The School of Music quickly emptied as the cry went up on a quiet day this
summer. “The Tuning Fork is back!” An audience assembled on Memorial Plaza,
their attention riveted to a crane that was lifting a familiar figure, centre
stage, left.
It was a memorable performance, a long overdue encore and everyone agreed
that the seven-metre steel sculpture by Gerhard Class once again filled a big
empty space and musicians would no longer lose their place on campus.
Time was transcended for Laurie Townsend, the School of Music’s Concerts and
Communications manager, who was taken back two decades to when she auditioned
to study at the school.
“I wandered among the buildings and trees, violin case in hand and got lost,”
she recalls. “`Look for a giant tuning fork’ I was advised and realized it was
an important part of being in Music at UBC.”
Recently Townsend returned to work on campus. The trees had matured, she noted
as she approached the school.
“Suddenly I was stunned because it was gone and the place wasn’t the same.
I was told it was removed because it had become rusty and dangerous.”
Indeed, four years ago the Tuning Fork was tilting. The base was deteriorating
and it was carted off to languish in a warehouse, an ignoble end to almost 30
years of music prominence.
In 1968 a jury had commissioned the well-known Class to create the work and
Alfred Blundell donated $5,000 to pay for it.
“Gerhard and I often went out to look at his works — including the fountain
in front of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre — and he was very disappointed when
the Tuning Fork disappeared,” says a neighbour, Ken James. James was asked by
Class to help put it back before the artist died several years ago.
James found sympathetic ears at UBC and enlisted the help of a former student
of Class, Paul Slipper, who fashioned a new base, which lifts the stature of
the sculpture by a further 20 centimetres.
“It was the right thing to do,” says Geoff Atkins, associate vice president,
Land and Building Services. “UBC hadn’t made sufficient provisions to properly
maintain works such as this and we are correcting that oversight by making a
complete inventory on campus.”
The artist’s widow and two sons are flying from Germany for a re-dedication
ceremony at noon on Sept. 7. Friends, artists and fabricators will be attending
from across Western Canada. It won’t be the first or last time people have gathered
to listen to music and share food around the Tuning Fork.
It’s all music to Townsend, who says she has overheard people once again giving
precise directions.
“It will always be there, a place to congregate, a constant reminder for us
to play in tune, an icon and the only clue that you were near the Music building,
which is soundproof.”
“Gerhard would be thrilled,” says James.
