Questions about ‘The Paper Symphony’

I’ve been at sixes and sevens about this post since I knew I had to do it. Even had a hard time picking the leadoff graphic. This one does convey the idea of questioning the decision by a great man of senior years.

But this one introduces the notion that Philip Glass’s principled stand is one that has been sponsored by indolent dilettantes who didn’t give a fig about the Kennedy Center during the decades in which it has been literally falling down.

Falling down. Along with all the forms of high art the Kennedy’s were trying to inspire with a facility for culturally significant performances by the nation’s most gifted artists. Interesting and ironic that they choose the 87 years Philip Glass to deliver their most stinging blow against the unspeakable privately financed renovation of the crumbling building and its wayward preoccupation with niche artistes.

Am I getting ahead of myself here? Did you miss the story when it broke? Lawrence O’Donnell, the left’s fantasy Dean of Jeffersonian intellectuals would be mortified if you failed to overturn your soft-boiled egg cup at this news:

 

No, I’m not giving it as big a play as the elite media. If you want bigger print, click’em.

Okay, okay. I’ll do some ‘splaining for the yokels in the group. What is being called the Lincoln Symphony is a big deal in the lofty circles who want to put Donald Trump in his place. As the rich son of a real estate mogul, he’s not fit to be in building-name company with the rich son of a bootlegger and Nazi sympathizer. Not even being a President is enough to overcome some social differentials. Even if the similarities are more numerous than the differences, which nobody on either side of the current blood-soaked political aisle wants to look at for a second. The famously unheard symphony by Philip Glass was commissioned in 2022 when the BMW tanks if the limousine liberal set were aiming their sturm and drang full force against the criminal ex-President of the United States. The intent was to humiliate the Trump person with a high-toned masterpiece of classical music that came to be known informally as the Paper Symphony.

This monicker was mentioned often enough that it reached into the depths of my rural backwater in southern New Jersey. Paper Symphony? What’s that, I wondered. I couldn’t find out anything about it except that it was a classical composition by Philip Glass, whom I also knew little about. Lacking any recordings of it on YouTube, I had to make it up for myself. I imagined a woke composer conjuring up a sound explosion of shuffled, tossed, shredded paper as some kind of Warhol-esque tour de force transforming the commonplace into a multi-million dollar consumable by the lords of the Upper East Side. The truth of it as almost as implausible as my version. It was a still be finished symphony about a published paper transcription of a speech by the sainted Abraham Lincoln. 

It has its own Wikipedia page, which is pretty good going for a piece of music nobody’s heard or even performed yet.

                   

What does any of this have to do with humiliating Donald Trump? The document called the ‘Lyceum Letter’ is the key. In the speech text, Lincoln is warning his audience that the greatest dangers to the republic and individual would not come from hostile foreign nations but from within. He specified the       nature of that danger at some length. I looked it up. The Lyceum Letter is no Gettysburg Address; it’s 3,700 words, longer if it were read out loud than the projected length of the symphony.

In all likelihood the text most likely to be featured somehow in the orchestral work is this:

**********

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts . . . . Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times. They have pervaded the country, from New England to Louisiana . . . . Whatever, then, their cause may be, it is common to the whole country. . . .

But you are, perhaps, ready to ask, “What has this to do with the perpetuation of our political institutions?” . . . When men take it in their heads to day, to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect, that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn someone who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of tomorrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. . . . [A]nd thus it goes on, step by step, till all the walls erected for the defense of the persons and property of individuals, are trodden down, and disregarded. But all this even, is not the full extent of the evil. By such examples, by instances of the perpetrators of such acts going unpunished, the lawless in spirit, are encouraged to become lawless in practice; and having been used to no restraint, but dread of punishment, they thus become, absolutely unrestrained. Having ever regarded Government as their deadliest bane, they make a jubilee of the suspension of its operations; and pray for nothing so much, as its total annihilation. While, on the other hand, good men, men who love tranquility, who desire to abide by the laws, and enjoy their benefits, who would gladly spill their blood in the defense of their country; seeing their property destroyed; their families insulted, and their lives endangered; their persons injured; and seeing nothing in prospect that forebodes a change for the better; become tired of, and disgusted with, a Government that offers them no protection; and are not much averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose. Thus, then, by the operation of this mobocractic spirit, which all must admit, is now abroad in the land, the strongest bulwark of any Government, and particularly of those constituted like ours, may effectually be broken down and destroyed—I mean the attachment of the People. . . .

The question recurs, “how shall we fortify against it?” The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others. As the patriots of seventy-six did to the support of the Declaration of Independence, so to the support of the Constitution and Laws, let every American pledge his life, his property, and his sacred honor;—let every man remember that to violate the law, is to trample on the blood of his father, and to tear the character of his own, and his children’s liberty. Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap—let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs;—let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars. . . .

**********

Where to begin? Questions aplenty to be posed if not answered. For example:

— 1838? Lincoln was 29 years old. His writing is not the clean simple elegance to come. It’s lawyery.

— His argument is good, but key points of emphasis are subtle. Why even bad laws must be obeyed?

— It’s hard not to suspect that President Lincoln might not have agreed with his 29-yr old self. He’s the one who suspended habeas corpus for the duration of the Civil War.

—What exactly does the libretto consist of? Has to be an extreme subset of the multiple sources indicated in the prospectus. Who wrote it is an important unknown in the project ballyhoo.

— What role is music supposed to play in a lofty implication that in terms of the Lincoln material, Trump is an obvious malefactor? That’s a big stretch by anybody’s measure, unless the audience is expected to infer what they’re supposed to because the sponsors have told them in advance how to hear it.

— What is the actual role of the composer in this project? If the libretto was born principally of the Lyceum Letter, the man writing down the musical notes is like the composer of a movie score, not the heart of a creative project bearing his name in neon lights.

— How and why exactly did Philip Glass get dragged into the project? For a composer of his eminence, the whole endeavor seems, well, beneath him.

Last question first is the best way to get to nub of the matter. In 2022, Glass was 83 years old. If the symphony commission was intended as some kind of lifetime honorific, it’s more than a little late. The cultural doyennes who fund and govern the classical music world are also in charge of awards like the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Back in the sunset of the 20th Century, eminent composers like Wynton Marsalis, George Gershwin, and Duke Ellington were recipients. By the year 2010, the prize winners were no longer household names but denizens of a boutique demi-monde. Know any of these names?

• 2010: Jennifer Higdon, Violin Concerto
• 2013: Caroline Shaw, Partita for 8 Voices
• 2015: Julia Wolfe, Anthracite Symphony
• 2017: Du Yun, The Silk Road
• 2019: Ellen Reid, The River of War
• 2021: Tania León, Yo y La Gente
• 2023: Rhiannon Giddens and Michael Abels, Omar
• 2024: Susie Ibarra, The Great American Dream>>
• 2025: Susie Ibarra

Philip Glass, father of 14 symphonies before the 15th and a multitude of other brilliant works, has never been awarded the Pulitzer Prize. One reason I’ve been stalling about doing this post has been my sincere admiration for the works I’ve found and enjoyed enough to write about and heartily recommend to others. I’ve even borrowed one of them for use in my own writing. But time’s a’wasting. It’s VE Day, we are at war with a nation that’s been a mortal threat to the United States for almost a half century (I don’t need the NYT editorial board to explain the meaning of “Death to America” for me.) It’s well past time to be concocting elaborate new ways of attacking the duly elected President of the United States.

Here’s what I think. Philip Glass got roped into this by people he has learned through life experience have a lot to do with maintaining the reputations and legacies of great American artists. He probably got handed the required libretto after he had accepted the commission and tried to honor it. He’s written for the movies before, although no one ver called a film score a symphony. No matter how grand it is, a film score is background music for something dramatic and attractive in its own right. The Lyceum Letter is about as appropriate for use in a symphonic/operatic experience as the famous but not scintillating Farewell Address of President Eisenhower. Refresh your memory. Would you want to pay good money for a symphony based on this?

Important but not the Eroica.

It’s at Rumble. Where it still can’t be linked to pop up like a YouTube clip. It’s a caste thing.

I rest my case. The future of the Lincoln Symphony remains in doubt. It has been scheduled for a debut with named performers and conductor sometime in 2027. I can’t help wondering if might blow another gasket before the long postponed performance. One can only hope, for the sake of Mr. Glass that a live performance won’t be as fraught as the equally long-awaited release of the live-action remake of Snow White. That would be unfortunate indeed.