The Coda is the closing section in a musical composition that is formally distinct from the main structure. You know, it is the end of the composition, and it sounds different. This is a coda—the end of Tanglewood’s 2024 season.
I have lived three minutes from Tanglewood for more than 40 years, but less than half a century. Still, I have missed some things. I was there for Lennie’s birthday and that phenomenal cake. Bernie cut it from the rung of a 10-foot ladder and handed me a piece. (If you don’t know who Bernie is, you missed a bit of Stockbridge lore. Watch for my Stockbridge column).
By absolute accident, in the shed, I sat next to John Williams at his 90th birthday concert (before he ascended the stage). Nope, I spoke not a word. I couldn’t think of a thing to say. I sat on the lawn behind Ozawa Hall to hear Yo-Yo Ma. We had a bottle of wine, but I forgot the cups. A lovely usher went somewhere and came back with two actual wine glasses. Clink-clink.
I did miss Ozawa concerts—I never understood the wonder of Ozawa. Two things I never missed: the 1812 overture and Beethoven’s Ninth. I know it is emphatically bourgeois to like Tchaikovsky’s “1812” and “Ode to Joy” and not appreciate atonal music or Maestro Ozawa, but to be a journalist is to tell the truth, and there it is.
This year I missed Beethoven, so I am evoking an earlier experience. The evocation is in honor of many things: the last concert of the BSO/Tanglewood season 2024, the reason Koussevitzky chose the piece in the first place, and my new book on the history of Tanglewood. My agent loves it (wish her luck in convincing a publisher to feel the same). You can judge; here is an excerpt:
It is 72 degrees, a light breeze picks at corners of this and that, the sun is sinking in the west, the ground darkening, the sky still light—late August, perfect weather, gentle evening. The cars switch on their lights and inch up Route 20 from Lee and the Massachusetts Turnpike toward the merge with Route 7. At that point, cars are at a standstill, waiting to make the left turn onto Walker Street. Walker is backed up from Route 7 to the Tanglewood entrance. No horns, no obvious impatience. The weather, Berkshire air, something in the August light has a calming effect. At an intersection in the center of Lenox a policeman waves cars onto West Street and finally another policeman waves them into the entrance of Tanglewood.
It is the last night of the season. Tomorrow afternoon the BSO will play Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—the one Koussevitzky chose to close every season because, he said, it was “the greatest masterpiece in musical literature.’ In 1947 Koussevitzky did the Beethoven cycle—all nine symphonies—with Bernstein in the chorus. On the lawn that night were a young man and woman. Their parents sat in the shed in dresses, jackets, and ties. The young couple stretched on the lawn, the man in shirtsleeves. They met friends there who would remain friends for life and the couple? They became engaged. Every year they returned to celebrate their anniversary, trying to select a weekend when Beethoven was on the program.
This is a place of music, yes, but also of traditions. Tomorrow afternoon the BSO closes the season with an Ode to Joy. Every year they celebrate Tanglewood on Parade (once Koussevitzky’s birthday party) with the 1812 Overture, have a salute to Bernstein, and the Williams oeuvre on ‘Film Night.’ Moreover, on the lawn, tomorrow afternoon, picnic beside them, the couple will sit returning for their 58th wedding anniversary. And then…
The gates will close, the leaves on the great Tanglewood trees will turn ablaze for a brief time, before the ground freezes, the picnic lawn is covered in snow, and Tanglewood is silent for another year.
All the discussion about change at the historic site will be rev up once more.
‘When they brought chairs onto the lawn for sitting, that was the end of Tanglewood.’
‘Oh, no it was when they took down the hedge and did away with the box parking lot, you knew the glory days were over.’
‘Ah I didn’t mind that, but when they used amplification, well you have to admit that was the end of nature and culture.’
‘Amplification? That wasn’t it, but I will tell you when they put big-screen TVs on the lawn, well that was the end.’
‘It was when Bernstein died; when Ozawa stopped conducting, when they omitted Fan Fare for the Common Man…’
‘When ancient trees were taken down and the large-screen TVs put up—that combination marked the turning point. That was when Tanglewood went from country to commercial, and that was the bitter end.’
But it is not the end. The snow will melt, the trees bud, and the music will begin again.
