Met Man

By William Bender

MUSICAL CHAIRS by Schuyler Chapin Putnam; 448 pages; $12.50

The confrontation was pure Somerset Maugham. Nadia Boulanger crisply closed the student's composition book and handed it back to her young pupil. "You're right," she assured him. "You haven't any talent."

The guru to such American composers as Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland and Virgil Thomson was correct about Schuyler Chapin. She was also right when she suggested that he might do well in music management. Chapin became road manager for Violinist Jascha Heifetz. He held Vladimir Horowitz's hand when the volatile pianist returned to the recording studios in 1962, and to the concert stage in 1965. For three turbulent years he occupied the most prestigious chair in opera, general manager of the Metropolitan.

Chapin, now dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, tells of all this in Musical Chairs. The author's candor and good humor have produced a compelling memoir. It should be required reading for anyone entering the contemporary music business--and for any young performer pondering an artistic career.

Chapin's recall is wickedly prodigious. Here is the curmudgeonly Heifetz going over ground rules during their first train ride together: "Sit here. I will buy your first drink. It is my custom to do this for my tour manager on the first trip. After this you will pay for your own." Later, as an executive for Columbia Records, Chapin proudly sent off a $20,000 royalty fee to Igor Stravinsky. The maestro showed up and slapped the check down on Chapin's desk. "Thank you for my tip!" he sneered. Horowitz might still be shuddering in the wings of Carnegie Hall, were it not for his representative's ministrations. "I took him gently by the shoulders and turned him 180 degrees, put my hand on his back, and gently propelled him out."

The author's account of angst inside the Met makes one wonder how anyone could endure the general manager's job. A perennial No. 2 man by his own testimony, Chapin acceded to the post when Goeran Gentele, the Swedish impresario who succeeded Rudolf Bing in 1972, was killed in an automobile accident. Chapin had enemies as well as friends on the Met's faction-ridden board of directors, and he was eased out in June 1975. The Met decided to abolish the job of general manager and substitute a conglomerate-style troika: executive director (Anthony A. Bliss), music director (James Levine), director of production (John Dexter). This reorganization apparently reflected the board's resentment of Bing, Chapin's autocratic predecessor. William Rockefeller, board president in 1975, also complained that Chapin had become a public personality, as though that were a sin:

"We must never have an impresario again. We've outgrown the need." The Met is still in the process of proving that thesis.

As for Chapin, if he suffered an ultimate chagrin, he also enjoyed some undisputed successes -- Les Troyens in 1973, Boris Godunov in 1974, the Met debut of Beverly Sills in 1975. For a while he had been granted a unique grace -- the chance of "living out childhood fantasies and being paid for them." The pay was good, but the fantasies were triumphant. In the contest of major league musical chairs, Chapin, 54, has accomplished that most diffi cult performance: he has lost his position and won the game.

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