RCEditions

Football Players, Baseball Players, Astronauts and then, Composers!

In a brief unhappy year as a new kid in Washington DC when my dad was transferred by NASA, I had few friends, so I wrote to baseball players/football /players. I clipped their pictures from 'The Sporting News,' Sport Magazine,' and asked for autographs. I learned not to give up. I learned that the nice ones wrote back, but that sometimes I had to be politely persistent! I learned that they were the same as me (I believe I already knew this as I had been living amongst the astronauts, who were all known and national heroes, at the beginning of the space program--Gus Grissom, Jim Lovell, Scott Carpenter, John Glenn, Wally Schirra, Frank Borman, all lived within 1-3 blocks. They were 'normal' and I played with their kids--we frequently used Scott Carpenter's trampoline. So, calling baseball or football players seemed an easy thing to do, and it was.

Green Bay Packers quarterback Bart Starr took my call at the local Washington hotel -and was very kind, listened, and said sure, if I wrote to him, he would be glad to send an autograph, and he did.
Stan Musial had just retired from the St. Louis Cardinals, and was General Manager. I sent him a dime store baseball in July, and asked if the players could sign it. At the end of the season, after the Cardinals won the World Series, I wrote to say I hadn't received my baseball back, and that I understood if they couldn't sign it, but could I have my baseball? A week later I received an official National League ball signed by everyone on the team, including Musial and home run king Roger Maris. From Musial I learned to tell the truth and stand up (politely) when I needed to.
Ernie Banks from the Cubs and Robin Roberts from the Phillies both wrote nice personal notes, Mickey Mantle sent me a 'real' autograph, after sending printed ones two or three previous times (i didn't give up), and all of these carried over into later years, when as a college student or young professional I wrote to the leading composers asking to commission them for saxophone works. Boulez, Rochberg, Messiaen, Copland, and others who said yes after no, such as Martino, Harbison, Horvit and Schuller, corresponded with me. I value those letters, and they tell part of my musical story of commissioning new works.

Composers

Gunther Schuller
I have known Gunther for almost 40 years. His influence has been continuous, along with his friendship and support. Gunther has never stopped working, travelling, composing, writing, conducting, and teaching. I first saw him run up the steps to NEC in Sept. 1974, and without having seen a picture knew this was the President of the New England Conservatory. He always had presence. I took a course 'Score and Sound,' team-taught with John Heiss and Victor Rosenbaum, clearly the three best teachers in the school at that time (at least clearly to me). The first day, Gunther talked about pitch/intonation as a constant adjustment while playing, and jotted down a page of Debussy's 'Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun,' by memory, full score and with measure numbers, to discuss the tendencies of all the notes in all the instruments. Well, that brought new meaning to, 'know the score!' Another brought forth composers' use of absolute vs. relative dynamics (Dvorak New World Symphony vs. modern composition in which the acoustics of each instrument (or even the player) are take into account in the writing). This was eye and ear opening. And what of the above is obvious to me today was unbelievably exciting the first time I heard it as a young graduate student. I have always had a sense of what I didn't know, and have always been curious. And Gunther was one of those teachers who filled in the gaps, every single time I heard him/had a class/played for him, etc.

A Salute to (My) Teachers

5. Composers and Other Inspirations