Bl2*Lancaster Farming, Saturday, April 10, 1993
Rotz Finds Similarity Between
Butchering And Conducting
BONNIE BRECHBILL
Franklin Co. Correspondent
McCONNELLSBURG (pulton
Co.) Richard Rotz is just as
comfortable talking about com
missioned choral works as he is
about dry-cured country ham.
Rotz, 52, is a partner in his fam
ily’s business, Rotz Meats, near
McConnellsburg, and the conduc
tor of the Mercersburg Area Com
munity Chorus. Classical music
has been a large part of his life for
many years.
*i look piano lessons as a
child,” he said, “but I didn’t take it
seriously until 1 got into high
school.” He joined the Columbia
Record Club’s classical division,
and received one record a month.
“I got to know a lot of music that
Richard Rotz is equally at home In front of a piano or in
his family business, Rotz Meats.
Richard Rotz checks hams In the drying room. The hams
lose weight as they dry, but no water Is added.
“I knew instantly I vividly
remember the moment that I
knew I was going into music,”
Rotz said. He was playing percus
sion during band practice at
McConnellsburg High School, but
didn’t have anything to play at the
moment. “I was listening to the
music, and I thought, ‘This is
great!’ I’m sure the Lord had a lot
to do with it.”
After receiving a bachelor of
arts degree in music education
from Lebanon Valley College and
a master’s in music from the Uni
versity of Michigan, he taught
music at James Buchanan High
School in Mercersburg from
1965-1979. He was not involved
in Rotz Meats during those years
A resident of Merccrsbu
start the Mercersburg Area Com
munity Chorus in 1975, and has
conducted all its concerts except
the first one. The chorus, which
has about 110 members from the
tri-state area, was incorporated as
a non-profit organization in 1980.
It gives five performances a year
in the arched Gothic cathedral on
the grounds of the Mercersburg
Academy.
“One of the reasons we organ
ized the chorus was that building,”
Rotz said. “It just cries out for the
kind of music we perform.”
While Rotz is highly skilled as a
conductor, he admits freely that he
has “a terrible voice.”
“(The chorus members) are the
makers of the sound,” he said.
“Music is in your head.”
As part of the 100th anniversary
celebration of Mercersburg
Academy, the chorus performed a
commissioned 12-minute cantata,
“For You O Democracy,” based
on the texts of Wall Whitman. The
composer, Lee Hoiby of Long
Eddy, New York, was present.
A committee of three people,
including Rotz, began the search
for the cantata’s composer several
months ago. They contacted
experts in the field for recommen
dations, and chose 35 composers
from their suggestions. They
invited those 35 to submit music,
specifying a lyrical, 20th-century
romantic style.
“We didn’t want anything avant
garde,” he said.
Twenty-five composers applied
for the commission by submitting
tapes and scores as samples of
their style. The committee chose
Hoiby to write the piece.
“Lee Hoiby is nationally known
as a fine composer,” Rolz said.
“He’s in the upper echelon, (but)
we chose him because of his mus
ic, not his reputation.”
It took Hoiby about three
months to compose “For You O
Democracy.”
Rolz, who enjoys a variety of
classical music, hesitates to
choose a favorite work or
composer.
“Great music lasts,” he said.
“You gel to know it by listening to
it many limes. It has a great inner
beauty and inner rightness that
stands the test of time.”
Classical music plays in one of
the back rooms at the butcher
shop, where Rotz can enjoy it
while he works.
Rotz’s parents started the meat
business in the 1940 s on a farm
about a mile from the present loca
tion. He and his sister, Marion
Walker, and her son, Stephen, run
the business with the help of five
employees. Their mother, Beulah,
87, helps to trim meat. Marion’s
husband, Charles, operates the
farm beside the shop, raising
about two-thirds of the hogs pro
cessed there.
The division of labor is not
clear-cut. “We all do anything
that’s to be done,” Marion said.
“That works best,” Rot/ added.
“We’re a close family.”
Over the meat case in their red
and-white wallpapered salesroom
are wooden cut-outs of pigs with
revolving tails. Most of the cus
tomers who enter are known to the
Rotz family, even those who come
from as far away as Philadelphia
and Pittsburgh.
What they come for is the
country-cured ham and bacon, and
the sausage, puddin’ and ponhaus
made in the shop.
(Turn to Page BIS)
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