Struggle and Strive

STRIVE: Beethoven

My band class, two days old by the time you see this, had begun in a painful sort of way. Everyone was gripping their seats as if they were life rafts, instruments precariously perched on trembling knees. Nervous chatter filled the room, like the chatter of birds or chipmunks crying for help from a friend in a neighboring tree. There was no help to be had here. The director stood at the front with a marker in his hand, a baton absent, widening the eyes of his students. Then, he began to part the lips of his fuzzy, beard-clad mouth and

Speak!

And in moments of his voice being released, he had a room full of glassy-eyed teenagers rethinking all of their life decisions that had led them

Here.

Band was where you were supposed to pick up your instrument and play some notes on a page, preferably at the same time as everyone else. Well, at least

Potentially.

But potentially the purpose has more potential to be examined. Because it seems like music might just be more than those previously mentioned notes and baton slashes. Some players just make it look like

More.

When you look at many of the first chair players before class, you can see maybe of them joking around, laughing, being the crazy teenagers the rest of us are as well. But then, they come to class, they sit down in their seats, press their mouthpieces to their lips, stick their mallets in their palms, or touch their reeds to their tongues and

Transform.

They pull the notes off the page with their fingers on their keys and oxygen in their lungs they've sucked out of the air. They take themselves to another place and leave everything else

Behind.

But these impressive musicians are students right now, and we are all uncomfortable. There are kids on their phones, whispering to their neighbors and staring off into space. I am still clutching the edges of my seat, trying not to pass out from boredom and exhaustion and desperately trying to remove my mins from thoughts of the physics class I am required to attend next. And to do so, I begin to look at the board my director is writing on and start to catch what he is saying. He is talking about

Beethoven.

As he speaks, talking with such vigor about this passed composer and his works and his oddities and his differences, I begin to really like Beethoven. I had nothing against him before this lecture, but I didn't really feel like I knew him before. Now, I know

Him.

Beethoven wasn't like the other composers and metaphorically speaking, wasn't allowed to join in the reindeer games for quite some time. Because people try to judge the composer before they are

Dead.

In the music world, that just isn't right. Beethoven was different. He didn't want to write about circuses or parties or dogs or toys or anything else like the others did. As my director said, "He chose not to write about what was earthly." He wrote about

Emotions.

Beethoven was a poet with notes. He cannot be described any other way. He wasn't a composer who likes rigid markings or strict notations. He wrote to express and he expected it to be played how he felt:

Emotive.

That's what those first chair players wanted to be doing right now (and at this point many of the others in the room who could no longer stand the blank staring and urging to talk): expressing. But instead, here we were listening to the director speak for 60 of the 90 minutes instead of conducting like we felt he was supposed to. It seemed as if only two people in the room were listening. And then I realized, I was one of them. I was listening because I was listening to Beethoven. I was listening to his anger and his love an his tears and his heart in the music I had heard before but never really understood.

I was listening to poetry without actual words. And I found myself loving it. Me! The last chair flutist growing a first chair

Heart.