Pletts: A letter to Elizabeth Paepcke

Dear Elizabeth,

Guten tag. You were here, you’re not here now . . . well, your spirit is absolutely. I’m glad I knew you and thankful you started the Aspen Music Festival 75 years ago. Good thing you were a socially-conscious woman. Because of you, we listen and feel more broadly.

Could you have imagined a woman would conduct the Sunday symphony this summer? Her name is Jane Glover, and she is remarkable. You didn’t create a festival in your Chicago home. No, you started one in the Rocky Mountains.

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Tom Cardamone, who directed the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (which you also started) said that when you first came to Colorado as a girl, you listened to storyteller Enos Mills (the John Muir of Colorado) in Estes Park. Inside you knew that music would be best played outside in the wilds of the Rockies — in a tent. For in the tent, we experience the power of creation surrounding us, then the composer who writes it down, then the conductor who guides and musicians who play. Nature and Art were simultaneously paramount to you, dear Elizabeth.

So, in 1949, you defied global hatred for your German heritage and dared to create a festival honoring the 200th anniversary of philosopher Goethe’s birth, for after all, he inspired the English Romantic poets. You telephoned Arthur Rubenstein asking him to come play in Aspen, for he was considered both a noble and sensitive pianist.

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Over 70 million people perished in the 1940s, but you both seized the power of art to heal and he came.

Then, wanting Dr. Albert Schweitzer to make his only trip to North America, you sent him a telegram after discovering he needed hospital supplies. Then he called back (from the Congo in 1949?) and replied, “Thank you. Here is my address.”

You replied, “Dr. Schweitzer, you must come to Chicago to get these supplies.” He did. And after he spoke in public, you both took a cab to the train station, and you said, “We’re going to a suburb.” You got on the train together, but the journey was interminable. I can picture Albert looking again and again out windows and saying (in German) “Frau Paepcke, this sure is urban sprawl.” You two disembarked in Glenwood Springs.

On a recording in the Pitkin County Library, one can listen to the playwright Thorton Wilder translate what Dr. Schweitzer said in our tent, “Man can only talk to God alone.” Kinda what it feels like to hike the big peaks.

I’ve lived here 45-plus years, and I realize many helped for that’s the power of a like-minded group committed to human creativity. Many in Aspen advocate for another arts council. We had one, which is why visions like the District Theatre became real. Janet Garwood, Jeff Bentley (former Dance Aspen), and I cooked up the concept to include a theatre when the new middle school was designed.

Since 1979, we’ve had a real estate transfer tax for public art, but in the past three years, that money did not fund art. We voted for the tax to go to making art — not just facilities and staff, not expensive non-green “employee” housing. Everyone needs shelter, but our souls must be nurtured — the way visual art, music, theater, and dance do. Personally, I’ve operated my home and an international arts organization in 500 square feet for 40 years.

And like you, Elizabeth, we must dare be uncomfortable. If the stairs aren’t crumbling on an historic building, we say no to a new look to fit current trends. Looking good wastes resources. You persuaded many to recover from the needless slaughter of millions of men against men in WWII. There was no room for complacency or complicity.

In 2024, we have another serious global crisis. Will we stop ourselves from destroying our own environment, our own nest? Will we make the world safe for the myriads of creatures who deserve to live? The Arctic is melting! We used to be trendsetters in Aspen. Now we rely on the past way too much. A healthy town must include cultural creatives who act now.

Please keep inspiring us to do what’s right for all life. The Iroquois tribes back East only act if it’s good for seven generations to come. If you were in the tent today, would you be proud of us?

With deep gratitude,

Sarah

P. S.: Oh, I think Elizabeth is coming through. “Miss Sarah, I have something to say.”

Uh oh, I think.

“About your dance duet I saw, with that handsome man Saphyre — years younger than you. Remember, I let out a cry, “Ahhhhh!,” from the audience, when you restaged “Romeo of Juliet” — where both lovers lived. I wasn’t shocked, you thrilled me! Everyone, thrill me again!

Sarah A. Pletts is the co-founder with Janet Garwood of the Sarah Pletts Dance Theatre, Ltd. The International, a Colorado-based nonprofit since 1984.