The Life of a Musician: A Subjective Account

By P. D. Quaver

Before I embark on any sort of autobiographical effort, my readers might want to know how this could even be accomplished, given that I have chosen to write my books under a pseudonym. Which leads to the further question of why I made this decision in the first place.

 As to the latter query: Simply put, I have a taste for privacy which, in this age of rampant self-promotion, is both eccentric and unfashionable. In addition, though a lifetime lover of  literature, I made my living as a musician, so I have come late to the art and craft of writing. The creation of "The Ordeals of Elly Robin" was a decade-long labor of love; delaying the series' promotion until the final volume was finished allowed me to polish the earlier volumes as my writing skills improved. And I feel there's a kind of purity in letting the result of this, my "second career," sink or swim on its own merits.

As for what sort of autobiography I can offer while maintaining my anonymity, I think the most interesting things about my music-suffused existence don't lie in the specifics of when, where, or with whom I have performed, but in the nature of musicianship itself. As I wrote in the"Afterword and Historical Notes" to volume one of the series, the impetus for writing these books was not just a fascination with the historical period (and its music), but my conviction that no novelist (at least none I've discovered in a lifetime of searching) has written about the life of a musician—what the act of making music actually feels [ital.] like—and gotten it right. So my autobiography can already be found, after a fashion, "hidden in plain sight" within the books themselves.

The central contradiction of a musician's life—that this wonderful art form, so endlessly fascinating to its devotees, can look so boringly repetitive when viewed from the outside—is something I several times endeavor to explain; this is from "Elly Robin: Bird in a Gilded Cage":

     Elly being urged to play; the room packed with excited listeners as she and Tony traded

     solos in a playful sort of competition; the table lined with Coca-Colas bought by her

     admirers… Like so many nights in a musician's life, seemingly interchangeable. Yet, 

     like flowing water, the music's ever-shifting rhythms and flashing arabesques were 

     never the same, and the thrill of improvising a solo at breakneck speed was as exciting 

     as jockeying a thoroughbred to the finish line.

(I might add that, in my own experience, the Coca-Colas were more often beers.)

Yet another example of the interiority at the heart of music-making lies in one of a musician's ultimate tests: having to play a show, sight-unseen. But if the challenge is met, it can also be a transcendent experience. As it was for Elly, in this scene from "Elly Robin on the Road":

     Elly never felt so alive as when her brain was being taxed to the utmost. Arranging

     and transposing songs on the fly, alert for cues, adjusting to singers she was hearing

     for the first time (Clement's tendency to drag, Winnie's to rush, Roland's light, easily

     overpowered tenor, Chester's elastic use of time for comic effect)—steam might almost

     have poured out of her ears, so revved up was her mental engine.

Elly's experiences at the Institute for Musical Arts (later renamed the Juilliard School), in volumes seven and nine, are based on my own experiences at two similarly prestigious conservatories. Their buildings were honeycombs of tiny practice rooms (whose steam radiators added to the hothouse atmosphere), and the sounds of one's peers pounding out octaves through the thin walls fostered an uneasy mix of gossipy comraderie and cutthroat competitiveness. 

But the heart of the conservatory experience is the weekly encounter with one's teacher. And the imparting of arcane knowledge, physical skills and interpretive traditions, through a one-on-one master/apprentice encounter, is part of an unbroken tradition extending back at least to the time of Bach. Elly's chief mentor is the fictional concert pianist, Vittorio Bellini. But there's nothing imaginary about the lore he shares with Elly in her first lesson, in an early chapter of "Gilded Cage":

     [He spoke] of how the forty-eight Preludes and Fugues of Bach—two pairs in every major 

     and minor key—form the Old Testament of the pianist's bible, with the New Testament being 

     the thirty-two sonatas of Beethoven. How many did she know? She must learn them all. And, 

     just as in the Bible, a Book of Revelation: the twenty-four etudes of Chopin. Transcendent

     exercises exploring every sort of technical problem, yet beautiful enough to perform in a 

     concert hall.

Though I possessed some natural talent (at five I was picking out tunes by ear on my toy xylophone), I was never a prodigy like Elly. But if music is a language, we're both multilingual. In Elly's case, this versatility stems from her exposure, as she's pinged around the country like fate's pinball, to a kaleidoscope of rich musical genres. She absorbs American popular song and ragtime's intoxicating rhythms in vaudeville, inhales Hazel Bland's hymnal in the Marysville children's asylum, learns to not just play, but to freely improvise ragtime from Old Sam Hackett in Cripple Creek; her year as an invalid in a remote Black community schools her in the blues, and New Orleans serves as a sort of finishing school in America's supreme musical art form, that improvised stew of march tunes, hymns, blues and ragtime that became known as "jazz."

My own versatility had a much simpler and more direct source in my father's wildly eclectic record collection. An early hi-fi enthusiast, he seemed to like pretty much anything. Beethoven, Brubeck, Belafonte; Horowitz, Peter, Paul and Mary, the Russian Red Army Chorus; Scottish bagpipes, Indian ragas, Broadway cast albums, movie soundtracks--my childhood was marinated in music. So in describing Elly, in the afterword to volume one, as a "musical melting pot," I am also describing myself.

As if to compensate for the outwardly repetitive nature of the musical experience, to actually make a living (at something most people do for fun) often demands that same kind of versatility, a willingness to travel, and a wild variety of venues. Which Elly's encounter with Brett Crawley, her old friend from vaudeville days, makes clear in another scene from "Gilded Cage":

          He launched into a dizzying account of his life during the time they'd been separated,

     and if Elly had any lingering doubts about the peripatetic nature of a musician's existence, 

     she quickly lost them. Jobs playing with other vaudeville troupes, in theatre pits for shows 

     that closed after three performances, in a society orchestra in Washington D.C., on a 

     Mississippi riverboat. Even (he sheepishly admitted) playing for a flea-bitten circus.

         “That was the low point. Had to play 'Entrance of the Gladiators' every day about 

     fifty times in a row as all the acts paraded around the ring. Only way I made it through

     that job was to stay drunk."

     Though I've never played for a circus, Brett's account only scratches the surface of my own eclectic career. I too have played on Mississippi riverboats (where my duties included playing the steam calliope on the top deck, an evil always-out-of-tune instrument louder than a stack of Marshall amps), as well as ships cruising the Caribbean and Mediterranean; I've accompanied a traveling operatic quartet, played for Broadway-style shows, led a jazz quintet in a world famous hotel, played a long-time dueling grand piano gig, composed radio jingles and sound tracks for industrial films. And don't even get me started on the weddings, church services, trade shows, dinner theaters, piano bars, and private parties. Once I even performed in a mental institution,  where a couple of the inmates got so worked up by my boogie-woogie they threw themselves headfirst against the walls (luckily they were already wearing crash helmets); alert readers will correctly surmise this was the inspiration for poor Hattie Lumberg's affliction in volume one. 

Two of Elly's performing experiences—accompanying melodramas and silent movies—have become antiquated endeavors, and correspondingly rare. But I was lucky enough while in college to land a summer job accompanying melodramas at a Colorado resort (enabling me to also work on my ragtime skills). And that gig on a Mississippi riverboat included evenings playing behind silent movies. Both required the ability to improvise music on the fly that enhances the ongoing drama; it's both exhausting and exhilarating, as these scenes from "Elly Robin on the Road" and "Elly Robin in Harlem" make clear:

          Elly improvised a florid overture, then allowed the clear-cut emotions of the story to

     pour out of her fingers...She conjured up a pathetic theme for Claire's heroine and a 

     menacing motive for Chester's villain (repeating and elaborating on them as the drama 

     progressed), and triumphant music for the moment Chester received his come-uppance…

          The challenge of simultaneously learning the score, tailoring it to fit the action, and

     blending with the other musicians was the same kind of thing Elly had learned to do 

     accompanying live melodrama...She struggled to match the comic timing of the physical 

     business on the screen, nerve-wracking work in a film she'd never seen. The drummer

     helped by underlining some of the pranks and pratfalls with cymbal crashes of thuds of his 

     bass drum. Still, she missed more cues than she caught, and concentrated instead on 

     memorizing everything for the next performance. By the film's end she was wet with 

     perspiration...

     As mentioned, I've been involved in several Broadway-style musical productions, both as pianist and pianist/conductor, and the opening night of a big musical show has a special kind of electric excitement. The cast and crew of "Ooga-Booga," the fictional show featured in "Elly Robin in Harlem," have added Elly's rewrite of "Jungle Serenade" at the eleventh hour. But it's barely learned, they're all exhausted, and their excitement is tinged with the very real possibility of spectacular failure; here I try to paint the scene of those deliriously fraught final minutes before the overture's downbeat:

          On the ride back to the theater Delphinia was uncharacteristically silent, and she

     rushed from the stage door to her dressing room without a backward glance at Elly. Cast

     members in various half-dressed states moved urgently through the warren of backstage

     corridors like passengers on a sinking ship. In the orchestra pit the musicians were 

     running through their parts; without taking their lips from their horns they nodded at Elly.

     It was thrilling to hear bits of her own melodies poking through the atonal cacophony.

          Along with their noodlings she heard another sound dear to hearts of musicians and

     thespians: the rumbling murmur of a large crowd… At eight o'clock the house lights

     suddenly dimmed. There was an expectant hush, then a spotlight followed Jim Europe

     as he strode from the door of the orchestra pit and ascended the podium. He acknowledged

     the applause with a brisk bow, then turned to face the orchestra. But the confident smile

     he flashed them was belied by the look of resignation in his eyes. Well, here goes nothin...

In contrast to the edge-of-your-seat excitement of a big theatrical production, the supreme thrill for a classically trained pianist is a demanding solo recital. It's something I've experienced hundreds of times in my life, and in this scene from "Gilded Cage," when Elly performs her first solo recital at Chicago's Hull House for an audience of socialists, anarchists, and struggling immigrants, I tried to portray what it feels like to walk onstage:

     Suddenly the hall was filled with applause and Miss Addams was smiling toward her

     expectantly. She was reminded of times she'd had to fight her way through a crowded

     saloon to get to the piano. Except this was a saloon full of sober-looking men in their

     Sunday-best clothes, and smling women in modest, full skirts with children on their 

     laps. She gave a jerky kind of nod toward the audience and sat down. The applause

     died away, replaced by the restless, piping cries of very small children, and hissing

     sounds of their mothers shushing them. But she paid little attention, for music was

     already flooding her mind, music with an urgent need to find an outlet. She lifted her

     hands...

A few months later, Elly plays her formal debut; among the audience are the cream of Chicago's musical society, including the conductor of the Chicago Symphony. So it's a much more daunting occasion, and—while waiting in the wings to go on—Elly has a rare case of performance nerves:

          Lillian impulsively hugged her, kissed her on the cheek, whispered "Good luck!" in

     her ear, pushed the swinging door open, and stepped into the ballroom. The rumble

     died away and for a few minutes Elly could vaguely discern Lillian's voice but not her

     words. A couple of times something she said provoked a ripple of chuckling.

          The sound of applause.

          She pushed open the door and walked toward the instrument. The audience was a

     sea of black, splashed with color from the gowns shimmering in the light of an enormous

     chandelier. She stood before the piano, made a dismal attempt to smile and bow

     graciously, then sat down. The applause had been only polite, and quickly died away.

     Her hands felt damp and she wiped them on the skirt of her gown. Someone tittered.

     She stared at the keyboard. Her heart was beating violently and she wondered if she'd

     be able to play at all. Finally she raised her arms--

          From the first imperious chord of the Back Chaconne in D minor, her fears dissolved;

     it was as if music was a vast ocean, and she a fish. And for the next hour, she swam

     through this element in which she was so at home, the audience no more real to her

     than people to a perch.

For better or worse, nerves are a part of every performer's life; Vladimir Horowitz, perhaps the greatest classical pianist of the twentieth century, developed such a terror of performing he was forced to take a twelve year hiatus from concertizing. Even such a supremely confident artist as Artur Rubinstein admitted to feeling butterflies beforehe stepped onstage—with the caveat that they almost always disappeared when he began to play. But tellingly, he also noted that without that fluttery feeling beforehand, his playing was never at its best. Which suggests that nerves are less a necessary evil, than a necessary ingredient of the exalted mental state required of a great performance. 

This truth (which I can't recall having seen depicted in novels about musicians) comes home to Elly in one of the climactic scenes of the series' final volume, "The Triumph of Elly Robin." Waiting in her dressing room before her appearance with the New York Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky's piano concerto, she realizes that what just happened between her and Jimmy, by altering her mood, has also jeopardized her impending performance:  

          With alarm she suddenly realized how mentally unprepared she was for what

     everyone insisted was the most important concert of her life...It occurred to her

     that the strange combination of agitation and dreamlike detachment that had 

     plagued her all day had been nothing but her mind's usual way of preparing itself

     for an important performance. But the last hour with Jimmy had induced in her a

     comfortable feeling that nothing else was real but the two of them, nothing else

     mattered...

         "You need to go," she blurted.

          He opened his mouth as if to speak--then instead nodded, gave her hand a

     squeeze, and left.

          Even as she'd spoken to him, the opening bars of the concerto were running

     through her mind. A minute later she was sitting on the commode, smoking a

     cigarette, eyes closed, kneading her fingers and swaying as different passages

     coursed through her brain, igniting rainbows of color...

         Back in the anteroom she pulled on her shoes, put the tray of sandwiches on the 

     floor, and--sitting on sofa and leaning forward--pummeled octaves on the coffee

     table...

          There came a knock on the door.

The often adversarial relationship between a conductor and orchestra is also something seldom depicted. So I enjoyed portraying Wanda Ballentine's struggle to tame an orchestra she's never even rehearsed—an orchestra that's also deadset against her:

          She met Wanda in the wings, and they embraced. But Wanda swallowed all the 

     things she'd meant to say about the audacity of holding out for unknown ex-choral 

     conductor from Missouri (and a woman!)--because, like Jimmy, she realized at once

     that Elly was already in another world...

          Wanda ascended the podium, Elly sat at the piano, and the audience quieted.

     Wanda gazed around at the orchestra. She had no illusions about what was in store

     for her. Proud, cynical, dismissive--the collective gaze of eighty pairs of eyes looking

     back at her was that of a wild mustang about to show a greenhorn cowpoke who was

     boss.

          She looked at Elly.

          Elly took a deep breath, and nodded back.

          Wanda lifted her baton, counted out two bold, decisive beats, and cued the French

     horns with a stab of her left hand. Already they were fighting her, trying to drag the

     tempo back down to Stransky's. But she refused to bend, forced them to fall in line--

     then, in the fifth bar, surprised them with a broad and compellingly conducted

     allargando.

          Elly entered, ringing her chords with a sound so stunningly massive the audience

     gave a collective gasp...

          For several more minutes, Wanda fought the orchestra, keeping an iron grip on the

     reins. But at the entrance of the lyrical second theme, which she shaped with a clear, 

     expressive sweep of her short arms, she suddenly felt them fall in line. And, as with a

     horse finally broken, she sensed they were ready to race wherever she would lead them...

          Elly felt it too. And from that moment, she, Wanda and the orchestra became a single,

     expressive entity, greater than the sum of its parts, consumed by the creation of a 

     passionate pas de trois... [pas de trois: italics]

That kind of "mind meld," in which the expressive voices of many disparate individuals—pianist and orchestra, string quartet, bluegrass band or jazz ensemble—magically become one, is one of the supreme experiences in the life of a true musician. It's something I've tried to portray many times throughout the series; in this passage from "Elly Robin in Harlem," Elly discovers in Delphinia Jones an affinity for a kind of music that, in 1916, was still little known in America's cities. Music from the rural South that, in a few more years, would be all the rage:

     [It was] less a song than a cry of loneliness and despair. Delivered in a voice as dark and 

     rich as molasses. Every syllable long and drawn out--sliding up to a pitch, then falling away 

     in an eerie sort of moan. Wildly free and expressive, but with the slow, steady pulse of a

     beating heart...

          Elly closed her eyes and joined in. Summoning up the thump of a beaten guitar, the 

     keening wail of a mouth organ. Weird sounds she'd first marveled at, then learned to

     savor. While lying in a dark cabin on a pallet of dried corn cobs, broken in body and soul.

     Music full of pain, which had somehow helped her to heal. And whose language, over the

     course of a year, she had learned to speak like a native...

          On and on, chorus after chorus. The phrases fluid, beats and entire bars added or

     subtracted, the two of them as alive to one another as lovers, conjoined in an exquisite

     ecstasy. Finally returning to the opening chorus, the last line repeated, stretched, then

     fading away like a train whistle echoing across a lonely plain...

All of these experiences help to compensate for a career often so poorly paid and unstable that musicians are the butt of jokes ("Difference between a musician and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family of four"). But I've seen it in the eyes of those I've moved with my music. The wistful recognition that, like all artists, I have chosen to make a living not by spending the bulk of my allotted time on this earth at some more-or-less tedious and repetitive activity, but doing something I feel compelled to do, something that can reveal life, if only for a breathless moment, for the precious gift it truly is.

    Something I love.