MY LIFE IN MUSIC

 

Today is Beethoven’s 250th birthday. I was first introduced to classical music by my father who made me listen to the final movement of the Fifth Symphony with the bombastic climax.

Growing up in a church going family we sang hymns at church  and some at home. I listened to classical church music without thinking about it. Choir anthems, organ preludes and postludes were written by classical and church composers. I remember Rae Willar dragging me to hear a cantata at the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, NY. I don’t remember the music butI wanted to be with Rae.

At Colgate in 1949 I heard Dimitri Metropolous conduct the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in Prokofieff’s Classical Symphony and liking it a lot.

At Camp DeWolfe I listened to records of Handel’s Messiah by the Huddersfield Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent (maybe). I played. The Halleluia Chorus and He Shall Lead His Flock and other arias over and over again so it drove the other staff nuts. I loved the music, the melodies and choral and symphonic music.

I listened to Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert and Schumann symphonies, when driving from Welfare Island, over the Queensborough Bridge with the Lewis boys and their mother going to our respective universities, one to Columbia and I to NYU. I went to free choral church concerts at Manhattan churches on Sunday afternoons.

At NYU I took a year’s survey course in Classical Music and I think a years course in Opera. Ever since then I have listened almost exclusively to classical music. I missed  the Rock and Roll evolution and popular music as I was immersed in seminary fro 1953-56. I like folk music and some country.  Joan Baez is one celebrity I would like to have dated. I saw her once or twice at parties but we never spoke. I used to enjoy fast and furious music, now I love slow, gentle and romantic music. 

From 1970-1983, I held tickets to the SF Symphony and Opera. I loved Seji Ozawa in SF. Women friends Judith Ets-Hokin and Susan Mitchell encouraged me and accompanied to many. By the time I met Ann, I had grown tired of the old symphonies and did not like the new ones. I used to go to concert music to meet women or to entertain them. When Ann and I married I did not have that reason d’être any longer.

My suspension of disbelief wore out with the old operas.I did not like seeing fat people clomp around the stage singing. We have seen an excellent Carmen in New Mexico and a good Barber of Seville in SF. I like the great tenors, Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo. I have seen them on stage and love their singing on CDs. I listen to classical music as background music most of the time.

As a teen I loved the dance bands led by Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman and crooners like Frank Sinatra, Perry Como and Vaughn Monroe. I like to slow dance but did a pretty good Lindy hop. Sally Meehan was a good dancer and good kisser.

I am sad that I never learned to play the piano and thus be able to know more and experience the emotions of music. I took one piano lesson from Lois Neiglia in 1942 and then he went into the army soon thereafter. Perhaps, I was the cause.