My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

It is said that music is the universal language. Admittedly, it can take some rehearsing for us onstage to all be in the same universe. And orchestral musicians being the relentless animals that we are, small language-snafus of foreign-born conductors can provide some eagerly anticipated material. Recently:

“Tromboni, put yourselves out of the living room!”

“okay, clari-NYETS, (as opposed to clari-DAs?), thees part not about the springtime for the gots. Ees about the speereets. Speereets!! No GOTS. Now, rehearsal 45. GO!!!”

Though that particular speech prompted a “But Maestro, I don’t understand what WORD you are saying” from the back of the orchestra, translation is mostly near-spontaneous. Throw in accompanying hand gestures and relevant musical material, and we’re good to go. GO!

Often conductors for whom English is not a first language will seize upon a phrase and use it over and over. Sometimes, it’s just a word. (GO!) If you know these “catch words” you can often tell which orchestra under which conductor may have last written in the rental music part that is now on your stand. Once I got a part for a piece I know I had never performed before that had the word “smooooz” written at the juncture of every cadence. My educated guess: the last orchestra to play that piece worked with Christoph Eschenbach. I myself have written that very word over various Mahler parts (though I spell it with only 3 “o”s) throughout his tenure here. I bet that at least 50% of the musicians of the Houston Symphony can’t even say the word correctly in a normal conversation.

Sometimes it’s just one or two letters that make all the difference. As in “disturbulence.” Used in a sentence, “the disturbulence of the contrabassoon must be all-encompassing,” it actually becomes more than the sum of both the words it once was. It takes on a life and meaning of its own. Especially when written 97 times in the parts and sent on a trip around the world.

Me, I don’t even pretend to be the great communicator. I’m a first-generation American of Greek-Chinese descent, who worked for a time in Germany but had French as my first foreign language. My Chinese is limited to useful phrases like “I’m sleepy,” “Do you have any roast pork?“ and “Oh my gosh, she’s not wearing any underwear!” As for Greek, I can read it but have very little idea what I am saying, sailor-worthy curses aside. Of course, a little knowledge is dangerous. On one trip to Greece to visit relatives, I purposely got an old boyfriend to tell a (female) friend of my dad’s that she had a big gluteus maximus (he thought he was telling her she had a nice dress). I also got him to walk into a bakery and politely say “I would like to have a little turd, please.” Now there was a case where both adding a syllable and one’s intestine do the same job-turning a “cookie” into a “turd.” Can’t say that often, can ya? But karma has a way of catching up: this summer, on a bike trip in France, I unintentionally treated my hosts to this little gem after being complimented on my (lack of) an accent in French:

“My French pronunciation may be good because I learned it as a child, but since I’ve never gotten dressed in France, I don’t know much grammar.”