WHERE MUSIC’S IN THE AIR

My romance with Tanglewood dates back exactly 25 years, when some friends and I drove the 90 minutes from our Connecticut hometown to this magical musical complex for a concert of Beethoven’s First and Ninth symphonies.

As an irrepressibly poetic teenager, I was swept away by the place. After that first visit, in July 1972, I exulted in my journal: “Tanglewood is a huge, open, nature/music-lover’s Xanadu. Classical music is played there, the orchestra in an open, roofed, flat auditorium and most of the crowd sitting or lying on incredibly luxurious, sprawling lawns. A blanket, bread, wine and cheese put the finishing touches to the air and the breeze, the stars and the music. . . . The place just caught my soul and held it--the music and the night combined to flow together, over and around me: unearthly, mystical.”

Tanglewood merits such effusions. Nestled just outside the town of Lenox in the green folds of western Massachusetts’ Berkshire Hills, the 300-acre complex of rolling hills, glades of oaks, maples and pines, manicured lawns, practice cottages and performance sheds marries earthly beauty with heavenly music every summer. From late June to early September, students from around the world study at the Tanglewood Music Center with master composers, conductors, singers and musicians. And the Boston Symphony Orchestra takes up residence to headline the Tanglewood Music Festival, an eclectic schedule that attracts more than 300,000 music-lovers.

About three hours by car from both New York and Boston, Tanglewood is one of the cultural institutions that springs Brigadoon-like to life every summer in the Berkshires. All within 30 miles of each other are: the Berkshire Theater Festival in Stockbridge; the Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival in Becket; the Berkshire Opera in Lenox; the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Williamstown; the Shakespeare & Company theater festival at The Mount, writer Edith Wharton’s former summer home, in Lenox; and the Aston Magna classical music festival in Great Barrington. Other area cultural treasures open year-round include the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge; the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield; and the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown.

You don’t have to be an impressionable teenager to be swept away here. This is New England at its most picturesque: trim towns with white-shingled, black-shuttered, two-story Colonial houses set on shaded lawns; high-steepled white churches overlooking town greens; pocket cemeteries graced with crumbling gray tombstones; and along main streets, brand-name boutiques next to stubborn, scruffy stores selling everything from fishing lures to Yankee magazine to milk in glass bottles.

For five years after my first visit, Tanglewood pilgrimages became an essential part of every summer. Sometimes I would make the trip alone, sometimes with David Ruccio, a friend who shared my passion for music and adventure.

Here’s how I described our ritual in my journal:

“Our routine rarely varies. If a family car is available, we may drive, but usually we prefer to hitchhike--somehow this has become an indispensable part of the experience. First we hand-letter both sides of a sign--one side saying Lenox, for the early part of the trip; the other Tanglewood. Then we pack the necessary provisions: Muenster cheese and Italian bread, some apples, a tent and our sleeping bags. Finally one of our parents drives us out to the entrance to the highway. From that point we’re on our own, trusting to the kindness of strangers and the karma of our thumbs.

“We never have any real trouble getting rides--though the beautiful blonds in the red convertible that we both fantasize haven’t yet materialized. But we always meet kind and interesting people along the way--and if worse ever comes to worst, we have our tent, our sleeping bags and our food, so we can always bivouac off the road and make a picnic wherever we are.

“The hitchhike is the initial rite of passage, but the real epiphany is Tanglewood itself. We spread our sleeping bags on the warm and cushioning lawn, break out our bread and cheese and, as sunset gives way to evening, look up at the stars and let the incomparable music transport us.”

Tanglewood’s incomparable music first sounded 35 years before my initial visit, but the site’s origins go back to the mid-1800s, when the Berkshires began to flourish as a getaway for wealthy city folk who wanted to escape the summer swelter and grime of Boston and New York. These summer residents built Mediterranean villas framed by gardens, or red brick estates surrounded by statues, gazebos and fountains.

In 1936, two descendants of such residents, Gorham Brooks and Mary Aspinwall Tappan, presented the Tappan family’s 210 acres of lawns, meadows, barns and sheds as a gift to the Boston Symphony Orchestra and its director, Serge Koussevitzky. One year later, on Aug. 5, 1937, the symphony performed its first Tanglewood concert. Played under a tent on the estate grounds, that first concert--an all-Beethoven program--was a grand success.

On the following weekend, however, rain and thunder drowned out an all-Wagner program. Immediately the concert’s founders set about persuading their friends to donate funds for the construction of an all-weather music pavilion that would shelter players and patrons. One year later, on Aug. 4, 1938, the 6,000-seat “Music Shed” was inaugurated. This is the same structure--enhanced by acoustical modifications in 1959 and renamed the Serge Koussevitzky Music Shed in 1988--that is in use today.

The Tanglewood Music Center followed a few years later. Sponsored by the Boston Symphony, the center opened in 1940 with Aaron Copland as chairman of the faculty (Leonard Bernstein was a student in the conducting program). Today, more than 100 students enroll every summer in its three eight-week programs: one for instrumentalists, singers and composers; one for singers only; and one for conductors.

In its first half-century, the music center’s influence on the American classical music world has been enormous: Fully 20% of the members of American symphony orchestras--and 30% of the first-chair players--have studied in the school’s programs.

Through the years, the festival has expanded to embrace jazz and popular music in addition to classical artists. Recent performers have ranged from Yo Yo Ma to Wynton Marsalis to the Moody Blues, from Jessye Norman and Itzhak Perlman to Dave Brubeck, Frank Sinatra and James Taylor. And the annual Boston Pops concerts have attracted a loyal following of their own.

Still, while Tanglewood has diversified, the focus has remained on classical music as a performance art. This synergy of working classroom and concert hall is fundamental to Tanglewood, where music is--literally--always in the air.

For me, however, the place’s enchantment always extended beyond music. As I wrote more than 20 years ago: “After the performance we wait until the audience has left, then simply cross the street and pitch our tent in the grassy parking lot opposite the entrance to the grounds. This is close and comfortable, and best of all, we awake to the dawn songs of birds and the scent of dew on the grass.

“In the morning we pack up the tent and amble down the road to Stockbridge, where we get some breakfast and read the Sunday New York Times on the town green or in the rocking chairs on the porch of the grand Red Lion Inn. Later we poke around some of the shops, pick up sandwiches and soft drinks for lunch at a local deli, watch the incoming visitors with the aloof assurance of locals and then gradually make our way back past the already growing trail of cars to the Tanglewood grounds. There we stake out our plot and savor the sunshine, grass, trees and blue sky.

“From the middle of the afternoon, people begin to arrive. Some are very serious picnickers with folding tables and chairs, and prodigious hampers from which they regally extract long, fluted champagne glasses, elegant silverware, candlesticks and candles, ambitious salads, platters of carved meats and sliced vegetables, and exotic fruits, cheeses and breads. Others are somber students who seem to have come simply for the music and consider even a scrap of food to be frivolous distraction. “Usually we spend at least some time searching among the hundreds of blankets and quilts for unattended young women who may want to share our conversation and food, but whether we find them or not matters little. The nights are always delicious.”

Rereading this now, I realize that part of that deliciousness was the freedom of it all, and the notion that life would always be--or could always be--as good as that conjunction of music and friendship and food and stars. Why not? We were young and everything was possible.

High school summers became college summers, and then the summer between my junior and senior years I had the chance to live and work in Paris, and that was the beginning of the end of my Tanglewood pilgrimages. But every summer, no matter where I was, there would come a moment--a certain angle of sunlight, or scent of newly mown grass, or stray scrap of music in the air--that would remind me of that blanket, that patch of grass.

Finally, three years ago, almost two decades since my last visit, I had the chance to return to Tanglewood.

Miraculously, everything seemed the same. The lawns still sprawled, the oaks and maples still shaded, and the Shed was just as I remembered it. Picnickers lounged on the grass, earnest students hustled their French horns to classes, music still filled the air.

However, if Tanglewood hadn’t changed in two decades, I had. Instead of unrolling a sleeping bag, I splurged on a room in Blantyre, a magnificent Tudor-style, red-brick chateau-turned-hotel, just a 10-minute drive from the festival grounds.

Blantyre, built in 1902 by Robert W. Paterson as a copy of his wife’s ancestral manor in Lanarkshire, Scotland, is something of a Berkshire cultural institution itself. Had I had time enough, I would have spent a leisurely morning admiring its museum-like array of antique furniture and exploring its 85 acres of hiking trails, croquet and tennis courts and formal gardens. But I was on a mission, and I strolled around the Tanglewood lawns in the slanting morning sunlight.

Students straggled toward their morning practice sessions. On the Shed stage a dozen musicians in shirt-sleeves worked on a new piece. In the distance, women in flowing summer dresses and fancy hats bustled under a billowing white tent. The thin strains of a violin sounded to my left, and the round sounds of an oboe answered from my right.

I sat down, opened up my journal--a constant companion through all my wanderings--and wrote:

“After two decades of carrying this place in my soul, I think I understand its enchantment. It is the passion that infuses the grounds and the very air--the passion of the young students who come every summer, bearing their instruments and their hopes, their yearnings and their fears; the passions of the patrons who come back--whether every week or twice a summer--bearing their picnics and their memories, their anticipations and their dreams; and the passions of the founders and their descendants, who believed and still believe so fervently in the necessity of this musical shrine in the bosom of their beloved Berkshires. . . .”

The concert I attended was scheduled to begin at 8:30, but by 5:30 the lawn round the Shed was already a patchwork of colorful quilts. I found a spot, spread my blanket and settled in to watch the evening unfold. Nearby two silver-haired couples set up a folding red-and-white picnic table with benches, then unpacked pewter candlesticks, crystal goblets, silverware swaddled in cloth napkins, four bottles of wine and a succession of platters laden with fried chicken, fruit salad, bread and cheese.

Soon dusk descended, and the insects and birds began their nightly songs like an orchestra tuning up, piece by piece. Candles flickered here and there on the lawn--mirroring the stars here and there in the sky. Corks popped and people laughed.

Sociable chatter drifted from a corner of the grounds and I walked over to investigate. There, under a white tent, the modern descendants of Gorham Brooks and Mary Aspinwall Tappan sipped summer drinks, nibbled intricate concoctions on toothpicks and made a graceful social weave. Seersucker suits clinked glasses with country tweeds.

If you wanted to be cynical about a group like this, you could, but Tanglewood owed its origins to people just like these. And this was another aspect of Tanglewood’s enchantment: the aristocratic gift had come to transcend social classes; tented aristocracy and quilted democracy all breathed the same intoxicating air and were transported by the same music.

I returned to my blanket, picking my way among the picnickers. Before long, patrons with reserved seats began to arrive, signaling the imminent appearance of the orchestra. A benign buzz began to build on the lawn. I took out my Swiss Army knife and uncorked my wine, then cut thick rectangles of cheese and slices of bread.

As I began to sip and sup, I conjured up the romantic young man of my past. I imagined him--wearing shoulder-length hair and bell bottoms, carrying a fraying backpack, a hand-printed sign and a much-used sleeping bag--sitting down on my blanket, looking up at the stars, sighing, then pulling out a loaf of Italian bread and a chunk of cheese.

I smiled at this ghost of my youth. “It’s great to see you again,” I said. And I imagined him answering, “I’ve been here all the time.”

Suddenly applause echoed from the Music Shed as the orchestra walked onto the stage. After a suspended moment of anticipation, Mozart’s Symphony No. 35 thundered into the air. My chimerical companion nodded and closed his eyes. And the music soared over and through and around us, threading listener to listener, blanket to branch to star.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

GUIDEBOOK: Tuning In to Tanglewood

Telephone numbers and prices: The area code for Lenox and Stockbridge is 413. Hotel rates are for a double room for one night. Restaurant prices are for two, food only.

Getting there: American and United offer nonstop flights daily from Los Angeles to Boston, which is about 115 miles from Tanglewood. American, Delta, Northwest, United and USAir offer daily connecting service from Los Angeles to Albany, N.Y., about 40 miles from Tanglewood.

Where to stay: Blantyre, P.O. Box 995, Lenox, Mass., 01240; 637-3556. fax, 637-4282. Eight sumptuous rooms and suites in the main house. Rates: $275 and up, including continental breakfast. Also on the property, the Carriage House offers 12 rooms and suites, decorated in a country style. Rates: $235 and up, including continental breakfast. Three separate cottages are also available. Rates: $165 to $500. The Blantyre is closed from November through April.

The Red Lion Inn, Main Street, Stockbridge, Mass., 01262; 298-5545. fax, 298-5130. Originally an 18th century stagecoach stop, the inn features a tavern, pub and a main restaurant. Rates: $87-$325. Inexpensive B&Bs; and modest inns are also plentiful in the Tanglewood area.

Where to eat: Nejaime’s Stockbridge Wine Cellar and Cheese Shop, 8 Elm Street; 298-3454. This deli in the historic heart of Stockbridge offers all the fixings for a picnic. Blantyre’s British country house cuisine is spectacular and pricey; $136. The Red Lion Inn’s main dining room, serving prime rib, pastas and fish, is charming; $35-$100. Church Street Cafe, 65 Church St., Lenox; 637-2745. The cafe is in the center of town, within walking distance of Tanglewood, and has excellent bistro fare; $35 to $40.

Tanglewood: The Tanglewood Music Festival runs from late June to early September. Schedule and ticket prices are announced in mid-April. For information, contact the Boston Symphony Orchestra, 301 Massachusetts Ave., Boston, Mass., 02115; (617) 266-1492. Last summer, lawn tickets cost $12.50, and reserved Shed seats ranged from $14 to $74.

For more information: The Berkshire Visitors Bureau, Berkshire Common, Pittsfield, Mass., 01201; (800) 237-5747.