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Monday, March 7, 2005 Volume VII Number 9
by Ken Kemp
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T |
hey call him “The Flying Dutchman.” And anyone who watches him work will tell you: he soars. This different kind of aviator has the uncanny ability to take you up there in the clouds with him. |
He’s got a simple goal in life. At fifty-six years of age, he’s accomplishing what he set out to do. He’s making it happen.
Accessibility is a hot contemporary concept. It became commonplace when legislators recognized that many of our buildings and structures were inaccessible to many Americans. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) changed the way we think of access. Look at our street corners and the approach to public buildings and the doors on restrooms and you’ll see the results. It’s everywhere. Access.
Now the word has a technological application, too: access to information. Thanks to the Internet and local area networks, we have unprecedented access to information that only a few years back would have taken hours if not days or months to uncover. We have a growing impatience with a lack of access; even for stuff that isn’t even that important. Phone numbers. Directions. Show times. Reservations. Lowest price. We want it now. We want access.
Teachers want their students to have access to the great minds. Physicians want their patients to have access to medical care. Attorneys want their clients to have access to justice. Pastors want people to have access to the Gospel.
André Rieu, The Flying Dutchman, The King of Waltz, set out to give the masses access to classical music. He’s opening the door. All over the world.
André, along with his brothers and sisters, grew up in the Netherlands with classical music. His father, a professional conductor himself, brought his music home. At the age of five, André picked up a violin. From the start, he had an extraordinary comfort level with this complicated instrument. His parents cultivated his gift. He was something of a prodigy, a concert violinist. He reveled in the joy of melody, then harmony and the challenge of the masters. He took a seat along with some of the finest musicians in Amsterdam. When their music filled the great halls of the city under his father’s direction, he knew this would be his life.
In 1978, he assembled his first orchestra, the Maastricht Salon Orchestra, which toured the Netherlands. André soon developed a one-of-a-kind style. We was a player conductor. He set the pace, leading the orchestra from his violin, using his bow as a baton. Sometimes directing with the bow waving artfully up and down with the rhythm of the music, other times across the strings, his motion catching the full embrace of the score, he drew the assembly of musicians into the rapture with his joyous enthusiasms and led them airborne, in full flight. You couldn’t keep the audiences away.
André could never understand or appreciate the generally accepted and almost universal resistance to classical music. He understood the level of competence required to reproduce the music in the literature through instruments challenging to master. He also knew that great music flowed not simply from hours in the practice room, but from the heart. He learned that from his father.
But people who complained of boredom, folks who shunned the concert halls, others who yawned at the thought of an evening with Brahms, none of them could André understand. All these commonly claimed barriers were unacceptable.
He understood the problem. It was a sad reality. There was a clear disconnect. Classical music became the private domain of the self-absorbed elite. It became subject to unspoken, stuffy rules of protocol. Rules like formal dress. Remaining seated and still. Emotions in check. Applause subdued. Self-control. Suppress the outbursts. Contain the feelings. Stiff upper lip. Quell the passions. Do not, repeat, do not disturb your neighbor or distract others with silly eruptions of passion.
André came to believe that this inhibition of the heart was a direct contradiction to the purpose of the masters. Like Amadeus Mozart, reckless abandonment to the joy of making music is the heart of the magic. Let the music take flight. People forget their differences, lay down their arms, set aside their distractions when the orchestra strikes up the harmonies and builds the crescendos.
So he assembled the best of the best. He dressed them in bright colors and winsome formality. Then he cut them loose, the strings and the woodwinds and the brass and the timpani and the sopranos and tenors and filled the gallery with delight. The auditorium jammed, André, from center stage, violin and bow in hand, played the role of conductor. But his charge went beyond the performers on stage. He led the entire assembly to sing along, to dance, to cheer… to weep. Lost in the classic, familiar melodies, we got lost, too.
As I watched the PBS televised performance, André achieved his goal with me. The old classics came alive. Accessible. Even other languages made sense. Along with a gathered throng in Dublin, I joined in. We all let the music bring joy and hope and enchantment.
André Rieu, The Flying Dutchman, comes to Pasadena this December.
I want to be there.
* * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
You want access, too. And as a leader, you are responsible to be sure that your people have the access they need. But you want more. It’s not enough to simply get the job done. You want heart. You want a measure of joy. You want camaraderie among your people. You want the kind of accessibility that results in an appealing sort of excellence.
We can take our cue from The Flying Dutchman. It’s in the music. The old music up there on the shelf collecting dust. The tried and true classics, easily neglected.
Breathe life into them. Enter into the joy that created them in the first place.
And watch what happens.
Posted in Placentia, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2005
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