the abstract orchestra

             I was tempted to choose the Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana, or the overture from Marriage of Figaro, because whenever I think of the St. Pat's Youth Orchestra I think of those first. Almost three years later, the opening notes still pull me immediately back to the very first rehearsal I went to: Judah’s band room at 9:30 at night, sitting in a roomful of musicians who I didn't know yet but already greatly admired, and laughing at the conductor's truly wild mid-conducting anecdotes. Unfortunately I could barely read the music for either piece: we were playing from grainy pdfs printed straight off imslp. By the end of the first concert, though, I was hooked. Church acoustics are addictive.


              My second idea was the first movement of Beethoven’s 6th symphony Pastoral. I remember practicing over and over again the idyllic opening lick that floats through the strings, and then catches two oboes, whirls around, settles down, and flies up again. Looking back I’m kind of impressed we pulled it off. There’s not a chance we had all the wind parts covered and the violin section contained a grand total of four people. St. Pat’s church was still being renovated at the time, so we were a nomadic orchestra again, rehearsing in another dull room late at night. This time it was in the back building behind St. Mary’s church: I was a sophomore, and I remember always bringing flowcharts to study during rehearsal breaks. In rational retrospect, nothing this symphony represents to me should really be that special, but somehow, hearing it will always make me wish I could be in that dull room with the orchestra again.


            Third: Nimrod, from Elgar’s Enigma variations. Subbie Uni orchestra, SPYO a few years later, but recently it was unforgivably remixed into the soundtrack of Dunkirk, so it I refuse to play it. Fourth, Strauss waltzes. There is a ridiculous amount of them and we played one every concert for almost a year. More Beethoven: symphony 7, allegretto. I briefly considered St. Paul's Suite, but then I remembered that everyone would hate me for it. The Impossible Dream. Anitra’s Tanz. Beach's Theme and Variations. I could go on, and tell you about the image each one conjures up for me, too.


             Still, I don’t know why I’m getting so sentimental about this decision. What is there to be sentimental about? SPYO owes its existence to a bunch of teenagers who keep graduating and as such it's a transient and somewhat abstract entity. The primary material artifacts of permanence are a spray-painted logo on a pile of music stands, a file cabinet full of sheet music, a drum set, and the eternal tradition of oreos at rehearsal break. With all these pieces of music I named, the orchestra that played one was never the same group that played the next. Instead it’s patched together -- from borrowed timpanis, semi-bribed wind players, and peer-pressure-fueled violinist recruitment efforts -- each time preparations for a new concert begin. Then we descend on the St. Pat's basement to eat the aforementioned oreos and relearn how to piece teenage fragments of an orchestra into a coherent whole. You could argue that even after all this, SPYO isn’t really complete until the concert itself, because it's only then that we play music for anyone but ourselves. It’s only at the concert, looking up from a piece that has miraculously crystallized into one final, ringing chord floating out the windows, that you know for sure each musician has been temporarily transformed from an individual into a part of this abstract orchestra. Every time that moment happens, I'm a little more convinced that the long nights of rehearsals have made the orchestra a part of each of us as well. Maybe that's what I remember when I hear that Beethoven symphony.


            I'm taking a brief sabbatical from my seat in the violin section to conduct a piece this concert, and the final verdict is Largo, from Dvorak’s 9th Symphony, “the new world.” Despite my nostalgic reminiscing, it is a piece the orchestra has never played before. The constraint I gave myself was that whatever I conduct has to be something we’ll all feel. That’s why I thought of Figaro and Beethoven 6, because those pieces will always have meaning to me. But in the end I chose this piece instead, because I love it (yes, I know it's a little cheesy. sue me.), I have always wanted to play it, and most importantly because I think SPYO is very capable of imbuing anything we play with meaning. In a few months I'll graduate like all the others, and with me will go all memory of the pieces that first had meaning to me. But the orchestra will still be here to teach someone else to love music, to look up in awe at a chord drifting out stained-glass windows and realize they, too, have become a part of something greater than themselves. SPYO will give them their Pastoral. And maybe they'll agree with me on the meaning, that the beauty of an abstract orchestra is how no one sentimental symphony is exactly like the next.