Politics
Why a Percussionist Was Playing a Siren
At the New York Philharmonic, the piece “Amériques” called for some unusual instruments, like sleigh bells and air raid sirens.
Good morning. It’s Friday. We’ll find out what happened when an experienced percussionist rehearsed with a siren at the New York Philharmonic. We’ll also get details on a 30-day reprieve from the Trump administration on congestion pricing.
Credit…Joseph Kelly
Joseph Kelly’s first rehearsal with the New York Philharmonic went well. He felt he was “getting familiar” with the instrument he was playing in his spot behind the trombone section — an instrument he had not played before.
In the second rehearsal, he said, “I felt like my approach was coming together.”
Then he broke the instrument.
The instrument was an air raid siren.
Kelly was one of 12 percussionists who had parts in “Amériques,” a dissonant piece that the composer Edgard Varèse began writing in 1918, a couple of years after Varèse moved to Brooklyn from Paris. As the critic Harold C. Schonberg observed when the Philharmonic played it in 1975, “it calls for unconventional instruments and makes unconventional sound.”
It also calls for an unconventionally sized orchestra. The version of the piece that the Philharmonic played squeezed 122 musicians, 53 more than were needed for Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5 last season.
