The cacophony enveloping Symphony Hall in the wake of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s decision not to renew music director Andris Nelsons’ contract has been jarring, in part because such discord has been unusual in the organization’s 146-year history.
Unusual, but not unprecedented.
Nelsons’ sacking has stirred memories of another acrimonious episode involving a Boston maestro: the famed composer John Williams and his angry — if brief — resignation as conductor of the Boston Pops Orchestra 40 years ago. That imbroglio, like the split with Nelsons, gave the public a rare glimpse of the sturm and drang inside Symphony Hall and the sometimes uneasy partnership that exists between the conductor and the conducted.
“Any relationship between someone who has to be obeyed and the people who are the followers can be difficult,” says Lloyd Schwartz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning classical music critic who has covered the BSO since the 1970s. “I mean, the followers are an opinionated lot, and it’s inevitable that they’re not going to agree with everything.”
John Williams arrived in Boston in 1980, succeeding Arthur Fiedler, the legendary maestro who led the Boston Pops Orchestra for five decades. Like Fiedler, Williams was fiercely unsnobbish and wanted the Pops to delight — not challenge — its audience by playing a repertoire of light classical music, popular tunes, film scores, and holiday favorites.
While Williams was something of a star at the time, having won three Academy Awards for his scores for “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Jaws,” and “Star Wars,” he was not accustomed to working with an orchestra outside of a recording studio and he had virtually no experience as a public performer. Yet Thomas Morris, then-general manager of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, hired Williams to lead the Pops orchestra anyway.
“It was a wonderful decision for the Boston Pops, but it was also a very courageous and daring decision for John Williams,” says Morris, who eventually left Boston to become the executive director of the Cleveland Orchestra. “Not surprisingly, as John got into it, he became ambivalent because he was very uncomfortable.”
The new conductor quickly encountered some of the same problems Fiedler endured — namely, members of the Pops orchestra who were not always enthusiastic about the music they played or their grueling schedule of performances. (Most Pops members also play with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, whose programs tend to feature music that is more demanding.)
But Fiedler overlooked or accommodated the players’ indifference, which often manifested itself in outrageous ways. In his breezy biography of the conductor, “Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops: An Irreverent Memoir,’’ Fiedler’s longtime friend and protege, Harry Ellis Dickson, wrote about paper airplanes flying around the Symphony Hall stage during rehearsals; an orchestra member reading Playboy magazine aloud; a live lobster let loose on stage while the orchestra was working; and one player’s refusal to run through “Greensleeves,” telling Fiedler “we’ve rehearsed that enough” and walking out.
Morris says the Pops’s culture was not as buttoned-up as the BSO’s and Williams was a sensitive man whose tolerance for hijinks was limited. During a Pops rehearsal on June 12, 1984, he’d finally had enough. The orchestra of 100 or so players had just returned from a 20-minute recess and were performing “America, The Dream Goes On,” a short, anthemic piece composed by Williams.
But instead of silence as the final notes faded, some members of the orchestra began to hiss — signaling, peevishly, their disdain for the work. The incivility angered Williams, who promptly stormed off stage and into Morris’s office. “He said, ‘I can’t do this anymore. I quit,’” Morris recalls. (Attempts to reach Williams, who is 94 and lives in Los Angeles, were not successful.)
“There had been some misbehavior, some hissing, and John took high offense to it,” says Morris, who wrote about the incident in his book, “Always the Music: How a Lifelong Passion Framed a Future for Orchestras.” “He was very heated, of course, and very emotional.”
Despite receiving a personal apology from orchestra members later that evening, the conductor would not change his mind. The next day, the BSO and Williams issued a joint statement announcing the unhappy news.
“All we could do was frame it as best we could,” says Morris. “It was going to get out, so we had to get ahead of it.”
Williams cited unspecified “artistic and creative differences” as his reason for leaving, while the BSO said it had accepted the conductor’s decision “with deep regret.” What followed were several Globe stories detailing an occasionally fractious relationship between the conductor and the orchestra. Most players said they liked Williams personally, but complained about having to perform “mindless” Pops music, including some of Williams’s own compositions.
“Prokofiev he ain’t,” one orchestra member told the Globe’s Margo Miller.
While some players expressed contrition for their behavior (“There is a feeling of embarrassment and we’re sorry that it happened,” said clarinetist Craig Nordstrom), others were remorseless (“The orchestra are not bums,” insisted Pasquale A. Cardillo, also a clarinetist. “They’re not malcontents. They’re not thugs. We did not drive John Williams away.”)
Morris says the ensuing weeks were used as a “cooling-off period,” during which he and the BSO’s board of trustees worked with Williams and the orchestra to make the Pops schedule easier on everyone. Satisfied with the changes, Williams announced in early August that he would be staying on as conductor.
“I do love the Boston Symphony Orchestra. And I do not think of them as bad boys and girls,” he told Richard Dyer, the Globe’s longtime classical music critic. “My friends in California read the papers and kept asking why I put up with people flying paper airplanes and throwing spitballs. Well, I wouldn’t. And I never did — I simply never experienced that sort of behavior.
“What was widely reported as a problem of discipline was really a problem of morale,” he said.
Leo Beranek, who was then the board chairman, said he was grateful to Williams for rescinding his resignation. “It did not look good to lose a man of John’s caliber,” said Beranek, who died in 2019. “The players have promised John their full interest, excitement, and cooperation.”
Williams would remain with the Pops for another nine years, during which he and the orchestra recorded more than a dozen albums and performed countless concerts together. Succeeded in 1993 by Keith Lockhart, Williams is now Boston Pops laureate conductor and an artist-in-residence at Tanglewood. His biography on the BSO website does not mention the dissonant interlude with the Pops in 1984.
Mark Shanahan can be reached at mark.shanahan@globe.com.