Music has always been an important part of my day. Whether morning, afternoon, or evening, it is usually playing in the background, a companion to everyday life.
Music was woven into the rhythm of my childhood home. There was always a radio playing in the kitchen while my mother cooked, and records were almost always spinning in the living room or den. Each kind of music seemed to belong to a particular time or activity. In December, we listened to Christmas records. During cocktail hour, Nat King Cole filled the house with his smooth, elegant voice. Saturday afternoons belonged to The Kingston Trio, while classical music played during dinner. Sundays, we went to the Symphony or my Dad drank sherry while listening to The Metropolitan Opera on the radio. Music was not something we had to plan; it was simply part of the atmosphere of our family life.
I think I was about nine when I got my first record player and a Glen Campbell record. I was thrilled to have music that belonged entirely to me. After that, I began buying records with my allowance, carefully considering which ones I wanted most and saving until I had enough money for the next purchase. My collection gradually grew, and eventually I graduated to a beautiful sounding stereo in my room. Having my own stereo made listening to music feel even more personal. I could choose what I wanted to hear, turn up the volume, and spend time in my own little world.
Lately, I’ve been drawn to classical music, so it seems to find me everywhere, on television, in movies, and even on Instagram. My husband and I have always appreciated a movie with a great soundtrack. Music can transform a scene, and I often remember films as much for their music as for their plots.
Yesterday, Victor Borge appeared on my Instagram feed. I stopped to watch him and was reminded that good comedy can stand the test of time. Borge, a Danish-American comedian and pianist, still makes me laugh with his distinctive combination of music, timing, and humor.
Seeing him brought back a childhood memory. Victor Borge performed with the Casper Civic Symphony when I was young. My father was president of the symphony board, and my parents often hosted visiting performers at our home for cocktails or dinner. Our house became an informal extension of the concert hall, where musicians could relax after performing.
I remember Mr. Borge as charismatic and charming. At some point, he sat down at our piano and played. Hearing a famous musician perform in your own living room is magical; the distance between the person onstage and the guest in your home suddenly disappears. The piano became more than a piece of furniture in that moment. It became a connection between the performer and all of us gathered around to listen
Van Cliburn was another guest. Unlike Borge, he was serious and quiet, almost solemn, but I was deeply impressed when he played for us. My mother had arranged for the piano tuner to come that day, ensuring everything sounded perfect. I can still picture the tuner making his final adjustments before Van Cliburn sat down at the piano. My mother wanted every detail to be right, and the condition of the piano was no exception.
My seventh-grade music teacher attended both parties, which makes the memories even more vivid. Music was taken seriously in school when I was growing up. We studied composers and musical forms and were expected to develop an appreciation for what we heard, although I didn’t love all of it. Some of the music seemed overly serious, but certain pieces made a lasting impression.
I especially loved Kiss Me, Kate. Learning that it was based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew made it even more appealing. The music, comedy, and Shakespearean story came together, and I enjoyed discovering the story beneath the story.
Perhaps that is what I have always loved about music: it stays with us, often unnoticed, until a melody or the sound of a particular piano brings back an entire room, evening, or person. A song can return us to the kitchen while our mother cooks, to a living room filled with records, or to a dining table where classical music played softly in the background. It can also take us back to a nine-year-old girl listening to her first Glen Campbell record, or to a teenager sitting in her room with a new stereo, discovering the pleasure of choosing her own music.
All these years later, I listen to classical music not because I have to study it, but because I want to. It plays as I go about my day, and sometimes I stop to listen. Every so often, something on my screen takes me back to my childhood home, where the radio played in the kitchen, records filled the living room and den, famous musicians sat at our piano, and music was simply part of family life.
One Response
Thank you, Kate, for this wonderful essay! But don’t get me going. As writer-producer-host of the long ago “IBM’s Your Heart of Music” on NPR, and the son partly of a Russian Jewish family in classical piano performance, you kindle memories. I met Victor Borge eons ago at a cabaret performance in Chicago, who expanded with me in conversation post-show in the music of the great composer friends in pre-war days. You mention Van Cliburn – and I remember a visit when a lad to my aunt in NYC, one Sunday afternoon, calling from the kitchen to her young Juilliard scholar, upon whose knee I sat at her Steinway: “Don’t make the boy play anything he can’t sing!” ….. And, y’know, the music goes on even in these ascending years. I’m right now expanding my early collection of the Estonian Arvo Pärt, as I’m hearing more of the J.S. Bach well-tempered scale in him that I never heard twenty years ago, and he makes me want to hear even more of our new age contrapuntalists. And the revelations of such African-American composers I never knew when younger and broadcasting, Florence Price and William Grant Still. ….. In fleeting moments of work, my Amazon desktop princess Alexa aids my shifting ears from WFMT and WQXR, to the aid of our local WSCL and the need to support music for the hearts of our new and even younger friends.