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BY ALEXANDRA RODRIGUEZ

In print | Published November 12, 2009

As classical music stations gradually fade into static and schools struggle to fund their music programs, have we found ourselves fighting to nourish a dying species?

Despite its many remaining devotees, classical music seems like a remainder of another era. In our technology-obsessed age, classical music has joined the ranks of other slowly fading mediums like print journalism, floppy disks and voicemail. In the eyes of popular culture, classical music has long since lost its luster. Potential listeners are convinced that classical music is “boring.” Perhaps their appreciation (or lack thereof) for classical music was tainted by the fact they were forced to take up an instrument under the encouragement of a good-intentioned parent, only to abandon it somewhere between elementary school and the SATs.

Maybe some of it is true. Like most things in life, some classical music might fail to inspire, and not all performances are successful. A large percentage of classical music tends to have a soporific effect (especially when played at low volume). If only all performances were as exciting as Tom and Jerry’s melodious sparring in the Academy Award-winning short cartoon “Cat Concerto” (1946), a playful rendition of Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 in C Sharp Minor.

Hoping to overcome this sense of dormancy, I looked for an antidote. I attended a recent installment of the Midday Monday Music Series on Nov. 2 in Lang Concert Hall. The performance featured the Temple University Tuba Euphonium Ensemble. It highlighted the tuba. Created by Wilhelm Wieprecht in 1835, the tuba was originally played in Prussian military bands, and is the most recently invented of all brass instruments.

The tubas are “organized like a male choir,” said the lively director of the ensemble, Jay Krush, who teaches tuba and euphonium at Temple University.

An audience of mostly kindergarteners and elderly retirees filled about two-thirds of Lang Concert Hall. There were a few Swarthmore students scattered amongst the crowd. Usually, about two hundred people attend the Midday Monday concerts. “We’ve had more, we’ve had less,” Michael Johns, the series director, said. He also said that the number of students is typically “more substantial.” “We’d like to see more faculty and staff come,” Johns said.

The first piece the ensemble performed was “Salvation is Created” by Pavel Tchesnokov. It was arranged from Russian Orthodox choral music and carried a slow, booming, rather murky melody. The second piece, “Into the Magical, Mystical Rain Forest” by Jesse Ayer, b. 1951, incorporated “electronic sounds” which at one point verged on sounding alarmingly like techno. But there were moments where the rich, sultry voice of the tubas and euphoniums (which are smaller tubas) seemed to rise up to the ceiling of the concert hall.

“The Devil Septet” by Eric Ewazen (b. 1954) sounded like the ideal score for a surrealist film — it was a cacophony of noises in a frantic, dissonant crescendo. The penultimate piece of the performance, “Evensong,” composed by Jay Krush (the director himself), recalled the intrepid musical quality score of a late 1990s-early 2000s war film. Interspersed with the occasional smack of a trashcan lid — and even sleigh bells — it had an intriguing sound. The last piece they performed was the “Five Dances” by Tylman Susato (c.a. 1510/15-after 1570), arranged by John Stevens. These “dances” had a hearty, robust feel to them, evoking Pieter Brueghel-esque images of clumsy, romping Flemish peasants.

Now in its fifth year, Johns believes that the Monday Midday Concert Series can become an integral part of Swarthmore’s cultural life. It can “provide high quality performances accessible to everyone, mingling generations of listeners as young as five, as old as eighty-five, and everything in between.”

The program, which encourages its audience to bring lunch with them, is designed to be a casual cultural outing. “the idea is that it is a place where everyone is invited and the music is accessible to everyone,” Johns said. “We sent information to the staff, the students, the community members, to schools around the area, to retirement homes.” In the past, performances have included drum sets, piano trios and even jazz groups.

But due to a decrease in funding, Johns said that encouraging publicity for this concert series has grown more difficult. “There used to be a ‘Friends of Music and Dance’ newsletter … an on-campus newsletter discontinued two years ago.” The Delaware County Times and local Swarthmore papers also advertised the performances, but this has also become a thing of the past.

Geoffrey Peterson, the concert manager of the Swarthmore music department, creates publicity for the event. “I design fliers for it — for the real, sort of basic grassroots stuff right here on campus.”

He said that it would be “helpful … if more funding were available to advertise in local newspapers,” and suggested that the college homepage could even feature upcoming performances. “Perhaps another avenue could be a college-sponsored website [on the department’s webpage],” Peterson added.

Despite a lack of publicity, the concert series has nevertheless spurred a strong following. “A number of people who come from New Jersey have been here for every concert,” Johns said. Johns also noted that the Monday Midday Concert series is now “starting to take hold.”

The majority of the performers are local. “We get the sort of the cream of the crop of people coming from Philadelphia and also people have established presence from the greater Delaware Valley,” Johns said. “We also like to have alumni when they’re available.”

It was clear that the ensemble performance hoped to show off the instrumental versatility of the tuba, despite exposing some of its limitations in the process. Regardless, it was an absorbing experience, and served as a lovely respite after suffering in the painful grip of a disagreeable case of the Mondays.

When all is said and done, classical music and modernity can be reconciled. Classical music has always been evocative of something even larger than itself, allowing it to withstand time.

And for the record, the vintage antics of Tom and Jerry in “Cat Concerto” can be viewed via YouTube with a few clicks of a somewhat more recent and relevant breed of mouse.

The next Monday Midday Concert Series, featuring the Fetter Chamber Music students, is scheduled for Dec. 7.

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