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GUEST: William F. Buckley, Jr.

RECORDINGS:

J. S. Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D Major. [First Movement] The Sofia Soloists. Plamen Djuroô, conductor. João Carlos Martins, piano. Lydia Oshakova, flute and Liudmil Nenchev, violin. Concord Concerto CCD-42042.

Domenico Scarlatti Sonata in E Major, L470, Fernando Valenti, harpsichord. Westminster W-9324.

Schroder-Weisman Don't Leave Me Now, Elvis Presley. BMG BVCM-37186.

Ludwig van Beethoven 33 Variations on a Waltz by Anton Diabelli, Op. 120 [Excerpt] Maurizio Pollini, Piano. Deutsche Grammophon 289 459 645-2.

Richard Wagner Tristan und Isolde. "Liebestod" Berlin Philharmonic; Herbert von Karajan; Helga Dernesch, soprano. Musical Heritage Society 544623T.

TRANSCRIPT:

Kaplan: His biography reads that he is an author, columnist, politician, adventurer, editor, philosopher and television personality, and goes on to say that no celebrity in the world wears as many hats. But two hats that are not mentioned in that biography are the ones we'll explore today - a harpsichordist and a music lover. William Buckley, Jr. on today's edition of Mad About Music.

[Theme Music]

Kaplan: For almost 50 years, William Buckley has perhaps been the most visible symbol of conservative politics in America. Starting when he was 30 in rapid fire, he launched the National Review Magazine, began a column, "On the Right", syndicated to 300 newspapers. Then in 1965 he jumped into politics itself and ran for the Mayor of New York picking up more than 13% of the vote. And the following year launched his award winning TV interview show "Firing Line". At every step of the way though, music has played a centering role in his life. William Buckley, welcome to "Mad About Music".

Buckley: Thank you. Nice to be here.

Kaplan: Now today your instrument of choice is the harpsichord. I assume as a child though you didn't start with that.

Buckley: That is correct. I didn't really start it until I was in college and it was actually the clavichord that I began fooling with. It was another ten years before I started playing; but incidentally, I don't want to give the impression that I consider myself a harpsichordist that anybody discriminating would listen to. I did play nine times in public and after the ninth I simply convinced myself that it was a desecration for me to do so in public, so I quit.

Kaplan: Now I preface my next question by confessing that I personally love the harpsichord. I even built one myself in the 20's, not the 20's, but in my 20's. But for many listeners I think it's fair to say it's a transitional instrument leading to the modern piano, and the sound doesn't please everyone. The conductor Sir Thomas Beecham likened the sound of the harpsichord - I remember this quote as "Two skeletons copulating on a tin roof." I've often wondered if Bach and Scarlatti ever heard the modern piano, would they have continued to compose for the harpsichord. What do you think about that?

Buckley: I think Bach would have composed for any instrument that accomplished anything singular and although much of what was written for the harpsichord I would just as soon hear on the piano; nevertheless there's some pieces in my judgment which only really come alive in the harpsichord. It's also inconceivable to me that he would scorn what a piano uniquely gives you. So I think he would have been enormously excited to hear his own compositions played on the piano.

Kaplan: Now one of the composers you've chosen for today, Scarlatti, of course, was entranced with the harpsichord. He wrote something like 500 sonatas for them and I see you'd like us to play one of them today.

Buckley: I wanted a sonata by Scarlatti. I could have picked any of 40 maybe - 30 or 40. Some of them I find rather tedious, but some of them are just fantastic. The one I simply picked, I picked in part in deference to the memory of Fernando Valenti who was a dear friend and he recorded, I think as you mentioned, 500 Scarlatti sonatas, and that this is one that he played from time to time.

[Music]

Kaplan: Domenico Scarlatti Sonata in E Major, Longo 470 performed by the legendary Fernando Valenti who was a close friend of my guest today on "Mad About Music", William Buckley. Now Valenti, to me, stands out for his flair with the instrument, where it's often hard to achieve and not necessarily admired. How would you characterize your own approach to playing the instrument?

Buckley: Hazardous. I really wasn't proficient enough to develop my own style. I knew how I liked the music to sound and in that sense it was imitative. There was something concerning which I was a partisan and that was the question of whether the Sixteen Foot register added something to it. Along, around four or five years after I first met Fernando Valenti, he offered in his anfractuous way to sell me his own harpsichord on which he had recorded 85 LPs. It had a Sixteen Foot but it had gone suddenly out of style. Everybody stopped using Sixteen Foot and I thought it a pity because it gives sort of a wonderful taste of thunder every now and then and brilliantly exploited by Valenti in my opinion.

Kaplan: Now I understand you came to know Wanda Landowska and at least the article I read said you met her when you carried a clavichord under your arm to her house to seek advice how to get it repaired. Is that true?

Buckley: Well the answer is I didn't come to know her, but I did meet her on that occasion.

Kaplan: You just walked up and knocked on the door?

Buckley: Well, I came back from my honeymoon and went to look at my clavichord and found it completely clogged. I was hysterical. And she lived 5 miles away in Lakeville, Connecticut. So, age 24, I was acting more like a 13 year old - I simply stuck it in the station wagon, went over to her house and knocked on the door. And she opened it and invited me to come in. And she chatted pretty much uninterrupted for 20 minutes, 30 minutes. I remember her initial remark with reference to the subject; she said you have my "Preludes and Fugues." I said they were wonderful. They are epochal, which was her judgment of her own achievement and that was pretty widely shared in those days when they came out.

Kaplan: Well I see you have some Bach on your list today also and one of them is the Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, but after extolling the harpsichord and then saying you're flexible on the piano, I see you want us to play a recording which features a pianist.

Buckley: You can do it obviously on both instruments. I think, I think it's more exciting on the piano. May I ventilate a complaint which is that in my experience, the 50 times I've heard the harpsichord played with an orchestra, it's never loud enough. I think that as a piece of piano music it is extraordinarily exciting as I think you'd agree if you listen.

Kaplan: Yes, but before we listen, talk a little bit about the cadenza in this work which I think probably is unique. It's a written out cadenza. It's a long -- and it's considered one of Bach's greatest achievements.

Buckley: It is in my judgment. All of a sudden instead of sort of the ritual coda you start in with this bar of music. In any case it gets absolutely carried away at a great speed. Well this goes on for 65 bars and it absolutely takes your breath away. Very difficult to perform. I wouldn't undertake it myself, but it is simply an exciting musical experience.

[Music]

Kaplan: The first movement of Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 5, The Sofia Soloists led by Plamen Djuroô and featuring pianist João Carlos Martins, a selection of my guest on "Mad About Music", William Buckley. You can learn more about William Buckley and his many careers, or listen to any of our prior shows by logging on to our website WNYC.org.

[Station Break]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan with my guest William Buckley, best known for extolling conservative political views, but after today, remembered for being a champion of the harpsichord. Now, in the late '80's your love of the harpsichord entered a new phase, didn't it? You crossed over and became a performer. You played several harpsichord concertos with orchestras in Phoenix, North Carolina, Connecticut, as part of charitable events. One TV critic observed that for someone who usually seemed completely unflappable, you actually looked nervous and vulnerable. What was it like to become a performer?

Buckley: The most frightening experience I can imagine. I was absolutely sleepless with apprehension. I remember once I went down to see the Titanic and I said to a doctor, I'm looking down at the Titanic tomorrow and it's kind of a harrowing experience. Is there any drug that I might take that would help? He said, well - I think he said Xanax. Take a Xanax. It's sort of a general tranquilizer. I finally decided that no pill exists that would make up for my deficiencies. On the other hand, it was frustrating because sometimes the dress rehearsal would go well and the performance less well, so. That requires a, the real professionalization that I couldn't reasonably hope to accomplish.

Kaplan: Now after one of your concerts it was suggested to you that your next work should be that Bach Brandenburg Concerto 5 we just heard with that dramatic cadenza and you said you would need ten years to prepare that. And I notice that the date of the article was 1992. So it's exactly ten years now and I wonder have you ever worked on it?

Buckley: No, I, unfortunately I stopped playing in the last two or three years. I think after awhile if you don't play with increasing proficiency and if you don't keep the furniture of the piece in your fingers, to go back to it is discouraging. At a certain point you just say well, am I going to spend the two hours necessary per day to retrieve all that stuff and the answer becomes, after awhile, negative.

Kaplan: So, in a sense I suppose you're heeding your own harpsichord's admonition, the words on the plate on the cover of your instrument - which read, I understand, "Shame on anyone who plays me badly." Did those words come with the instrument or was that your idea?

Buckley: Honni soit qui mal ma touche. I forget where I saw it.

Kaplan: But you put it on the instrument. It didn't come that way.

Buckley: It's beautiful. No, no, no. You can select any sort of aphorism that you want and I thought that one was appropriate.

Kaplan: Because the Brandenburg Concerto most people would associate with you is not the 5th but the 2nd because of its famous piccolo trumpet melody, much more famous now after you conscripted it as theme music for your TV show, "Firing Line". Was that a difficult choice, or did you consider any other music before you selected it?

Buckley: I didn't give it much thought at all because when "Firing Line" was launched it was assumed it would have a 13-week life. It went on 1,490 weeks. But if I had thought it would last for 35 years I might have been more deliberate in deciding what its theme music should be. But once launched people get used to it. You know, I watched the "Sopranos" the other day and having to sit through their theme music I find really unpleasant. I remember the theme music in "All in the Family" which I loved and you could hear that week after week without any gears grinding. But I guess my point is that theme music ought to be carefully selected so as not to become jarring or banal.

Kaplan: You know, I thought that, that works very well. It's memorable and yet it's light and it's fun. So let's turn to your ….

Buckley: [Sings tune] You didn't want me to sing it?

Kaplan: Well, I'd love you to sing it. I didn't mean to cut you off. I also think we could also turn to your next work which regular listeners of "Mad About Music" know I refer to as a "wild card" - the one choice each guest is allowed to make from a genre other than classical music. You might be interested in some of your predecessors: Former President Jimmy Carter selected Glenn Miller's Moonlight Serenade; Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of Germany picked Yesterday by the Beatles; and former Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Barak selected Frank Sinatra singing My Way for reasons he said that surely need no elaboration. So what "wild card" did you bring us today?

Buckley: Well, I picked Elvis Presley. I wrote a novel a couple of years ago called Elvis in the Morning and in the course of writing it I did a lot of reading about him, listened to a lot of his music. Ninety five percent of what he sang, in my judgment, is simply awful. But five percent is just terrific. He was a great, great balladeer and his sense of music and his sense of rhythm was fantastic. When I said awful I didn't mean that he ruined those other songs, but that the music was no good. So I picked one which I like a lot and it's called Don't Leave Me Now.

[Music]

Kaplan: Elvis Presley singing Don't Leave Me Now, the "wild card" selection by my guest on today's edition of "Mad About Music", William Buckley. Let's talk about music and politics. You have been close to many politicians including Presidential Nominee Barry Goldwater. I understand you're a close friend of President Reagan's. Over the years did you ever detect any interest on their part or any other famous politician in classical music or opera?

Buckley: It's funny you should say that. When I played in Phoenix, which was my first performance, a reporter saw Barry Goldwater in the audience and approached him and said, "Senator Goldwater, what did you think of Mr. Buckley's playing?" And Goldwater said, "Absolutely terrific. On the other hand, this is the first concert I've ever attended."

Kaplan: I see. Now although you spent your life as a political conservative, you've always had contact and friends among the liberals. And this may be a simple minded question I'm about to ask, but have you ever discerned whether musical tastes of conservatives are different from liberals?

Buckley: I haven't reflected on that. It happens that I personally know and revere John Kenneth Galbraith and Milton Friedman who are, of course, the polar opposites in political thought. They are both tone deaf. I once asked Ken Galbraith if he ever went to a concert and he said no - why would he go to a concert, it's just a lot of notes. And Milton Friedman, using language less colorful, just simply has no ear. I don't think of music as attaching to a school of people who are otherwise ideologically aroused.

Kaplan: But continuing with the role of music and politics, I'm sure you've read recently that the pianist Daniel Barenboim has caused a stir by organizing an orchestra made up of young Arabs and Israelis and by performing as a pianist himself in the battleground cities on the West Bank. Do you think music can accomplish things that politics can't?

Buckley: No, I don't. But I think more and more that musicians ought to be permitted to perform. Right after the war there was a terrific fuss over Furtwängler, Flagstad, who had both performed in Nazi Germany. And the question was should they be permitted to perform in post-Nazi era? And I remember Flagstad saying rather innocently - and I don't think disingenuously - well, all I do is sing, and she was asking people to understand that by singing she wasn't attempting to ratify the regime under whose auspices she sang.

Kaplan: I'm interested to hear you say all this because I remember on one of your shows on "Firing Line" you had Norman Mailer on as a guest, and he had recently been arrested, I believe, for protesting in what was regarded as an improper way. And your very first question to him was, "Well do you believe that artists should be given special privileges and be judged differently?" And today you're sort of saying a little bit they should, I think.

Buckley: I don't remember what Norman's answer to that question was, but I would not want to use the word "artist" to color Norman Mailer urinating on the steps of the Pentagon. I think there was a generic liberty taken by assuming that any act of protest should be thought of as artistic. Nudity, whatever, and that is not to use the word "artist" as I began by using it today.

Kaplan: Well let's get then back to a real artist and let's come to your next selection, which is Beethoven's Diabelli Variations. What is the special appeal to you of that music?

Buckley: I think probably the special appeal of it was that the Professor of Musical History with whom I studied at school when he came round to playing that for us - I remember it was a recording by, featuring Leonard Shure, and he said now I want you to pay special attention to this piece of music because I consider it the finest that Beethoven ever wrote. I was startled especially after hearing the opening notes because it seemed so banal. But of course his pitch for it so riveted my attention that I paid serious attention to it in years to come.

[Music]

Kaplan: An excerpt from Beethoven's Diabelli Variations performed by Maurizio Pollini, a selection of my guest on "Mad About Music" today, William Buckley. When we return, we'll enter William Buckley's world of opera.

[Station break]

Kaplan: This is Gilbert Kaplan with William Buckley on today's edition of "Mad About Music". Being a harpsichordist that you are, I'm not surprised that most of your selections today involve keyboards and fall within the Baroque and classical period. Now with your final choice, though, we leap into opera and the dramatic romantic tale of Wagner's Tristan. Does opera have the same appeal to you as the keyboard?

Buckley: No. It's, I think it's an entirely different appeal. I suppose, to use that fancy word synaesthesia, a marvelous experience listening to the keyboard and a marvelous experience listening to opera or for that matter string quartets are cognate experiences. Of course you're listening to music, but it is a different experience.

Kaplan: When did you first encounter opera?

Buckley Very young. My music teacher, when she worked her way through school she acted as an usher at Carnegie Hall. The result of which was that she was able to get her favorite students from time to time into New York for dress rehearsals. And we started hearing some opera there. I think the very first opera I heard was Siegfried. In 1939, I and two sisters were in London. We had just been pulled out of boarding schools and my father wanted us to sort of get over that experience and we had a tutor. And we went everyday to the opera at Covent Garden. I say everyday: we went five times a week. And I developed the ambition - I was then 13 - to hear every opera before I was 21. In those days, if memory serves, the inventory didn't change as often as it now does and probably I could have fulfilled my pledge by listening to say 50 operas. And I probably did. But if I had to cut off one or the other, if I was sentenced to do with just one or the other, I would do with the keyboard rather than the opera.

Kaplan: I think it's appropriate since you started off with Wagner that we end today with Wagner.

Buckley: Sure.

Kaplan: And I see that your final selection is Wagner.

Buckley: Well, of all Wagner's music, I think the love song, "Liebestod", is the most arresting. It is just ecstatic, sublime, erotic, exciting and it permits the soprano and the orchestra to accomplish miracles. I'm sure a million people would choose different items in the Wagner repertoire as signifying his highest achievement, but probably more there would be a plurality who pointed to the "Liebestod".

[Music]

Kaplan: The "Liebestod", the concluding moments of Wagner's Tristan und Isolde, the Berlin Philharmonic led by Herbert von Karajan with soprano Helga Dernesch, the final selection of my guest on "Mad About Music", William Buckley. You know, I think it's almost impossible to escape the passion of that music as you said. You know, Jimmy Carter was on our show as a first guest and he mentioned that when he would play the "Liebestod" in his room at Annapolis, midshipmen who normally would not listen to music would just pack outside the door. They couldn't stay away. So we've come from Scarlatti, Bach, Elvis, Beethoven and Wagner. Lots of space in-between. Are there any mainstream composers you really don't like?

Buckley: "Don't like" might be too emphatic. I can go as far to say I'm less attracted to and I think that would be in my case true of most of Chopin. He just doesn't turn me. I remember once, this sounds very name droppy, but in dinner with Horowitz one time and I was talking to him about what he was going to play at his spectacular upcoming concert at the Metropolitan - the first time a soloist had ever played the Metropolitan. And he said he was going to do some Clementi and some Schubert and of course Chopin. And he said it almost apologetically. One has to play Chopin in a piano concert. And of course he was such a dazzling virtuoso and yet, he could write some beautiful…. I'm just saying I'm not terribly attracted to it. I'm rather sorry you forced that out of me, but there you are. Since I've been so docile under your care, I answered your question.

Kaplan: Well thank you. And on that answer, that note, may I thank you for appearing today and sharing your passion for music and for being a champion of the notion that music can play such a centering role in our lives. This is Gilbert Kaplan for "Mad About Music".

[Credits]

ABOUT WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955. He is the author of more than 40 books, and was the host for more than 30 years of the television show Firing Line. His newspaper column, "On the Right," is syndicated to more than 300 newspapers. His most recent books are Let Us Talk of Many Things: The Collected Speeches and the novel Elvis in the Morning.

Buckley received a B.A. with honors (political science, economics, and history) from Yale University in 1950. In 1965 he ran for mayor of New York City and received 13.4% of the vote on the Conservative party ticket. He has received numerous and diverse awards, including Best Columnist of the Year, 1967; Television Emmy for Outstanding Achievement, 1969; The American Book Award for Best Mystery (paperback) for Stained Glass, 1980; the Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Award, 1989; the Presidential Medal of Freedom, 1991; the Adam Smith Award, Hillsdale College, 1996; and the Heritage Foundation's Clare Boothe Luce Award, 1999.

Buckley married Patricia Taylor of Vancouver, B.C., in 1950, and is the father of Christopher Taylor Buckley.