I just got a copy of this via a long chain of people who were able to
digitalize this essay by Garrison Keillor.  My guess is that it will be
pinned to orchestra bulletin boards backstage all over the world.  A Foot
Soldier in God's Floating Orchestra

(From his comfortable position as a well-known author, Garrison Keillor
feels every sympathy for his underpaid, overworked violinist wife.)

   My wife is a violinist, a freelancer, a foot soldier in God's floating
   orchestra, who waits for the phone to ring, and then goes off and
   plays the Faure Requiem at a Presbyterian church at 7 PM on the 21st,
   rehearsal at 5 PM, or six rehearsals and eight performances of The
   Montagues and the Capulets, or a concert of African-American composers
   for Black History Month, and comes back to tell me stories about the
   soprano with the big diva attitude and major pitch problems, and the
   timid clarinetist, and the blatty trombone player, and the French
   horn player who dropped his mute during the quiet passage.  For her
   work, which is highly skilled and requires years of exacting
   preparation, and is stressful, being so unforgiving of errors, she
   is paid a fraction of what a rookie waiter of modest charm could earn
   on any Friday night in an upscale restaurant.  But she is glad for
   the work, and her complaints about the pay are always good natured.
   Of course it helps that she married well.  When she was 14, she left
   the little town that we both grew up in, and went off to music school,
   and to violinist boot-camp, and landed in New York City, where she
   worked for 20 years, bopping around from opera tour, to regional
   symphony, to pop shows, to Broadway pit orchestras, to church gigs,
   and off to Japan with a pick-up orchestra, to do Vivaldi and Bach.
   And then tour the South with Madama Butterfly.

   My wife has played for Leonard Bernstein, and she has also played
   for the Lippezaner Stallions.  She is a pro.  I love to sit up and
   wait for her to come home after a performance, and hear how it went.
   Usually, it went just fine.  Sometimes she is ecstatic about what
   they played, or about some singer who was especially fine.

   Sometimes she grits her teeth.  The trumpets were bad, or the baritone
   dropped a wine glass on the stage, and it rolled into the pit and
   almost creamed the harpist.  Often she has something pithy to say
   about the conductor or the soloist.  If she says, "I thought he was
   very unprofessional," it's a real slap.  A famous soloist who is
   haughty towards the commoners backstage -- that's unprofessional --
   it's just not done!  A conductor who glares at someone who just played
   a bad note -- unprofessional!  Worse than the bad note.  Orchestra
   professionalism is a world apart from mine: mine prizes attitude
   and a rakish hat, and star quality, and interesting underwear.  And
   this concept of professional(alism), prizes ensemble playing, and
   precision, and a sort of selflessness -- and this concept of
   professionalism can be expressed in certain principles.  You won't
   find this list posted backstage, but, my wife tells me, that's because
   everybody knows this stuff right out of music school.

   1.  You are, of course, on time.  Always!  Don't come an hour early
   (amateurish) but never come late.  Never!  This is an Orchestra, and
   you are Violinist, you're not some paper-pusher at Amalgamated Bucket.
   (Orchestra musicians are experts at finessing public transportation,
   and if they do drive, at finding parking spaces no matter what, legal,
   or illegal.  Everybody has a strategy for "Getting to the Gig," and
   a back-up strategy in case the area is cordoned off for a Presidential
   motorcade, and an emergency strategy, in case of earthquake or civil
   disorder, or an invasion of the body snatchers.)

   2.  Don't show off warming up backstage.  Don't do the Brahms Concerto.
   Don't whip through the Paganini you did for your last audition.  Warm
   up and be cool about it.

   3.  Backstage you hang out with other string players, not brass or
   percussion.  You don't get into a big conversation with the tuba
   player, lest you be lulled into relaxation.  He is not playing the
   Brandenburg No. 3 that opens the show -- you are.  Stick with your
   own kind, so you can start to get nervous when you should.

   4.  You never chum around with the conductor, too much.  Likewise
   the contractor who hired you; you can be nice but not fawning,
   subservient.  If one of them is perched in the musicians' common
   backstage, don't gravitate there.  Don't orbit.

   5.  You never look askance at someone who has made a mistake.  Never!
   If the clarinet player squeaks, if the oboe honks, if the second
   stand cello lumbers in two bars early, like lost livestock, you
   keep your eyes where your eyes should be.  You are a musician, not
   a critic.  String players never disparage their stand partners to
   others.  Stand partnership is an intimate relationship, and there is
   a zone of safety here.  Actually, you shouldn't disparage any musician
   in the orchestra to anybody, unless to your husband (or spouse), or
   very good friends.  But you never say anything bad about your stand
   partner.

   6.  If the conductor is a jerk, don't react to him whatsoever.  Ignore
   the shows of temper.  If he makes a sarcastic joke at the expense of
   a musician, do not laugh, not even a slight wheeze or twitter.

   7.  Try to do the conductor's bidding, no matter how ridiculous.  If
   he says, "Play this very dry, but with plenty of vibrato," go ahead
   and do it, though it's impossible.  If he says, "This should be very
   quick but sustained," then go ahead and sustain the quick, or levitate,
   or walk across the ceiling, or whatever he wants.  He's the boss.

   8.  Don't bend and sway as you play.  Stay in your space.  You're
   not a soloist, don't move like one.  No big sweeps of the bow.  And
   absolutely never, never, never tap your foot to the music.  9.  Go
   through channels.  If you, a fifth stand violin, are unsure if that
   note in bar 143 should be C natural as shown or B flat, don't raise
   your hand and ask the maestro, ask your section head, and let him/her
   ask Mr. Big.

   10.  You do not accept violations of work rules passively.  When it's
   time to go, it's time to go.  If it's Bruno Walter and the Mahler
   Fourth, and you're in Seventh Heaven, then of course, you ignore the
   clock.  But, if it's some ordinary jerk flapping around on the podium,
   you put your instrument in the case when the rehearsal is supposed
   to be end.  It was his arrogant pedantry that chewed up the first
   hour of the rehearsal, and now time is up, and he's only half way
   through The Planets, and is in a panic.  If he wants to pay overtime,
   fine.  Otherwise, let him hang, it's his rope.  At the performance,
   you can show him what terrific sight-readers you all are.

   It's all about manners and maintaining a sense of integrity in a
   selfless situation, and surviving in a body of neurotic perfectionists.
   And it's about holding up your head, even as orchestras in America
   languish and die out, victims of their own rigidity and stuffiness
   and of a sea change in American culture.  Perhaps in a hundred years
   orchestra musicians will seem like some weird priestly order akin to
   the Rosicrucians or the worshipers of Athens.  But in the rehearsal
   for the Last Performance, the players will arrive on time, and take
   their places and play dryly but with vibrato, and not tap their feet.
   And one violinist will come home and have a glass of wine, and say
   to her husband, "Why can't they find a decent trombonist?"

(Garrison Keillor read this over BBC Radio 3 over the Easter
weekend.)

Scott Morrison