Marc Mostovoy Replies to the Facebook Posts
Attacking Marcel Tabuteau

When she learned of Joan Champie’s death, and read the obituaries, Katherine Needleman, principal oboe of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and one of two oboe professors at the Curtis Institute of Music, posted on her Facebook page and again via video a message of outrage. Needleman’s central paragraph, in which she addresses herself directly to Marcel Tabuteau, is as follows:

“I don’t care if it was 1952 or 1954. I don’t care what you did for oboe reeds, as if anyone cares that you sometimes scraped them longer with your knife than your predecessors—what an innovation! I don’t care what you did for phrasing, and I don’t care how many (mostly men) students you inspired with your abusive teaching, which lived on for generations because they were unable to self-assess and grow past it. I don’t care about your number system. If you did not admit Joan to Curtis because she was a woman, and if you “let” her sweep your floor as a reward, this is how I remember you. *** you, Marcel Tabuteau. You know what would’ve been a real innovation that would have provided us all some benefit? Being a Very Big Fancy Man who supported women in music.

Needleman’s outrage is the result of the mention, in Joan Champie’s obituary, that Tabuteau hesitated to accept women at the Curtis Institute because 1) the likelihood of their being able to pursue a successful career was limited; and 2) because, after a successful lesson, Tabuteau “allowed her to sweep the floor.” 

Point 1 is, very obviously, one of the sad facts of orchestral life in the United States in the 1940s and 1950s, and, alas, even beyond. Conductors at that time rarely hired women oboists. The increasing presence of women in symphony orchestras in the United States, and around the world, is one of the signs of the remarkable gains made by women since the mid-twentieth century, gains akin to those that have been made in this country by other groups long dismissed or long oppressed.

Point 2, apparently troubling–although possibly the result of Tabuteau’s well-known mischievous sense of humor, needs to be understood in context. Those of us who knew Tabuteau or who knew others who knew him well, acknowledge that he could be a difficult taskmaster and act cold in lessons—not only to his rare female students, but to all of those who came to his studio. And yet most of his students remained faithful and dedicated to him because of his demonstrative artistry and the richness of his teaching. As Joan Champie herself said, after explaining to me in an interview how trying it could be to withstand Tabuteau’s sometimes severe remarks, “each lesson was a gift.” Champie was a courageous young woman whose desire to learn from an artist obviously quieted the discomfort that she felt.

What is most distressing in Needleman’s tirade is the dismissal of Tabuteau’s reed-making, which was part of his effort to achieve a kind of sound that combined the best of the French and Viennese schools of oboe-playing (a kind of sonority that Katherine Needleman herself well produces) and the dismissal of Tabuteau’s concern with phrasing, which, as it gradually infiltrated the players who sat around him, became one of the elements that caused critics such as The New Yorker’s Winthrop Sargeant to call Eugene Ormandy’s band the “Rolls Royce” of American orchestras.

Needleman’s reference to Tabuteau’s “abusive teaching” goes too far. That teaching has lived on for generations not because Tabuteau’s students “were unable to self-assess and grow past it,” but because it incorporated logical and inspiring methods of making music come alive.

I take no pleasure in refuting Katherine Needleman’s profane tirade. Nor does anyone on our board think of the bad old days of male chauvinism as the good old days. The Marcel Tabuteau First-Hand website continues to remain dedicated to promoting the musical ideas of a man who in our view had a highly positive impact on the development of musical performance in the United States during his lifetime, and during the period since his death. I ask those reading this response and my initial reply below to forward it to others who might be aware of Needleman’s Facebook attacks, so that the facts may be known.

Marc Mostovoy
Website administrator