Earth Day is this Friday. The idea has come a long way in the
four decades since it was first observed, but it seems to me
that one of the most obvious consequences of Earth Day must be
New York City’s recycling laws, which have us all sorting the
paper from the glass, and the glass from the plastic (and the
plastic from the plastic--nothing is easy). It’s become a habit,
and when I go out of town on vacation to places where recycling
isn’t a local custom, I find myself a little disgusted at the
thought of just throwing all that stuff away. It can’t all be
useless, can it? “Reduce, Reuse, Recyle” is an ecological mantra
now, but it’s something composers have always done. Bach and
Handel recycled melodies, sometimes more than once. Elgar kept
his compositional scraps from boyhood, and turned them into the
Wand of Youth suites. Gounod re-used a Bach prelude and made a
world-famous setting of “Ave Maria.” Mahler reduced his first
symphony by an entire movement, and that discarded movement
stands alone now as Blu