Sheet Music Politics
This past week, the last New York City bricks and mortar
store that sold sheet music rang up the cash register for a final time. It wasn’t a pretty tune. The business is dying—the world has changed, and everyone buys their
sheet music on line--or downloads it but doesn’t pay for it—or gets someone
else’s score and scans or copies it.
When I first heard about the imminent demise of this mecca,
I immediately texted my daughter, who is a conservatory student. I got an almost instantaneous response, the
content of which showed me that she might be a teenager, but already she is
becoming sophisticated in the ways of people who try to make a living at music—I
should only buy things if they are on sale.
I ignored this.
First, I felt a going out of business sale would mean good prices—after
all, the luggage store across the street was offering up to 90% discounts on
their “lost-their lease” clearance.
Secondly, I wanted the feeling of going into a great old store, like
Argosy, or Strand, and just soaking in all the atmosphere of being surrounded
by works of genius. In my mind’s eye,
musicians (and parents who look after them?) would crowd the halls, looking for
each scrap, cherishing each note. If, by
some chance, I paid a couple of bucks more for a real version, not some dusty
used one, so what? It would be
special.
The building was perfect—old time New York City
pre-war-worn-to-a-nub. The elevator creaked charmingly, opening up to a floor
that had been divided into practice rooms, studios, and the obscure object of
my search (I walked past it as I came in.)
From the floor above I heard a baritone warming up. I was psyched. Tosca
and Tristan are what my daughter
wanted, and Tosca and Tristan was my mission. I would not fail.
The owner had them. In
fact, she had different versions of each, leading me to ignore the “no
cell-phone" sign I missed, and call the child in question for
guidance. We decided on the Schirmer Tristan and I picked the Ricordi Tosca with the excellent footnotes. Ringing off, with a second “don’t buy it
unless it’s on sale” ringing in my ears, I made my purchase. The books were placed into a nice store
envelope, to give it an extra touch of formality, and I walked out, past real
musicians thumbing through sanctified pages.
I felt good—out of all this digital air, I would give her the real
thing, something she could write in and make her own. I imagined her studying, annotating, going to
them again and again until they became like beloved, worn slippers.
It helped that I was clueless. No only did I have no idea
how much these things were supposed to cost but they weren’t even marked. So, I paid what the owner asked, and left with
my treasures tucked inside my raincoat. Suffice
to say, it was not my shrewdest purchase of all time, but I will chalk it up to
a paying a premium for the experience.
The scores, over-priced or not, will go to good use.
Yet, there was something about this that just didn’t sit
right with me. The store first opened in
1937—it seemed a shame to see it fade into irrelevance, especially since it
still sold something of value. The owner
simply could not adapt to changing circumstances—the only visible evidence of
even 80’s modernity was an old calculator.
Everything else could have been done by gaslight. In the end, she was left with a diminished
product wedded to an unviable business model.
Maybe there was no way out, but she had clearly made the conscious
decision not to try. She just couldn’t wean
herself from the old ways.
I couldn’t
get this experience out of my system; it struck me as so resonant with the messy
wider world we live in and the hapless way we are dealing with it. Just as there are no certainties in business,
there are no certainties in the marketplace of political ideas. Things change, and ideally political parties
change with them. That is hard to do on
the fly, because many of their adherents still believe in that old time
religion, and because too much of modern politics is about taking. It’s far
easier to justify that taking—either liberty or property—by couching it terms intended
to imply Constitutional fealty and moral force.
That gives it a virtue that purely secular motives, even those
ostensibly for the common good, cannot approach. Ross Douthat, the conservative
columnist for the New York Times, makes this argument in the context of human
advancement in The Case for Old Ideas. “New ideas, rooted in
scientific understanding, did help bring societies through the turbulence of
industrialization. But the reformers who made the biggest differences — the
ones who worked in the slums and with the displaced, attacked cruelties and
pushed for social reforms, rebuilt community after it melted into air — often
blended innovations with very old moral and religious commitments.”
What is fascinating about Douthat’s piece is what it does
not say. He wants innovation wedded to faith—his kind of faith. But the linkage between “very old moral and
religious commitments” has been tested severely by the coopting of the language
of religion to justify the use of purely political force to limit freedom. And,
there has been a bifurcation, in both parties, in a way that Douthat fails to
acknowledge. The Democrats are far more
likely to encourage the social reforms that Douthat professes to admire, albeit
it in a secular, government-directed way.
The Republicans have embraced Douthat’s personal religious fervor and
desire to proselytize, but have withdrawn from the pastoral aspects. The true reformers, people like William Lloyd
Garrison and Jane Addams, whose passion for justice were clearly influenced by
their faith, would probably have felt unwelcome—in both parties.
I think that people in the great middle of the electorate
sense this inconsistency as a bankruptcy of conscience, and are looking for a
way out. They really do believe this country is the greatest place on Earth,
and they wonder when their leaders will be worthy of our heritage. They know
that businesses don’t succeed when they turn aside customers—to thrive, you have to adapt and grow.
That is really the point--to be part of something bigger. As Lincoln, our Poet Laureate once
said. “We can succeed only by concert.
It is not "can any of us imagine better” but "can we all do
better?" The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy
present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise -- with
the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew. We must
disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.”
The Sheet Music lady couldn't disenthrall herself from the old assumptions, until it came time to close the store. Will politicians take the hint? Will they disenthrall themselves before we disenthrall ourselves of them? .
March 10, 2015
Michael Liss (Moderate Moderator)
Join us on Twitter.
