Dean Douglas Lowry made these closing remarks at the Eastman School of Music’s commencement on Sunday, May 16, 2010.
We’ve been privileged to watch you assert yourselves so grandly during the past few years through your music, your imagination, and your innovation. And so today, May 16th, 2010, we arrive at an unbelievable intersection, a true “commencement moment,” a half-cadence in which one musical narrative is finished and another about to begin.
On the one hand we know you feel relief; that is, about the first function of the half-cadence. You have, after all, just finished your degree. Yet we also know that you sense considerable anticipation about the next phase, and so your feelings are seasoned with both optimism and anxiety. You’re not alone. You’re about to inhabit a world that forecaster Bob Johannson calls the VUCA World: volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
Uncertainty, of course, suggests trouble. And how people deal with trouble varies wildly. There’s always that knucklehead sort like Dave Barry, who suggests, “When trouble arises and things look bad, there is always one individual who perceives a solution and is willing to take command. Very often, that individual is crazy.” But you’re not crazy. Furthermore, true leaders know that volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity are the very stuff of humanity. As a musician, as an Eastman-trained musician, you are particularly well-equipped to handle this. Why? The very characteristics of the world you are about to inhabit are the very characteristics of our greatest music: volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.
At a practical level, how will you manage? For starters, you carry out of here an Eastman toolkit full of all the components of a superb musical foundation, plus a little packet of intangible will power. This will enable you to not just relish uncertainty, but to thrive on it. You also have encoded in your Eastman DNA two urgent motifs that are part of the new Eastman: innovation and engagement. In other words, for you, it’s not enough to stand still and observe; it is imperative that you passionately invent, and engage the audience in the passion of your new musical invention.
Perhaps most importantly, you are possessed of a radiant creativity. This may trump all else. It is the creative personality that lives constantly in a state of flux, and therefore understands the nature of music. And the nature of music mirrors the nature of the world. Isn’t it interesting that so many times it’s not the stable moments in music or any art that give us a thrill, but the unstable ones: shaky moments when the tensile strength of a great piece of music is tested by the extreme push and pull of musically dramatic opposites, as well as a variety of very mixed musical feelings.
This all makes a quote by W.H. Auden so timely and spot-on when we talk about musical or practical instability, and especially how to negotiate it. Auden’s quote underscores the primacy of the creative personality, and could, in fact, read like an Eastman mantra: “Great creative work is clear thinking about mixed feelings.”
Imagine that: “clear thinking about mixed feelings,” an inherent feature of great teachers or performers or composers who are able to press the forces of musical equilibrium to a bursting point, and then distill all that mixed up drama into a clearer, more penetrating understanding. It is something that pretty much anyone of accomplishment, no matter their métier, possesses at the core. Moreover, “clear thinking about mixed feelings” involves not just the heart, but the mind as well. Which underscores a philosophy we have here at Eastman: great creative work, rooted in deep feeling, is shaped and informed by the mind.
As we move about in our professional careers, we like to simplify. In music, we like to say that one either performs or one teaches. Yet be we conductors, composers, performers, scholars or educators, we are all at base teachers. I have an obligation to press you on this point. Every great musical experience, truth told, is a learning experience. Every great act of rehearsal or practice or performance, be it the theater of the classroom, the book, the article, the piece of music, is a teaching experience in which we learn not only content, but the drama of the content. And we learn most dynamically as players in the drama of its presentation. Indeed, we are in the thick of the theater of ideas. More to the point, by creating and sharing what we create, we teach.
And by teaching, we lead.
Now all of us can probably count on one hand our great teachers. I find it interesting that rarely do we talk about what they taught, but end up rather describing circumstances or situations or ways of doing things that spurred our attentions. In other words, we remember their basic humanity, their unique style, idiosyncrasies, their basic compulsion, their manic need to excite our curiosity. Great teachers are also demanding. Odd, isn’t it? We remember our great teachers as the drivers of the hardest intellectual and musical bargains.
Just a week ago we had an extraordinary experience. Some of our alums in the clarinet world took it upon themselves to honor Stan Hasty. As some of you know, Stan taught at Eastman from 1955 to 1985, 30 years. At 90, he’s still vibrant and still has that glint in his eye. 66 of Stan’s former clarinet students showed up for this reunion. One even flew in from Rome. And there were 32 spouses, partners and friends. There were many events at which hundreds of Stan Hasty stories were told.
One student recalled taking a lesson with Stan and while he was playing, he, as some clarinetists are wont to do, squeaked. Stan glared at him and said, “Come again?” The student replicated the squeak, even louder this time, proud perhaps that he could get it on so repetitively. Stan looked at him and said, “Now that you know how that feels, don’t ever do it again!”
The really touching moment of the reunion, however, was when, even a good two hours after Stan had gone home, there was still a gathering of 20-30 clarinetists standing around … re-connecting.
And so this brings me to my closing theme. Come visit us. Come back, and come back often. As the novelist Ann Patchett has said, you go through life leaving a trail of crumbs, and sometimes when you re-trace and go back to the occasions of your early experiences, you discover patterns, junction spots, directions you took, and then some illumination occurs. I think in the re-living, you re-connect. Perhaps in re-discovering the vitality of the earlier experience, we discover the mystery of who we are now and maybe it makes more sense than it did before.
As for all this uncertainty, you’ll be fine. Eastman has built you quite a fine paradox. You’re grounded in deep and strong musical tradition. But you have lived in a can-do place that has challenged you to improvise and collaborate, to adventure, to be musically and personally adaptable. After all, it was Charles Darwin who said, and I paraphrase, “It’s not the strongest or most intelligent of the species that survive, but those that have learned to collaborate and improvise, the ones most adaptable to change.”
Be industrious. Propel your musical equilibrium to its highest. In true Eastman fashion, make your music matter.
All right, we called FedEx and the truck is outside the main hall ready to overnight you to your next destination.
Eastman grads of 2010, be well, and keep in touch.