In New York State: Culture's Front Porch

By John Skow

Tall and blond, he looks like a beach boy in his cutoffs and tennis shirt. He is Peter de Vries, 25, with two years toward a doctorate in violin performance at the University of Indiana, and just now the first violinist of the Chautauqua Festival Orchestra. He says something, laughing, to Evan Wilson, 20, the principal violist, and then puts his violin under his chin,and plays an A. A's of various textures rise up from the instruments played by his colleagues, and De Vries sits down.

Conductor Nathan Gottschalk, 66, stands up. He is a stocky, cheerful-looking man in rumpled pants and a short-sleeved shirt who during the school year directs the student orchestra at the State University of New York at Albany. As the rehearsal gets under way, he is asked how his 83 players are doing. He gives a "Who knows?" shrug, like a man who knows very well indeed, and grins happily. "Listen tonight!"

Such feelings of anticipation scent the air here at the Chautauqua Institution. This extraordinary cultural encampment, now part arts festival and part religious and philosophical retreat, has convened every summer since 1874 on the shaded shores of Lake Chautauqua, 60 miles southwest of Buffalo in western New York State. Some 6,000 lovers of fresh air and philharmony gather here for classes, lectures and performances in the arts, sciences and humanities. But music is the big draw. Three full orchestras are in residence: the Chautauqua Symphony, composed of professionals and conducted by Varujan Kojian; a youth orchestra conducted by Anthony Milograno; and Gottschalk's college-age group.

The big amphitheater is made of wood, and its vast roof arches gently overhead like the soundboard of a huge violin. It begins to resonate to the sonorities of Dvorak's Eighth Symphony. "Wood is the best acoustic material there is," Gottschalk says. "Concrete is dead. Wood is alive." Appearing peaceful and intent, hearing nothing that requires correction, he lets the Dvorak build and flow.

In a bleacher at the rear of the amphitheater, beyond the shade of the roof, a man with an unbuttoned, flowered shirt suns his ample midriff, his eyes serenely shut. He could be an orthodontist or a hardware-store owner, but he is probably the minister of a prosperous Protestant suburban church. Chautauqua was founded by Methodists as a boot camp for Sunday-school teachers, and even today an empty bottle of sarsaparilla (alcohol is not sold on the grounds) flung into the night is likely to bean an aestivating pastor. To one side of the amphitheater is the stately United Presbyterian House, red brick with white trim, and to the other side is the substantial United Church of Christ Center, red brick with yellow trim. On the 856 acres owned by the institution, there are more church buildings than tennis courts, and there are a lot of tennis courts.

A visitor ambles to the ice cream pavilion in the town's square. Near by a sizable bookstore offers the works of Reinhold Niebuhr in paper and hardback, but no Playboys. A red-brick walkway shaded by great maples leads to the Hall of Philosophy, a determinedly Greek structure with large white columns. It would be impossible to utter a facetious word in this edifice, and Gene Outka, a professor of religious studies at Yale, is seriously posing conundrums, one of which concerns a military chieftain in some benighted land who has condemned ten political prisoners to death but who offers to spare nine if an American will personally shoot the remaining wretch. Outka is taking his audience carefully over difficult ground. Still, there is something off-putting about the contrast between the violence of the parable and the safety of the speaker and the cosseted elders listening to him in their sanctuary.

The philosopher William James expressed a similar reaction after a visit to Chautauqua in 1896: "I stayed for a week, held spellbound by the charm and ease of everything, by the middle-class paradise, without a victim, without a blot, without a tear. And yet what was my own astonishment, on emerging into the dark and wicked world again, to catch myself . . . saying 'Ouf, what a relief! Now for something primordial and savage . . . to set the balance straight.' "

Yet safety is an illusion, and so is paradise. Speaking before another Chautauqua audience this day, Dr. Christiaan Barnard, the surgeon who performed the first heart transplant, says that it is inhuman and arrogant for doctors to prolong life artificially if nothing but pain or coma lies ahead for the patient. His predominantly gray-haired audience cheers. A moment later, one of his listeners falls ill. As he is carried out by ambulance attendants, he gives a V sign to the crowd.

The stroller through Chautauqua heads toward the lakefront. He wanders among white Victorian frame houses, all cooled by one or several levels of spacious front porches. Spaciousness was an easeful 19th century preoccupation, at least among the prosperous middle-class citizens who could afford to come here (by lake steamer in those days) and enjoy the broad verandas and 20-ft. ceilings of the Hotel Athenaeum, a splendid old yellow-and-green ark that did and still does offer two desserts with each meal. And it was a spaciousness of mind that made a summer of music, lectures and dramatic readings seem exciting, an attitude that the modern Chautauqua tries with fair success to preserve. In the early decades of this century, a variety of "Chautauqua" lecture circuits sprang up, borrowing the name and fame of the original retreat. These vanished with the Depression, but Chautauqua had a grandmother's-house permanence. Richard Reddington, 40, who now directs the institution's courses in such subjects as painting, dance and Chinese literature, married into a clan of Chautauqua summer residents and found, like other newcomers, that "it was simply understood" that vacations would be spent here.

Besides Chautauqua's lake, on which a splendid paddle-wheel steamer still chugs to and fro, a literal-minded divine long ago built a grassy, 60-ft.-long scale model of the Holy Land. It is now much joked about, and years ago, according to Novelist Theodore Morrison, Rudyard Kipling toured Palestine Park and tripped over a boulder labeled "Jericho." He went away muttering that there was "something wrong" with Chautauqua, though he could not figure out just what it was.

Over discreetly served drinks, old Chautauquans love to startle visitors with the information that deeds to property within the gate of the institution still give the management the right (never enforced) to buy back houses in which liquor has been detected. Self-satisfaction is not unknown here, and the degree to which Chautauqua is Waspy, churchy and arty recalls an era when culture in the U.S. was a conspiracy between the pastors and the women, and manly men sulked as they were dragged to concerts by the ear.

If there is a problem with this lively museum piece, it may lie in the sheer busyness of the place. Over a long weekend, Roberta Flack sings, the U.S. Army Field Band plays The Battle Hymn of the Republic, Presidential Aide Edwin Meese and General William Westmoreland defend embattled political positions, young musicians keep dates with Tchaikovsky under the stars. The resort's daily newspaper warns culture vultures to prepare for Victor Borge, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, discussions of abortion and contraception, and an address by the president of the National Council of Churches. It is not a great surprise to learn that a new course has just been added to the Chautauqua curriculum. Its title is "Battling Burn-Out."

--By John Skow

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