ENCOUNTERS by George Sturm
Martin Bookspan
One of the most visible of men in and around music
circles today is Martin Bookspan. Or in his case perhaps it would be more
accurate to say "audible," Bookspan being recognized by music lovers
throughout the United States mainly by his distinctively rich broadcaster's
voice. But taking to the airwaves is only one of the multiple areas of his
involvement. For one not himself a composer or performer, Martin Bookspan
ranks among music's most versatile practitioners.
Boston born and Harvard educated, Bookspan grew up in a
family whose love of music was passionate and broad-based. His father was
a particular enthusiast of Jewish liturgical music and often took young Marty
to hear the artistry of the world's most celebrated cantors. At the age of
six, it was time to begin his formal musical studies and the violin was chosen
as the most suitable instrument. Turned on to listening from earliest
childhood the radio was, of course, an inexhaustible resource for music the
boy was soon old enough to usher at Symphony Hall. There he heard not only
the glorious sound of concert music performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra Serge
Koussevitzky was then its music director and all the world's great artists
trooped by in a never-ending flow but also, through the Pops, a colorful
canvas of show, dance, folk and pop tunes. Music for Martin was pluralistic
from the outset, and as boundlessly fascinating as the men and women who
wrote and played it.
By the time he got to Harvard, he already had a pretty
good notion of high professional standards and realized that a concert career
as a violinist was not for him. He put his fiddle down and has never picked
it up again. (His major at Harvard was German literature.) It was at college,
however, that he was first able to combine his gifts: a fine ear, legendary
memory, natural ability to organize, driving inquisitiveness, and of course
that wonderful speaking voice. He became music director for Boston's radio
station WBMS a year before his 1947 graduation, going on to WCOP and WBZ
(1951-56), before becoming music and program director of New York's WQXR
(1956-67).
His twenty years of direct involvement in "good music
radio" give him a broad perspective. He points out that we have between
commercial and non-commercial concert music stations far greater depth than
when he was in Boston in the 40's, with over 250 such outlets throughout
the country. "They are an oasis in the middle of the desert. They really
do in their communities a service which can only be done by radio. They bring
to their public the new technology-most stations play c.d.'s now as well
as concert tapes from the orchestras which syndicate, and new record releases."
While people may not depend on radio as exclusively today as they did before
the mass media explosion of the past decades, they listen best while riding
in their cars. "The car has become a medium of complete involvement
in music listening."
On the other side of the coin, Bookspan worries about radio's
chief abuse: off-the-air taping. "The practice is a transgression of
Federal and moral law. It deprives composers and publishers of income which
is due them. It robs the record companies of countless millions and certainly
takes away the incentive to continue to record. Our conscience must dictate
that the Congress enact legislation taxing blank audio and video tape, just
as is the case in every country of western Europe, and put this money at
the disposal of composers, publishers and record companies."
On June 5, 1967 he remembers it because it was the first
day of the Six-Day War he gave notice at WQXR that he wanted to leave to
devote himself to writing and becoming a freelance broadcaster. Some months
later, he accepted an invitation to become coordinator of Symphonic and Concert
Activities for ASCAP, a position he held for fifteen years and which brought
him into close contact with virtually every composer in America. A stipulation
of his employment was that he be permitted to continue his writing and broadcasting
activities. He had already authored 101 Masterpieces of Music & Their
Composers (Doubleday, 1968 & Dolphin, 1973), The New York Times
Guide to Recorded Music (Macmillan, 1968), as well as countless record
reviews and articles for a covey of periodicals. When NPR began a series
of interview programs with composers, Bookspan was asked to host its Composers'
Forum. The feature continued for nearly seven years.
Bookspan figures that, between the written and broadcast
media, he has conducted well over 1,000 interviews. He will never forget
his very first, undertaken at the time he was still an undergraduate working
on a term project. "Sure," said the ever-amiable Aaron Copland
to this eager young man, "go ahead and ask me." (Bookspan has occasion
to review this first effort from an old radio transcription not too long
ago and "was not ashamed of it at all.") Every once in a while
a subject proves difficult. Perhaps the most trying interview he ever conducted
was with the composer of one of our most controversial popculture musicals
who proved to be entirely noncommunicative, responding in monosyllables and
obviously regretting that he had ever agreed to this type of exposure. But
mostly, Bookspan has an incredible knack of getting people to talk freely
about themselves.
Martin Bookspan beams at the very mention of his family:
his wife Janet, herself a well-known figure as narrator and stage director,
and his three grown-up and married children, David, a Washington attorney,
Rachel, a psychiatric social worker in Boston, and Debbie, administrative
assistant to Stephen Sell, the executive director of the Philadelphia Orchestra.
He met Jan when she was a senior at Emerson College and is obviously amused
as he remembers their very first date. She was ushering at her college's
performance of Kurt Weill's Street Scene and was committed to going
to a cast party thereafter. "The performance was not bad at all. The
party was awful. We spent maybe ten minutes there before going to a local
coffee shop where we chatted for hours. That was in May. We were engaged
around the Fourth of July and married that October."
Known on radio as the Voice of the New York Philharmonic
since 1975, Bookspan's widest audience circle has been developed through
"that" other broadcast medium, television. He is host and commentator
for all the Live from Lincoln Center and Great Performances telecasts which
have included concerts, operas and dance presentations. His interviewing
techniques have stood him in good stead as a researcher and writer, and he
has used his cassette recorder in gathering data for the two books he has
coauthored (with Ross Yockey), Zubin: The Zubin Mehta Story (Harper
& Row, 1978) and André Previn: A Biography (Doubleday,
1981). He recalls how the Mehta biography, which ends with the conductor's
music directorship of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, had to be rushed into
print. It seems that Mehta and Bookspan were standing together on the last
December day of 1975, admiring the magnificent view of Catalina Island from
the conductor's front yard. "I can never conceive of leaving this place,"
Mehta remarked. The next day he had another visitor: Carlos Moseley, president
of the New York Philharmonic. By coincidence, Moseley and Bookspan were on
the same New York-bound plane on January 2 and, on being asked what he was
doing in southern California, Moseley smiled innocently and said, "Oh,
I just took a few days off to visit some old friends out here." Although
the Mehta stewardship in New York could not begin until the 1978-79 season,
its announcement was publicized a few days after that chance Moseley - Bookspan
encounter.
He chuckles as he recollects that the Mehta biography was
something of a fluke. He had originally conceived of a number of books by
different authors on major U.S. symphony orchestras. The history of the Los
Angeles Philharmonic was of particular interest to him, so he reserved this
book for himself and was in the process of finding other authors to do Cleveland,
New York, and Philadelphia when the publisher dropped the whole project.
With hardly a Luftpause, Bookspan came up with the counter-suggestion:
how about a book on young Mehta who had already taken three continents by
storm?
Not content to rest on the secure laurels of his ASCAP position,
Bookspan surprised the music world in 1983 by becoming artist and repertory
director for The Moss Music Group, an enterprising roster of recording labels.
He makes no secret of the jeopardy in which he finds the entire recording
industry, describing it as "an endangered species." Not only is
it compelled to cope with the home taping dilemma and its economic implications,
but with the overall question of its very raison d'étre. There
is, after all, virtually nothing of the music of the past which has not already
been recorded. If consumers resist contemporary music, what should record
companies now record? Bookspan's chief reply and one senses that he himself
feels an insufficiency in his response is the new technology, the ability
to make standard works available in ever improving fidelity.
In all the many dimensions of his professional activity,
Bookspan has been required to interact dynamically with musicians. He thinks
of himself as a communicator among communicators and he has a keen insight
into the creative personality. "It's a very lonely existence. They may particularly
the performers surround themselves with entourages, but they remain so alone.
The composer, painter, playwright, poet, their time is spent in solitude.
The human condition must react traumatically to that kind of aloneness."
On the other end of the spectrum is the audience to whom
the creative artist must address himself. Potentially, Bookspan says, every
human being in the world is a consumer of the artist's expression and, taken
all together, constitutes the market. That there is often a gulf between
the professional artist on the one hand and the rest of mankind on the other
seems irrefutable. But how to bridge that gulf? "It's precisely that
question which The Association for Classical Music is asking itself. How
do you do it?" [see page 14] Bookspan is the Association's chairman
and feels that much can and must be done to make concert music of the past
and present attractive to more people. "A questionnaire has gone out
to some school districts in which sixth and tenth graders were asked to respond
to the question: `What is classical music?' The responses have been extremely
interesting and indicate that the educational job to be done is formidable."
Did Martin Bookspan think that the role of music in our
society differs today from when he was growing up in the shadow of Boston's
Symphony Hall? "Music made me aware of a big universe, although I was
living in only a small community. It was a shared experience with countless
millions of others whom I would never know. There was something almost mystical
about it. I wonder if there is, today, the same kind of magic. Or has it
become a little common, a bit more workaday and less ... sanctified? It may
have something to do with over-saturation, with the proliferation of available
listening opportunities. Some of the specialness has gone."
This spring, Martin Bookspan received the Medal of Honor
for Music from the National Arts Club, joining such past recipients as Leonard
Bernstein, Richard Rodgers, Olga Koussevitzky, and Rudolf Bing. A distinguished
gathering assembled to pay tribute to a musical facilitator and a master
communicator. In the program, they read a capsule summation of the honoree's
career, the last line of which stated: "It is difficult to estimate
the enormous influence he has had over the tastes and appreciation of music
in thousands of listeners not only in the large urban centers where music
is always available but also in remote areas wherever his voice is heard."
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