The Two Schumans

"I'm a composer," says William Schuman, "and I'm also an administrator. I can't imagine a life when I couldn't do both--or each." Last week Schuman was doing both. As president of Manhattan's Lincoln Center, he turned what one associate calls his "leaping mind" to the myriad problems that follow on the center's glittering opening; as a composer, he sneaked away from his office to listen to the New York Philharmonic rehearse his new Eighth Symphony. The premiere of the Eighth, in fact, was a reminder of the unique combination of talents the center has in its new boss.

When the Philharmonic commissioned the symphony in 1960, Schuman was still president of the Juilliard School of Music. The composing took him, Schuman computes, 645 hours and 30 minutes, and he finished it last June. The symphony was a typically Schuman-crafted product: powerful, impetuous, rhythmically complex and grindingly dissonant--a work more notable for its vigor and blaring momentum than for charm or lyric effects. Schuman, though he is a difficult composer to classify in any specific school, is an easy composer to recognize: in his symphonies he has shown a fascination with quirky, eccentric rhythms, a love of massed, brassy sound, a powerful dramatic sense. In the Eighth, unfortunately, drama generally outweighs substance; the music stunned but never entirely convinced.

Dual Discipline. When General Maxwell Taylor resigned as Lincoln Center's president to become President Kennedy's military adviser, Schuman seemed an ideal successor. He insisted that he must have time to compose: "You want an artist, I presume, not an ex-artist." The board agreed, and Schuman prepared to launch himself into what he calls his "dual discipline.'' In the less harried Juilliard days, it involved sandwiching in roughly 600 hours of composing a year between administrative responsibilities. Schuman achieved this by paying scrupulous attention to time: "When I sit down to compose, I note the time, for instance, 8:17 a.m. If I'm called to the phone, I note a loss of, say, three minutes."

Schuman knows how to delegate authority, but he is not "a believer in the chain-of-command concept. I have always jumped channels and will continue to do so." His first move at Lincoln Center was to call his staff to his austerely neat office to ask them to discuss their "projects"--a favorite word--and to propose some projects of his own. He then set completion dates and asked for progress reports. The project he is happiest about so far: a $10 million special fund earmarked by Lincoln Center to support educational projects and to encourage the commissioning and production of new works.

Singing Composer. Schuman's associates are continually amazed at his ability to "do twice the work in half the time it would take the average person." He is aided by a mind that has always been thoroughly analytical: he recalls that when he decided to write his first opera in 1951 he said to himself, "Let's approach this thing in cold blood. What is it that is thoroughly American?" His answer was baseball, and he promptly got to work on The Mighty Casey. Moreover, Schuman's memory is so acute that he has without hesitation recalled a budget figure from two or three years back and named the page it was on.

For all that, even Schuman has had to abandon his composing temporarily under pressure of his Lincoln Center work. But he permits himself musical thoughts while driving his maroon Oldsmobile home to New Rochelle (45 minutes) at night, and he even indulges in a little mental composing. At such times, the Lincoln Center's president sings in a wild, loud voice. "I sing all the different instruments," he says. "I'm a singing composer."

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