The Artist as Citizen

By Joseph W. Polisi

The Artist as Citizen is a compilation of Joseph W. Polisi's articles and speeches from his two-decade tenure as president of the Juilliard School. His writings focus on the role of the artist in American society as a leader and communicator of human values. The extended prologue includes Polisi's recollections of his early days at Juilliard and the selection process that resulted in his appointment as the school's sixth president. Also included is a discussion of the important role that Juilliard plays in the workings of Lincoln Center. Polisi makes a strong point that “there should be no dividing line between artistic excellence and social consciousness.” He contends that the traditional “self-absorbed artist” is the wrong model for the arts in America in the 21st century.

• Language: English
• Publisher: RowmanLittlefield
• Release date: Dec 1, 2004
• ISBN: 9781574672428

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Great Values Carried by Beauty

Juilliard Commencement

May 21, 1993

Alice Tully Hall, New York City

Traditionally, in the middle of each Juilliard commencement ceremony there is an address given by a principal speaker, who is often one of the honorary degree recipients. This is followed by a short musical interlude performed by graduating students. The president’s message occurs immediately after the musical presentation and provides an opportunity for me to speak directly to the graduates.

Recently I awoke on a sun-drenched Sunday morning to a blue sky and newly bloomed tulips gracing my front lawn. What a great day, I thought, as I picked up my Sunday New York Times. Turning to the Arts and Leisure section, which is my usual first stop in this great newspaper, I was greeted by an article that raised some troubling questions.

In reading the piece, I came up with certain selected revelations that seemed to lessen the bloom on my tulips. The first quote of the article was extraordinary. ‘In the time it takes to listen to Brahms’s Third Symphony,’ said Kevin Copps, general manager of Elektra International Classics, ‘you can work on your Exercycle, cook dinner in the microwave, watch a couple of music videos on MTV, read USA Today cover to cover and make a date with a stranger over the telephone.’¹

How strange, I mused, that such mundane pursuits could be juxtaposed with the Brahms Third Symphony, one of the great monuments to the human spirit.

But there was more. I learned that the new marketing director of the Pittsburgh Symphony, disavowing a previous publicity campaign for the orchestra that presented soft-focus photographs of a man and a woman embracing, emphasizes the true and real plan of action for the orchestra—a tie-in to sports based on the new director’s past experience with another franchise in town: the Pittsburgh Penguins.

It continued. A pianist, better known for his exotic name change and dedication to body-building, is promoting his recording of the Chopin and Liszt piano concertos through photographs of himself unbuttoning his shirt.

Finally, a major record company has just released a disk called Heavy Classix, the main claim to fame of which is its loudness. The promotional quote for the disk is a classic in itself:

With Heavy Classix, EMI Classics has compiled the original heavy-metal thunder. Fifteen head-banging compositions, including the 1812 Overture, Romeo and Juliet, and, naturally, Wagner’s Valkyrie. Sixty-six minutes of the loudest music ever written. There’s enough high-volume histrionics on Heavy Classix to keep the most demanding fan of thunderous noise satisfied.²

In a new television commercial, Riki Rachtman, host of MTV’s Headbanger’s Ball, calls the recording a killer CD and claims that the best sound was the loudest sound.³

As the article came to a close before me, I looked up and the sun was still shining, the tulips still bloomed, and I felt that our profession had been invaded by lunatics.

Although the aforementioned initiatives are amusing when viewed in isolation, the collective wisdom of these endeavors puts into question exactly why people partake of performing arts presentations in the first place. Let us not be led down a path that presents gimmicks as the reasons for which we experience the great art of the centuries.

In a true and real sense, great art transcends the mundane and the mediocre. Art can be, as the writer Samuel Lipman once said to me, great values carried by beauty.

As the twentieth century comes to a close, there are many issues that confront you as performing artists that did not exist fifty years ago. In recent years, the very arts to which you have dedicated your lives have been put in question as positive, or even important, forces in our nation and our culture.

The assumption that the arts are essential elements of our environment as human beings has been weakened by the extraordinary power of the media, the diminishing of our primary and secondary school systems, and the general perception that the arts are only for a tiny portion of our population who have not been buffeted by the spiral of poverty, crime, and disease that has torn into the heart of this nation.

I would contend, ladies and gentlemen, that this final assumption is totally false. In fact, it may very well be the arts—and you as artists—who can provide the stimulus and focus needed to energize this nation as we move into the next millennium.

I would ask you this morning—and at other times in your careers—to remember the fundamental and profound reasons why you have dedicated yourselves to the performing arts. Think of the sense of exhilaration and satisfaction that comes from a performance well done; the sense of passion, commitment, and discipline that defines the process of the performing artist.

I would also hope that you will frequently reflect upon the roles of leader, communicator, and teacher that you will need to realize if your art is to flourish in the future. You must embrace the concept of the artist as citizen.

Owing to the less distinct role of the arts in American society today, the profession will look to each and every one of you for your leadership; for your artistic ability, your honesty, vision, creativity, energy, and your sense of mission as you present your art in different places, to diverse audiences who may have various expectations of how your art will speak to them.

But not only are you leaders. You must also never forget that you are communicators. In every performance, simply presenting the efficient reproduction of your art will not be adequate for your own self-growth or for the flourishing of all you believe in as an artist. The passion and texture you bring to your performances will communicate the human values and beliefs inherent in your art.

In addition, the performing artist of the twenty-first century must be a teacher in the purest and most honorable sense of the term. A teacher who internalizes his or her art so completely that its manifestation is part of the persona of the artist. A teacher—who as a leader and a communicator—presents an artistic endeavor with an energy that is at once intoxicating and compelling.

Edgard Varèse once said that there is no such thing as the avant-garde; there are only people who are late. In critically scanning the arts environment in America today, one can observe many disturbing circumstances.

But if history has taught us one thing, it is that the profound achievements of humanity have often been reflected through the arts and that these achievements have permeated the souls of millions of our co–inhabitants on this flawed but brilliant planet in a way that has opened their eyes to the beauty of the human spirit. You represent the hopes of the future in the performing arts. Take your education and transform it into an inner energy that radiates in your performances, in your personal relationships, and in your career. Never lose that inner direction in this honorable mission.

And, above all, never make compromises that force you to draw down upon your own moral and artistic capital to the extent that you deplete the very resources that will support your future activities in the arts. The performances that you have presented this year and throughout your career at Juilliard have been a source of great pride and joy for all of us. Remember those events and use them to energize yourselves in the years ahead.

On behalf of the members of the board of trustees, the faculty, and the administration of the Juilliard School, we wish you all a wonderful life in the arts filled with inspiration and happiness. May you prosper through making others more fulfilled human beings.

Notes

1

Jamie James, Sex and the ‘Singles’ Symphony, New York Times, 2 May 1993, sec. 2, p. 1.

2

Ibid.

3

Ibid.

Thoughts on Colossal Success

55th National Biennial Conference of the Music Educator’s National Conference

April 19, 1996

Kansas City, Missouri

This gathering of music educators involved thousands of teachers, students, and administrators at the elementary, secondary, and college levels. Juilliard has never been close to the music teacher training establishment in America, and I saw this speech as a way to reach out to this group, as well as to present my concerns about music education in America.

This talk was adapted, in part, from my article entitled A Musical Call to Arms, which was published in Musical American Directory 1994.

I am very pleased and honored to be a participant in the fifty-fifth National Biennial In-Service Conference of MENC. My participation in this gathering is a bit of a homecoming for me, because for many years I worked with my father in one of the numerous booths that sprout up at this meeting, presenting the Polisi Bassoon to students and faculty members. It’s very good to be back.

Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a time that often avoids distinctions between human achievement and personal celebrity. Success in the arts today is most frequently measured in dollars earned. Hollywood proudly announces the weekly grosses of newly released movies and declares successes or failures based on the ledger sheet. Broadway and even Lincoln Center measure success in comparatively the same way. In the late 1990s in America, artistic success is inextricably linked to financial success.

However, such was not always the case. One of my favorite stories exemplifies well the power of art, and not money, as being the progenitor of most creativity.

When the noted American composer William Schuman, who later became president of the Juilliard School and Lincoln Center, was a young man, he was asked to assist the well-known Broadway producer Billy Rose in coordinating the musical portions of an elaborate review entitled The Seven Lively Arts. The presentation would include songs by Cole Porter, new choreography by George Balanchine, and a musical interlude by no less a composer than Igor Stravinsky, who eventually entitled the work Scenes de Ballet.

When the Stravinsky work arrived, Rose was concerned to see that the instrumentation for the composition required a much larger orchestra than the one Rose wished to use in the pit for the run of the show. Rose asked Schuman to immediately contact Stravinsky to see about reducing the size of the orchestra so as to reduce the weekly payroll for the musicians. Schuman was, of course, tremendously reluctant to begin such a sensitive process with one of the giants of twentieth century composition without some assurances that Stravinsky would agree to re-address the orchestration.

In an effort to start the process, Rose sent the following telegram to Stravinsky:

YOUR BALLET A COLOSSAL SUCCESS. WOULD BE EVEN GREATER SUCCESS IF YOU AGREE TO CERTAIN MODIFICATIONS IN INSTRUMENTATION.

Stravinsky wired back:

QUITE CONTENT WITH COLOSSAL SUCCESS.

I certainly wish that we could experience more frequently Stravinsky’s brand of integrity in all that we address every day.

In the intensive process of learning and teaching, you have correctly been consumed by the standards needed to be realized by any sincere and conscious music professional. The hours you have spent in the service of your profession have, in fact, set you apart from others in our society who may have not yet found their sense of life mission.

In Shakespeare’s comedy Twelfth Night, Malvolio reads a letter from his supposed beloved in which she tells him ... be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em. This is a time when all of us who believe in the important role of art in our society must respond to a call to action that focuses our goals and reinforces our resolve to re-create an environment that truly nurtures the arts. We must assert the important part that art has in enhancing the quality of our lives and in preventing us from settling for the mediocre as individuals and as a nation.

Many in the music field sense a prevailing malaise about music in America today. Others deny the existence of any major problems. I have heard optimistic comments from representatives of the profession—performing artists, managers, teachers, administrators. But the conclusions of many more of my colleagues are different: the American artistic environment is in feeble health; its professionals have not been effective advocates to the public and its political leaders; and ensuring the survival of individual artistic entities—orchestras, dance and theater companies, schools and departments of music, et cetera—has become so all-consuming that there is little time left for extra efforts to improve the general arts environment.

In truth, the American arts scene has been divided by its own excesses. It has also rejected or obscured many of the essential values upon which our cultural heritage is based. The halcyon days of the late 1950s and early 1960s allowed musical organizations of all types to enlarge their seasons, their enrollments, their budgets, and their expectations. The economic downturn of the 1970s decimated many musical programs in America, especially in the area of primary and secondary education. However, the expectations of the past lived on. The 1980s, with their debt-driven economic revival, allowed our artistic institutions to survive and occasionally even flourish. But the philosophical underpinnings, the values that made our musical organizations thrive in the immediate post—World War II years, deteriorated and often evaporated entirely.

This phenomenon occurred in part for a few reasons:

♦ The large urban centers of this nation became more and more separated from the rest of the country. A dual system of education developed where urban public schools were seriously underfunded, ravaged by crime, and allowed to disintegrate. The decay of the overall urban infrastructure, through the deterioration of roads, bridges, water systems, and the like, was mirrored in the educational infrastructure through the demoralization and dismissal of teachers, the deferred maintenance of buildings, and, especially, the disregard for the importance of the arts in the school curriculum. Concurrently, non-urban school systems more frequently prospered through strengthened tax bases