Nicholas Gordon and Music Mountain … His Peaceable Kingdom
Community Snapshot: Joan Baldwin
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8/26/2004
Music Mountain in Falls Village was quiet Monday morning, no signs of the previous afternoon’s 75th anniversary party, no stray plastic glasses, no confetti, no candles. The only noise was the wind in the trees and bird song.
Midst this peaceable kingdom, Nicholas Gordon, president of Music Mountain’s board, walks jauntily down the path to the concert hall, settling on a bench to talk about his favorite subject: chamber music and more specifically, Music Mountain, the oldest summer chamber music festival in the country.
"Essentially this remains an all-volunteer organization," Gordon says. "Yet we have one million listeners in 35 countries."
Music Mountain broadcasts its summer concerts — something it has done for 30 years — courtesy of Edward R. Hamilton Booksellers in Falls Village.
"What happens is what goes on the air," Gordon explains.
He describes today’s compact discs as little monuments to perfection, tweaked and assembled till they are flawless. But that’s not Music Mountain. It is all about intimacy, immediacy and the drama of watching four artists make music in an almost acoustically perfect space.
Not much has changed since Gordon’s parents, Jacques and Ruth Janeway Gordon, bought the Dean Farm in Falls Village intent on establishing a summer music festival in the Northwest Corner, all before Tanglewood, before the Berkshires became "America’s Premier Cultural Resort."
"Our mission is the education and performance of string quartet literature," Gordon says. "Everything else is designed to support that.
"The very simplicity of the mission makes it easy to stay with it. It’s unchanged from bad times to good times."
So although some lights and new carpet were added and the Franklin stoves removed, essentially the concert hall looks much the way it did in 1931 when Music Mountain opened for its first season, the only cultural institution ever built by Sears. "It’s all wood surrounded by air," Gordon says about the hall’s design. "The sound is so good, there’s almost nothing you can’t do in there."
While the buildings remain the same — Sears also built four capes and a larger house for the Gordon family — the performance schedule has grown from 10 concerts to 44 this anniversary season. Ask Gordon what makes Music Mountain special and he looks at the planes and shadows of the concert hall’s long white exterior before answering, "There’s some magic here."
Perhaps, he suggests, it’s because everybody wants to be here. The musicians — many world renown — can make buckets of money elsewhere, but choose the intimacy of Music Mountain’s stage over, say, Carnegie Hall. "And the audience wants to be here. There’s no social pressure; this isn’t the thing to do."
Then there’s the sound. "It’s so glorious. There’s nothing that compares to it.
"I’ve welcomed audiences to every concert. We want them to feel at home. This isn’t an elitist temple. Our obligation is to provide the best music and do it in an atmosphere that takes advantage of the incredible site."
Even in its early days when women wore hats and gloves to concerts, it was still the kind of place where the Gordon family Newfoundland would amble down the center aisle, circle and collapse in front of the stage, gently beating its tail in time to Haydn. Dogs are still welcome as long as they don’t sing along, as are children. Music Mountain, like many favorite summer experiences, is multi-generational. Grandparents, who were once the youngest members of the audience, now bring their grandchildren.
This year it debuted a family concert series to go along with the jazz, choral and, of course, chamber, music.
"We’re getting the kind of audience we want, just not enough," Gordon says about the family series. At $25 per family, whether there’s one child or 12, the concerts are less than the cost of the movies.
An active partner in its community, Music Mountain opens its doors to neighboring institutions for benefit concerts whenever possible. The Little Guild of Saint Francis, Falls Village Day Care, Cornwall Child Center and the David M. Hunt Memorial Library have all used the site to raise funds. "We’re busy Wednesdays through Sundays, but we’re absolutely available for any organization that wants a concert.
"Will Music Mountain change?" Gordon asks rhetorically. "Sure, but as long as its vision remains, it doesn’t matter. It should grow."
Long-term, Gordon would like to see all the site’s houses equipped with furnaces so they can be used by musicians and students year-round. (A gift from Paul Newman’s foundation helped underwrite the cost of heating systems for two of the site’s capes.) And somewhere in the not-too-distant future he’d like to see the dormitory his parents first envisioned finally built so Music Mountain could continue to expand its education programs.
"You should come and have a nice time," Gordon mused about the Falls Village hilltop. "Rock concerts? Well, not in the hall, but hell, there’s 120 acres here.There’s always more that Music Mountain
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