A Fable for our Time
(The following was sent as a letter to the faculty and students of the Ithaca College School of Music on March 20, 2020.)
My Dear Fellow Musicians,
This is a fable, a myth, a story about a junior composition major at a conservatory in the 1920’s. Let’s call him “Oliver.” Oliver had a composition teacher who was very wise, because not only was she a great musician and teacher, she was also psychic. She could see things before they happened.
Here's a piece of the script from that movie:
Oliver: I have the idea for my senior capstone project! It is a great orchestral piece, with organ, and carillon, and a chorus, a magnificent work!
[pause]
Teacher: Actually, your senior capstone project will be for only four instruments.
[full stop]
Oliver: Really. Which four?
Teacher: You won’t know until you get to the performance venue.
Oliver: Really. How big is the stage?
Teacher: There won’t be a stage. It’s outdoors.
Oliver: I see. Is there a piano?
Teacher: Yes, but not all the keys work.
Oliver: Really. Which ones don’t work?
Teacher: It changes day by day. You won’t actually know until the performance. Oh, and none of the other instruments will be fully functional either, but we don’t know how yet.
Oliver: I see. This sounds really attractive so far. Anything else I should know?
Teacher: Yes. You will be surrounded by people who are dying, hundreds every day. There won’t be any sense of “fair”, no basic human rights, no privileges, no “normal.” You won’t be able to expect food, for example. You might find it hard to focus. It will be distracting to work.
[full stop]
Oliver: I cannot do my work under those circumstances. It’s impossible for me to create anything worthwhile with those restrictions. I have standards.
Teacher: Actually, it will only be possible for you to create this work under those circumstances. The restrictions are by design.
Oliver: I won’t compromise. Music must be of a certain quality. I can’t and won’t compromise my art. I’m not interested in creating trash.
Teacher: Actually, this piece will be one of the greatest pieces of music ever composed in all of history. It will be revered!
Oliver: HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?
Teacher: It’s not possible! That’s why the whole thing works!
This movie, “Before the End of Time” is of course the “prequel” to a true story, a story in which young Oliver is played by the actor Olivier Messiaen and the “capstone project” is the Quartet for the End of Time. The “concert hall” is a Nazi prisoner-of-war camp in Görlitz, Germany.
You and I are on the eve of a great battle, an event that will change our world. Unlike Oliver’s teacher, I am not psychic, and I cannot see the future. Like you, however, I am the holder of 50,000 years of shared practice, and there are certain things that are about to happen, and we already know what those are.
What has always been normal, ordinary, will become in many cases impossible. The most ordinary things—finding toilet paper at the grocery story—have become impossible. When the ordinary becomes impossible, what was previously impossible manifests. Disruption produces transformation. The impossible suddenly becomes practical.
I, like you, have been up many nights this week struggling with the reality that some things we do, we might continue to do, but many will become impossible. The limitations will be significant. Some things I can’t even imagine, yet. I feel like young Oliver might have felt. But because we have 50,000 years of experience at this, there are a few things we can stand on.
If you carry your practice, your practice will carry you. If you hold music, it will hold you. There is no circumstance in which this is not true. It is true at the moment of our birth and the moment of our death, and true at every point in between. It was true ten hours after the buildings fell on 9/11. It was true when Haiti earthquake survivors were found singing in the rubble by first responders who came to dig them out in the hours before dawn. It was true when my students in Boston, knocked out by the blast of a bomb and waking up next to an amputated limb, made a music video 24 hours later to hold their experience. It is true today for Italians in quarantine, dying in record numbers, singing together with their neighbors from their open windows.
Some things we ordinarily do will indeed be impossible. No one expects you to do the impossible, certainly not me. When something you ordinarily do becomes impossible, let it go! But let it go with open arms so that the impossible can find its way in. Like Messiaen, you might suddenly find yourself bringing the impossible to life.
FEMA will not bring music. (I’m not entirely certain what FEMA plans to bring, but I am entirely certain it will not be music.) In all of the circumstances I describe above, music arrived before FEMA did. Within hours. In some cases, music held survivors until help arrived, and I have no doubt this will be the case now. In dire cases, music may be the only form of help that arrives.
Carry your practice. That which is ordinary may no longer be possible. That which was previously impossible will become real. You carry 50,000 years of group practice, embedded in you by your teacher and your teachers’ teacher. I am no psychic, but we have done this thing many, many times before, and this will not be our last.
Carry this practice, and this practice will carry you. Help people carry music. There is no question of “If” there will be music in the next 8 weeks. There is only the question of where, how, and by whom.
May it be us. Carry your practice!
With tremendous reverence and great affection,
Karl Paulnack, Dean
School of Music
Ithaca College