Interview with Martin Katz on Marilyn Horne
Jun 27, 2024The first time I met Marilyn Horne, I went to her house in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles to be
interview
ed, I guess. Would I like to play for her? Well, I mean, you know, do people like to eat and breathe? Yes, I would like to play for you. I was only 23 at the time and her career was already a huge success, so I was excited. I anticipated that you might ask me about the first concert I did with Marilyn. And I remember that even more specifically. It was February 3, 1967, and I was in Macon, Georgia, at Wesleyan College there.
And the reason I remember it is because she was hysterically nervous and Marilyn, she should have been nervous because she was about to go on stage with a child for the first time and she didn't really know how I would be under pressure. , but instead of worrying about her own nerves, she pressed something into my hand when we were backstage waiting to continue and it turned out to be a silver lighter. People still smoked back then, you know? And the lighter was engraved: "M.H. to M.K. Numero Uno." And I get chills even telling you that story now.
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interview with martin katz on marilyn horne...
I still have the lighter. It no longer works. I don't smoke anymore. She never smoked. But I thought that not only was it a harbinger of a 35-year relationship neither of us dreamed of, but it was very generous of her to put herself second in the nerves department and comfort me. She was still terribly nervous, but anyway 
And here comes Marilyn with high notes and very low notes, fast notes like no mezzo had sung in decades and all the time, a fairly large instrument that sometimes Marilyn unleashed totally and other times she refined it and sang more calmly than people with small voices. So they were getting a smorgasbord of vocal techniques and effects every time we went on stage to do a gig. And as you know, in a recital you show many different styles, languages and attitudes. So they also realized that it was not just some kind of animal voice, but it was also a highly disciplined artistic temperament that did all this.
And she... I mean, the word freak is really the only word people used in those days. Ten years later, of course, everyone knew she could do all this. So people just thought she was extraordinary rather than phenomenal at the time. But it wasn't just applause, but the type of surprise factor that the audience would exhibit and experience was always present in those first recitals we did. Well, it's a long association, okay. I am always proud to say that I am the man who has been in her life the longest. Because I was only 23 when I started with Marilyn, of course there was a sort of teaching component coming from her.
But Marilyn never did it as a pedagogue or anything like that. It was always a teaching between the lines that perhaps because of what she exhibited as a musician was the teaching for me. But I was very excited to have this opportunity to play for this phenomenal singer, as I already called her. It was that kind of relationship to begin with. But as the years went by, I also grew as an artist, thank God, and everything became more equal. So we would have conversations about what we wanted to do with music instead of doing this or that or not doing these kinds of things.
There were even times when I knew repertoire better than her as the years went by. I think I was always a little better at French and she was always a little better at Italian. Then she would listen to some suggestions about things in French. But I would say that maybe from the fifth year onwards it was really the same thing and Marilyn made sure that it was always a chamber music experience for both of us. When she tried something she didn't like or something was too fast even for her to sing or too slow to sing or too loud in an uncomfortable part of her voice, she didn't hesitate to tell me.
But it never was... I never felt slapped or stupid for the choice I made, you know? I guess you could say she started out as an older sister and a little brother and then ended up being sort of twins, occasionally father-daughter, occasionally mother-son, you know. That's how most partnerships I've had go. How much tape do you have in the machine? If I start with her as a musician and her voice as an instrument, I have learned what a voice can do. And unfortunately, for everyone else I teach and perform for, Marilyn's work set the bar very high and made my own standards the same as hers, whether I wanted that to happen or not.
I'm thinking I never really knew what singing or playing legato was until I started working for Marilyn. And now, when I hear something other than perfect legato, I feel offended, shocked, regretful, sad or something like that. So she really ruined everyone else's job
She could sing incredibly soft notes that carried to the back of the room and people said that it seemed like she was singing into her eardrums even though she was signing very, very softly. So that's what I learned. And I think as a teacher and a coach, that has informed me to be able to ask other people to try to behave like that. As a professional colleague, she has confirmed to me what integrity can do for a career and a life in music because she has never lost the question of whether things were going well for her, professionally or maybe there was an obstacle in the way professionally or a season in which she was so sick that there were cancellations everywhere.
But this thing about sticking to the right reason for being in music, not for the limos and the flowers and all that, but for the music itself and the lyrics and your relationship with other people in the business, I know it sounds like it. It seems like an exaggeration, but I say it with all sincerity, I learned that from her. And I have also learned what hard work achieves. I have always been a great worker. So it's not that Marilyn taught me that, but Marilyn confirmed to me that even a singer can be a hard worker
Now, when I'm working with other people and after a half-hour rehearsal, they say, "You know, let's leave it for today," and I think Marilyn and I would rehearse three, four, five hours, put together a new program or if I was learning a new role or something, maybe stopping for a glass of water or something, but he was tireless in his work habits. And it was always worth it. These are just some of the things I can think of to tell you that I learned from Marilyn Horne. Any particular story, antidote, or anything else she wants to share and that she can share.
We did a Handel aria. Very often it is called "Iris, from there far away" and comes from the oratorio de ella Semele de ella. And it's very pompous and very grandiose and very Victorian and mockingly heroic. And Marilyn sang it beautifully. In fact, it was her first concert that I played for her. That's how we did it throughout her career with me. And it has a recitative in front of it, which is even grander than the aria. And the words are very fallacious: "Get up Saturnia from your lethargy. Seize the adulteress. Snatch her away," etc. And one time, in a suburb of Chicago, we were doing a recital and when she sang the lyrics "snatch her" and I played
And Marilyn and I shook with laughter. So that's just the beginning of the story. So, of course, we left the stage. The coach came out, replaced the bench, whatever. The public wonders what is happening. We went out again and started the aria again. We got to the same place and we were both... we couldn't resist laughing again, so we completely collapsed and had to leave the stage again. The third time... now, I imagine the audience was thinking about getting a refund because this was only the second piece of the show. The third time we omitted the recitative so that the same thing would not happen.
But do you know that for the next 20 years, every time we played that aria, we got closer to that extent and I could feel us both steeling ourselves so we wouldn't fall apart again? I even hear other people sing it now and I'm not playing and I still get nervous
We knew what they sounded like and so on. And Adalgisa's first note follows a scene of a large crowd. So it is an unaccompanied note that follows the loudest music of the opera. Then Marilyn let the entire choir leave, the conductors leave, and the orchestra finish their music. And then she seemed to wait another two minutes. It was probably only 30 seconds, but it seemed like a world of time. And then she made this soft sound and the whole audience just went
And just... like I said before in this
interview
, it was a real lesson in how powerful a smooth, controlled stage presence can be. And you know the Metropolitano, we are talking about more than 3,000 people. And he went to the back of the place. And I think it was a great moment in the history of the Met. I would just like to say that if the word "cornerstone" can be used for a human being instead of a building, to me and my life, Marilyn Horne is nothing. less than a cornerstone. And you only have four pillars in your life if you're lucky.So I owe her a lot and I consider her example to be a shining beacon all the time.
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