Tabuteau book: Awed and Puzzled
Monday May 12 2008
I just finished the chapter about Tabuteau and Stokowski, and Storch has done a ridiculously amazing job researching this topic. The only other book I can compare it to is Christoph Wolff’s Bach Biography, the Harvard Scholar’s life work.
But this chapter shatters any concept I ever had of who Tabuteau was, and there is so much speculation that I am left with more questions than answers. It seems in the single chapter Tabuteau is portrayed as:
- Brilliant genius
- Neurotic Paranoid
- Raving Egomaniac
- Calm, composed mediator
- Sympathetic Father Figure
- Literally a physical bully
- Laugh-out-loud comedian
Perhaps he was all of the above, and perhaps that’s why he is a legend.
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May 12, 2008
Having not started the Tabuteau book yet (though I am almost finished reading Sound in Motion, which is truly excellent)I don’t know how much Storch goes into the background of Georges Gillet, Tabuteau’s professor and obviously just as influential when you consider that he was the grandfather of both the French and American schools (through not only Tabuteau but Fernand Gillet as well). The reason I bring it up is it seems that these oboe giants are not saints at all, but complicated flawed individuals. According to Storch, Gillet was averse to letting his students in on the black arts of how to make good reeds (and I’ve read similar things about Tabuteau, though John Mack somehow got it out of him and was happy to share). I’ve heard similar things about other oboe giants who acted as if sharing insider secrets on making reeds was like giving up a piece of themselves or making it too easy for their students who should also suffer on the way up! There’s a great story in the Gillet article about Gillet’s disdainful reaction when one of his students went out and bought a gouger, as if he were encroaching on some no go zone for the mere initiate! Here’s the Gillet article, with apologies if this ground is also covered in the book:
http://www.idrs.org/publications/Journal/JNL5/gillet.html
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