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Dan Coren
The conflict had been there for months: the opening concert of my Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia subscription series and the Phillies’ season finale, both scheduled for Sunday, September 28th.
Surely, I supposed, one way or the other that last game would be meaningless, and I wouldn’t have to choose between baseball (I have season tickets) and Beethoven– specifically, Ignat Solzhenitsyn conducting the Second and Seventh Symphonies. But as the date approached, it became apparent that if I did have to choose, it would be because the Phillies were in desperate straits.
With some elaborate planning, I set things up so that neither pair of tickets would be wasted. But this preparation failed to allay my inner conflict. What would I choose: the Church of the Standard Repertory? Or the pagan tribal ritual that has gripped my psyche since my grandfather first took me to Yankee Stadium at the age of five?
The ‘value’ of a symphony
In my heart, really, there was never a choice. Baseball trumps everything else, albeit not without plenty of guilty suffering. Part of my soul is ruled by the misguided notion that somehow attending a concert of Beethoven symphonies is a more valuable use of my time than attending a mere ball game. (My wife suffers from no such spiritual conflict. I doubt she would have soon forgiven me for making us miss a season-deciding Phillies game.)
In the end, of course, Jimmy Rollins, with one diving stop of a ground ball up the middle on Saturday (the day before the concert), saved the Phillies’ season and resolved my dilemma. And I assure you, that double play was every bit as aesthetically satisfying, just as worthy of cultural enshrinement, as the return to C major in the finale of Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony.
After Saturday’s game, my wife and went to dinner at the bar of Ansill, our favorite neighborhood restaurant, and with the help of some particularly potent Martinis pondered the competing grips of baseball and classical music.
What makes a man interesting?
When I first met my wife long ago, she wasn’t yet the baseball fan she has become (with my encouragement) in recent years. But she did say something like, “You know, men who aren’t interested in sports tend to be not very interesting as men.” This is one of the keys to our compatibility. Although I’ve spent much of my life teaching and writing about classical music, I respect folks who can’t stand it. Classical music is an acquired taste. Chacun à son goût.
And I must admit, there is something intrinsically silly and irrational about fandom. Why should I care about the success or failure of a bunch of guys playing what in the end is, indeed, merely a game? Why do I, I must reluctantly admit, find myself feeling patronizing disdain for guys who don't care about sports?
I can't really answer those questions.I played countless innings of baseball while I was growing up, but somehow that explanation has never satisfied me. All I can say is that the passion that I (and millions of others) feel for baseball is as genuine, as deeply felt, and as "meaningful" ( whatever that means!) as what I feel while singing "Alle Menschen, Alle menschen, Alle Menschen!" during a performance of Beethoven's Ninth or while listening to Glenn Gould play Bach.
So there I was at the Perelman Theater on Sunday afternoon, enjoying Beethoven in peace. How did I like the concert? What do you think?
In fact, I can’t add anything much to David Patrick Stearns’s rave review in Monday’s Inquirer. As Stearns so well put it, “In the first moments [of Beethoven’s Second], you had to catch your breath: This is it. It’s alive… Conductor and players speaking the piece like a first language….”
If this had been a baseball crowd, there would have been chants of “Ig-NAT, ig-NAT.” Instead, of course, there were merely several minutes of curtain calls, gracious bows and a tableau of beaming orchestra members.
Surely, I supposed, one way or the other that last game would be meaningless, and I wouldn’t have to choose between baseball (I have season tickets) and Beethoven– specifically, Ignat Solzhenitsyn conducting the Second and Seventh Symphonies. But as the date approached, it became apparent that if I did have to choose, it would be because the Phillies were in desperate straits.
With some elaborate planning, I set things up so that neither pair of tickets would be wasted. But this preparation failed to allay my inner conflict. What would I choose: the Church of the Standard Repertory? Or the pagan tribal ritual that has gripped my psyche since my grandfather first took me to Yankee Stadium at the age of five?
The ‘value’ of a symphony
In my heart, really, there was never a choice. Baseball trumps everything else, albeit not without plenty of guilty suffering. Part of my soul is ruled by the misguided notion that somehow attending a concert of Beethoven symphonies is a more valuable use of my time than attending a mere ball game. (My wife suffers from no such spiritual conflict. I doubt she would have soon forgiven me for making us miss a season-deciding Phillies game.)
In the end, of course, Jimmy Rollins, with one diving stop of a ground ball up the middle on Saturday (the day before the concert), saved the Phillies’ season and resolved my dilemma. And I assure you, that double play was every bit as aesthetically satisfying, just as worthy of cultural enshrinement, as the return to C major in the finale of Mozart’s “Jupiter” Symphony.
After Saturday’s game, my wife and went to dinner at the bar of Ansill, our favorite neighborhood restaurant, and with the help of some particularly potent Martinis pondered the competing grips of baseball and classical music.
What makes a man interesting?
When I first met my wife long ago, she wasn’t yet the baseball fan she has become (with my encouragement) in recent years. But she did say something like, “You know, men who aren’t interested in sports tend to be not very interesting as men.” This is one of the keys to our compatibility. Although I’ve spent much of my life teaching and writing about classical music, I respect folks who can’t stand it. Classical music is an acquired taste. Chacun à son goût.
And I must admit, there is something intrinsically silly and irrational about fandom. Why should I care about the success or failure of a bunch of guys playing what in the end is, indeed, merely a game? Why do I, I must reluctantly admit, find myself feeling patronizing disdain for guys who don't care about sports?
I can't really answer those questions.I played countless innings of baseball while I was growing up, but somehow that explanation has never satisfied me. All I can say is that the passion that I (and millions of others) feel for baseball is as genuine, as deeply felt, and as "meaningful" ( whatever that means!) as what I feel while singing "Alle Menschen, Alle menschen, Alle Menschen!" during a performance of Beethoven's Ninth or while listening to Glenn Gould play Bach.
So there I was at the Perelman Theater on Sunday afternoon, enjoying Beethoven in peace. How did I like the concert? What do you think?
In fact, I can’t add anything much to David Patrick Stearns’s rave review in Monday’s Inquirer. As Stearns so well put it, “In the first moments [of Beethoven’s Second], you had to catch your breath: This is it. It’s alive… Conductor and players speaking the piece like a first language….”
If this had been a baseball crowd, there would have been chants of “Ig-NAT, ig-NAT.” Instead, of course, there were merely several minutes of curtain calls, gracious bows and a tableau of beaming orchestra members.
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