Learning to Save Lives
Half a century ago, over a stretch of several decades, any kid with a musical instrument in Liberty Township learned how to make music from Mr. Schroeder. Strings, horns, woodwinds, percussion—from tubas to piccolos—he taught us all how to hold the instruments, draw the bow, purse the lips, or operate the valves. His method was to start with at least one year of piano lessons in the fourth or fifth grade. Plunking away at the keyboard acquainted us all with both treble and bass clefs, whether or not our small hands could produce anything vaguely melodious. After the piano, he made a suggestion for what instrument might be a good match for the temperament and emerging personality of each kid. Post piano, I picked up my Dad's coronet, but soon was shifted to sousaphone (a marching band tuba). My sister Susan began with clarinet, but when her innate musicality and fortitude became apparent, she made a transition to oboe, an almost unplayable instrument that was a necessary component of Mr. Schroeder's high school band.
By his own musical training, Mr. Schroeder was a violist and classical musician. Thin-framed and gray-haired, he seemed an elder from the time I first met him, a spirit from the 17th century. From his podium in front of the band, which I joined in the sixth grade (because there are never enough tubas), he would gaze out over half-frame glasses perched delicately on his beak-like nose, pierce us with his intensity, raise his long white baton, and rehearse us three times a week in the late afternoon, just before last bells. Sometime in the distant past, he told us, he had been an orchestral violist in New York City, before and during the Great Depression. Our repertoire, he said, would be unusual for a high school band. We would march just once a year—to satisfy the high school administration and the expectations of some parents—but otherwise we would play “serious” music. Band arrangements of Mendelssohn's Fingals Cave, the overture from Fidelio, Borodin's In the Steppes of Central Asia filled our band folders. Even the marches were Sousa—the highest musical form of the genre. Most high school bands don't have “marching oboes”; we had two.
Once a year, usually in springtime, Mr. Schroeder would hand out a piece of music that stretched the limits of our competence. It was chosen to evoke the potential of that particular year's edition of the band. I believe it was my junior year when he handed out Dvorak's New World Symphony. If you know the piece, it is one of many moods—complex, demanding, inspiring. It begins darkly and in some confusion, but ends with an affirmation of life, hope, and the potential of the human spirit. In the week he distributed the music, we butchered it. Everyone contributed to the cacophony. I certainly did my part—destroying the bass foundations of the piece through some combination of too little lip, a casual arrogance, and lack of discipline. It was spring, after all, and as a young man my thoughts were elsewhere. In the third rehearsal, when we were still wreaking havoc, Mr. Schroeder put down his baton and took off his glasses. After a minute or two, everyone realized that he was motionless—just standing there with his head down—and a relative quiet fell on the room. “Have I told you the story of this music?” he said, “No? Well … . I think I should.”
“Most of you don't know anything at all about the Great Depression, but it was a terrible time. My wife and I were living in New York City, had two young children, and I was trying to make money as a musician. I auditioned frequently for jobs—in orchestras, theaters, nightclubs, and any other place where a musician might find work. I was young and enthusiastic but was having very little luck. The time came when I didn't have enough money to put food on the table and pay our rent. I was failing as a husband, a father, and as a musician. It was winter and I couldn't see how things would turn around. One day, after visiting two or three nightclubs and failing to find a gig, I went to a pawn shop where I traded my viola for a handgun and ammunition. It was dark and I was wandering the streets looking for a good place to put a bullet in my head.
“It was snowing that night and bitterly cold. I wrapped my coat around me and kept my hands in my pockets. With my right hand, I could feel the butt of the pistol and with the left hand the box of bullets. After an hour of aimless wandering I passed the familiar entrance of a concert hall where I had auditioned. People were entering the foyer, and the announcement board listed the event of the evening: Free Concert! Dvorak's New World Symphony. I entered the hall and went into the bathroom. After sitting in a toilet stall for what seemed a long time, I loaded the pistol, put it back into my coat pocket, and entered the concert hall itself, sitting in the last row of the balcony, fingering the trigger. I remember the pistol warming to my touch, feeling like a friend. The orchestra finished tuning, the conductor entered, the music began, and something different began to happen to me. Sometime during the first movement I stopped thinking about myself and started thinking about the music. By the third movement, I was lost in the music and fashioning in my mind what optimal bowing would be for the lead viola. By the time the house lights went on, I was on my way back to the pawn shop to trade in the gun and cartridges to get my viola back.”
Mr. Schroeder picked up his baton and looked at us. “Boys and girls, this music saved my life! Now… . Let's try it again, shall we?” Behind my tuba mouthpiece I arched my eyebrows, took a deep breath, and tightened my embouchure, readying to produce the first note of a Dvorak bass part for the ages. I have no real memory today of the sound the band actually made next. I do remember thinking that we were saving lives.
