Ruffs and Drags

When the retirement of Timpanist Saul Goodman was announced by the New York Philharmonic, Conductor Pierre Boulez gave him a watch. That was like giving Soprano Birgit Nilsson a pitch pipe. As head of the Philharmonic's percussion section, Goodman has been keeping time for the orchestra for 46 years. His rolls, ruffs and drags were as familiar and indispensable to Mengelberg and Toscanini in their day as to Bernstein and Boulez in theirs. Goodman's departure this week will terminate one of the longest tenures in the history of American symphonic life. As Philharmonic Snare Drummer "Buster" Bailey puts it for the whole orchestra, "It will just never be the same again."

Goodman is not just the world's foremost virtuoso of the kettledrums; he is also an influential teacher, a designer and manufacturer of drums and drumsticks. "My God!" he exults. "The sounds of today are all percussive--the auto factory, the jet engine." Composers, however, "will give you a new score with new percussive effects and say, 'I've written this down, now you find out how to do it.' That's why a timpanist has to be so ingenious."

Occasionally Goodman will admit the existence of a little ingenuity on the part of others. Bernstein? "He revived the Philharmonic. He created a new interest in music by his enthusiasm and energy and unique approach." Georg Solti? "Fantastic dynamics. I seldom go to concerts, but you could not pay me to stay away when Solti comes to New York with the Chicago Symphony." More often, Goodman is a flinty patriarch who seems to live by his own view that the conductor is seen, but the timpanist is heard. Mengelberg? "Very quirky and picky. He would rearrange the orchestra when he guest-conducted and put the percussion all the way in front, and then complain that the brasses were too loud." Dimitri Mitropoulos? "He did some very exciting things, but he let the Philharmonic deteriorate."

When it comes to his fellow players, Goodman tends to respect those with the most difficult jobs, starting with his own. "A timpanist is the only one who is always alone." He concedes that the horn is even more difficult than the timpani. "I have never known a French-horn player who was a bad person. He may drink, yes, but he is never bad." Violinists, on the other hand, are "pinheaded, often buffoons and clowns"; cellists are "fanatic about their instruments"; oboists are "arrogant."

Occasionally Goodman's skewered mates get their own back. Whipping around to strike his No. 4 kettledrum once, he flailed empty air. A colleague had tied a rope to the big copper bowl and, while Goodman was looking elsewhere, hauled it away.

Crucial Audition. Former Goodman students now occupy most of the major first-chair percussion spots in the U.S. One of them, Roland Kohloff of the San Francisco Symphony, is succeeding Goodman at the Philharmonic. So motherly is Goodman about watching out for his big drum-beating family that he once had Buster Bailey audition for the St. Louis Symphony in place of another candidate, Bob Matson, also a Goodman student, who happened to be out of town. Apparently on the theory that one Goodman product is as good as another, Matson got the job.

Goodman's own crucial audition came under similar circumstances. It was the spring of 1926, and his teacher Alfred Friese fell ill the night the Philharmonic was doing Stravinsky's Petrouchka Suite. The conductor was Toscanini. "At that point, I had never heard of Toscanini, so I wasn't afraid. If I had known who he was, maybe I couldn't have played the way I did." The way he played won him a full-time position. "They promised," recalls Goodman, "that it would be a steady job."

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