Gunther Schuller - The MacDowell Colony

2015 MEDAL DAY
Michael Chabon reflects on mortality
and the importance of making art 2
Terrance McKnight describes
multiple ways to remember
Gunther Schuller 5
Composer Yehudi Wyner
reviews the genius that
was his friend 6
Gunther
Schuller
56TH EDWARD MACDOWELL
MEDALIST REMEMBERED
ON GLORIOUS MEDAL DAY
Medalist Gunther
Schuller, who was
president of the New
England Conservatory
from 1967-1977, is seen
here conducting the NEC
Jazz Orchestra in 2010.
(photo by Andrew Hurlbut)
MacDowell Chairman Michael
Chabon welcomed the Medal Day
crowd with a moving address,
combining mirth and poignancy in
his words calling attention to the
importance of making art.
MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 1
2015 MEDAL DAY
O
n a day glorious for its perfect weather, nearly 1,100 people gathered at the
MacDowell Colony Sunday, August 9 to commemorate composer, educator, and
conductor Gunther Schuller as the 56th Edward MacDowell Medalist. It was also a
day to celebrate “the creative spirit that he embodied so durably and so inexhaustibly,”
said author Michael Chabon in opening the Medal Day ceremony in his capacity
as Chairman of the MacDowell Board. Public radio host Terrance McKnight memorialized Schuller
before celebrated composer and pianist Yehudi Wyner spoke about his friend. Wyner accepted the
Medal on behalf of the Schuller family.
Schuller was named the 2015 Medalist in April by a selection committee that included composers
Augusta Read Thomas, Sebastian Currier, Aaron Jay Kernis, Paul Moravec, David Rakowski, Alvin
Singleton, and Melinda Wagner. Before he could accept the award, Schuller died at the age of 89 on
June 21 as preparations were underway for his visit to the Colony.
Following the award ceremony at the free public event, guests enjoyed picnic lunches on Colony
grounds and then toured the paths of the Colony’s 450 acres for visiting 31 open studios. The annual
event offers the public the rare opportunity to visit with artists-in-residence to experience what’s
happening on the leading edge of contemporary arts around the world.
2 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015
MacDowell Colony
chairman welcomes
Medal Day crowd with
universal themes
TRANSCRIPT: MICHAEL CHABON REFLECTS
ON MORTALITY AND MAKING ART
Thank you, thank you all for being here on this
extraordinary day, the sun is repeatedly threatening to
break through the clouds and it looks like it’s happening
for us now.
As I’m sure everyone here must be aware, our
medalist this year, our 2015 Medalist Gunther Schuller,
died on June 21st, at the age of 89. Now, it’s a nice day,
shaping up to be a beautiful day, here in Peterborough.
We’re all happy to be together, in this beautiful place.
The idea of the Medal, the MacDowell Medal, is to
celebrate, and that’s what we’ve gathered here to do.
We’re here to celebrate both the life and the work of
Mr. Schuller and the creative spirit that he embodied
so durably and so inexhaustibly right up to the end of
that life. We’re here to celebrate the creative spirit of all
the artists in residence today, and of every artist who has
put in time here since we first opened for business 108
years ago. (David, I know you remember). I know that,
and I’m sure that’s how Mr. Schuller would want it. No
doubt he would want us to celebrate him, and not to
dwell. I don’t want to dwell.
But I just can’t help it. First of all, the MacDowell
Board of Directors, which I have the honor of chairing,
lost three of its members in the past year: George
Electric Earth Concerts
performed Gunther Schuller’s
1967 quartet Aphorisms under
the Medal Day tent after the
ceremony.
Clockwise from top left: Resident
Director David Macy, Executive
Director Cheryl A. Young, Colony
Chairman Michael Chabon, WQXR
Radio Host Terrance McKnight,
Colony President Susan
Davenport Austin, Composer
Yehudi Wyner
We’re here to
celebrate the
creative spirit
of all the artists
in residence
today, and of
every artist who
has put in time
here since we
first opened for
business 108
years ago.
Nicholson, Jytte Jensen, and Susan Sollins-Brown. Susan
actually served on the Medal selecting panel for our
Medalist last year. Two of our board members endured
the deaths of their beloved spouses in the past year.
And here we are in New England, a region that from
Cotton Mather to Emily Dickinson to Anne Sexton to
the Pixies’ Black Francis has historically shown itself to
be amenable to extended ponderings of mortality, of that
death who kindly stops for us, whether or not we stop
for him. And here we are at the MacDowell Colony, a
place that openly encourages the artist in residence to
ponder his or her mortality.
Don’t believe me? In every studio at the MacDowell
Colony, as many of you know, and as all of you will
see when you tour the studios this afternoon, you will
find a number of tombstones. These are small wooden
planks, some straight rectangles, some pointed at the
top or rounded like actual headstones, on which a
resident artist, typically just before departure, signs
his or her name and supplies the dates of his or her
residency. As each tombstone fills with names it is
hung from a nail on the wall or lined up along the
fireplace mantle; year after year, decade after decade,
the tombstones accumulate. In the oldest studios, they
crowd the walls by the dozen.
Sooner or later, when you work in a studio at
MacDowell, a day or an hour will come when the work’s
not going that great, your attention wanders, your eye strays
to the tombstones lined up over your fireplace or nailed
up on the wall over your desk, and if your studio is old
enough and your eye strays back far enough, back before
the mid-1950s or thereabouts, it will occur to you that all of
the artists and writers and composers whose names appear
on those tombstones are at least highly likely to be dead
by now. In some of the oldest studios, the inscriptions on
the first few tombstones, especially those that were written
in pencil, have faded to illegibility. Many tombstones are
almost completely blank.
MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 3
2015 MEDAL DAY
Visitors from far and near
took advantage of the perfect
weather to enjoy a picnic lunch
before going off to explore
the historic structures on the
Colony grounds, and satisfy
their curiosities about the
contributions to culture being
made by MacDowell Fellows.
Now, I know that the tombstones are meant to
be the record of a continuous active creative human
presence in a studio, going all the way back, in some
cases, to before the First World War. But again, I can’t
help it; I dwell. I’m a dweller. I have always found the
tombstones to be a powerful reminder of the oblivion
that awaits me and, in all likelihood, the work that I’ve
come to MacDowell to struggle with.
I mean, no wonder Thornton Wilder wrote Our
Town here, bringing a graveyard up onto the stage, and
filling the world—or reminding us of how the world is
filled—with the presence of the dead.
The other day as I was walking with my dog along
the road up to the little Maine village where we spend
our summers with my family, the downeast sky was
tufted with high white clouds, a smell of salvia and salt
in the air, a pickup truck racing by with its window
rolled down, trailing a sweet ache of the Allman Brothers’
“Melissa,” it struck me that, at 52, my present age, by
even the most optimistic scenario I am well past the
midpoint of my life. A hundred and four would be pretty
spectacular.
Now, I’m comfortable with the idea of mortality, or
at least I always have been. I never felt the need to believe
in heaven or an afterlife. It’s been decades since I stopped
believing—a belief that was never really more than fitful
and self-serving to begin with—in the possibility of
reincarnation of the soul. I’m not totally certain where I
4 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015
The question of
what matters,
and why, is
fundamental to
the work we do
at the MacDowell
Colony.
stand on the whole “soul” question. Though I certainly feel
as if I possess one, there’s just something too wishful in that
feeling, and so I’m inclined to dismiss it at the same time
that it comforts me. I can live with that contradiction, as
with the knowledge that my time is finite, and growing
shorter by the day. It’s just that lately, for the first time, that
shortening has become truly perceptible. I can feel each tiny
skyward lurch of the balloon as another bag of sand goes
over the side of my basket.
When I was young and callow (as opposed to middleaged and callow), and I would hear about the death of
someone I knew or admired, in particular someone older
than me, my thoughts tended to run more or less along
the following lines: That is so sad. Well, of course, everyone
has to die sometime. Everyone, that is, but me. (Remember
feeling that way?)To be accurate this wasn’t really something
I thought, exactly. More like something I simply assumed,
took for granted. Back then I took pretty much everything
for granted, but especially, time.
Now, when I consider the death of a friend, a loved
one, a colleague, a fellow board member, a beloved
teacher and influential artist, like Gunther Schuller,
I am much more likely to feel, in addition to grief or
regret, Soon enough it will be you. And then—I can’t
seem to help it—I think something along these lines:
And so, what was the point of it all? All the hard work,
all the disappointment, all the striving and wishing and
heartbreak, all the hours and money and time and hopes
invested by the parents of the dead one. Whether you
are a mensch or a rogue, lazy or industrious, greedy or
giving, the end of your story is the same as everyone
else’s. And to what end? Why does it matter? And for at
least a few minutes after I hear the bad news, a bleak,
small voice within me says, very clearly, It doesn’t.
We all have our own way of grieving, I guess.
The thing is, the question of what matters, and why, is
fundamental to the work we do at the MacDowell Colony.
On the Board of The MacDowell Colony, we spend vast
amounts of time sitting around long tables or dialing in on
a conference line, trying to figure out for ourselves so that
we can tell others, why MacDowell matters, why solitude
and fellowship and a picnic lunch matter, why a library
matters, why a peer selection matters. And most centrally
of all, sometimes overtly and underlying every other
discussion, why art matters.
To each of these questions that bleak, clear voice
replies, it doesn’t. Or perhaps that small voice throws the
question back at us, turns it around, and asks, To whom?
Art lunches, and libraries don’t matter to the universe.
They don’t matter to neutron stars, nebulae or gas giants.
Rocks, trees and zebras don’t care if our admissions
system is unbiased. When some nut-job takes a knife to
a Rembrandt, when the Taliban dynamite a 1500-year
old hundred-foot-tall statue of the Buddha, the earth
rolls on, to the next ice age or meteor impact. If there’s
no money available to help defray the expense when a
painter, who is also a working mother, has to arrange
unpaid leave and child care so that she can come for two
all-too-brief but transformative weeks at the MacDowell
Interdisciplinary artist
John Kelly describes
his work to Medal Day
visitors in Cheney Studio.
A visitor contemplates the
work completed by painter Valerie
Hegarty during her residency
in Graphics Putnam Studio.
(photo by Jenni Wu)
Colony, and as a result she is obliged to give up on
painting, for good, the loss fails to register on history and
Time.
The only ones, of course, to whom tasty and nutritiously composed picnic baskets, the caliber of applicants,
or the Afro-Cuban musical tradition matters, of course, is
us. Poor little humans, caring about stuff. Caring about art,
and tradition, and the creative lives of working mothers, and
about each other.
That, I end up saying to the gray despairing voice
inside me, is the point of it all. You’re right: nothing
matters—except to us. As far as we know, we are the only
objects, the only beings, in the entire universe, to whom
the universe matters. That’s our nature; our role, in turn,
is to matter to other people, and our task, our greatest
work, is to matter to them in a way that brings them
comfort, safety, peace, knowledge or joy. Art can do
and has done all of those things, at one time or another,
sometimes all at once. Gunther Schuller with his gifts as
a composer, musician and teacher could do, and did, all
of those things. So has the MacDowell Colony and, on
a good day, so has its hard-working and faithful Board
of Directors, and the loved ones who support them.
The work that we do matters and because it matters, we
matter. Because those we have lost matter so much to us,
we mourn that loss. The extent of the grief we feel is a
measure of how much they and their lives and their work
mattered. Let the loss serve to renew and to remind us of
how much we all matter to each other, and how much it
matters that we carry on, in spite of the indifference of
galaxies and zebras, with our work. n
MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 5
2015 MEDAL DAY
Music is a Force
that Brings Humans
Together
WQXR Radio Host
Terrance McKnight
addresses the crowd,
asking them to
remember Gunther
Schuller as someone
who did so many things
extraordinarily well.
TRANSCRIPT: WQXR RADIO HOST TERRANCE
MCKNIGHT EXPLAINS THE UNIVERSE OF
ACTIVITY THAT WAS GUNTHER SCHULLER
So what Michael didn’t say, I will forewarn you, is that
my father is a Baptist preacher, and today is Sunday.
I’m really overjoyed to be here, for a number of
reasons. But I want to take a moment to just imagine
the occasion, 7 weeks ago, perhaps a lavish ceremony,
on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Gunther Schuller was
the guest of honor, it was his day, and all his old friends
were there. A whole generation of musicians. John
Lewis and Leopold Stowkowski, Miles and Diz were
there, Toscanini. Giants in the world of music. They
were there to witness Gunther receiving his award for
a life well lived and an art well served. Perhaps Louis
Armstrong even played “When the Saints Go Marching
In” with strings and woodwinds. I imagine that’s the
way Gunther Schuller would want it. Because in his
imagination human beings were not to be separated by
music, but music should be the force that could bring us
together. That was Gunther Schuller.
Imagine just a few months ago Gunther Schuller
being interviewed and asked the question, how he
wanted to be remembered. His response was, I’d like to
be remembered. So I ask you, how will we remember
Gunther Schuller. Perhaps we’ll remember a few of
The crowd under the tent listens
as speakers give context to the
choice of Gunther Schuller as the
56th Edward MacDowell Medalist.
6 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015
He believed that
art and culture
made for a more
humane society,
and he was
always in search
of people.
his compositions. One of my favorites was Gunther
narrating the piece about the young trumpet player
learning to play jazz. Or maybe we’ll remember him
from some of the books he authored. Maybe we’ll
reflect upon all the students he touched and the music
programs that he shook up. Remember the first time
Gunther picked up a horn, he got an F out of the
instrument, a beautiful tone. And how about a few years
later when at 16 he played Shostakovich with the New
York Philharmonic. The very next year he was principal
horn in the Cincinnati Symphony. But maybe some of
us will remember him as a journalist or radio personality.
Gunther did so many things well. Perhaps we’ll think
of Gunther every summer as the ice cream trucks roll
through the neighborhood playing Scott Joplin’s “Maple
Leaf Rag.” Because we know Gunther did a lot to help
revive Joplin’s music.
How will we remember Gunther Schuller? He did so
many things extraordinarily well.
I knew of Gunther years before meeting him. I
finally got the chance to shake his hand seven years
ago. I never sat in his classroom or under his baton
and unlike many of you I can’t really claim him to be
a friend. But you know what, Gunther and I, we were
cool. I had his phone number, and I’d just call him up.
And he’d say, “You just called me to talk? You just called
to see how I was doing? Nobody does that anymore.”
And I said, “Well I do, and I’m going to call you again.
I’m going to keep calling you.” And I did. We had
riveting conversations, the last in which he lamented
the fact that our society has become almost completely
commercialized. That in large part we don’t value the
arts the way we used to. That bothered him. He believed
that art and culture made for a more humane society,
and he was always in search of people. It was also in
those conversations that I learned Gunther didn’t do
everything well.
His father was an accomplished violinist, but
Gunther couldn’t make a violin speak. Couldn’t play
it at all. Piano, very little talent. He wasn’t great at
everything. And aside from the scholarly writing, the
prophetic compositions, I propose that we remember
Gunther for his abilities and his inabilities. The
most important inability was his inability to tolerate
nonsense.
He couldn’t do it. When something didn’t make
sense or was just flat out wrong, he had to say something
about it and he had to do something about it.
He didn’t sit by quietly during his school days in
Germany. He wrote letters to his parents about the
Injustice until they did something about it.
At 14 years old he understood the genius of
Beethoven and Duke Ellington and he felt that the two
had something to learn from the other. That was heresy
to many, but not to Gunther. So he talked about it.
It didn’t make
sense to him
that an orchestra
couldn’t swing,
or that its
players couldn’t
improvise. So he
composed music
that did.
It didn’t make sense to him that the blues was
considered low brow, he thought the poetry of Bessie
Smith was brilliant. He wrote about it. He understood
jazz as an American masterpiece, it didn’t make sense to
him that it wasn’t being taught in our conservatories, so
he did something about that.
At Tanglewood, Gunther saw a dearth of AfricanAmerican musicians, so he brought them in.
To Gunther, if it didn’t make sense he didn’t sit by
quietly. It didn’t make sense to him that an orchestra
couldn’t swing, or that its players couldn’t improvise. So
he composed music that did.
So when we hear the grooves in Paul Moravec’s
chamber music, remember Gunther Schuller.
When you feel the passion in Wynton Marsalis’
blues-inspired symphonies, remember Gunther Schuller.
When you witness Donal Fox at the piano going to
town on Bach, think about Gunther Schuller.
Or when you hear me on the radio know that I’m
there due in part to Gunther Schuller.
Gunther Schuller and I were just cool, and I can
hardly wait to hear what one of his friends has to say
about him. Yehudi Wyner. n
Visitors and honored guests alike enjoy one of Medal
Day’s oldest traditions, a picnic lunch. After the
ceremony, which is always free and open to the public,
art lovers had the opportunity to visit with 31 artists-inresidence in their studios to get a look at what happens
behind the normally closed doors of the Colony.
MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 7
Composer Yehudi Wyner, (left)
who accepted the Medal on
behalf of the Schuller family, is
greeted by artist-in-residence and
composer Richard Danielpour.
2015 MEDAL DAY
He Was the Whole Man
and a Remarkable,
Majestic Human Being
TRANSCRIPT: FELLOW COMPOSER
YEHUDI WYNER AND FRIEND OF THE MEDALIST
REVIEWS THE GENIUS OF GUNTHER SCHULLER.
Editor’s note: MacDowell Colony Chairman Michael
Chabon introduced Yehudi Wyner and had just mentioned
it was inconceivable that Wyner had not been to the Colony
as a Fellow.
I think I was probably exhibiting a kind of quiet heroism
in proving that one can do something with one’s life
without going to MacDowell. I had no idea that this
ceremony and encounter would be informal. I feel grievously overdressed. I might take off my tie. Or tell you
about one of my grandchildren who came, when he was
11, to his mother (my daughter):
“Mommy, can I go to school commando today?”
“Commando, what’s that?”
”No underpants.”
One of the people who was a very strong supporter
of the things that Gunther did was a man named Paul
Fromm, who was the mogul of Christian Brother’s
Wines, a man who assembled substantial wealth and
put it into the support of contemporary music. Support
which goes on even today with many great concerts,
festivals, et al. Fromm concerts, Fromm commissions,
Fromm conferences. Fromm was German, his brother Herbert was a composer (the two didn’t get along,
though) nevertheless Fromm was a ubiquitous presence
at Tanglewood with Gunther. He called Gunther Ganse,
because he couldn’t say it so well, and I picked that up as
well, in a way sort of making fun of Paul (which was not
very nice of me), but suddenly realized that Ganse means
the whole enchilada! And that, for me, was what Gunther really represented; the whole man, the entire artist,
but more than just an artist, but a remarkable, majestic,
human being.
I’ll tell you one other incident, which might amuse
you before I go into the serious business of talking not
just admiringly but gravely about Gunther. You may not
know that I think at the age of 8 he had an accident and
lost an eye. Gunther lived his entire life with one eye,
couldn’t drive. How one eye can encompass and absorb
very complex orchestral scores is beyond me. But he said
for example that he had great ears, he admitted that he
had a wonderful memory, and he had preternatural power of perception. Well, there was a concert at Carnegie
Recital Hall with a group that Gunther was conducting,
8 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015
His love of music
and openness
to all genres of
genuine human
expression kept
him vibrant
and striving for
greatness until
the very end.
a contemporary group performing contemporary music,
and his principal violinist was a wonderfully able contemporary music player named Matthew Raimondi who
founded the Composer’s School many years later. But he
had trouble with a particular piece, and Matthew said ‘I
don’t know I never get it right’, and Gunther said ‘watch
me, I will give you a signal, watch my eye.’ The performance came and went, Matthew made the same mistake
as before, Gunther came off really quite irritated, ‘What
happened Matthew!’ Matthew said ‘I watched your eye!’
Gunther said ‘No, not this one, this one!’
Here is a statement that I will read from George,
Edwin, and Nicole Schuller, George and Edwin are the
sons of Gunther and Margy:
“On behalf of our father, Gunther Schuller, we would
like to thank MacDowell Colony for bestowing such a great
honor. All of us had hoped that we could be here to accept
this award for our father. Unfortunately, due to the extreme
complexity of our current situation, we were unable to
attend this afternoon ceremony. However, we are all here in
spirit, and so is Gunther, of course, listening intently with
his customarily wide open and discerning ears. Gunther was
a man who wore many hats. This includes being a musician,
a conductor, a composer, a scholar, a writer, and an educator. And this is but a short list of all the things that this man
accomplished during his long life. One thing that has to be
added to this list is that he was also a great father. When
we both were young and upcoming musicians, he never
failed to show us his support and answer our questions no
matter how busy he was (and he was always extremely busy).
Besides that he lived a life that most people couldn’t even
imagine, keep in mind that he was completely self-taught,
but it was his curiosity and his thirst for creativity that
made him succeed in all of his endeavors. His love of music
and openness to all genres of genuine human expression kept
him vibrant and striving for greatness until the very end.
This was a man who didn’t believe in retirement. Recently
we’ve discovered how many people he had really touched,
influenced, mentored, and helped to also fulfill their artistic
dreams. Again we would like to thank The MacDowell
Colony, Augusta Read Thomas, and the rest of the selection
committee, Yehudi Wyner, Terrance McKnight, and all of
you who have come to be a part of this historic occasion for
honoring the life and legacy of Gunther Schuller.”
And that is signed by George, Edwin, and Nicole
Schuller.
Much of what I have written has already been covered so I beg you forgive me for this redundancy, I didn’t
know what Terrance was going to write, I had no idea
what George and Edwin were going to transmit.
GUNTHER SCHULLER 1925-2015
Upon his death the following appeared in The New York
Times:
“Gunther Schuller: Composer, conductor, performer,
educator, publisher, master of Jazz and Classical, his
capacious gifts in all realms of music generated an
inspiring life—his accomplishments define an era.”
How to expand that compressed statement? Truth
to tell it would take a vast amount of elaboration to
begin to come to terms with the miracle of his life.
As a teenager he was obsessed with music. He was a
prodigy horn player. Before he was twenty he was in the
Cincinnati Orchestra and soon after in the Metropolitan
Opera Orchestra. But he was already composing and
arranging, insatiable in his appetite for all styles of music
including jazz. It was not long before he gave up horn
playing to devote himself to composing, conducting and
all manner of musical enterprises. The list of activities
is too long to assemble here, but in the course of time
he became a notable conductor, an important scholar, a
revolutionary educator and administrator at Tanglewood,
at the New England Conservatory, and at other festivals
he led and created. He wrote books, which in their
vividness and comprehensiveness, have become classic
sources; Horn Technique 1962, Early Jazz 1968, Swing
Era 1989, The Compleat Conductor 1998, and Memoir: A
life in Pursuit of Beauty 2011. This last book, remarkable
in its density of events and references, carries us only
to 1960. Schuller intended to embark on Volume II to
bring us into the present.
Schuller was a model of industry, discipline, receptiveness, openness to art, to cinema, to music of every
kind from every culture and from every era. His passion
was not restricted by ideology or narrow prejudice. While
of course he possessed an ego of a creator it did not lead
him to a rejection of the work of others. His appetite for
genuine expression of any kind was inexhaustible and
his generosity of spirit was constantly in play. Hence his
founding of MARGUN, a music publishing company
which promoted the work of underrepresented composers. Hence his transcriptions of jazz and ragtime
recording so they could be studied and circulated. Hence
his launching a recording company GUNMAR to record
the music of composers he deemed authentic. Typically profits from these activities as well as money from
commissions and other awards and prizes were at once
ploughed into supporting the work of others.
Schuller seemed to know everything, to know
everybody, to remember every event, every fact. Similarly
he had a comprehensive grasp of history. His work habits
were relentless. In general we expect such obsession to be
driven by a kind of febrile intensity, a nervous impatience, perhaps even a menacing presence. But these were
not Schuller’s characteristics. Prevailingly he revealed an
equable temperament, a benign patience, an absence of
arrogance. The creative maelstrom, the chaos of ideas,
impressions and obligations, remained active under the
surface, not suppressed under tension but fermenting in
a different mental realm, functioning invisibly.
Schuller revealed something about his own character
when he writes in Memoir about his relationship with his
beloved Margie during their courtship:
“I was (and am) a basically gentle type to begin with. I
had seen enough scarring rancor, disaffection and estrangement on too many occasions between my own parents. So I
vowed I would never let such clashes destroy our relationship. My love for her had one agenda: To make her happy.”
Schuller was
a model of
industry,
discipline,
receptiveness,
openness to art,
to cinema, to
music of every
kind from every
culture and from
every era.
Usually we think that such behave on the part of parents
would lead to all kinds of neurotic tendencies. It’s not
always so. Bach was orphaned very, very young, and
brought up by relatives, brothers who were not always
kind to him and he nevertheless turned out to be one
of the most generous and gentlest human beings who
we can imagine. Similarly, Gunter did not go in the
direction of the way he was brought up. He reports in his
book his mother behaved mercilessly.
Only rarely would his benignness be breached. It
had to do with two issues which enraged Schuller. The
first involved the sacredness of the musical scores of great
composers, which Schuller felt were intentional, detailed
Photographer Susan May Tell (left)
discusses her approach to her art
with visitors to Nef Studio during the
afternoon open studio tour.
MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 9
2015 MEDAL DAY
and literally inviolable. He excoriated conductors (and
performers in general) who “interpreted” or distorted
great works according to ego or ignorance, violating the
instructions of the text. The second area of angry protest
was directed at The Music Business. He found administrators, conductors, players, managers, publicity agencies
and unions destroying elements of art and joy in music-making. Not infrequently he would lecture orchestras
with much irritation, accusing players of indifference to
the highest aspirations of the art.
My most sustained contact with Gunther took place at
Tanglewood–during the years 1975-1984—where he was
director of the Music Center. Always approachable, always
open and patient and interested in the activities of others,
he was totally immersed in all the activities of the Festival. It
was miraculous, almost inconceivable, how he could determine all repertory, scheduling, personnel, ensembles for the
entire eight-week season, thousands of decisions regarding
choice of music from the obscure to the familiar, another
indication of how universal and catholic was his enthusiasm
for the vast repertory of musical art.
And what of recreation, of free time? Such concepts
were swallowed up by Gunther’s love of work, by anything to do with music.
I have left composition for last. But it stands as first
in the life of Gunther Schuller, the activity around which
swirled all the other aspects of his hyperactive life. He composed constantly and with extraordinary fluency. The music
is imaginative, inventive, colorful and complex, restlessly
morphing, transforming, surprising. From the very beginning the craft was exemplary, with an uncanny understanding of instrumental capabilities and textural clarity, along
with a fearless tendency to test conventional boundaries.
Notable compositions would include the Seven
Studies on Paul Klee, orchestral images of wonderful color
and variety, including an impression of Klee’s Twittering
Machine. The popularity of this piece is enhanced by its
pictorial reference, not surprising given our obsession
with visual images of all kinds.
Of Reminiscences and Reflections (a Pulitzer Prize
winner in 1994) is a deeply expressive creation in
memory of Margy. Her death created a sense of loss that
was never far from Gunther’s thoughts.
Dreamscape, a substantial recent composition for
the Boston Symphony, which Schuller said came to him
in a dream clear in shape and elaborated by a myriad of
details. The intricacy and animated inventiveness of the
piece is astonishing as is the genesis of its creation.
Magical Trumpets, a brand new piece for 12 trumpets
commissioned by Tanglewood for this summer’s Contemporary Music Festival, was performed for the first
time just two weeks ago. Scintillating, vital, brilliantly
polychrome, preternaturally virtuosic, it betrayed noth10 MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015
It is the
massive creative
achievement, the
feverish energy,
the inexhaustible
curiosity, the
openness to
new experience,
the enduring
generosity and
support for
friends and
colleagues that
begin to define
the man.
ing of old age or failing health. On the contrary it was
full of fun and optimistic brilliance.
Composer Margaret McAllister, close friend of
Schuller, told me that, “Gunther was composing in the
morning the day before he passed (just sketching out
ideas). He had completed all his outstanding commissions (23 compositions in two to three years!) and was
looking forward to other projects.” Gunther’s sons Edwin
and George estimate that he completed well over 180
compositions during his lifetime.
In the end it is the massive creative achievement, the
feverish energy, the inexhaustible curiosity, the openness
to new experience, the enduring generosity and support
for friends and colleagues that begin to define the man.
I say “begin” because the details are infinite and they
inflect every moment of this individual’s life.
I conclude with a paraphrase of Beethoven’s words about
Mozart: We shall never see the likes of him again. n
Mixed media artist David
Opdyke and visitors to
his studio are framed by
the arched doorway of
Alexander Studio. The
public visited with artistsin-residence in 31 open
studios on Medal Day
afternoon.
MacDowell Colony Chairman and
author Michael Chabon presents
the Edward MacDowell Medal
to composer Yehudi Wyner who
accepted on behalf of the Schuller
family.
Edward MacDowell
Medal Awarded
Annually Since 1960
The Edward MacDowell Medal is a
national award presented annually to
an artist who has made an outstanding
contribution to our culture. Since
1960, Medal Day has brought
to New Hampshire some of the
most influential artists of our time,
including Leonard Bernstein, Georgia
O’Keeffe, I.M. Pei, John Updike,
Merce Cunningham, Louise Nevelson,
and Sonny Rollins. A complete list
of past Medal winners is available on
our website at macdowellcolony.org/
events-MedalDay-History.html.
Gunther Schuller 1925-2015
Gunther Schuller was born in New York on November 22, 1925.
He began his professional music career as a French horn player,
performing with the American Ballet Theater as a teen, as principal
horn in the Cincinnati Symphony (1943-1945), and with the
Metropolitan Opera from 1945-1959. He also played French horn on
Miles Davis’s Birth of the Cool recording (1949-1950), and composed
and conducted for jazz greats John Lewis and Dizzy Gillespie. As
an educator, Schuller taught at the Manhattan School of Music and
Yale University. He began teaching at the Berkshire Music Center
(at Tanglewood) at the request of Aaron Copland, and later served
as president of the New England Conservatory where he formalized
NEC’s commitment to jazz by establishing the first degree-granting
jazz program at a major classical conservatory.
Schuller composed more than 180 works, spanning all musical
genres, including solo works, orchestral works, chamber music,
opera, and jazz. Among Schuller’s orchestral works are Symphony
(1965), Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee (1959), and An Arc
Ascending (1996). Schuller’s large scale work Of Reminiscences
and Reflections was composed as a tribute to his wife of 49 years,
Marjorie Black, and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994.
Schuller was the recipient of the William Schuman Award (1988),
the MacArthur Foundation Genius Award (1991), the Gold Medal
for Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1997),
the Downbeat Lifetime Achievement Award, and an inaugural
membership in the American Classical Music Hall of Fame. He was
named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2008.
Despite illness, he never stopped composing.
An independent committee of peers
selects the Medalist. Next August,
The Edward MacDowell Medal will
be awarded to an artist working in
literature.
MACDOWELL MEDAL DAY 2015 11
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The MacDowell Colony awards
Fellowships to artists of exceptional
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