"A character in Willa Cather’s work says that “religion and art—and in the end they are the same thing—have given mankind the only true happiness it has ever known."
Magazine
Winter/Spring 2002
An
unexpected gift
by David Kubiak
As I enter the second half of my academic career at Wabash I have been
given the great and unexpected gift of beginning another career as a singer.
Growing up I was always an opera fanatic of an identifiable type, who
at age 12 could tell you when and where Renata Tebaldi first cracked the
high C in O patria mia. I also knew I had a voice of sorts, but through
the years never had the time to study very seriously.
That opportunity came to me here at Wabash when I worked for four years
with Michael Belnap, then our Glee Club coach and now a faculty member
at the Indiana University School of Music. My instincts were good, I think,
and when I acquired the technique to support them I emerged as a lyric
baritone singing major parts with my choral group in Lafayette, Ind.,
the semi-professional Bach Chorale.
But the most rewarding part of my new career has been an ongoing collaboration
with Marc Loudon, a distinguished organic chemist at Purdue University
who is also a pianist of professional achievement. We have worked together
now on several Lieder projects, and it is one of them, the Dichterliebe
of Robert Schumann, that I will remember most warmly. I had the chance
to talk about the cycle with the Swedish baritone Haaken Hagegaard at
a week-long song festival in Cleveland, and Marc and I coached it at IU
with Leonard Hokanson, one of Arthur Schnabel’s last students, and
a celebrated accompanist of such famous singers as the late Hermann Prey.
As a literary scholar, I had to think about what the poetry of Heine
meant, and then Marc and I had to decide how we could come to a common
interpretation that might do some small justice to Schumann’s miraculous
music.
It has been a great privilege for me not only to appreciate art as a spectator,
but to be a part of making it as well. And that is the lesson I hope that
I am passing on to my students here—respect for the great nobility
of the European artistic tradition and a desire to connect oneself to
it in a personal way, whether grand or modest.
A character in Willa Cather’s work says that “religion and art—and
in the end they are the same thing—have given mankind the only true
happiness it has ever known.” In my experience, very true.
David Kubiak is professor of classics at Wabash and a frequent contributor to Classical Singer magazine.
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