My friend and colleague Greg Clemons is active on Facebook and for "throw back Thursday" posted this photo of Harry Begian, the legendary band director.
That brought back so many memories I decided to choose Dr.
Begian as the subject of this week's blog entry.
I met Harry Begian for the first time in 1979. I was
auditioning for graduate school at the University of Illinois, and the
percussion professor Tom Siwe, noticing that I had played in bands at Michigan
State, told me that if I were willing to play timpani in the symphonic band, I
could audition for Begian and (if successful) get a band scholarship. I thought the language of the possibility
seemed a little strange, ("willing to play"?), but since I would need
a scholarship regardless of where I went to school I said yes I'd definitely be
interested. Playing in band was a normal part of life for me and, like many
young musicians, especially in the midwest and definitely in the rural midwest,
my earliest experiences as an instrumentalist (except for private lessons with
my Dad) were in public school music.
If I remember correctly, Tom made a call over to the band
office, arranged for me to play, and sent me over to the band building, which
was in a separate location from the rest of the music school, walking distance
of course (the Illinois campus is pretty centralized), but I know I couldn't
help wondering about why the band had a separate building and also why there
seemed to be more than just a physical distance between the band and the rest
of the school. I could sense this from the very beginning and later that
distance was both confirmed and amplified during my year in residency at
Illinois. My audition for Dr. Begian (no one I know ever called him by his
first name) went well, although he must have been somewhat taken aback by what
I played--Improvisation by Elliott
Carter--and I was offered the scholarship on the spot. After the audition we went back to
his office, which was an amazing space and even had a shower installed. Anyone
who played under Dr. Begian knew why it was there--he was usually drenched in
sweat after rehearsals. He talked to me
about Michigan State University, how much he had loved the school and what a
dream it had been to be chosen as Leonard Falcone's successor. Then he asked me
where I went to high school. When I told him I came from Leslie, Michigan he
said, "Well, that's proof talent can find its way out of anywhere."
After graduation, I packed up for a summer playing
percussion with the Santa Fe Opera, an amazing opportunity for a
twenty-year-old just out of undergraduate school. Mark Johnson, my professor at
Michigan State was the timpanist, and Michael Udow (who was teaching at the
University of Missouri--Kansas City at the time) was the principal percussionist.
Things have changed now I'm sure but back then there were only two of us
playing all the parts so Mike had to make "arrangements" of big
pieces so we could cover everything. Can you imagine Salome played by two
percussionists and timpani? I can! We also performed the U.S. premiere of the
completed three-act version of Alban Berg's Lulu,
which was conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas. That reminds me of a story. My
future plan was to be an orchestra player and when I wasn't performing I spent
the rest of my time practicing for an audition with the Grand Rapids Symphony
(Bill Vits won that job and still holds the position). During one practice
session, I was working on Stravinsky's Les
Noces when I heard a knock on the door. When I opened it there was Michael
Tilson Thomas! He said, "That's not the right tempo. Would you like me to
conduct you through it?" And so he did. What a memory: both his ability to
conduct me through Les Noces from
memory like that, (it's not exactly in the standard repertoire after all), and
the memory of me playing playing Lulu
under his direction as well as that Les
Noces excerpt in the practice room.
I mention this as a prelude to my arrival at the University
of Illinois, one week late because the opera season goes through the end of
August. I had that preapproved of course, but during my first rehearsal with
the band, Dr. Begian stopped conducting, looked directly at me with that stare
everyone calls "the beam" and said, "This may be your first look
at this piece but we've been working on it for a week. I want to see you in my
office after rehearsal." Had he forgotten why I arrived late?
I entered his office with fearful trepidation--the first of
many times I experienced fear in Dr. Begian's presence; in fact I was pretty
much in fear every time I was in his presence--waiting for him to come out of
the shower. When he came out he smiled, shook my hand, and said, "How was
the Santa Fe Opera? What was Tilson-Thomas like?" Turned out, I had
worried for nothing and he wasn't mad at all. However, a seed had been
planted that lived and grew for the entire year I played in his band. I never,
ever wanted to see that look on his face directed at me again. And I knew
(first intuitively, later by experience) that if I ever made a mistake in
rehearsal or concert (it didn't really matter since rehearsals and concerts
were all performances for him) I'd get that look. And that he would never forget.
Conductors can no longer behave that way in front of any
ensemble, professional or student. Fear as a motivator is no longer how music
gets made, at least not directly in the hands of any conductor I'm aware of. And even then, with many conductors still
using intimidation as a means of establishing discipline and order, Dr. Begian
was legendary for his dictatorial ways. When I arrived, very few music majors
played in the Symphonic Band. That's why Tom Siwe had asked if I was
"willing." There was only one other percussionist in Tom's studio, my
good friend John Leister, who played in the band when I did. Most majors
instead played in the wind ensemble under the direction of the trombone
professor Dr. Robert Gray. Dr. Begian was
quite open about his resentment that this was the case, at least he was with
me. I remember him telling me once about how he had received a phone call from
a band director at a top music school, asking about a musician who was being
considered for a teaching position there. Begian told the director, "I
can't tell you anything about him. He never played in my band." "What?"
the band director said. "Went to Illinois and didn't play in your band? I
can't believe it." Begian then said to me, "This happens all the
time. Someone is a candidate for a job and who do they call? The one person
they know at Illinois. Me. And I don't know those candidates because they never
play in my band." Sure enough. When I applied for my job at the University
of New Mexico, who did they call? That's right, Harry Begian.
I worshipped the man. He scared me to death but I loved him.
I'd never played under the direction of anyone like him and I wanted to be like
him too. So, with no prior experience, I asked Dr. Begian if I could take his
conducting class, which I found out later was created for graduate students of
his who were majoring in wind conducting. Actually I did have some conducting
experience, one experience to be exact. I conducted "Coat of Arms" at
graduation, following a tradition that all band seniors could conduct a march of
their choice at spring commencement. "Coat of Arms" was my favorite
march then, I loved playing it in high school, and it is still one of my
favorites today. I'm pretty sure Stanley DeRusha, who was Director of Bands at
the time I graduated, was not happy with my choice. He didn't like marches
anyway I could tell but this march, a march only played by small town high
school bands like the one I played in? Well, I think it's great and here's a
YouTube link so you can listen for yourself, played about as well as I remember
my high school band playing it, and it is the only link that is at the right
(fast) tempo:
Dr. Begian said yes so I joined the conducting class, meeting many
fine students who have since gone on to successful conducting
careers. Dr. Begian spent most of the class telling stories. He especially
liked to talk about wind ensemble conductors, their arrogance, their predilection for
turtlenecks, (Begian instead wore polo shirts, usually Illini orange and blue), and how
one instrument on a part was not conducive to the repertoire, which he believed
was best served by a large symphonic band. My favorite wind ensemble story
involved his nemesis, Frederick Fennell, whom he talked about, and not
favorably, a lot. I made the mistake once of bringing in a Fennell recording
for one of my conducting lessons, an excellent Eastman Wind Ensemble recording
of Schoenberg's Theme and Variations,
and he was so furious he went up to his shelf and handed me an Illinois
recording. "Use that from now on," he said. End of lesson. Anyway, back to the story, which happened not long after he had been appointed Director of Bands at
Michigan State University. Begian had invited Frederick Fennell to be a
guest and at the first rehearsal, Fennell asked Begian to conduct the piece
through so he could have some idea of what had already been accomplished in
rehearsal and take it from there. After Begian finished, Fennell took the
podium, closed the score, put it on the floor and said, "We won't be
needing that," and conducted the rest of the rehearsal from memory. Begian
was furious, and, according to him, this was when the rivalry began.
One of my favorite Begian stories, I've told it many times
over the years, originates during another one of those class sessions. He was giving us all advice about being a
conductor and making priorities, "God first, family second, music
third," he said and then told us that after a concert, no matter what goes
wrong, "you have to let it go and move on. Otherwise it will just eat at
you, become an obsession." At that time, I was conducting Hindemith's Symphony in B-flat, a piece I would
later analyze for my final (I still have it), using a University of Illinois
recording under Begian's direction, as I had learned you dare not do otherwise.
During my private lesson, Fridays at 8:00 AM, (although I usually could never get up
that early I was never late), I started to conduct the second movement, which
begins with a very exposed duet between trumpet and saxophone. There is some
trouble in the recording with the trumpet playing, and when that trouble was
heard, Begian stormed over to the turntable, pulled the needle off the disk,
and in that inimitable husky voice of his quietly roared, "how could he
make that mistake? Completely ruined a great recording." So much for
letting go and moving on! He then put another record on the turntable and I
finished my conducting lesson by listening to the recording he made of
the Hindemith with his high school band. In fact he told me that Cass Tech High
School, under Begian's direction one of the greatest high school bands ever,
did the Michigan premiere of the first movement of the Hindemith, after which
(according to Begian) William Revelli at Michigan finally gave the complete
Michigan premiere. Apparently Revelli did not like the piece but refused to be
"upstaged" by a high school band. Here's a link for the second movement, from that amazing performance of the Hindemith performed by Begian and the Cass Tech band:
I've always loved the music of Percy Grainger but there's
just no way to emphasize enough how my feelings about Grainger's music deepened
through performing his band music under the direction of Harry Begian. Every
band director has their own way around this music but I am guessing that no one
ever approaches Grainger's music without first listening to Begian's legendary
Grainger recordings. Of all the pieces I studied with Dr. Begian, Grainger's Colonial Song was my favorite and I
consider it to be Grainger's minor masterpiece. This is the recording of it I
used for my lessons:
When I was writing Openings,
the band piece I finished in 2009, and dedicated to my father who was himself a
band person having studied with Sousa drummer Frank Perne and playing in the
Michigan State University Band when Leonard Falcone was the director,
Grainger's Colonial Song was ever
present, the score sitting at my piano and the music always in my ear, even
becoming the intentional source of how the last movement "Ear" ends,
so if one wanted, you could without pause have Colonial Song immediately follow. Here's the last movement of Openings so you can hear for yourself
how the two pieces fit together:
I always told Eric Rombach-Kendall, Director of Bands at the
University of New Mexico, that before I retired I wanted to conduct Colonial Song, which unfortunately didn't
happen but is something I still hope to do in the future.
There are many stories out there about how brutal Harry
Begian could be in rehearsals. And no
remembrance of him is complete without drawing attention to that side. One time
in particular I will never forget. We were preparing for a tour in
mid-Michigan, essentially a homecoming for Dr. Begian, (for me as well of
course), and we all knew these performances were a rare chance for Michigan band
directors and students to hear the great Harry Begian conduct the famous University of Illinois
Symphonic Band. The program was very difficult and, as usual, mostly
transcriptions. I don't like transcriptions and, as my former percussion
students know, I refused to ever program anything not originally composed for
percussion, even though we had a marimba ensemble where it would have made
sense to program transcriptions following in the great Guatemalan tradition.
Instead we played exclusively traditional Mexican and Guatemalan marimba music
and the ragtime xylophone repertoire. I will continue with this subject momentarily. For now, back to the story at hand.
We were rehearsing the Aegean Festival Overture by
Andreas Makris which, if you don't know it, you can listen to here:
The piece has a very exposed bassoon solo and just days
before we left on tour, the bassoonist, accompanied by me on timpani and
(probably) John Leister on snare with the snares off, was having some trouble.
Dr. Begian stopped and had the student, who like most of the band was not a
music major, play by himself. Not good.
"Try again," Begian said. "Again." And "again." Several
times. After which Begian, with that terrifying glare of his, finally looked at
the student (the "beam," remember) and said "What on earth is
wrong?" The student replied, "I'm playing on a new bassoon." Begian:
"Why would you do that now?" "I did it for you, so I would sound
good on the tour," the student replied. The tension in the room was
unbearable. "Well, that was a terrible
mistake," (emphasis not mine) Begian fumed, standing there in silence
just looking at him. We were all horrified and I've never felt so sorry for a
student in my entire life.
I assume the student got his old bassoon back (what else
could he possibly do after that?) because the tour went splendidly. The finale
of every concert was one of Begian's favorite closers, Respighi's Pines of Rome, in a
brilliant transcription by Guy Duker who wrote many of the great transcriptions
I played when I was at Illinois. They were always in the original key so if you
learned the part you essentially had learned what you might someday play in an
orchestra, at least if you were a percussionist like me. I think that's the
reason I never minded playing transcriptions at Illinois. And you were
performing under someone who really should have been an orchestral conductor
anyway. Begian had studied conducting at Tanglewood before he began his
professional career as a band director and he had also conducted opera when he
was at Cass Tech. I can tell you this: I've played the Pines of Rome many times
but it never, ever sounded as good as those performances with Harry Begian.
When we played in Charlotte, Michigan, my parents came to the concert and it was
so close to home I actually spent the night with them afterward. The Pines drew
incredible ovations everywhere we went but that night in Charlotte was by far
the best. And the fact of that just
seems to capture what I loved more than anything about Harry Begian: making
music had nothing to do with whether you were playing a concert or a rehearsal,
whether you were playing in Carnegie Hall or Charlotte, Michigan. The music
itself, the making of it, is what mattered. And it mattered so much that, no
matter what, you had to push as far as possible to make it absolutely great.
Many people suffered getting there, and I suspect he suffered the most of all. But was it worth it? I guess nowadays people would say no it's not worth it and I certainly can't speak for anyone else who was there at the time. But for me? Yes it was. Absolutely worth it. Listening to the Respighi again, in this great recording now available through
the American Bandmasters Association (link below),
I'm guessing the musicians who performed on the recording would
have said it was worth it too. Playing under the direction of Dr. Harry Begian
was an incredible experience. For me, there has been nothing like it before or
since. Here's a link so you can hear Begian conducting the last movement of the Pines of Rome:
I wonder if that's me playing timpani?
I went all year playing in the University of
Illinois Symphonic Band without making a single mistake, terrified that I would
at every rehearsal and every concert. And at the end of the year, not long
after we returned from our tour of mid-Michigan, I asked Dr. Begian if he would
sign a picture of himself and give it to me as a gift. It is one of my most
treasured possessions.
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