Full disclosure: I have not seen the movie Whiplash. It’s on my list, but I haven’t seen it. What I have seen is the conversation that this movie has started about art, excellence, methods, and abuse. This is an important conversation to have, and it is one that I have been afraid to have for many years. Not that I have felt specifically abused, per se, but I have been under the baton of many a screaming, shouting, furious, belittling conductor who feels perfectly comfortable flying off the handle when the singers are not singing up to code. But every time I try to mention this in a negative way, I get weird stares and looks, as if I am being disloyal. Because of course this sometimes brings about great music. But do the ends justify the means?
When I was a bit younger, my wife and I sang in a Grammy-nominated, well-respected, and musically excellent chorus. For one season. The music was wonderful, the people were kind and passionate, and the end product was heartbreakingly beautiful. But every week my wife and I would go to rehearsal and be shouted at for several hours. Our water breaks were taken away. We were called names. We were treated like children, despite the median age being 50-60. And the other singers just ate it up. They loved this man, this conductor, and they respected the final product so much, that when he screamed at them they just nodded their heads and vowed to do better next time. He was a musical genius and they were lucky to have the chance to sing under him, and of course they didn’t deserve to be there, but they would try harder next time. After rehearsals they would all gush about what a great time they had had, and what a wonderful and productive rehearsal it had been. I have never understood this, and we quite the group after the first year.
Artists get a bit of leeway when it comes to what we might call “eccentricities.” The inner workings of their brains are not understood by the common person and, as long as what they put out is pleasing to our senses, their methods are rarely called into question. Even when their habits and ways do get called out, these “artists” are often given a pass, due to the respect which we have for their work. Why? Why is that? I have heard so often in life that one of our great moral ideals is that the ends do not justify the means. I know there are some who would disagree, but overall we believe that getting information does not justify torture, that screwing over your coworkers is not okay, even if you get the promotion, and that buying someone a present doesn’t make up for beating them up over and over again. Even if it is a really, really nice present.
It’s not just the music world, of course, where abuse happens but is overlooked due to success. You can look at the whole business infrastructure of this country and see plenty of despicable people who continually ruin millions of lives, but are given large bonuses for it because the company turned a profit. Yes, it might catch up with you eventually Wall Street, but you can get rewarded for quite some time by being successful, no matter what you have done to get there. But that’s money. Cold, hard cash they call it. We almost expect the rich to be jerks. Artists, on the other hand, who create works of great beauty and emotional substance…shouldn’t they be held to a higher standard? Don’t we wish they were good people?
Okay, before I get too far down that road, I would like to say that none of the conductors that I have ever worked with are bad people. They are all friendly, enjoyable people outside of the rehearsals. And I don’t want to confuse being strict with being mean. Certainly there is an amount of rigidity that must be adhered to when conducting a large group of people. But I have seen rehearsals where everyone is laughing and having fun, including the conductor, and which also produce Grammy-winning music. I have seen people work hard but have fun at the same time, and not the kind of fun that comes from realizing that you have accomplished something difficult, but the kind of fun that comes during the doing of something difficult.
I love to sing. I love rehearsals (sometimes). They are hard work, but I enjoy the company of friends and colleagues as we work hard to build something amazing to share with the world. I am aware that sometimes you need focus and grit, rather than smiles and jokes, but I am also aware that screaming and name-calling is not a necessary part of the rehearsal process. Hey, I am now a conductor myself, and I understand how frustrating it can be to have someone sing the wrong thing, over and over again. And I am also a parent. Every day is a gigantic list of frustrations and people not doing what you say. But I have also found, in both cases, that screaming and losing your temper is not the best path to success for either situation. We wouldn’t accept it from others, so why would we accept it from our conductors? Is that really the only way they know how to make great music? And if so, is the price too great? And if it isn’t, is any?