Meeting Michael
I first met Michael Saffle when I attended the Franz Liszt Festival at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, 27-30 October, 1994. I didn't know at the time that he held a distinguished reputation in the fields of music history and musicology (my primary area of study and teaching is film and video). Indeed, I didn't know then how special he would turn out to be in my life. Anyway, although we exchanged barely a few words during the lectures and concerts, we found sudden and unexpected professional and personal interests as we boarded the shuttle to return to the States. The conversation that began during that flight continues to this day.
We discovered mutual interests in the representation on film of composers and their music. I was agreeably shocked. I was used to encountering only a kind of suspicion from my friends in the music world, who sniffed disdainfully at the subject. But Michael, to my astonishment, not only was sympathetic, but he encouraged my research. He offered to read my essays; he tendered advice; he introduced me to his colleagues. He kept me apprised of music festivals at home and abroad.
A few years went by, and I began work on the book that was finally published in 2005 as Composers in the Movies: Studies in Musical Biography (Yale University Press). All the while Michael's interest in my work continued. He introduced me to several editors and threw my way a number of publishing opportunities. Without his enthusiasm and support I would never have produced the interviews, essays, and book chapters that I am so proud of today.
The point of the above is that in Michael I discovered that which is best but rarest in the academy, i.e. a truly generous and unselfish collegiality. While so many scholars jealously guard their research and conveniently refrain from sharing their findings and helping their colleagues, Michael, without the prospect of any material gain, was always there, ready to help. Send a manuscript to Michael and you get back a careful and thorough reading. Submit to his wisdom and experience, and you get a tough but supportive editor. Talk to him on the phone or in person and he always takes time for you. And accept an invitation to Virginia Tech to speak, as I did a few years ago, and you encounter in him and his beautiful wife Sue colleagues who do everything to make your stay a welcome and productive one.
In his own work he continues to be an inspiration to all of us. Not only has his authoritative research and publishing about Franz Liszt been of inestimable value to all of us, but the thoroughness and rigor of his work, not to mention the amazing variety of his interests, represents real vitality and inquiry.
Michael Saffle represents all that is positive in the future of our profession. The world has grown too large for us to be narrow in our interests, to ignore our fellow scholars, to refuse help to others. With all this talk about “globalization,” he reminds us that the term also refers to the spirit of collaboration and sharing that unites us worldwide.
John C. Tibbetts
Associate Chair, Dept. of Theatre and
Film
University of Kansas