Talent- a special innate or developed aptitude for an expressed or implied activity usually of a creative or artistic nature
I believe Talent is a myth. This is my own personal belief, and I have had spirited discussions with friends, family and colleagues about it. It came up again the other day with a co-worker, this notion that people who pursue and succeed at music are somehow different from regular people. It comes up that the defining difference is "natural" or "god-given" talent, and I reject this notion. Maybe it is the liberal and democratic part of my being that does so. I want everyone to feel able to participate in the joy of making music, and not sit on the sidelines because of some perceived lack of "talent". When it comes to music, I believe that everyone and anyone can learn, and the only real limit to that learning is what I call affinity.
Early exposure to music of all kinds, and an expectation from parents that a child WILL play music can give a person an advantage out of the chute. I see this every day, where kids who come to start a band instrument succeed quickly because they have had piano lessons and/or the parents have exposed them to lots of music, especially live performances. Such students take success on the new instrument as a given; that they will have to work at it to succeed is also understood from day one.
But I have also seen students who have no early exposure to live music, or very little, have had no previous training, and whose parents have zero expectation of their child becoming a musician move to the head of the class. But is it talent that explains musical success where the groundwork is missing? I don't think so. I think it is that a student discovers he really LIKES making music. He likes fooling around with the flute or cello at home, making attempts to get sound, dragging the bow across the strings, trying the buttons, figuring out how to play Jingle Bells or the first few notes of Happy Birthday or the USC fight song.
And no one at home tries to stop him. Nothing makes me sadder as a music teacher than when a child tells me she cannot play at home because a parent won't let her. The family lives in an apartment, or has a small baby who needs to sleep, or the parent can't stand the squeaks and squawks that are inevitable at first. Or there might be a toddler in the home who might damage the instrument, so it is put away in a safe place, which is, unfortunately, not accessible to the fourth-grader either. These impediments WILL keep a student from succeeding.
But if the child has access and loves it, he or she will succeed. There ARE students who try it for a while and discover it isn't their cup of tea, this blowing and scraping away on some piece of arcane equipment. Some don't even feel compelled to try; music doesn't have any pull for them. They become visual artists or actors or dancers or soccer stars or history experts or spelling buffs or scientists, because that is what they LOVE to do.
What makes one person like one thing and not another? I don't know the answer to that. Maybe we need to redefine "talent" as something closer to "desire".
Maybe the job of the music teacher is to make sure the student is having fun. Due to some scheduling issues last year, I have almost all beginners in my elementary classes this year. There are a bunch of them. What's fun for a group of 30 beginning violinists, or a beginning band? I think, and am basing this year's pedagogy on this, that what's fun is success. I have been keeping this idea in mind, focusing on basics and getting it right. Sitting up with good posture, forming good embouchure, playing in tune, using a "beautiful bow hand", starting and stopping together are all things easy to overlook in the throes of trying to get some music happening, but when made the focus of the lesson, can be achieved by everyone and create an atmosphere of teamwork and accomplishment. What is interesting to me is that I hear from kids and the parents of those kids that they are having fun!
I have to admit, I didn't really think about this as I was going into the new year. I was thinking more about crowd control, breaking things down so I could manage so many beginners at once. The added benefit of creating successful moments for my students is something that I didn't foresee, but am enjoying nonetheless.
Now I hope I can keep the fun going, because that's where their future lies. Talent-shmalent. If they are having fun, they are going to keep playing. And if they keep playing, then doors open into worlds of fun they can't even imagine yet.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Saturday, October 22, 2011
They Do It Every Time!
Well, here we are, deep into the school year. It's only October, but we have been back to school since before Labor Day- a first for us this year in Pasadena. I have nearly 300 kids signed up to play music in the elementary classes, and all but a handful of the instruments in my inventory are checked out. Kids are blowing in head-joints, buzzing lips, plucking open strings, learning about playing postion and rest position. They are excited, and in every single new class, sometime in this first month, sometime during the relative noise and chaos of those first meetings, someone will turn a clarinet or a trumpet or a violin up, place it on his shoulder (it really is the boys who do this, not girls) make two clicking sounds and then pantomime a kick back, and an innocent musical instrument is transformed into a gun. It is universal. It ALWAYS happens. My response to this is quick and serious: guns are not allowed at school, guns are not a joke, and instruments are never, NEVER guns. Usually I get a wide-eyed stare back, like how-did-she-even-know-what-I-was-doing...as though he was the first person ever to think of doing that.
I remember in the 70's when I had friends my age with small children, and those children were not allowed to play with guns, or weapons of any kind. These kids were not given cap pistols or air rifles or even pop guns, but they DID play with guns. Sticks, trucks, Legos, almost anything, except maybe a stuffed animal could become a gun. I am quite sure that if I had been teaching music classes then, the clarinets would have had their turn as semi-automatic rifles. We, as children, did play with toy guns, had a couple of realistic-looking pistols in a closet high up, where we had to ask permission to get them down. Sometimes we had rolls of caps that fit into the hammer, so that when you pulled the trigger, they made a dandy sound and emitted light, smoke, and the smell of gunpowder.They were fun, but I didn't care much one way or the other about them, and have absolutely no interest in guns, toy or otherwise, now. But, in every new class, in every year for 15 years, and I'll bet for the next 15 years, someone does.
So forgive me, kids, for getting on your cases about it, but in a post-Columbine world, I don't feel I have a choice. I cannot say that allowing 4th graders to weaponize their trombones will result in mass shootings in the high school cafeteria later, and I cannot say that making a big-deal prohibition of this weaponization will prevent such horrors from happening. But if I don't make my speech, I will be forever hearing that click-click kaboom, we will have it in every class, every week, instead of just the first month. I think we're done with it for this year. Good.
I remember in the 70's when I had friends my age with small children, and those children were not allowed to play with guns, or weapons of any kind. These kids were not given cap pistols or air rifles or even pop guns, but they DID play with guns. Sticks, trucks, Legos, almost anything, except maybe a stuffed animal could become a gun. I am quite sure that if I had been teaching music classes then, the clarinets would have had their turn as semi-automatic rifles. We, as children, did play with toy guns, had a couple of realistic-looking pistols in a closet high up, where we had to ask permission to get them down. Sometimes we had rolls of caps that fit into the hammer, so that when you pulled the trigger, they made a dandy sound and emitted light, smoke, and the smell of gunpowder.They were fun, but I didn't care much one way or the other about them, and have absolutely no interest in guns, toy or otherwise, now. But, in every new class, in every year for 15 years, and I'll bet for the next 15 years, someone does.
So forgive me, kids, for getting on your cases about it, but in a post-Columbine world, I don't feel I have a choice. I cannot say that allowing 4th graders to weaponize their trombones will result in mass shootings in the high school cafeteria later, and I cannot say that making a big-deal prohibition of this weaponization will prevent such horrors from happening. But if I don't make my speech, I will be forever hearing that click-click kaboom, we will have it in every class, every week, instead of just the first month. I think we're done with it for this year. Good.
Sunday, October 9, 2011
My Life in 6 Songs: Part IV- War/Lean on Me
Hai-yai, Kay-ay-kus
Nobody like us,
we are the campers of RSC!
Always a-grinnin'
Always a-winnin'
Always a-feelin' fine!
Kay-Ay!
Okay, this is actually two songs or maybe three if you count the one above. But they merge in my mind into the experience of one summer- the summer of 1972. I had graduated from high school a year early and was excited about starting college in the fall, and had landed my first job as part of the kitchen staff at Rotary Sunshine Camp in Rochester. RSC was, and is still, a summer camp serving disabled children( http://www.sunshinecampus.org/). The idea behind the camp is that, for a couple weeks each year, no matter how disabled a child is, he or she will be able to have fun, just like any other kid. Swimming, camping out, crafts, campfires, movie nights, special visits from bagpipe troupes and ventriloquists, sherriff helicopters and magicians all were accessible to even the most severely involved child. 4 ten-day sessions brought hundreds of children from ages 7-18 to the 23 acre camp situated on the shores of Lake Ontario. The camp relocated in 1973, and the format of the summer program has changed, but the mission of the camp remains to serve children whose disabilities keep them from being able to participate in other summer programs.
I worked in the kitchen. I had wanted to be a counselor, but was only 17 so was not yet eligible for that position. Instead, I was part of a team which included two other high school girls, Chris and Janet, Stella, our severe chief/chef, and Henry, a handsome African-American young man, the first such person I had ever spent any close time with. Our day started at 6:30 a.m. preparing breakfast for the 200 or so campers and staff. We broke egg yolks with our fingers in the steel vats where they cooked into scrambled eggs. We put out boxes of cereal and made piles of toast. We boiled pots of oatmeal. We fried bacon or sausage. We set tables with napkins and flatware at each place. The staff routinely and loudly complained about the lousy food, but to many of the campers, it was delicious.
In our kitchen was a radio that played all day long, tuned to a top 40's radio station. Having been brought up in a household where mostly only classical music played every day, the songs that came out of that radio were new to me. Stella tolerated the radio, but only because, I think, she was a little afraid of Henry. She was a no-nonsense boss, who kept us busy all the hours of our shifts, scrubbing the floor, mixing up government-issued butter with the dry, government-issued peanut butter, cutting, slicing, mixing, cleaning, washing dishes in the big, steamy Hobart.
Henry did all the heavy work, and was a jovial foil to Stella's seriousness. He was NOT afraid of her, as we girls were, and joshed her and teased her till she would crack a tiny smile, indicating that she wasn't all that tough after all. He was a lusty boy who stole kisses from us girls in the walk-in refrigerator. But he was our friend, and the kisses were just silliness that lightened the day.
We worked through the morning, and then had a couple hours off every afternoon to do as we pleased before coming back in to start on dinner. We finished the dinner work by around 6:30 and then had the evening to do what we pleased. Being teenagers, we would stay up till 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. and then get up at 6 to start all over again. We had 2 days off out of 10. It was a gruelling schedule for a solid 8 weeks. For this entire summer of work I earned $125.00. We got room and board, so I really didn't spend any of it, and it was the first money I had ever earned doing anything besides babysitting, so it seemed a small fortune.
In those afternoon hours, Henry wanted to prepare a song for the staff talent show. "War" (Edwin Starr http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01-2pNCZiNk) was one of the songs that came out of our radio in the kitchen. Henry told us he had a band that was going to come to the camp to play for one of the dances and he wanted us to perform this song with them. We were going to be the three white chick back up singers and he used some of our time in the afternoons to teach us the moves. My memory is fuzzy about whether we actually ever performed this song. I seem to remember that the whole band thing was a hoax. But we had fun, and whenever I hear that song I think of those days.
The other song that takes me right back to the steam tables of Stella's kitchen is Lean On Me (Bill Withers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaVXfHZv50Y ) which was also on the playlist of our top 40s station. It was a summer of firsts. This song might be one of the first top 40 songs I ever knew all the words to. We sang along in the kitchen as we opened #10 cans of ravioli and green beans or mixed up vats of jello or made sheet cakes. We were 4 strangers who shared 8 weeks of hard work and hard play. I don't know what ever happened to any of those people, but when I went back the next year as a counselor, they were all gone. I never complained about the food.
Nobody like us,
we are the campers of RSC!
Always a-grinnin'
Always a-winnin'
Always a-feelin' fine!
Kay-Ay!
Okay, this is actually two songs or maybe three if you count the one above. But they merge in my mind into the experience of one summer- the summer of 1972. I had graduated from high school a year early and was excited about starting college in the fall, and had landed my first job as part of the kitchen staff at Rotary Sunshine Camp in Rochester. RSC was, and is still, a summer camp serving disabled children( http://www.sunshinecampus.org/). The idea behind the camp is that, for a couple weeks each year, no matter how disabled a child is, he or she will be able to have fun, just like any other kid. Swimming, camping out, crafts, campfires, movie nights, special visits from bagpipe troupes and ventriloquists, sherriff helicopters and magicians all were accessible to even the most severely involved child. 4 ten-day sessions brought hundreds of children from ages 7-18 to the 23 acre camp situated on the shores of Lake Ontario. The camp relocated in 1973, and the format of the summer program has changed, but the mission of the camp remains to serve children whose disabilities keep them from being able to participate in other summer programs.
I worked in the kitchen. I had wanted to be a counselor, but was only 17 so was not yet eligible for that position. Instead, I was part of a team which included two other high school girls, Chris and Janet, Stella, our severe chief/chef, and Henry, a handsome African-American young man, the first such person I had ever spent any close time with. Our day started at 6:30 a.m. preparing breakfast for the 200 or so campers and staff. We broke egg yolks with our fingers in the steel vats where they cooked into scrambled eggs. We put out boxes of cereal and made piles of toast. We boiled pots of oatmeal. We fried bacon or sausage. We set tables with napkins and flatware at each place. The staff routinely and loudly complained about the lousy food, but to many of the campers, it was delicious.
In our kitchen was a radio that played all day long, tuned to a top 40's radio station. Having been brought up in a household where mostly only classical music played every day, the songs that came out of that radio were new to me. Stella tolerated the radio, but only because, I think, she was a little afraid of Henry. She was a no-nonsense boss, who kept us busy all the hours of our shifts, scrubbing the floor, mixing up government-issued butter with the dry, government-issued peanut butter, cutting, slicing, mixing, cleaning, washing dishes in the big, steamy Hobart.
Henry did all the heavy work, and was a jovial foil to Stella's seriousness. He was NOT afraid of her, as we girls were, and joshed her and teased her till she would crack a tiny smile, indicating that she wasn't all that tough after all. He was a lusty boy who stole kisses from us girls in the walk-in refrigerator. But he was our friend, and the kisses were just silliness that lightened the day.
We worked through the morning, and then had a couple hours off every afternoon to do as we pleased before coming back in to start on dinner. We finished the dinner work by around 6:30 and then had the evening to do what we pleased. Being teenagers, we would stay up till 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. and then get up at 6 to start all over again. We had 2 days off out of 10. It was a gruelling schedule for a solid 8 weeks. For this entire summer of work I earned $125.00. We got room and board, so I really didn't spend any of it, and it was the first money I had ever earned doing anything besides babysitting, so it seemed a small fortune.
In those afternoon hours, Henry wanted to prepare a song for the staff talent show. "War" (Edwin Starr http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01-2pNCZiNk) was one of the songs that came out of our radio in the kitchen. Henry told us he had a band that was going to come to the camp to play for one of the dances and he wanted us to perform this song with them. We were going to be the three white chick back up singers and he used some of our time in the afternoons to teach us the moves. My memory is fuzzy about whether we actually ever performed this song. I seem to remember that the whole band thing was a hoax. But we had fun, and whenever I hear that song I think of those days.
The other song that takes me right back to the steam tables of Stella's kitchen is Lean On Me (Bill Withers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaVXfHZv50Y ) which was also on the playlist of our top 40s station. It was a summer of firsts. This song might be one of the first top 40 songs I ever knew all the words to. We sang along in the kitchen as we opened #10 cans of ravioli and green beans or mixed up vats of jello or made sheet cakes. We were 4 strangers who shared 8 weeks of hard work and hard play. I don't know what ever happened to any of those people, but when I went back the next year as a counselor, they were all gone. I never complained about the food.
Wednesday, September 21, 2011
The Matrix Music Teacher: New Year's Wishes
The Matrix Music Teacher: New Year's Wishes: Here I am on the 4th Wednesday of the new school year, and it is the first day I feel I have a grip on my schedule. One of my former scho...
New Year's Wishes
Here I am on the 4th Wednesday of the new school year, and it is the first day I feel I have a grip on my schedule. One of my former schools closed at the end of last year, victim to state and local budgetary woes, and so I took on one new school this year. I have had more or less the same schedule for the last several years, and suddenly I have a new bell schedule to accommodate. It's all worked out now, and I think I will actually sleep tonight, instead of lying awake trying to see into the black hole of instructional minutes, recesses and lunches. The new school just so happens to be a school I spent LOTS of time at up till about 4 years ago. It was my home school, I had my office there and I taught two or three middle school classes plus 3/4/5 instrumental and choral music. We put on huge musicals every spring, and at one time I had fully a third of the middle school population in my classes, and most of the 3rd-5th graders. I had only one other school during those years, and so was heavily invested there. I have now come back to work with only 4th and 5th graders. It's great to be there. There are many familiar faces, and there are lots of new ones. None of the kids remember me from before, as most of them didn't go to school yet at all last time I was there. That's a good thing, if only because there are no expectations of the former glory of the music program. We can rebuild it from scratch, though I won't ever be able to devote the time there I once did. The new principal had been a music teacher herself once upon a time, so, while respecting the needs of the classroom teachers, is very adamant about getting as many kids playing an instrument as possible. All of this is wonderful. So what else is new? We have a new room at Sierra Madre Middle School, where the AC works ALL the time and there is room to do everything we need to do. I have 45 kids signed up for the orchestra, whose name is now iPAK (instrumental Performing Art Kids) and there is talk of splitting it in two- a real BAND, and ORCHESTRA! They are sounding pretty good at moments, and I only wish there was more good music at their level for this kind of mixed ensemble. I think we have played almost all of it in the last year or two. I have to be careful what I wish for. I might just get it! I wished for 40 kids, I got 45. I wished for the new room and we got it. I have wished to have a band and orchestra, instead of the mash up of strings and winds together that we call a symphony orchestra (heavy on the alto sax); I might just get it. If it happens, it will further complicate an already complicated schedule- I have no two days in the week alike- but I will be thrilled. Check back in October. Meanwhile, the other elementary schools are raring to go. Field Elementary Band blew a few notes today. The 4th graders at Roosevelt are learning Hot Cross Buns on the recorder and the 5th graders are learning how to hold a violin bow. At San Rafael, we had a few classes on note and rhythm reading in anticipation of passing out instruments. In a week or so, I will jump in and work with some string classes at Marshall Fundamental. This will bring the total of number of campuses I visit each week to 7. I will rub my lamp and wish for enough instruments for everyone who needs one, and off we go! Labels: instrumental music, new school year, Pasadena, performing arts | draft |
Friday, August 26, 2011
My Life in 6 Songs: Part IV- The Sound of Music
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| Friends and Sisters |
Last week my sister and I drove over the mountains from her home near San Francisco to Las Vegas. It was a long, and grueling, and also very pretty trip. I got the first speeding ticket I have ever gotten in my life when we were streaking along in the Nevada desert night after having to stop for 1) a jackknifed big rig on the 2-lane Sonora Pass 2) multiple construction sites, and just trying to GET THERE. It was late. I was going too fast. There are burros on that road. 'Nuf said.
The reason for the trip was to reconnect with my childhood friend, Bonnie. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology and facebook, I was able to find her last year around Christmas. We have been emailing since, and had finally come up with a plan to meet in, of all places, Las Vegas. She flew from our hometown, Rochester, New York, to Pensacola, Florida to meet up with HER sister and her sis's boyfriend. They slammed across the country in 36 hours in a Ford Taurus and got to Vegas several days before Lee and me, but we met them bright eyedthe next morning under the Arch d'Triomph of Gay Paris for breakfast.
The non-stop talkfest began immediately, and it was easy to remember why we had gotten in so much trouble as kids for talking during class. We caught up on classmates, family and each other. Bonnie's sister headed to the casinos after breakfast (she is very lucky and won lots of money) while Lee, Bonnie and I wandered from hotel bar to hotel bar in the 110 degree heat, sipping cold drinks, stopping into a few shops and talking all the while.
What does any of this have to do with The Sound of Music? Well, Bonnie and I were friends through the 10 years between 2nd grade and when I graduated and left town after 11th grade. She played clarinet and I played cello. Eventually I played tuba and French horn too. We sang in the choirs. We played in the pit orchestras. We were in every music group together for eight of those 10 years. We stomped around the snowy fields of our suburb, played Clue (she always won) and rode bikes, learned about sex from another girl hanging around the apple trees in the vacant lot and dated boys who were also best friends. We walked to school together in the predawn cold of a Rochester winter, except when her dad drove us to school in their Ford Falcon. And the one thing that we shared all through those years was our love of music.
In about 5th or 6th grade, I became infatuated with two movies. The first was Mary Poppins. The soundtrack recording of this movie was one of the first records I ever owned. I knew every song, and could sing them with proper English pronunciations. I thought Julie Andrews was marvelous, and I wanted to BE her.
But there was another movie that Bonnie kept telling me about. She had the record and we listened to it over and over on her little stereo in a suitcase on the floor of her bedroom. THIS was the movie to end all movies. If you like Julie Andrews, you are going to LOVE this! Finally, I got to see The Sound of Music. I don't really even remember the circumstances of the actual viewing of the movie. But, yes, this movie had it ALL over Mary Poppins. It was for adults, a serious story, a love story. The songs were about adult things. Learning those songs, and singing them gave me glimpses into adult life. Nuns, Nazis, the Alps, teenage betrayals, a stern father relearning to love his children: this was epic.
Together, Bonnie and I learned The Lonely Goatherd, and performed it as a duet for our class during General Music class (yes, we had such a class in those days). I remember that she knew the words better than I. It was the silliest song in the whole show, and maybe that choice was a reflection of our not-yet-ready-to-leave-childhood state of mind, but The Sound of Music was a jumping off place for becoming my own musician. It was a grownup musical, unlike Mary Poppins, which was obviously for kids.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
My life in 6 Songs: Part III Water Music
7 a.m. in the Crocker household at 10 Ironwood Dr. in Rochester NY. The family is stirring, beginning the day. From the radio in early years, and the homemade stereo "hi-fi" tuner in later years sounds the reveille that accompanied the morning every day for the 17 years I lived with my parents: George Frederick Handel's Water Music- specifically the Hornpipe in D that was the sign-on signature from WBBF-FM 91.5 on your FM dial.
Dad was a guy who had to have the radio going, tuned to his favorite radio station every day from Water Music to the National Anthem. The classical play list of WBBF was the background of all activity in our household, and is the reason I didn't know much about pop music till I left home. Such was Dad's dependence on his personal soundtrack that he installed speakers in both bathrooms, the dining room, the basement and the back patio. With kits purchased from Craig Audio Shack, he rigged up elaborate switches to control which speakers were playing, so it would be possible for us to watch TV in the living room, while he enjoyed a Mahler Symphony in the backyard.
Dad was an expert on this music, and would confidently announce the composer and name of a piece playing whose introduction he had missed (how? Walking from the car where the radio was also permanently tuned to WBBF? Walking from one room to the next? In the flush of a toilet? Or the buzz of a saw during a building project of which there were many? ) I was always amazed that he knew so many of the pieces, could identify them within a few moments. When I asked him how he knew so much, he said it was from his days as an usher in a theater in Minneapolis where he grew up. I guess instead of Coke-sponsored trivia quizzes on the screen accompanied by up-and-coming pop artists, the movie theaters of yesteryear played classical music for their patrons.
Many years after I left home, my parents retired and bought a house on 20 acres near Columbus, Ohio. My sisters and I loved this rural retreat with its woods full of songbirds and spacious grounds including a small pond perfect for swimming and puttering around in various dilapidated watercraft.
One day, after a compressed year of school and who-knows-what other kinds of stress, my older sister and I visited the "farm" for some R&R. We decided to take a ride in the crummy rowboat that spent most of its time upside down on the grass. We pictured ourselves languidly floating around in the green water, chatting and listening to the quiet. But here came Dad, sliding open the doors to the large garage and pulling out two large speakers, aiming them right at us! Just in time for Shostakovitch 5 he told us! Here, you can listen from right where you are! If you know this piece, you can imagine that it was just the thing to destroy the mood of a bucolic afternoon shutting up the birds and thwarting any quiet chat. My sister and I just shook our heads. Some things never change.
Nowadays, I am called upon to play cello occasionally for weddings with a local string quartet. Almost every time out, we play the Hornpipe from Water Music, either as prelude music, for cocktails or sometimes for the wedding itself. Dad has been gone for over a decade already, and WBBF is thousands of miles away. I wonder if they still play Hornpipe every morning. But always, every time we play that piece, memories of early childhood morning in the Crocker household fill the space just behind my eyes. And when I listen to our Southern California KUSC classical radio station and miss the introduction of the piece, I amaze myself that I can confidently name the composer, if not always exactly the name of the work. Thanks, Dad.
Dad was a guy who had to have the radio going, tuned to his favorite radio station every day from Water Music to the National Anthem. The classical play list of WBBF was the background of all activity in our household, and is the reason I didn't know much about pop music till I left home. Such was Dad's dependence on his personal soundtrack that he installed speakers in both bathrooms, the dining room, the basement and the back patio. With kits purchased from Craig Audio Shack, he rigged up elaborate switches to control which speakers were playing, so it would be possible for us to watch TV in the living room, while he enjoyed a Mahler Symphony in the backyard.
Dad was an expert on this music, and would confidently announce the composer and name of a piece playing whose introduction he had missed (how? Walking from the car where the radio was also permanently tuned to WBBF? Walking from one room to the next? In the flush of a toilet? Or the buzz of a saw during a building project of which there were many? ) I was always amazed that he knew so many of the pieces, could identify them within a few moments. When I asked him how he knew so much, he said it was from his days as an usher in a theater in Minneapolis where he grew up. I guess instead of Coke-sponsored trivia quizzes on the screen accompanied by up-and-coming pop artists, the movie theaters of yesteryear played classical music for their patrons.
Many years after I left home, my parents retired and bought a house on 20 acres near Columbus, Ohio. My sisters and I loved this rural retreat with its woods full of songbirds and spacious grounds including a small pond perfect for swimming and puttering around in various dilapidated watercraft.
One day, after a compressed year of school and who-knows-what other kinds of stress, my older sister and I visited the "farm" for some R&R. We decided to take a ride in the crummy rowboat that spent most of its time upside down on the grass. We pictured ourselves languidly floating around in the green water, chatting and listening to the quiet. But here came Dad, sliding open the doors to the large garage and pulling out two large speakers, aiming them right at us! Just in time for Shostakovitch 5 he told us! Here, you can listen from right where you are! If you know this piece, you can imagine that it was just the thing to destroy the mood of a bucolic afternoon shutting up the birds and thwarting any quiet chat. My sister and I just shook our heads. Some things never change.
Nowadays, I am called upon to play cello occasionally for weddings with a local string quartet. Almost every time out, we play the Hornpipe from Water Music, either as prelude music, for cocktails or sometimes for the wedding itself. Dad has been gone for over a decade already, and WBBF is thousands of miles away. I wonder if they still play Hornpipe every morning. But always, every time we play that piece, memories of early childhood morning in the Crocker household fill the space just behind my eyes. And when I listen to our Southern California KUSC classical radio station and miss the introduction of the piece, I amaze myself that I can confidently name the composer, if not always exactly the name of the work. Thanks, Dad.
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