MMM: meet the parents

A few weeks ago, I announced the new series Music Morsels and Mountaintops but promptly let other things get in the way of the first actual installment.  Here it is!  I figured I’d start at the beginning of my music life, with my parents. . . .

Dad and Mom were in Harding Academy and Harding College choruses together.  Dad was a fine tenor for much of his adult life.  He had first learned to read “shape notes” but later learned traditional notation.  I think he continued to rely on the shapes a little into later life.  He was a worthy, dedicated congregational song/worship leader, and he had very reasonable understandings of pitch, vocal range, time signature, and tempo.  Dad never played an instrument.  I recall that he thought he’d made up a tune that he would whistle often, but it turned out to be the opening measures of Dvořák’s oft-played Humoresque.  He had learned some classical music in Mona Moore’s “Music Appreciation” course at Harding, and his appreciation only grew with his age and all his children’s abilities.  Dad especially supported and loved Mom’s piano playing.

My mom was the far superior musician.  She was from a musical family and was a strong vocalist and pianist.  I’m not sure which she would have said was more her forte, but she was very, very good at both.  She could sight read difficult piano music so fluently!  She arranged many wedding and other songs for their group, the New Hardels.  I don’t know that she ever quite understood the band experience that my sisters and I reveled in, but she supported it.  Mom taught piano in the home for about 20 years in Delaware, and she taught classroom music at Aletheia School for a few years.

I think my parents did just about right with my musical upbringing.  I balanced good grades, a few sports, church activities, and music.  My mom started teaching me piano when I was very young.  I don’t have any memory of it, but I know it happened.  Although Mom would have had much more to teach me, she made the right call to turn me over to someone else when I was 5 or 6.  I took lessons with Mr. Byassee once a week, for a few years, at his home studio.  He was a good teacher, and for some reason I connect his presence to that of Mr. Rogers.  I still have a couple of books (improvisation, quasi jazz styles, and composition) that I think Mr. Byassee specifically prescribed for me, so I could advance more quickly and deeply than others my age.  Cool stuff, and it wouldn’t have happened without my parents’ sacrifice and vision.  Later, I took lessons with Mrs. Kedda for a couple of years during 7th and 8th grades.  I learned much and am grateful for that foundation.  She and I played some duets in her later years just for fun, and she had done more of that with my sisters when they were teenagers.

As a fourth grader, I had tested positive (that’s a real thing!) for the horn, and I’ve never stopped playing it.  I also started cello that fall but dropped that soon, because it was too much.  I continued in band and later made a vocational choice based on my love of wind band music, all because my parents had helped me at the start.  My parents rented a horn for me at first (Zeswitz Music), and the plan allowed for eventual purchase.

My parents took us kids to live performances.  They didn’t attend nearly as many as I do these days, but I remember the SPEBSQSA barbershop show when I was probably middle school age, and they had taken me to the Philadelphia Orchestra when I was in elementary school.

I recall good times singing hymns as a family.  Greta was soprano; Laura was alto; Mom would switch some between the girls’ parts; Dad was tenor; and I was bass.  One time, when I was home from college and we sang together, Mom nearly cried because we had a bass again.  I was not a “bassy” bass, but she said my sound added “richness.”  I treasure a couple of cassette recordings of our singing.

Prior to that, Mom had seen enough in my ability to write harmony that she apparently “brokered the deal” (read:  had me show my arrangement of “May I Call You Father?” and maybe a composition to the Harding Music Dept. Chair) to get me my first music scholarship.  They saw me receive my first two music degrees and always loved news of what I was doing musically.

Every bit of the above was special.

Thank you for the musical upbringing, Mom and Dad.  I don’t see how you could have gotten me off to a better start.  Today, on an otherwise depressing day, it is good for me to remember you in this way, and to be grateful to God for what He provided through you.