"Now he belongs to the ages," were the words
uttered by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton when Abraham Lincoln died. They are
no less appropriate to Arnold M. Jacobs, who died in his sleep Wednesday,
October 7,1998, at age 83.
I was privileged to know Arnold Jacobs for nearly 37 years. I
first met and began studying with him when he was at the very height of his
powers. It was near the end of the Reiner era of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
(CSO), when he had already recorded Pictures At An Exhibition with Rafael
Kubelik, playing the solo in "Bydlo" on a BB flat-F double tuba, the
high C-sharps played on the BB-flat side, and the powerful Prokofiev Alexander
Nevsky Cantata with Fritz Reiner. Yet to come was the Neilsen 4th Symphony,
"The Inextinguishable," and many years of great recordings with the
late Sir Georg Solti. When Jacobs decided to retire due to the deterioration of
his eyesight, Solti told him he couldn't because, "My dear Mr. Jacobs, you
are the Chicago Symphony." Although auditions were held, an immediate
replacement was not available. Therefore Jacobs continued to perform. When
retirement was eminent, Solti awarded him the Theodore Thomas Medal that
accompanies retirement from the CSO. Walking together on the way back to
Jacobs's chair, Solti said, "Now that you have your medal, you should be
able to play the remaining half of the season."
In the early 1960s, it was my privilege to sit high up in the
Gallery at Orchestra Hall and listen to his great artistry. It is often the
misconception that Arnold Jacobs only played loudly. To the contrary, his
pianissimo playing was like silk. It was not sheer volume, but rather his
impeccable rhythm and buoyant sound that made it possible for him to literally
lift the entire Chicago Symphony and drive it like no other player, save perhaps
its principal trumpet, Adolph Herseth. The late Philip Farkas said that playing
in the brass section with Herseth and Jacobs was like driving a road with a
white line on either side; you only had to stay in the middle. I recall hearing
a performance of the Bruckner 4th Symphony from the Gallery that
literally shook Orchestra Hall to its foundations. Yet it wasn't a vulgar
performance, just so rhythmically and inronarionally perfect that the entire
brass section played as one, and this synergy became a performance that echos in
my head to this day. So too does another "Bydlo" that acid-penned
music critic Claudia Cassidy referred to in her review as, "A golden coach
pulled by magnificent white chargers." The late Ms. Cassidy was seldom
100-percent right in her column, but in this instance her prose was exact and as
beautiful as the playing she portrayed. And he replicated that scene in each of
three performances.
At one time students of Arnold Jacobs and the late William
"Bill" Bell carried on a cheap-shot rivalry. In truth, Bell and Jacobs
were the very best of friends, and enjoyed each other's company to the fullest.
One of the last times I spoke with Arnold Jacobs he mentioned this supposed
rivalry and said, "I was on tour and a man came up and without introducing
himself said, 'I study with Bill Bell and you play too loud."' While
students took sides, these two giants of tuba performance remained friends to
the end of their lives.
In life, Arnold Jacobs was bigger than life itself. A self
caricature, he was forever the performer on a stage. Wherever he went, he sang,
often scatting jazz licks. Henry Ford said he liked a man who was fast to reach
for his wallet; Ford would have loved Arnold Jacobs. It took great plotting to
ever beat him to the tab in a restaurant. Many was the CSO ticket he bought for
me so that I could soak up more of his and the orchestra's sound, and many, many
the dinner. Arnold Jacobs loved people and seldom made a disparaging remark
about any individual. To be sure, he carried a great disdain for conductors,
especially the arrogant and incompetent, and for those who sought his counsel
solely for a resume entry, or who were not as totally dedicated to improving
their own musical being as he was. Still, it was rare that he called someone
something other than a "Schlub."
Arnold Jacobs's teaching legacy will live on, but we need to
be ever mindful that no one person has all the answers he did. His friend and
student Dr. Richard Nelson, M.D., once said, "Arnold Jacobs is the world's
greatest diagnostician." It is in this area that the truth of Jacobs's
teaching has its roots. He worked with each student as a separate entity, never
using a stock approach. A single person taking a single lesson or even 10 or 100
lessons has only the perspective of how Jacobs worked with him. To be sure, many
things were common to every student, but as each student was an individual with
individual problems, so too was Jacobs' approach to him or her alone: there was
also no universal approach.
Each time I think of Arnold Jacobs's death, I have a sense of
emptiness, a sense of an unfillable void. It is difficult to come to the reality
that I'll never again hear that wonderful, deep, almost sung "Hello"
at the other end of the phone. That I'll never have that dear man sitting next
to me, demolishing my playing, only to reconstruct it by lesson's end into
something far better than it was. That he is no longer there when disaster
strikes my playing or that of a colleague; no one to make right the mistakes of
self-inflicted folly and misdirection. No longer the one who could pinpoint a
problem within the first eight bars of an etude, and then really fix it. No
longer the one whose every fiber exuded music, and who tried desperately to
impart that feeling to every student and acquaintance. It is truly the end of an
era in American brass playing. But as the flesh dies, the memories are many.
Hopefully those memories will sustain us until we too go to join Jacobs, Bell,
Helleberg, Geib and the rest in the Celestial Band.
Arnold Jacobs has been rightfully called the father of modern
orchestral tuba playing. He left an overflowing cup of knowledge, musicianship,
humor and joy to countless listeners, students and colleagues. The world of
music is far, far poorer today than before October 7, but his legacy will live
on in the hearts and minds of music lovers everywhere, because Arnold Jacobs now
truly belongs to the ages.
