Opus 18, No.4

In the 1980s, my parents owned a Zenith record player. It had a plastic silver face, faux wood-grain sides and a tuner display that glowed lime green when switched on. Mom and Dad didn’t own very many LPs — but what they had was gold. Sam Cooke, the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations: this was the music of their heyday. There was no Beethoven in their collection, no Miles Davis either. No Public Enemy nor Cyndi Lauper, although Dad did love Whitney Houston and kept a copy of her self-titled debut cassette tape in his vehicle for at least a decade after its release. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen a man with a gun rack in the back window of his truck earnestly singing along to “How Will I Know?”

As I became a teen, my parents’ tastes veered more towards Travis Tritt and Randy Travis: countrified tunes that didn’t connect with me. I was soon taking cues from Soundgarden and Pearl Jam. I started playing bass guitar at fourteen and took bass lessons for a short while that spring. By the end of June, I had worked through all the lessons in The Electric Bass Primer, Volume 1. Ray, my bass teacher at Star Guitar, told me to bring in tapes of songs I liked and wanted to learn and he’d teach me to play “by ear”. Ray rolled his eyes when I brought in Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Love Buzz”. He was able to figure out, play, and begin teaching both songs to me in under five minutes. Kurt Cobain was a tortured genius, but Nirvana’s bassist, Krist Novoselic, was white bread — boring and uninspired. I didn’t realize it at the time, but Ray sure did. The next week I brought in “Heart-Shaped Box” and “Polly”. Ray yawned. A couple of months later, I brought my cassette of Dookie to rehearsal and Ray’s eyes lit up. When he heard Green Day’s “Welcome to Paradise” he smiled: Now, there’s a bassline! Let’s get to work.

My interest in Nirvana and Green Day led me directly to an underground, independent punk music scene that was inexplicably flourishing in Minot, North Dakota at the time. Mid-nineties punk legends like Bikini Kill, Godheadsilo, Fitz of Depression and many others played for legions of enthusiastic spike and leather-wearing teens. At my first band’s first show, on a Sunday night, in front of a half dozen friends, I wore an American flag-bedecked motorcycle helmet, with visor down, as I plunked through the set, playing my janky little bass lines.

A decade later, I was still cranking out janky little bass lines, sans motorcycle helmet. During my time in the Navy, I met a couple of guys and invited myself to play bass with them. We’d play Creedence and Jackson 5 cover songs in the dive bars of the Pacific Northwest, Guam, and Virginia.

As I planned for my impending post-military future, I was also embarking on one of my annual existential crises. I was loosely looking into colleges I wanted to attend, but had no clue what I wanted to major in. If hard-pressed, I would venture only a room-temperature response: “something in music?”

Klickitat County (James Rascoe, yours truly, and Jack Brett), circa 2004

I was fortunate enough to have a bevy of free time — as our ship was in dry dock — and signed up for some general education courses at Old Dominion University. My course-load for my first semester at ODU shows the confusion I held for my imminent future: Physics of Sound, Sailing 101, Intro to Creative Writing, and Music Literature Survey. Of the latter, I had no idea what to expect, I just knew I’d probably learn something about music. As it turns out, it was a history of classical music from the Middle Ages to present. One of the requirements of the class was to attend at least two classical recitals per semester and write up concert reports afterward. That assignment led me to Beethoven, and the rest of my life.

The first concert I attended for the class was in September, 2006 at Chandler Hall on the campus of ODU. The Borromeo Quartet was performing Beethoven’s String Quartet in c minor, Op. 18 №4 along with two other string quartets that I have long since forgotten. The hall was intimate but sparsely-attended. By the second bar of the first movement of Op. 18 №4, I was riveted. I would soon discover that there is nothing inherently groundbreaking about Beethoven’s Op. 18 No. 4. It doesn’t represent an evolution in Beethoven’s own compositional style. It is no “Ghost Trio,” no “Pathetique” Sonata, certainly no Symphony №9. It is nearly lost in the classical haystack that also contains Bach’s perfect cello sonatas, Bellini’s operatic arias, and Chopin’s heart-wrenching nocturnes.

But the sound of that quartet in Chandler Hall was as smooth as a good merlot. Wood paneling projected and refined the unamplified violins, viola and cello. The first and second violinists leaned into the music, swaying with the downstrokes. The violist’s eyes flashed back and forth from the cello to the violins, reading them for rhythm, for changes in tempo. The music built to a galloping, swelling ending with all four strings playing three fortissimo triplets in unison. The sparse crowd waited for the reverberation of the final chord to fully decay before applauding the musicians. I had literally never heard music like this before.

When I walked out of Chandler Hall that night, I knew what I wanted to major in. I wanted to preserve that performance. I wanted to put that sound in a jar, and open it up whenever I was feeling hopeless or lost. I wanted to re-create that concert for anyone who couldn’t attend the recital. I wanted to be a classical recording engineer.

One year later, I was living in Chicago, majoring in Audio Arts and Acoustics, and cold-calling local classical groups to see if I could record their recitals. I was volunteering at the CSO and subscribing to BBC Music magazine. By 2010, I was interning at Chicago’s only classical radio station, WFMT. I worked my way up the ranks, from intern to overnight Production Assistant to Recording Engineer — my goal — before moving up to Operations Manager and finally Chief Engineer in 2017.

I can’t listen to any one genre of music for too long without growing a little tired of it, so I listen to all styles, from Billie Holiday to Amalia Rodrigues to Megan Thee Stallion. But every time I hear the Op. 18 №4, I stop whatever I’m doing and fall back in love with classical music.

If Beethoven Owned an iPhone

his symphonies would number not 9, but 2 

(perhaps 2 ½, leaving one

“Unfinished” like Bruckner did). 

He would check his Twitter mentions 

after every performance, scroll

the BBC Music app with each album dropped. 

Ghost vibrations would leave incomplete

his Opus 70 Ghost Trio. 

Fretting about his branding, 

he’d compose and orchestrate his LinkedIn bio.

If his Heiligenstadt Testament 

were leaked to Buzzfeed, he’d need to release 

a PR video on YouTube,

sit down with Terry Gross, 

post pics of his semicolon tattoo. 

Conducting his Triple Concerto from the piano, 

he might butt-dial that Soprano 

he collabed with once, six years ago. 

He would totes tote his Zelfie-Schtüken

on his daily walks around @RathausPark.

#NeverNotComposing

He would force his niece 

to post TikToks of herself flossing

to his latest mixtape. 

On death’s stoop, he’d doomscroll

in a darkened room, puffy undereyes,

shock of iconic hair cast in a sallow blue glow, 

pressing the speaker end to his deaf ear,

volume full, feeling fomo 

for his protégé’s Première.

#yolo