PLUCKED FROM THE JAWS OF DEATH

posted by James Reel

    I saw a summary of a New York Times article about a study at New Jersey's Morristown Memorial Hospital, where a harpist is stationed in the recovery room; the study is looking into the effectiveness of harp music as a healing aid for heart-surgery patients. First thing I thought was, “Those patients are going to regain consciousness and get the wrong idea.” Sure enough, here’s the story’s lede: “When George Moran woke up on Tuesday, he thought he had died and gone to heaven.”
    The first time I met harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, I sat down with her for a long interview for a magazine article. At the end, she thanked me for never bringing up the usual questions about the harp’s “angelic” nature. Surely harpists get sick of that association, just as they probably get tired of playing those endless arpeggios by composers who don’t know what else to do with the instrument. Too bad, because the harp is capable of a great many other things … and not every harpist is an angel.
    What instrument does not carry some unfortunate association? Until a couple hundred years ago, the trombone was regarded as the instrument of the devil; in the 20th century, thanks to its ability to play lewd glissandi, the trombone took up with strippers in the public mind (the saxophone also developed lascivious associations), while the violin became the devil’s instrument, thanks in part to Stravinsky’s L’Histoire du soldat. People tend to hold “oboe” and “duck” in the same thought (thank you, Prokofiev), and Danny Kaye, in the song “Anatole of Paris,” popularized the notion that the oboe is an ill wind that no one blows good. As the butts of jokes, violists are the new Poles and blondes, and bassists and drummers don’t fare much better. Until the time of Bach, cellists were regarded as continuo hacks; real musicians played the viola da gamba. Despite the best efforts of people like Jean-Pierre Rampal, the flute is still regarded as an instrument for cute little blonde girls, not professionals. The bassoon struggles to overcome its image as the clown of the orchestra.. The trumpet has no setting below “11” on its volume control, and a horn concert is inevitably a clam bake. So what does that leave? The clarinet, I suppose, is the one orchestral instrument completely lacking negative connotations. It might be nice to wake up in a cardiac unit and hear a crooning clarinet, as long as it wasn’t playing some long, sustained note that made you think you were flatlining.