I'm happy for tonight's
state of Connecticut, which
works with.
Mr. Glover, George on campus, Gregory.
On Capitol Hill, the principal
French horn is with the Chicago Symphony.
Thank you for being with us.
Thank you also for.
You spend some time with these three
students.
I know it's been a real experience for
them and for me.
Could you tell me a little bit about your
your background and some of the
specific experiences that have led
you to the point that you are now
performing with the Chicago Symphony?
Well, when I I was born and raised
in Chattanooga, Tennessee,
none of my parents were musicians.
My dad used to be president of
Chattanooga Opera Company, and he
took me to opera and symphony concerts
when I was about seven.
I started piano
and as
we would view the orchestra
at the opera or the symphony concerts,
I kept my eye on this shape
of metal, which is different, which
were the French horns.
And I sort
of was infatuated
with the way they look or I looked
more. I became infatuated with the way
they sound.
And
I had a dream, a vision
to to play one of those things.
And I stuck with it.
And when I was 11,
my dad brought me bought me a trumpet
he couldn't afford.
I didn't want to afford French horn
didn't think I would do that much with
it. When I was 13, I switched to a
school instrument and
the next year he finally bought me
a French horn and
I played in bands and orchestras
in Chattanooga and the Chattanooga
Symphony.
I went to Chautauqua, New York
one summer and studied with.
A teacher that I decided I would like
to study with and
I chose
what was the Carnegie Institute of
Technology, which is not Carnegie Mellon
University, I might
add, that I considered very
strongly coming out here to school.
But at the time, there was no French
teacher in the orchestra of
the stature that I
wanted to be identified with
and nothing to do with the school, I
mean, are coming out here.
So I went to Pittsburgh to sectarian
school, a secular school,
I should say, and,
uh,
practiced a lot that a lot of experience
and
played in all
the school
orchestras and bands and chamber music
groups, played in the Wailing Symphony,
played extra with the Pittsburgh
Symphony. When I graduated from school, I
went to New York and
made my way up there.
I worked for a time at Radio City Music
Hall, played by Broadway shows.
Uh, I worshiped at the Manhattan Church
of Christ and
that was sort of a base of operations
and, uh,
kept taking auditions till I finally
got one. I actually
took maybe nine or ten auditions and
I passed two or
three of them. They offered me jobs.
I played in the Kansas City Philharmonic
for one season and
then went back
to New York.
And I played with the Pittsburgh Symphony
on a three month European
and Middle Eastern tour in 1964,
back to New York City after that,
and then was taking auditions
as they came up of ones of interest.
I auditioned in May of nineteen sixty
five for the Chicago Symphony, did not
make it.
They didn't take anybody and auditioned
again in January of
sixty six.
Started the work in February 1966.
It was the seventh.
This is my 19th season
and if you
talk to me more than about a minute what
it's like to play there, I'd have to
admit I still can't believe it.
Hmm.
It's still you still got a real
sense of satisfaction without question
performing. It's it's
just unbelievable at times.
You know, there were two things that you
said about recounting your life
story. One is that it's it's amazing,
at least to me, to hear how
many people go
back to their childhood and remember a
time that they thought even
in early childhood.
That's what I want to do someday.
Just as you were talking about the time I
knew when I was about 14 or 15
that what I'm doing is what I wanted to
do.
I did not know what
would be involved in getting here,
how much work. I didn't really know if I
could you find that out along the way,
but with
a lot of hard work and
enormous drive, a
lot of practice.
A little talent and some very
good schooling and
a good deal of good luck being in the
right place at the right time.
We put all the ingredients together.
Well, I'm sure timing does have something
to do with it. But the other two things
you mentioned were a lot of hard work
and a little talent, which I attribute to
your modesty, I think is probably
a great deal more talent there.
But but I think it probably
is possible for a lot of people
to assume that it's all talent
in case of a person achieving
that particular level of performance
and perhaps not be aware
of the years of hard work and
practice that may go on.
It's not all of any one of those things
it has. It's a balance
of all of those things, all those
ingredients that I mentioned, some
maybe a little more than others.
There are some people who are highly
talented, but they don't work hard enough
or they don't have quite enough drive
to do whatever it takes to get there.
And I had a lot
of drive.
Well, you mentioned a few auditions
that you didn't make.
And so obviously
it wasn't that every door you walked in,
they welcomed with open arms and were
ready for you at that particular moment.
I played as I can
recount maybe
as much as a dozen auditions
and was offered.
Three or four positions, I only took
one or two out of them, of course, the
main one of those being the Chicago
Symphony.
I have a young man in my section in
the Chicago Symphony who's
passed every audition he's ever played.
He was in the Chicago Symphony at twenty
two.
I was in at twenty five.
But that's almost
unheard of these days.
I have another student who
studied with me in Chicago
several years ago for about two and a
half years.
He's the second home of the Boston
Symphony and that
was his 40 seventh audition.
Hmm.
I can't I can hardly believe it,
but he he counted them all up and
he said it was worth the effort.
I'd like for us to come back a little
later and talk some more about auditions,
because obviously that's a very
significant part of being able to
perform in a significant part
of a lot of people's lives in the
eye of the needle.
Yeah, that's right.
But first, I'd like to ask
you this.
How do you see
the role of of music,
uh, integrating with
society today?
What how would you define
its role in our society?
What, uh,
what does it play?
What is its
my my
mission in life.
My passion.
My compulsion is to make
music.
Uh, when I was younger it was
perhaps for different reason.
I enjoyed it an enormous amount.
I love to be enveloped with the sounds
of a symphony and not only the sounds
of symphony. I love jazz, I like
good soul music.
I think good music fits the occasion.
And to hear a very
fine band is is superb.
So I'm not a stuffy
symphony musician who only wants to hear
a symphony.
But as I look upon my career
now and what I'm doing,
I counted.
I realized that I have been given a gift
by God to
to make music,
to perform
music and to give people
joy.
And you take music out of society,
out of the world, and you take
a lot of joy out of this world.
And that's
simple, as I can put it.
It's I have
the pleasure, the privilege
of making people happy and
in doing so, making my own self happy.
I do play for myself.
I enjoy what I'm doing.
And I want the audience to know that
I enjoy what I'm doing, by the way it
sounds.
But it gives me a great feeling
to know that
somebody who's hearing me for the one
thousandth time are the first time
really gets a lift,
a thrill out of what I'm doing,
out of the sounds that I make.
It's, let me say, a real honor
for you, for you to be here on
our campus and to have performed
with our students and
both the solo that you played, as
well as the number that you conducted.
Uh, we're we're very
moving pieces.
What what is the
one thing that you would like for an
audience to do in response when
you're performing or playing the words?
There are a lot of opportunities or
alternatives of ways that they can
respond.
But if you could have them respond just
exactly what you would like for
them to do, to sit back
and feel very comfortable
and enjoy what we're doing,
it's a performance we're in the
performing arts
and music is is
obviously very communicative art.
And it involves
seeing it live, of course, involves
the sight and the
sound of the ensemble
and the thrill of the situation.
And of course, when the audience gets
taken up in it with an applause
and and
those kinds of responses,
I, I like I want them to enjoy
it.
It seems like music has a way of
touching moods and emotions that
that perhaps there's no other way to
touch something you said it to.
Can you sense that that's happening
sometimes with an audience can?
No, without question.
It does it with me.
It's got I mean, and I'm they're
human beings like I am.
It has to.
How do you
when you're up on the stage,
are you able to detect different
audience differences and different
audiences, can you tell an audience
seems to really be responding?
Sure.
Well, to you, as opposed to another
audience that might know we the Chicago
Symphony plays each concert
three, four or five times
every weekend.
And one night we will
play for these are generalities
which we'll play for our group of
for an audience, many of whom are
there because their parents
were subscribers.
Are there on the board of trustees
are they want to show off their mean
coats in the safest place to go.
But in every audience, most people are
there because they're there for the
thrill. They're there to be to
enjoy. It is a doctor,
an orthopedic surgeon in Chicago
who's from Houston, Texas.
He told me, I said, why are you in
Chicago?
He says, I'm here because of the Chicago
Symphony.
Only he says I can fix bones
anywhere in the world so I can live
anywhere I want to.
He does an Oak Park River Forest
and he's at the Chicago Symphony every
weekend and
sometimes two and three times a weekend.
And here you fly to New York to see
the met just to hear a concert.
He he fixes bones,
as it were, in order to listen to music.
Hmm.
Now, there are a lot of people that have
that way who would
get that kind of thrill out of a out of a
concert in an orchestra is very special.
It's it's quite different from most
other orchestras.
In what ways do
most symphony orchestras
contain a large group of people who are
there because they can't do anything else
and would rather be doing something else?
Believe it or not,
most of our orchestra and
95 plus percent
of all the people in the orchestra still
love to make music.
They they enjoy the thrill
of performance, being a part
of an orchestra
that's they haven't lost
that that excitement about
still doing it hasn't become boring or
monotonous.
So, I mean, it's not always great.
I mean, there are mountaintops
and there are valleys every
every concert every week can't be the
same as the last one.
But by far,
the overall experience is
the mountain tops are certainly worth
waiting for and they are there
more often than you might expect.
We need to take a break here for just a
minute and then we'll be back and
continue to visit with Dale Clevenger.
Abilene Christian University is a place
where people really matter, a concept
held since the school's beginning in
1986.
Well, today, more than 4500 students
from across the nation enroll in ACU
in the middle of west Texas because
they know it's where people really
matter. The university's academic program
reflects people orientation and
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If you agree that people really matter.
You'll love Abilene Christian University.
We're back on campus and continuing to
visit with Dale Clevenger, the principal
French horn,
there's no sign on your French horn
here made by S.W.
Lewis, Chicago, October the 20th.
Nineteen eighty one for Dale Clevenger.
Write your own personal French horn.
Right. What's, uh, is there a particular
story behind that horn being made for
you?
Yes. About 11 years ago,
uh, a young man came
to me very meekly
at a horn workshop in Florida,
Tallahassee, Florida, and said
he would like to come to Chicago and
study with me.
And I said, fine, could I, uh, could we
get together and let me hear you play?
And, uh, I was satisfied
that he was quite talented.
And and I would like to have him
as a student,
came to Chicago and he auditioned for
Civic Orchestra, which is a training
orchestra for the Chicago Symphony.
Also in that civic orchestra that year
was a lovely young lady
from Dallas that he fell in love
with and.
Got married
quickly, real quickly, he realized that
in a marriage you have to
put bread on the table and he had to go
to work, so put a
slight damper on his studies of horn.
But he went to work at
a music instrument maker,
Shoki Company, and
worked three and a half years under
a master European craftsman.
Mr. Jerry Lesnik
from Latvia.
And in four years,
at the end of that time, Mr. Lennon died.
Steve, later.
About six years ago, started
his own business, started making
Hornes this instrument is
is number 62
and he finished it about, well
about two years ago.
I've been playing about two years.
And last week he finished Horn
102.
And this young
student who came 11 years ago is
now internationally famous
as a horn maker.
Is that and this is one of the finest
instruments in every way that's made
today, the materials,
the workmanship and the way it
plays.
What is the particularly
specific role that a French horn
plays as far as an overall
orchestra is concerned?
How would you distinguish it from the
other instruments?
Let me say that it is called French
horn only in English
speaking countries.
And technically it's not French.
It's it's Ostro Bohemian.
But in all other countries, it's
called just the horn.
Everybody knows what it means.
The horn. But it's OK for us
to say French horn, OK, the
the horn.
The French horn is a pivotal
instrument in the orchestra.
It is often used for chordal
structure, particularly in classical
music, but in all kinds of music
where two, three, four horns,
usually four.
Are the basis of a cord.
That's going on during the process
of the peace are sometimes
since it is made out of brass.
It is basically a conical instrument
made of brass.
And.
Is composers often write it.
To be played only with strings.
So you have four horns and
the string section.
Often they write it to be played with
woodwinds, so we must
blend our sound to woodwinds
alone, our woodwinds and strings.
No trumpets and trombones,
and since it's also a brass instrument,
it is we are
often coupled with the trumpets
and trombones.
So we are very a very pivotal
instrument, sometimes being a
brass fanfare kind of
instrument.
Playing technical passages
are full chords.
Are we often called upon to play
like, play with and play like the
woodwind instruments?
At a lower dynamic level, maybe
a different tone color, and
we're often called on to be to
play with the strings or the orchestra,
uh, relating to the strings,
it is probably close to the cellos
in the range that we play.
So it's like the cello of
the wind section.
You have not only played throughout
America, but around the world and
different countries, are there any
particular performances
that stand out in your mind as being
exceptionally well?
Yes, somebody asked me that
about three days ago, and there was a
fellow in the audience who had who had
been there when our
president, conductor George Shote, Sir
George Shote, came shortly
after he came, we played in Carnegie
Hall, New York, the Mahler Fifth
Symphony, which has a very
prominent part for the first trumpet
and the first heart
along with everybody else.
But our instrument is featured
throughout.
And the applause
at Carnegie Hall was astounding.
You have to just sit
and clock 20 minutes
of clapping before you realize
just what 20, 20
minute applause is like, and
that's what they did. They were standing,
stomping, clapping.
He kept going on and off the stage.
And I didn't
know much how else to respond
and to just, well, I just
couldn't believe it.
And it was maybe five years after
I got into the orchestra or less than
that, three, four years.
And we've had similar responses like that
to that piece and
many other pieces all over the world.
Vienna, Berlin, Amsterdam,
London, particularly Japan,
all over Japan.
And nearly everywhere we play, we have
a response like that.
Has there been any particular person
that strongly influenced you or.
Either in your study of music or
your performance or anybody that you
feel like you have and
then particularly influenced
by who is there, several
my band director in high school is
he tried his best to talk me out of
playing professionally and really and
he was a great band
bandmaster, if I mention his name.
Any band directors who hear this program
will will now know who
he is, A.R. Casavant.
But he didn't think it was possible for
me to make a living doing this.
In my drive, my motivation,
my will to succeed at this
far out shown his
advice not to do it
and he's quite happy for me now.
He's he doesn't begrudge me that at
all.
But, uh, my band
years in high school were really
wonderful.
And, of course, my individual teachers.
One of the most influential people.
My career at this point is
the first trumpet player of the Chicago
Symphony, Adolphe.
Mr. Trump, it seems.
It's just unbelievable
in what way is the employee's,
uh, his musicianship, his tone?
Is his musical attitude,
is his love of the business
and of music and playing
in an orchestra.
And his consistency and his
character.
And is.
Example of what a professional
musician is, it's probably the best
living.
Certainly the best living brass player
there yesterday, in my opinion,
you know, you talked about your band
director not being able to detect
the drive that you had, which is
one of those those intangibles
that you really can't see on the surface.
Uh, and it may even continue
to develop and and grow stronger
as the years go along.
And we get back to this audition that we
talked about earlier, because that must
be an important part of the audition,
the determination or drive about
what kind of advice would you
give to a person as far as auditions
are concerned?
You
know your stuff.
Be well prepared.
Uh.
This is just so much to say about
it.
There's an enormous amount of repertoire
that you have to know that you're
probably going to be asked to play on an
audition and
I mean, there are certain basic
elements of an audition.
Your rhythm and your intonation has to be
nearly perfect.
And then your
tone quality and your musicianship and
just your very personality.
Your own personality
has to come through and be so convincing
that whoever is listening to you wants
you.
How do you know, though, how you're going
to stack up with the other people in the
don't you don't know.
You don't I mean, you can't really go in
knowing necessarily whether you're the
best and the order.
You don't know until you get there.
If consistently
you are among the top 10 or the top
five percent and most of the auditions,
then you've got an idea of where you're
stacking up against the
competition.
How do you, uh, how do you compare
the college level musician today
or the college level of musicianship
today with professional?
Musicians.
What's been your experience as far as
the quality of players?
There are other elements than just how
they play.
I mean, there are some college musicians
who probably play as well or better
than some professionals.
The professionals have experience.
And you can't buy experience,
you only get that on the job of
knowing what to do, how to do it and
when.
A college player might do
it a little bit better on a given
moment, but
they quickly learn when they get on the
job that that experience
that they're getting is invaluable.
But most professionals are
far better than.
Better, better, technically, certainly
better musically.
Now that that you've
you've seen a number of people who made
the auditions and people who didn't like
the auditions, what would you say
differentiates those who are successful
from those who may be?
I've tried a lot, but just never were
successful in your auditions.
I mean, is it just musicianship
or their ability to play the ends?
No, no, no, no.
You're under the
the ground subject of music there.
I think at least two
basic areas.
One is the craft.
The technical, the physical,
the means to the end, the.
They have to.
The method.
On the other side is the art form,
the end product, the musicality,
the the thing,
the effect, the thing that the audience
actually hears.
Nobody in the audience was
even curious are
questioning about which finger
I use last night, which notes
or how I helped my hand in the bell,
or how much pressure I use on my face
are not there.
They were only interested in what sounded
what came up in the
dynamic contrast, in the stylistic
contrast.
And.
The person who shows
more personality, who has
more attention to detail.
It has more flair as
a soloist are the ingredients
that it takes to be a section player.
On a French horn, it's a matter of
having a very good high register,
a very good middle register and a very
good low register, you can't
have one or two of
them and not the other.
I'm sorry. We're out of time.
It's been most enjoyable.
Thank you again for being with us.
You're awesome. Thank you for being with
us.
And with Dale Clevenger, Principal
French Horn is with the Chicago Symphony
on campus.