What is Music Made Of?

Pyotr Ilyich, trying to FIG-ure out the answer to this question.
(Disclaimer: I am not responsible for my appalling sense of humour. It's inherited from my father.)

"So tell me please, what have you all learnt in my course over the past year?"

- asks our teacher of a subject called "Foundations in Opera Directing" which all conducting students must take in Third Year of the five-year conducting course at the Saint-P Con. Lectures were inconveniently held on Monday mornings, therefore naturally, students rarely ever turned up, forcing the poor old lady to often sit in the classroom waiting by herself for the entire duration of the 2-hour lecture (often she'd be sitting in the very corner of the empty classroom with the lights turned off... kinda creepy). Occasionally I would be the only student present in her lessons (although not always, I was also guilty of truanting, often loitering at the rehearsals of the St Petersburg Philharmonic instead).

She never got angry when students didn't turn up to her classes (or maybe we were never there in the first place to witness her get angry). In such instances, she would just shrug her shoulders and say that there's not much point in starting a new topic without the rest of the students, so she'd instead start talking about her recently-bought dacha (Russian holiday house) in Luga (a town located some 140 km south of St Petersburg), how much she adores Teodore Currentzis, and other trivial things. And then at the end of the class, she'd gather all her unused teachings notes and put them back into her recycled frozen broccoli package which she keeps and uses as a bag.

Anyway, back to the question. This takes places in our final lesson of the one-year course - the only lesson where we had 100% attendance by the students, lured by the hopeful opportunity to get the teacher's signature in the zachetka (a booklet for keeping record of grades, because computer technology has yet to arrive) in order to officialy pass the course. So what did we learn? The teacher looks at me, so I answer:

"I learnt that Teodore Currentzis is a cool conductor!".

"Correct." - she answers.

Then another student follows the trend and exclaims: "That Luga is a great place to own a dacha!".

"Also correct. But what about relating to our course?"

There was a long fermata of silence among the students.

The teacher gives a deep sigh then asks: "Well then, tell me please, what is music made of?"

While the whole class starts knitting their brows, thinking (an act not many are used to doing), one nerdy student yells out with conviction - "Melody, harmony and rhythm!" and a huge grin appears across his face, obviously proud of himself.

"WRONG!" thunders the teacher, then continues calmly, "Music is made of sound."

The offended (and embarrassed) nerdy student, with his grin turning into a frown, goes on to defend that he is certain of his answer because he read it in a textbook. He then complains: "But if it doesn't contain all three of those elements, it can't be called music!" then leans over to the classroom piano, angrily hits a note at random on the keyboard and adds: "can you even call that music?"

The teacher didn't answer his rhetorical question, nor did she seem surprised by the nerdy student's narrow definition of music. After a few seconds of awkward silence, the teacher started talking in depth on this topic. This was probably the first time we went into depth all year - on a course-related topic! Pity it was also our last lecture. Though I can't remember word for word of our teacher's ramblings (mainly because of my still rusty Russian skills even after several years of studying the language), I managed to grasp the main point which was that sound has existed since the beginning of time, and the world was probably even created by sound - the big bang. Then I realised that most of the Russian students didn't understand much of what the teacher was talking about either - her words were so obvious yet seemed too deeply philosophical.

Nevertheless, all of us terrible students managed to receive the teacher's signature at the end of the class and 'pass' the subject (luckily, no exams or essay papers were involved!). Can't say that we walked out of our final class with any sense of accomplishment (we didn't learn much about the foundations of opera conducting and it was mainly our own fault), but at least it got many of the students thinking, which is a good thing (especially because the education system here is still heavily based on knowledge and memorisation).

Coda
One thing I do remember which we learnt in class, is that if we ever get the chance to work in operas as conductors, we must learn to love the singers - soloists and chorus alike, as if they are our own children. According to the words of this teacher, a chorus is made up of  "many Shalyapins, who never turned into one" (a bit harsh, no?) and that they have nothing better to do than gossip because they have the easiest job in the production. Singers, she says, on the whole may create tension from artistic conflict, rivalry, politics and other such problems. But if the Maestro has the willingness to accept the flaws and imperfections of all personel involved in productions, love everybody equally and behaves professionally by focusing on making the production work, the singers will usually respond positively. So basically being a conductor is like being a parent of hundreds of kids.

I think she also loves all of her students as if we were her own children (or grandchildren). Even though most of us students rarely turned up to her classes, she often came to the Glazunov Hall to listen when we were rehearsing or taking exams with the orchestra - always curious to see what her conducting students were up to and which pieces of music they were working on.