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Music
Behind It All | Favorite Bands | Favorite Composers | Misc Music Links Music. A force of emotion. Joy. Power. Seduction. No other entity has ever touched me, embraced me, endured with me like music. No religion, no relationship...nothing. Like most musicians, music had interested me from a young age. My father brought me up on the music of his generation, the most influential of all bands he introduced me to being The Beatles. Instead of fantastical imaginary friends, I used to reserve places at my tea parties for Paul McCartney and Davy Jones. At the age of 10, I was able to begin playing an instrument through the public school's band program. I chose the flute after people filled my mom's head with the idea that the clarinet was too difficult. When I was 12, I had the opportunity to switch instruments again and almost took up the French horn. The only thing that kept me with the flute is that I took to it easily with an almost uncanny natural ability. I suppose I just always wanted to play something a bit more unusual, but I have no regrets now. There are not many instruments where you can sing with such emotional abandon. There are times in my teenage years where I would take it out into the woods on my grandparents' property and play while sitting in the trees. Those were special days. When I was 14 and began high school, I was forced to begin private study. Of course, I was young and naive, and didn't think I needed a teacher. I changed my mind after a year's time, when I discovered how far I had progressed. It was like an explosion inside me, the hunger for music that had awakened. When I was 15, my grandmother brought home several vinyl recordings she had found on clearance. I had inwardly chuckled to myself at first, then decided to try them out. One was a box set of Tchaikovsky's last three symphonies, his 4th, 5th and 6th. I became infatuated with the dark and powerful 'fate' theme scored for the brass that recurred throughout his 4th symphony. I realized I wanted to become involved in music for the rest of my life, that I wanted to go to college to study how to teach music. To go into detail about my college years would only be reiterating what is in my Bio. I will say that my passion for music was overshadowed by the fact I realized I didn't want to go into teaching, so I left college after 4-1/2 years. I put down my flute, by this time the third one I had progressed onto (a Powell 2100), and didn't play at all for nearly four years. I seriously thought that part of my life was over. It was like a part of my soul died. I was consumed by despair over it all. More than one thing nagged me about picking up my flute again. I had a renewed interest in returning to school, perhaps for computers or a general music degree. My husband and new friends wondered why they had never heard me play. But what really sticks out in my mind is something I had never bothered to learn while I was in school. I came across Beethoven's 'Heiligenstadt Testament', a letter to his brothers he had composed at the age of 31 when his hearing had greatly deteriorated. He was distraught after coming to terms with the fact that his condition was incurable and that the joy of hearing music was something that had been stripped from him forever. He admitted in this letter that he would have taken his own life to end his torment, save for the fact he felt there were musical works he still had left to create. I was moved to tears, and greatly inspired. I now play again. I'm with the city's community band, and hope one day to maybe play with the civic orchestra. I feel appreciated in my position and realize that the joy of playing again is enough. It never had to be all or nothing, I just made it that way.
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Samuel Barber - American composer (1910-1981)
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