daccn

I am not a clerk
2003-02-27 02:00:46 (UTC)

Music

Inspired by another journalist's writing on the same topic,
I will outline my musical history.

Playing the piano is one of those things that I've "always
done," as my mother got me started when I was four and I
haven't stopped playing since. I don't think I had much
understanding of the music I was playing, even into my teen
years, beyond knowing they were a series of pretty tunes
and technical problems, but it gave me an appreciation of
classical music on some level.

Also, when I was little, my mother bought me a bunch of
those "classical kids" cassette tapes, my favorite of which
was "Mozart's Magic Fantasy," a child-friendly version of
The Magic Flute. I liked to sing the queen of the night's
aria while swimming in the public pool, no doubt causing my
parents some embarassment.

I was nine years old when I discovered Andrew Lloyd Webber,
listening over and over to a tape recording of "Phantom of
the Opera." It was an easter present, and I remember
sitting on my bedroom floor that day with "Phantom" going
full blast, eating a creme egg and following along in the
little booklet. I don't really remember music before that -
other than I made a point of not listening to the same
things my friends were listening to.

Musicals were my "thing" for the next six years, starting
with ALW and Les Miserables, gradually working backwards to
Sondheim, West Side Story, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and
eventually Cole Porter. I got all the recordings from the
library and was usually sad to take them back when my two
weeks were up. I formulated a dream of being a Broadway
Actress one day (like every other little girl), learned to
sing, took tap dancing classes, and energetically
participated in the school musicals. Seeing "Phantom" on
stage at last was a treat - I can still remember the date
our tickets were for (August 26), as I had looked forward
to seeing it for months and months.

Somewhere along the line I fell in love with Gene Kelly
after seeing him in "Singin' in the Rain," and I rented all
the old MGM musicals and committed them to memory.

A turning point was taking a music history course required
for further progression in piano levels. It focused on the
romantic era. When I think of "books that changed my life,"
the textbook for that course would have to be it. I dropped
musicals "frighteningly quickly" (as someone commented) and
immersed myself in Schumann and Puccini. I was especially
interested in opera, and I got recordings of operas out of
the library and listened to them on the bus - the first one
of these was a recording of La Boheme with Gianni Poggi and
Renata Scotto, and I still associate it with sitting on the
bus and staring out the window at the snow outside. I was
completely overtaken with it - something "clicked" and I
stopped wanting to listen to everything else. I bought
books about opera, I read opera newsgroups on the internet,
I returned to the library again and again for more. I was
uninterested in the Classical era and the 20th century
composers, but the next two music history courses changed
all that. At age 17 I became infatuated with Mozart, as
well as the conductor of the local symphony orchestra (a
charismatic, broad-arm-gestures type, and I still feel a
pang when I see him walk out on stage). I started going to
concerts. Everything else seemed to fade into the
background, I was so absorbed with classical music.

I was also finishing up my piano grades, and knew from the
quality of my haphazard playing that I would never get
anywhere as a concert pianist. I thought it would be fun to
take singing lessons, and I still pay half of my starving-
student money to an eccentric little singing teacher, just
for the sheer enjoyment of hearing my voice develop. Music
has an effect almost like a drug, I think. Concerts and
live operas make me happy like nothing else does. I'm
trying to broaden my horizons a little more these days, and
I doubt that my enjoyment of music could ever be exhausted.




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