I hope that you, my dear reader, have not been put off, scared, or made in any way uncomfortable about the descriptions of my spiritual experiences. Actually, even if you have been, I would like you to continue reading with me. So, what if I were to change to a slightly less threatening topic, which is my personal growth through music, beginning with my childhood piano lessons? Haven’t many of us studied piano as a child, or another instrument in school? If you have, or know someone who has, you know that we can proceed here together….in harmony!
Back to music and the studying thereof. Some of us manage to stumble through the aforementioned childhood piano lessons; some of us even enjoy what we learn, perhaps putting that knowledge to use (rock band, anyone? or, maybe, chamber ensemble?). Better still, there are those of us who absolutely fall in love with our instrument and can’t get enough of it!! Oh, yes, we are going to study even more about this instrument, plus everything else we can possibly absorb about this wonderful new musical world, at a college or conservatory of music. After that, who knows? Maybe we will win The Cliburn competition and set off on a world tour, performing concertos with all of our favorite orchestras!!
A girl can dream, can’t she?
That is what I did, shortly after I started studying piano at the age of eight, up through my sixteenth year, when a very unwell – and jealous – member of my family cut off my lessons. Up to that point, though, I had The Cliburn catalogue for the next quadrennial competition, and my teachers, at a local college, thought I had a shot at being accepted.
My favorite instructor, who was also the most senior of all of them, lived in an actual mansion and used to invite three of us younger kids to come for occasional weekends. What a treat! In addition to her husband’s Italian cooking, all of the bedrooms on the upper floors had baby grand pianos in them – one each to ourselves! My favorite was the bedroom with the Baldwin piano.
During those weekends, Mrs. Liva held musical “salons” in her living room. There, we had two Steinway 7’ concert grand pianos at our disposal (and there were two more in the basement!). About eight or ten college students performed, also. As we all gathered there listening to each other, we looked like we belonged in a painting by one of the Old Masters.
I was in Heaven.
I meant that part figuratively, being “in heaven”.
“Of course!,” you think. Ah, but dear reader, there was more to come…
After I was so cruelly pulled from the one thing in life that gave me joy, my piano and music, I found myself listening every Sunday morning to recorded music with my father. He had never performed on an instrument himself, and as far as I knew, sang only in church. Oh, but it would be a mistake to say that he did not have “an instrument”!
Dad was deeply in love with the pipe organ. He never told me if his exposure to the instrument came from somewhere other than church, because he loved the Big organ sounds. He had records of the great beauties from the Busch-Reisinger museum at Harvard with E. Power Biggs performing, to the greats of New York City, to the multi-faceted organ (thought by many to be the world’s largest) in Atlantic City, with Virgil Fox playing. To the best of my knowledge, Dad had not heard any of those organs live in concert. Maybe he heard the combined classical/theatre organ during a tour of the Convention Hall–but that would most likely have been after he discovered his affection for the instrument.
So, what started this affinity of his? The better question might be: what started mine?
You have probably guessed already: listening to the sound of the organ, with my Dad, every Sunday morning. You see, I loved my Dad, quite deeply. And, despite the fact that he did nothing to protect me from the aggressive and egregious abuse of his brother, my mother and her sister, I had him on a pedestal. He was the only one of those four adults who could understand me. Intellectually, at least. He was not, God knows, high in emotional intelligence.
But, pipe organ music provided another deep link with my father. It was another language we shared, and in my household, it was unique to us. So, of course, this people-pleasing teenager, who wanted more than anything to shine in her father’s eyes, decided to study the organ as an elective course, while she majored in Philosophy. This was at that same college she had attended as a young piano student. Despite the small size of the school (now Wilkes University) it had extraordinary teachers in Music, Philosophy, and other fields.
It may come as no surprise to you by now, to learn that I eventually changed my major to Music. With my primary teacher, Clifford Balshaw, I received a Bachelor’s degree, and fled (and I do mean fled) to Boston to complete my graduate work in Pipe Organ Performance (M.M.) with another great organist and pedagogue, Philip Steinhaus. Mr. Balshaw taught me how to discover the composer’s meaning, intention and inspiration in the music, or, how to interpret it. Dr. Steinhaus taught me how to achieve that, with technique. I was blessed, mostly in the musical sense, to have had that combination in my teachers; one cannot express the meaning of the music without technique. Without meaning, Divine meaning, technique accomplishes nothing.
We will pick up the topic of Divine meaning in music in my upcoming book, Visions, Visitations, and The Voice: My Intimate Journey with the Sacred. You can also help support the work I am doing on it, here on the website.
Thank you!
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