Ravinia 2023 Issue 6

Lawn Clippings By John Schauer Obsession, a Flagrance by Compact Disc WHEN I FIRST SAW the movie Amadeus , I immediately identified with Salieri for two reasons: as a child, I had also prayed to be able to devote my life to music; and I also had a father who had no empathy with my devotion to music whatsoever. Having grown up during the Great Depression, my parents were very cautious with money, including how I spent my own allowance. My father in particular thought buying classical recordings was frivolous. Once, when I wanted to pur- chase another LP, he responded, “Why do you want another record? You already have three.” When I later mounted an elaborate campaign to justify acquiring a second recording of Handel’s Messiah —my first being the drastically abridged Leonard Bernstein version—he was beyond dumbfounded. I relate this not to elicit sympathy, but to pinpoint the source of a lifelong ob- session with expanding my collection of recordings. I switched from LPs to CDs decades ago, and was glad to get rid of my vinyl discs, no matter what the young hipsters who champion that format’s revival might claim. But don’t get me started on streaming—I want something I can hold in my hand. You can tell it has gotten out of control if you visit my apartment, where the walls are covered with shelves of CDs (along with DVDs and books, two other fixations). I essentially live in a library. I’m at the point where I’m so short of shelf space, if I acquire another CD, I need to pack up or dispose of a previous one. My compulsion has gotten so bad, on occasion I will actually purchase a recording of a work I don’t even like, simply because I feel I should have one. The psychological residue of my youthful struggle to obtain a complete Mes- siah is reflected in how many versions I currently have of many of my favorite works, among them 9 recordings of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake , 12 sets of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, 14 performances each of Bellini’s Norma and Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor , and no fewer than 22 Messiah s (down from 24, which even I found excessive). A Freudian analyst would have a field day with that last statistic alone. The phenomenon is a bit more understandable in the case of vocal works, especially operas, partly because they have so many component parts, it is nearly impossible to find one performance in which everything is ideal; and because vo- cal performances are judged differently than instrumental ones, due to the voice factor. I doubt that anyone buys a recording by Joshua Bell because they especial- ly love the violin he performs on, or one by Lang Lang because they are enam- ored with the particular piano he is playing; but a vocal instrument that is less than gorgeous is, for me, a major barrier to enjoyment, no matter how artistically the singer is employing it. Voice aficionados are particularly sensitive to criticism of their own favorites. I actually lost a friendship over the fact that I don’t enjoy the sound of Maria Callas’s voice. Of course, the obvious question is: Do I actually listen to all of these discs? Sort of; I play some frequently, others only once. It’s amazing how often I run across a recording I didn’t realize I own. And it’s only lately that I’ve begun the dubious process of binge-listening, in the sense of listening to numerous record- ings of the same piece in succession. It’s a strange experience, and an option that people in past centuries didn’t have. For instance, if you lived during Berlioz’s lifetime, you would have been lucky to hear his Symphonie fantastique maybe two times before you died; I listened to nine different performances in one weekend. And a curious thing happens: you reach a point where none of them is complete- ly satisfactory, something that doesn’t happen when you have and know only one version of a work. Diminishing returns, I think it’s called. The sad denouement, of course, will be when I eventually go to that great listening library in the sky, and my cherished collection ends up in the dumpster. It’s an obsolete format, and even libraries don’t want them. I know; I inquired at the music library of my alma mater, Northwestern University. Not interested. But I don’t care; I love them. And at the end of the film of my life, as they are being tossed into the furnace, the camera will linger on that Bernstein Messiah engulfed in flames. My personal “Rosebud.” John Schauer is a freelance writer whose inner child still gets a thrill just looking at all the CDs on his shelves. RAVINIA MAGAZINE • AUGUST 28 – SEPTEMBER 10, 2023 82