students and professionals alike, that we each must be (pause) "The Artist of Your Life". "Don't let people put you down!", he'd say. "Don't let ANY one smother your art! And the biggest person to watch out for in all of this, is your SELF, because YOU'RE the one most responsible for keeping that spark of art alive in your heart!"

Albert helped us achieve this so often by his own enthusiastic example......whether it meant cooking an absolutely FLAWLESS, Glorious, Chinese meal for a dozen friends, or a classic French meal, or an Italian one..or a Belgian waterzooi, (Pronounced vatter-zoy), ..whatever the cuisine, Albert could throw it together at the drop of a toque..(PAUSE) And there'd always be 'Music' following dinner, either live or in recordings of extraordinary performances from Monteverdi to ALMOST Montovani...by that I mean, Aretha Franklin would share the spotlight with Wanda Landowska or Janis Joplin with Couperin's Leçons de Ténèbres. If the music-making was superb, that's all that mattered to Albert.

I met him in 1961 when I was 24 years old– can it be nearly half a century ago?- at the Spoleto Festival in Italy. Throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s, I sang in numerous concerts with Albert at the helm. So many beautiful performances took place as well with Mel Kaplan's New York Chamber Soloists...Albert inventing away at the clavicembalo. As Artist-in-Residence at the NYU Medical Center over on East 30th Street, Albert presented many seasons of extraordinary concerts under the aegis of his great friend on the NYU Medical Faculty, immunologist Dr. Zoltan Ovary.

I will never forget the glorious Baroque operas Albert arranged and conducted here at Juilliard in the 70s, as well as endless instrumental and vocal works performed through the years at his Aston Magna and later, Helicon series. A stunning Platée- of Rameau- radiantly sung by then Juilliard student Barbara Hendricks under Albert's direction- is only one of many events that remain burned in my memory. His beautiful apartment on West 67th street with the two-story living room was the scene of so many wondrous musical evenings. Pianos and harpsichords and viols and lutes were constantly coming in and out of the apartment as young performers took their places for yet another 'soiree musicale' chez-Albert.

Lovely performances took place as well in a number of the several sumptuous apartments lived in by his great friend and musical benefactor, Gregory Smith. I recall a special evening of French poesie and Couperin music at Gregory's french-boiseried home on 73rd street just off Vth Avenue - The Pulitzer Mansion. Albert played harpsichord, Hugues Cuenod sang and Jean-Louis Barrault and his wife Madeleine Renaud read Racine and Moliere texts.

Albert had a great friendship with Alice Tully who was in his home so often for dinners and concerts. Through Albert, young performers got to know and perform for this legendary lady in the most gracious and personal of ways. How fitting that Albert was to be Alice's affectionate and perceptive biographer.

Another great friend and colleague was Hugues Cuenod, the Swiss tenor, who made his Met Opera debut in 1986 at the age of 84 in the Zefirelli production of "Turandot". I heard that performance, seated between Albert and Alice (who was born the same year as Cuenod..1902). Recently this past Summer, to the astonishment of us all, Albert, confined to a wheelchair, flew- ON HIS OWN- to Switzerland to celebrate Cuenod's 105th Birthday(!), and, as Albert put it all too prophetically, "to say 'goodbye' to Huguie."

I'd like to end this note on Albert by reading from an email I received from another dear friend and colleague, the distinguished British pianist Graham Johnson, who too, was devoted to this wonderful man. Graham writes: "..Albert retained voracious interests in ALL aspects of music-making and he greeted those whom he regarded as talented with an openness of heart that will always be unforgettable. Like all great artists he was capable of being moody and self-absorbed, but he remained to the end someone who respected talent when he saw it, and found it, as an utterly sacred thing, to be nurtured, helped, advised and encouraged....One of the greatest teachers, thus, that I have ever known.... After an evening in his company when he was on form, one could be lifted to another place. Whatever our problems, we were artists and part of a family that nothing could destroy. Albert made one feel part of a blessed community of kindred and supportive spirits."

Graham says in closing, "Albert treasured a signed portrait of Mae West that I had bought him at the Argosy Bookstore in Manhattan after staying at his flat in 2000. Couperin and Aretha Franklin.... Alice Tully and Mae West.... that was our incomparably curious, incomparably iconoclastic Albert."

Robert White
12 November 2007

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.

Albert Fuller Memorial Tribute Program

Albert Fuller Memorial Tribute

A TRIBUTE CONCERT
CELEBRATING

ALBERT FULLER
_____

Monday
12 November 2007
6:00 PM

PAUL RECITAL HALL
THE JUILLIARD SCHOOL
144 West 66th Street

RSVP (required)
(212) 799-5000 x 329
_____

Participants:
Andrew Appel, harpsichord
Aymeric Dupré la Tour, harpsichord
Arthur Haas, harpsichord
Myron Lutzke, 'cello
Pedja Muzijevic, piano
Lionel Party, harpsichord
Joseph W. Polisi, President, The Juilliard School
Linda Quan, violin
James Roe, Artistic Director, Helicon
Marc Schachman, oboe
Jaap Schröder, violin
Jonathan Ware, piano
Robert White, tenor

Letter from oboist, Sarah Duval

Dear Jim,

I just want to say that I was so sorry to hear about Albert's passing. He was a special man and influenced so many people, including me, in such a variety of ways. I was sorry that I lost touch with him in recent years.

When I worked for Aston Magna for those years under his directorship, it was his inspiring philosophies on music and life, and his wonderful charisma that made me choose the early music path, which I've never regretted. These days when I'm playing more "modern" oboe, and composing as well, I still hear his voice from time to time about creativity and the cosmos, and the link between all the arts. I especially thought of him during a recent visit I made to MoMA. It was the motion of one of Calder's mobiles that made me think of one of his quotes about the motion in visual art and music being similar.

I'll see you on Monday for the memorial.

All the best,
Sarah

Tribute by Barbara Bogatin

Albert Fuller, Mentor Extraordinaire
It’s amazing how many people who had the great pleasure of working with Albert consider him not just teacher, but mentor. Yes, he was a “specialist” in early music, but what he taught was all of music, and not just how to play with others, but how to play with life. To be caught up in his world was to look deep inside the music, to get “the shivers,” to meet an extravagantly colorful cast of characters, to read and think and laugh, and to eat and drink very well. What a stroke of luck to find Albert early in my Juilliard years, when he was just beginning Aston Magna, and eager to recruit interested students to come to Great Barrington, exchange our steel strings for gut and try out his Baroque bows. I spent eight summers there, learning that music is not in a world by itself, but integrally connected to the art, architecture, literature, dance and historical context of its time. In that musical and scholarly community that he created, we learned to make spaces between the notes, relish the symmetry in the gardens of Versailles, and dance the sarabande.

But it was all of life that Albert cared about, and I find his wisdom so relevant today as I try to guide my own children and students. At a time when I was feeling particularly lost, struggling to find my place in the daunting professional world, I saw Albert dining alone in a café on Columbus Ave. He waved me in, bought me lunch and at once tried to sort out my confusion. He told me to “make a list of everything you want to accomplish in the next year…..then in the next 5 years….then the next 10 years……then 20 years….and now listen to that still quiet voice inside, that’s connected to your heart and your gut, and let it guide you…..”

The big picture, and the most essential truth, that was Albert. He once told me that he loved museums because if he got very quiet and looked at great art for a long time, the paintings spoke to him. I didn’t have any idea what he meant at the time, but 30 years later, a quiet hour in a museum fills me with a calm joy. So take a few minutes out of your busy day, sit down somewhere, just be still, and listen very carefully…..you just might hear, way in the distance, Les Sauvages played on Baroque harp.

Barbara Bogatin
Cellist, San Francisco Symphony
(and occasional viola da gambist and Baroque cellist)

AF tribute by Johan Stern

One time at Juilliard I had to take the baroque cello owned by the school to a violin maker for some adjustments and new strings. I was playing some chamber music with Albert and another student of his, the oboe-player Andrew Adelson, preparing some trio sonata for his recital. Albert suggested that I should take the cello to William Monical at Staten Island and he asked me if I would like him to join my trip – of course, I was delighted to accept his offer! From the first day I came to New York I was mesmerized by the city and used most of my spare time to explore it. In books like E.B White’s Here is New York or Singer’s Enemies unfolded all those typical New York stories of completely different worlds taking place just some blocks away from each other. It all felt so different from Europe, not to mention Sweden where I grew up!

We took the subway down to Battery Park, Albert lecturing about the history of the New York Subway, the different private lines long before the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. I couldn’t have found a better guide than Albert; with all his knowledge about the city he was the perfect companion, telling amusing stories, sometimes flavored with indecent details of the secret liaisons taking place in the empty driver’s compartments during roaring rides underground. We boarded the ferry and smelled the breeze from the sea and Albert’s stories changed, describing the sight of the QE and the other great ocean-liners and long before that, how poor and oppressed people from Europe approaching New York with hope of freedom.

Another great memory is how Albert in his Performance Practice class at Juilliard made a thorough analysis on Madonna and her Marie Antoinette remake of “Vogue” from the MTV Video Music Awards 1990. It was one of his many unique qualities – to see and understand a brief moment of what most of us would think was nothing more than superficiality, and understand the very human meaning of it as an expression – far out or "hot shit on toast under glass" as Albert would call it if it really was something very special. How an artistic statement always has many "historical siblings" – a direct link to history, and the need of generation after generation to retell it.

I am very grateful to have so many good memories around Albert's: all the discoveries in our coachings with the TestosterTones playing the Brahms trios, our sudden concerts! – his great trust in us, his warm hospitality, our exit subito when he suddenly felt tired and we, totally unaware of how time flies absorbing scents and sounds of the enchanted gatherings around the Rendezvous Lounge – overtaken and aroused scattering into the city night. I have written him many times over the years, just small notes on postcards from my tours and travel. It was always so natural to share a new moment of experience with Albert.

To put words to what Albert represents is very hard but I can honestly say that still 15 years after my great couple of years at Juilliard, he is still with me on a daily basis in my musical life.

Aston Magna's Notice in the New York Times

For Daniel Stepner's tribute to Albert in the New York Times, click here.

Albert Fuller Tribute on WQXR

Click here for an MP3 of a tribute to Albert Fuller broadcast on WQXR, Thursday, 27 September 2007, just before 1:00 p.m.

Tribute by the tenor, Robert White in The Juilliard Journal

"The Incomparably Iconoclastic Albert Fuller" by Robert White

For the Juilliard Journal article, click here.

"Albert Fuller--an appreciation and goodbye" by the harpsichordist, Andrew Appel

I first heard Albert Fuller in a recital of French harpsichord music (he was a pioneer in the repertoire) at Hunter College in 1967. A series of concerts by the world’s leading players presented him alongside Gustav Leonhardt and a few other American colleagues. I was 16 and from his first notes I was seduced by vitality and luxury. I thought, “I want to do that!”

When I returned to New York from studies abroad in 1973, my route was to the Juilliard School and to Fuller’s studio. Albert asked me to meet him for tea at his apartment on West 54th street. I arrived with the attitude of a boy who had moved through the disciplined and socially structured world of a European conservatory. I had never addressed a professor by his first name. The boundaries were clear, the education wonderful and focused.

I rang Mr. Fuller’s bell and was dumbstruck when he opened wearing only his white underwear. Just out of the shower he ushered me in to the living room and asked me to wait, to look around, to play his harpsichord.

That evening he invited me to join friends after one of his concerts and introduced me to New York Szechwan Chinese food at Sheila Chang’s, one of the city’s best.

From that moment on, encounters, lessons, voyages with Albert always introduced and challenged. He demanded reaction and he gave catalyst, he required balance but offered constant opportunities for growth. Life was about interaction. MUSIC was about interaction. Albert demanded that life in all its facets and forms found its way into music. Music needed to illicit a reaction from the listener. Short of that, our performances were banal, roughage, waste.

He moved me away from over-sophistication and inaudible subtlety in my playing yet invited me to events where I could drink fine Champagne and look at Rembrandts and Monets. He helped teach me that the experience of golden and precious art must be married to our experience of being animals, natural, primal. He immersed himself, bringing in his pupils, in pre-Freudian art and made it rich in meaning through his modern understanding of the mind and heart.

He showed me how to talk to an audience about the most distant aesthetics and moments in history without ever insulting them with condescension. He taught me that the glass of champagne and the Rembrandt were to be there for everyone and that it was our mission to make this possible, to open hearts and minds and opportunities.

It may be the case that even before I began my work with Albert, I was this type of musician and person. It may be that Albert and I found each other and coincided in a way that will always make me feel filial gratitude and love, and with his loss, a large open space that can never be filled. But ask his other students. Ask the harpsichordists from James Richman and Ray Erikson to Charlotte Mattox. Ask the instrumentalists who worked with him in those early adventures into repertoire and instruments (gut strings and light old bows, wooden flutes and early oboes) like Ryan Brown, Linda Quan, David Miller. Ask the singers who enjoyed the cantatas and arias worked out together.

Albert left a trail of committed, inspired, intelligent, engaged artists and for each of them, Albert Fuller represents a moment or many moments of light.

This week I went to visit Albert on his deathbed, hospice care in place at home, and cared for by two dedicated and loving friends, Patrick Rucker and Jim Roe. It was painful to see a man of his vitality no longer IN life. I held both Albert’s hands and hoped that he could feel that the blood running through him, also ran through me; that I would continue, if not nearly as well, the work he did so beautifully and generously in his life. And then I noticed that he was wearing only his white underwear.

"Bist du bei mir"

WQXR 96.3 FM in New York City will play Albert's version of "Bis du bei mir" from his "Bach for Harpsichord" CD today at 12:40 p.m. They will program additional performances by Albert Friday in the late afternoon. (Thank you Hester Furman.)

This is from Albert's program notes:

"The group closes with another prayer, one for companionship at the end. This prayer, Bist du bei mir, was sung by Hughues Cuenod countless times in concerts that he and I gave together. In remembrance of those magical times when I accompanied him, varying my figured-bass realization as we improvised together, I have made a transcription of this vocal work for harpsichord alone. In it are gathered the feelings of melodic and accompanimental spontaneity that Hughie and I enjoyed, along with some of the tender feelings that guided us along our way." --- Albert Fuller

Recorded: 20-22 April 1992, The Presbyterian Church, Rye, NY
Harpsichord: Thomas & Barbara Wolf

Tribute by the classical guitarist, Eliot Fisk

The passing of my beloved friend and mentor, our adored Albert, fills me with sadness. He was an indispensable musical model and inspiration, of course, but so much more for all of us . . . He was our guru of love and of the sacredness of human sensuality, of our right to try to be happy in spite of everything. He gave us all so much. He will truly always be "UNFORGETTABLE" (music of Nat King Cole), and his beautiful loving spirit will be with us always.

Article by David Fuller, Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York at Buffalo

For half a century, I have watched happy faces fall as they tell me how pleased thay are to meet me and how much they have enjoyed my recordings, my concerts, and even my books, and I tell them, I’m sorry, you’ve got the wrong Fuller. It happened easily, since we moved in many of the same circles, he was less than a year older, and I even played the harpsichord, sort of. In fact, that was how we met. It was 1953-4. I had come back from three years abroad and had developed enough curiosity about harpsichords to want to get one. Since I was knocking around Boston and Cambridge, I bought one of Hubbard & Dowd’s first four instruments, already second-hand, and joined the little club of which Thomas Dunn and Albert were the principals. Albert had just come through the hands of Ralph Kirkpatrick at Yale, and was willing to give me lessons (like him, I had begun as an organist). The setting of those lessons, spaced out informally over two or three summers, was one of the great shingle-style “cottages” at Manchester-by-the-Sea on Boston’s north shore, belonging to the brilliant and infinitely cultured Gregory Smith and his family, one of Albert’s very closest friends from his Washington days to Gregory’s death. I never spent more than a night or two there for my lessons, but those visits were non-stop party-time with non-stop music. Albert, who spent summers there, christened it “Nerve-Ending-by-the-Sea,” exactly right for bunches of high-powered people living on the edge. He was the Smiths’ window onto the world of professional music, to which in those days their social position decreed that they must ever remain fascinated outsiders. Albert was then playing on and off with the New York Chamber Soloists, and I remember one party that culminated in a couple of Brandenberg Concertos in the living room with both Albert and Tom at their harpsichords (which normally lived in a sort of conservatory they called the “tile pile”), the orchestra, and invited guests. No matter whom the house-guest list included during my visits, it was clear that that it was from Albert that the fun and the life radiated.

This capacity to illuminate whatever he touched reached its culmination in the enterprise that he called “Aston Magna,” after the Berkshire estate of Lee Elman where it began in 1972. An idea of its pioneering importance in the period-instrument movement in this country can be had from the article in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2001). I knew it for the interdisciplinary Academy it spawned in 1978, and at which I lectured on aspects of French harpsichord music in 1979, 1980, and 1982. Why French? Because I had been sufficiently ravished by Albert’s playing of this elegant and elusive music in the old days at Nerve-Ending to make it my career and write my dissertation and a great deal more besides on it—and to dedicate an edtion of music by Armand-Louis Couperin to him (A-R Editions. 1975, and still in print!). The original mix of disciplines and outlooks at Aston Magna was enormously stimulating, but what was so peculiarly “Albert” about life there was the cooking. He managed to find chefs who could turn out three meals a day for weeks, each one different and each one sensational, and this for dozens of people in an institutional setting. He was a first-class cook himself, by the way, and developed a particularly violent passion for Chinese food, becoming a close friend of the New York restaurateur Sheila Chang and even learning a bit of restaurant Chinese to use with waiters. I had a lot of this cooking, since for years I used his apartments at 162 W 54th St. and 27 W 67th St. as my New York hotels. In 1968, I stayed with him a few days in a rented house in Fire Island Pines, whither he had brought a clavichord on which to prepare his recording of Bach’s E-minor partita. I shall never again be able to hear that toccata without the remembered sound of the surf almost drowning out the whisper of the clavichord.

The reader who would like to experience something of the rich, enveloping personality of this extraordinary man can find it reflected in a remarkable and engaging way in his memoir of Alice Tully (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999). For the sake of his memory I hope that it, too, is still in print.

David Fuller (no relation), September 23, 2007.