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Sympathy Hall


Sitting in the cheap seats at Symphony Hall for Handel & Haydn's Mozart Requiem


Disclaimer that a lawyer would tell me to write: The stories I tell happened eons ago and no longer reflect the BSO of today.


My BSO compadres and I used the slang "Sympathy Hall" because we were in our twenties and our currency was what we imagined was wit. That we would slip up, saying "Sympathy" instead of "Symphony" at inappropriate times was predictable and laughed about over drinks at the Pour House on Thursday, the new Friday, evenings. We were under-financed, but shared a passion borne of our good fortune to be working in the performing arts.


On my first Friday afternoon, I had to get something signed near the second balcony, where I had not yet been Upon entering, I was assaulted by a reception desk splattered with pink goo and the sounds of a blender churning out strawberry daquiris. Stained pink teeth and tongue of an overserved senior manager pressured me to join. A far cry from the law office of the prior week


Symphony Hall was funded by the man responsible for creating much of the culture in Boston, Henry Lee Higginson. His largesse lured Mead, McKim and White, who had by then designed the Public Library in Boston, along with many substantive buildings in NYC, to create what "remains, acoustically, among the top three concert halls in the world (sharing this distinction with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw and Vienna's Musikvereinsaal), and is considered the finest in the United States"*. Now, you're likely wondering "How is that even possible?". As was oft quoted, Symphony Hall is a shoebox within a shoe box. I realized the other night that it's actually three shoe boxes; the exterior walls, the offices, bathrooms, library, kitchen, supply closets and other rooms that abut the exterior walls keeping external street noise at bay, and finally the interior wall that separates the concert hall from the corridors surrounding.


I tell you this because when I first started my two week temp job that extended to thirteen years, my office was in a recently converted supply closet adjacent to someone who had installed a driveway mirror above her desk so she could see when it was safe to lay out her nightly lines of coke. My friends in Sales and Marketing hung their hats in the newly reconfigured ladies room, which still had two swinging red leather doors with oval windows at head height. Yes, the toilets were gone.


Despite or maybe because of the slightly chaotic environment, I couldn't have been more delighted to be interacting with (mostly) men who sometimes came in with their instruments, wearing tails or Friday black suit. That they might have been eating chips or a sandwich at the same time seemed incomprehensible, a clash of refined European heritage and crass, American eating and walking un-culture. It was similar to the confusion elicited by the "pilgrim" at Plimoth/Patuxet who was texting while his grape and squirrel stew was cooking. As I got to know the musicians better and saw how excited they were for the Costco benefit, it became clear they had never inhabited their tails, rather wore them as a uniform.


A new season started a few weeks after I'd been officially hired, which meant it was a time when new orchestra members began their tenure after having survived a grueling audition process. Their initial step would have been submitting a tape of themselves playing, then if called back (few were), performing behind a curtain while the selection committee listened, and if that went well, joining a concert with the orchestra.


There were two guys the same age as I starting, and it was my job to sign them up for benefits and help a bit with acclimation. I was intimidated by them, never thinking to kibbitz the way I would with a new staff member. Maybe because they were single men my age, or because there was a clear line between the musician's union and "management". Or, it could have been a social awkwardness they bore that was the result of many hours in the practice rooms. In any case, I helped them out and during my tenure at Symphony Hall would chat with them from time to time in a way one might speak to a boss' boss. When I'd attend a concert, I'd watch them and think about how at the same age as me, they had a well-paid avocation and I, marginally a vocation.


The lustre of HR fell away quickly, but good friends, comp tickets, a great boss and the Tanglewood stipend kept me there. Until one day when I up and quit, and that was the end of that. I took a different HR job (don't ask) down the street at the Gardner, staying in touch with the people I cared about. Occasionally someone would slip me some comps and I'd attend a concert in Boston or at Tanglewood, happy to luxuriate in those rich BSO strings, among other instruments.


Staff meetings at Tanglewood were not so bad


As well as enjoying the performance, BSO concerts became a time to see what was up; who was working backstage, how the ushers were doing, which ex-colleagues were in the house seats. But I'd also visually move around the stage while listening, checking out new faces, seeing who was missing and generally reviewing how various members I knew were faring. Attending as sporadically as I did made confronting the passage of time unavoidable. Good thing I myself hadn't aged a day.


When I'd land on the two guys, I noticed less of an inferiority feeling in me. My life had started to gain traction in various ways, becoming aware of what was important to me. They too seemed more confident, having settled into their lives and roles, playing with more gusto, no longer the junior members. I heard through the grapevine that each of them married, moved to the burbs, had kids.


Tanglewood


Then, for some years I didn't attend any concerts. When finally returning, I was shocked to see two middle aged men, one the color of the underbelly of a fish and slightly jowly, the other with aggressively grey hair and melancholy eyes. It was almost too much to bear, thinking about how young and green and open to our lives ahead we had been. My trusty life barometer was yelling so loud it was all I could do to listen to the music. Sigh.


Back at the Hall the other night, because it was not a BSO concert I couldn't scan the stage, but instead spent the break looking at the orchestra photographs in the corridor on the wall. There, I saw one venerable and vaguely familiar man who looked close to retirement. And no photograph of the other.





OK, turns out, his photograph was missing but he isn't. Still.


*From Wikipedia


2件のコメント


Jude Asphar
Jude Asphar
10月03日

One of your best. Perspectives on what boils down to be moments in time you'd been part of. And not just any old moments, and not just any old time or in any old place for some of the best of un-automated America...which may be still is, or would be, as the world accelerates around us? Plus significant history in the evolution of music and in that storied environment...wow, wish I'd heard those big brass organ pipes at full blast, and how they must have filled that box within boxes. Quite sobering to read your reflecting these stories as we pass life and places and people, by.

いいね!

Jude Asphar
Jude Asphar
10月03日

(unpublsishable below?) so comments were: One of your best. Perspectives on what boils down to be moments in time you'd been part of. And not just any old moments, and not just any old time or in any old place for some of the best of un-automated America...which may be still is, or would be, as the world accelerates around us? Plus significant history in the evolution of music and in that storied environment...wow, wish I'd heard those big brass organ pipes at full blast, and how they must have filled that box within boxes. Quite sobering to read your reflecting these stories as we pass life and places and people, by.

いいね!
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