Vale Uncle Don

(This post should have been posted last week but, due to my being on the road and unable to find a computer that would cooperate, it has had to wait until i got home).

This morning my dear friend Nic texted me to inform me of the passing of Donald Erb. It's also mentioned by Karl Henning in the comments sections of the previous post and he provides a link to Don's Obituary which is taken from the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

This has hit me hard. Don was more than a teacher. He was a mentor and an example of what a composer should be - technically proficient across the spectrum of his work, deeply passionate about the worth and quality of his output, a champion of the work of quality composers and new music and a man who knew that without technique AND passion (i.e. something worthwhile to say) then it was, in his own words, "not quite good enough".

I met him when he came to Melbourne (where, by a strange co-incidence, I'm typing this) in August 1984 - almost 24 years to the day from this date - and he taught me for abour 6 weeks. One lesson with him was enough to convince me that I needed to study long term with this man, to help me tap into whatever I felt I had to say.

That was Don's greatest strength as a teacher: he helped you hear yourself. With him you had the courage to find the depths of expression and vulnerability you need to be an artist. And to him, being an artist was what it was all about. Once, when asked why he should be supported by public or private funding or be heard in public at all when his music was not commercially broadly appealing, I heard him simply say, "Because I'm an artist." There was no other reason. Yet Don's definiton of an artist was complex and deep.To him, an artist was one who cared in the same way he did about the work he made, the reputation he had and the unflagging certainty he had about the importance of what he had to say.

I cannot state this too strongly. Donald Erb gave me my life as a composer. When I went to study with him in the USA I left everything I had, both personally and materially. It was like starting fresh and new. I was at my most vulnerable and impressionable by my own choice, and his impact on me is still reverberating in my life and my work.

The love and affection his ex-students have for him is reflected by the deep and abiding interest he had in our careers. I hope I've helped make him proud. I'm sure we all do. I'm in Melbourne this week doing what he taught me to do - being a composer. I can think of no better way to thank him than to keep being one, no matter what changes around me and despite the current unfashionability of the term in academia.

The body of Donald Erb is gone, but the essence of him lives in his own immediate family and in the extended family of distinguished musicians around the world. His teaching and love are something I will cherish my entire life, as I owe so much of it to him.

I think it's time to listen to the end of "Ritual Observances" one more time.