Bully for Brontosaurus (21 page)

I would alter only Lavoisier’s patrician assumption that ordinary folks cannot master this mode of reasoning—and write instead that most people surely can but, thanks to poor education and lack of encouragement from general culture, do not. The end result is the same—riches for Las Vegas and disappointment for Pete Rose. But at least the modern view does not condemn us to a permanent and inevitable status as saps, dupes, and dunces.

Second, whatever our powers of abstract reasoning, we are also prisoners of our hopes. So long as life remains disappointing and cruel for so many people, we shall be prey to irrationalisms that promise relief. Lavoisier regarded his countrymen as more sophisticated than previous suckers of centuries past, but still victims of increasingly sly manipulators (nothing has changed today, as the Gellers and von Danikens remain one step ahead of their ever-gullible disciples):

Since hope is an ever-present temptress in a world of woe, mesmerism “attracts people by the two hopes that touch them the most: that of knowing the future and that of prolonging their days.”

Lavoisier then drew an apt parallel between the communal crises of mesmeric sessions and the mass emotionalism so often exploited by demagogues and conquerors throughout history—“
l’enthousiasme du courage
” (enthusiasm of courage) or “
l’unité d’ivresse
” (unity of intoxication). Generals elicit this behavior by sounding drums and playing bugles; promoters by hiring a claque to begin and direct the applause after performances; demagogues by manipulating the mob.

Lavoisier’s social theory offered no solution to the destructive force of irrationalism beyond a firm and continuing hegemony of the educated elite. (As my one criticism of the commissioners’ report, Lavoisier and colleagues could see absolutely nothing salutary, in any conceivable form, in the strong emotionalism of a mesmeric crisis. They did not doubt the power of the psyche to cure, but as sons of the Enlightenment, children of the Age of Reason, they proclaimed that only a state of calm and cheerfulness could convey any emotional benefit to the afflicted. In this restriction, they missed an important theme of human complexity and failed to grasp the potential healing effect of many phenomena that call upon the wilder emotions—from speaking in tongues to catharsis in theatrical performance to aspects of Freudian psychoanalysis. In this sense, some Freudians view Mesmer as a worthy precursor with a key insight into human nature. I hesitate to confer such status upon a man who attained great wealth from something close to quackery—but I see the point.)

I envision no easy solution either, but I adopt a less pessimistic attitude than Lavoisier. Human nature is flexible enough to avert the baleful effects of intoxicated unity, and history shows that revolutionary enthusiasm need not devolve into hatred and mass murder. Consider Franklin and Lavoisier one last time. Our revolution remained in the rational hands of numerous Franklins, Jeffersons, and Washingtons; France descended from the Declaration of the Rights of Man into the Reign of Terror. (I do recognize the different situations, particularly the greater debt of hatred, based on longer and deeper oppression, necessarily discharged by the new rulers of France. Still, no inevitability attended the excesses fanned by mass emotionalism.) In other words:

From which, I think, we can only conclude that Mr. Franklin understood a thing or two when he remarked, speaking of his fellow patriots, but extended here to all devotees of reason, that we must either hang together or hang separately.

THIRTY YEARS AGO
, on April 30, 1958, to be exact, I sat with 250 students facing one of the most formidable men of our generation—Peter J. Wilhousky, director of music in the New York City schools and conductor of the New York All-City High School Chorus. As the warm, and primarily parental, applause receded at the concert’s end, Wilhousky returned to the podium of Carnegie Hall, gestured for silence, and raised his baton to conduct the traditional encore, “Madame Jeanette.” Halfway through, he turned and, without missing a beat (to invoke a cliché in its appropriate, literal sense), smiled to acknowledge the chorus alumni who stood at their seats or surrounded the podium, singing with their current counterparts. These former members seemed so ancient to me—though none had passed forty, for the chorus itself was then only twenty years old—and their solidarity moved me to a rare fit of tears at a time when teenage boys did not cry in public.

“Madame Jeanette” is a dangerous little piece, for it ventures so near the edge of cloying sentimentality. It tells the tale, in close four-part a cappella harmony, of a French widow who sits at her door by day and at her window by night. There she thinks only of her husband, killed so many years before on the battlefield of St. Pierre, and dreams of the day that they will be reunited at the cemetery of Père Lachaise. With 250 teenagers and sloppy conducting, “Madame Jeanette” becomes a maudlin and embarrassing tearfest. Wilhousky, ever the perfectionist, ever the rationalist, somehow steered to the right side of musicality, and ended each concert with integrity and control.

“Madame Jeanette” was our symbol of continuity. For a very insecure boy, singing second bass on the brink of manhood, “Madame Jeanette” offered another wonderful solace. It ends, for the basses, on a low D-flat, just about as far down the scale as any composer would dare ask a singer to venture. Yes, I knew even then that low did not mean masculine, or capable, or mature, or virile—but that fundament resonated with hope and possibility, even in pianissimo.

Len and I met at the bus stop every Saturday morning at 7:30, took the Q17 to 169th Street and the subway to Lexington Avenue, walked uptown along the line of the old Third Avenue El, and arrived at Julia Richman High School just in time for the 9
A.M.
rehearsal.

We lived, thirty years ago, in an age of readier obedience, but I still marvel at the discipline that Wilhousky could maintain with his mixture of awe (inspired) and terror (promulgated). He forged our group of blacks from Harlem, Puerto Ricans from the great migration then in progress, Jews from Queens, and Italians from Staten Island into a responsive singing machine. He worked, in part, through intimidation by public ridicule. One day, he stopped the rehearsal and pointed to the tenor section, saying: “You, third row, fourth seat, stand up. You’re singing flat. Ten years ago, Julius La Rosa sat in that same seat—and sang flat. And he’s still singing flat.” (Memory is a curious trickster. La Rosa, in a recent
New Yorker
profile, states that Wilhousky praised him in the same forum for singing so true to pitch. But I know what I heard. Or is the joke on me?) Each year, he cashiered a member or two for talking or giggling—in public, and with no hope of mercy or reinstatement.

But Peter Wilhousky had another side that inspired us all and conveyed the most important lesson of intellectual life. He was one of the finest choral conductors in America, yet he chose to spend every Saturday morning with high school kids. His only rule, tacit but pervasive, proclaimed: “No compromises.” We could sing, with proper training and practice, as well as any group in America—nothing else would be tolerated or even conceptualized. Anything less would not be worth doing at all. I had encountered friendliness, grace, kindness, animation, clarity, and dedication among my teachers, but I had never even considered the notion that unqualified excellence could emerge from anything touched or made by students. The idea, however, is infectious. As I worked with Wilhousky, I slowly personalized the dream that excellence in one activity might be extended to become the pattern, or at least the goal, of an actual life.

Len phoned me a few months ago and suggested that we attend this year’s concert, the thirtieth since our valedictory. I hesitated for two reasons. I feared that my memory of excellence would not be supported by reality, and I didn’t relish the role of a graybeard from springs long past, standing and singing “Madame Jeanette” from the audience, should that peculiar tradition still be honored. But sentiment and curiosity prevailed, and we went.

Yes, Heraclitus, you cannot step twice into the same river. The raw material remains—talented kids of all colors, shapes, backgrounds. But the goal has been inverted. Wilhousky tried to mold all this diversity into the uncompromising, single standard of elite culture as expressed in the classical repertory for chorus and orchestra. In the auditorium of Julia Richman High School, before his arrival, we used to form small pickup groups to sing the latest rock-and-roll numbers. But when our sentinels spotted the maestro, they quickly spread the alarm and dead silence descended. Wilhousky claimed that rock-and-roll encouraged poor habits of voice and pitch, and he would expel anyone caught singing the stuff in his bailiwick.

Diversity has now triumphed, and the forbidden fruit of our era has become the entire first part of the program. The concert began with the All-City marching band, complete with drum major, baton twirlers, and flag carriers. Then the All-City jazz ensemble.

A full concert and two hours later, the orchestra and chorus finally received their turn. Not only has the number of ensembles expanded to respect the diversity of tastes and inclinations in our polyglot city, but each group has also retained a distinctive signature. Blacks predominate in the chorus; the string sections of the orchestra are overwhelmingly Asian. The chorus is now led by Edith Del Valle, a tall, stunning woman who heads the vocal department at Fiorello H. La Guardia High School of the Arts. (As a single sign of continuity, Anna Ext still coaches the sopranos, as she did in our day and has for thirty-two years. How can we convey adequate praise to a woman who has devoted so much, for so long, to a voluntary, weekend organization—except to say that our language contains no word more noble than “teacher”?)

The chorus still sings the same basic repertory—Randall Thompson’s “Alleluia,” Wilhousky’s own arrangement of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” some Bach and Beethoven, and an Irving Berlin medley for the season of his centennial.

How good are they, and how good were we? Was Wilhousky’s insistence on full professionalism just a vain conceit? They sing by memory, and therefore (since eyes can be fixed on the conductor), with uncanny precision and unanimity. But I demur for two reasons. First, the sound, though lovely in raw quality, is so emotionless, as though text and style of composition have no influence upon interpretation. Perhaps we sang in the same manner. The soul of these classics may not be accessible before the legal age of drinking, driving, and voting.

But my second reservation troubles me more. The chorus is terribly unbalanced, with 129 women and only 31 men. The tenors are reduced to astringent shouting as the evening wears on. This cannot be by design, and can only mean that the chorus is not attracting anywhere near the requisite number of male applicants. Thirteen of the 31 men hail from the conductor’s own specialty school, La Guardia High. Have they been pressed into desperate service? In our chorus, all sections were balanced. We clamored in our local high schools for the strictly limited right to audition, and fewer than half the applicants succeeded.

I mused upon these inadequacies as the evening wore on (and the tenors tired). The expanded diversity of bands and jazz is both exciting and a proper testimony to cultural pluralism. The relaxed attitude of performers contrasts pleasantly with the rigid formalism and nervousness of our era (I could have died in a spectacular backward plunge off the top riser of Carnegie Hall when I felt the chair’s rearward creep, but didn’t dare stop to fidget and readjust).

But has the evening’s diversity and spontaneous joy pushed aside Wilhousky’s uncompromising excellence? Can the two ideals, each so important in itself, coexist at all? And if not, whatever shall we do to keep alive that harsh vision of the best of the greatest?

But if I felt this single trouble amidst my pleasure, at least I wouldn’t have to worry about “Madame Jeanette” in this new river. Surely, that tradition had evaporated, and I would not have to face brightness and acne from the depths of advancing middle age in the fifteenth row. After all, “Madame Jeanette” is a quiet classical piece for chorus alone—and the chorus no longer holds pride of place among the various ensembles.

I applauded warmly after the finale, pleasure only slightly tinged with a conceptual sort of sadness, and then turned to leave. But Edith Del Valle strode out from the wings and, with a presence fully equal to Wilhousky’s, stepped onto the podium—to conduct “Madame Jeanette.” Old members scurried to the front. Len and I looked at each other and, without exchanging a word, rose in unison.

No tears. We are both still terrified of Wilhousky’s wrath, and his ghost surely stood on that stage, watching carefully for any sign of inattention or departure from pitch. This time, the chorus sang exquisitely, for “Madame Jeanette” succeeds by precision or fails by overinvolvement. The imbalance of sections does not affect such a quiet song, while its honest, but simple, sentimentality can be encompassed by the high-school soul.

Edith Del Valle, the black woman from La Guardia High, blended with her absolute opposite, the silver-haired Slavic aristocrat, Peter J. Wilhousky. The discipline and precision of her chorus—their species of excellence—had triumphed to convert the potentially maudlin into thoughtful dignity for tradition’s sake. It was a pleasure to make music with her. If youth and age can produce such harmony, there must be hope for pluralism
and
excellence—but only if we can recover, and fully embrace, Wilhousky’s dictum: No compromises.

I learned something else at this final celebration of continuity, something every bit as important to me, if only parochially: I can still hit that low D-flat. Father Lachaise may be beckoning, but “Madame Jeanette” and I are still hanging tough and young in our separate ways.

Postscript

This essay, which first appeared in the
New York Times Magazine
, unleashed a flood of reminiscence by correspondence, mostly from former chorus members and others who knew Peter Wilhousky. I was regaled with many sweet memories, particularly of our custom in jamming subway cars after leaving the rehearsals
en masse
and singing (generally to the keen surprise and enjoyment of passengers) until the accumulating departures of homebound choristers reduced our ranks to less than four-part harmony. But one theme, in its several guises, pervaded all the letters and reinforced the serious, and decidedly nonsentimental,
raison d’être
of this essay—Wilhousky’s commitment to excellence and its impact upon us. One woman wrote from a generation before mine:

Another who sang in the chorus five years before me said:

And from ten years after my watch:

And finally, from a Wilhousky counterpart in Portland, Oregon: “The taste of excellence is the hook. The kids never forget—as you obviously have not.”

This accumulated weight of testimony made me reassess the tone of the essay itself. I now think that I was a bit too ecumenically forgiving of the chorus’s present insufficiencies. We probably were very good (if not quite so subtle and professional as clouds of memory suggest); in any case, the ideal of uncompromising excellence certainly pervaded our concepts and did pass down into our subsequent lives. I don’t see how the present chorus can be engendering such an attitude with an appeal so feeble that male singers must be dredged up rather than turned away after dreaming, scheming, and begging for a chance (as we did). This is simply too great a loss for any gain in diversity or relaxation. Islands of excellence are too rare and precious in our world of mediocrity; any erosion and foundering is tragic.

Finally, for I really do not wish to end a sweet story on a sour note, may I report Julius La Rosa’s version of his incident with Wilhousky. He writes in a letter of November 17, 1988, that the chorus was rehearsing “Begin the Beguine” (during his tenure in the late 1940s). Wilhousky wanted the men to sing with a cello-like tone. La Rosa writes: