A few years ago, it was reported that one of the world’s most influential faces in music, Lydia Tár — a pupil of the great composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein — faced a particularly troubling group of students at New York’s Juilliard School of Music. During a session of her masterclass, Tár told students that their worries about performing a piece written by Johann Sebastian Bach were unfounded. They were concerned about performing a piece written by another white male, and according to Tár, brought external concerns to the conversation that had nothing to do with the music itself. “If you want to dance the mask, you must service the composer,” Tár said, referring to cultural performances where dancers strive to lose their identity by taking on the visage of someone or something else. “You’ve got to sublimate yourself, your ego, and yes, your identity. You must stand in front of the public and God and obliterate yourself.”
Of course, all of that is only half-true. Tár is not a real person, but rather an amalgamation of egos from the world of fine arts, played by Cate Blanchett and masterfully captured in Todd Field’s 2022 film “Tár.” And the title character's belief that one must destroy one's own identity and autonomy to perform a piece successfully isn’t exactly correct, either — though many within the arts would disagree. In Field’s film, the writer-director slyly lampoons the pretension of figures high up in the worlds of ballet, opera, theater and symphony, as well as more recognizable personas in public-facing industries like film and music. His fictional conductor is a cipher for all of the ways that power and influence can taint an artist, and how many believe that great art is born not only by suffering, but by creating a vacuum in which suffering can persist. “Tár” takes place inside that vacuum, where the conductor propagates this great myth to maintain her control.
