Wandering, Lost in Music

Among the many who were working out at “The J” Friday morning, I was surely the only one listening to Dvorak’s 8th Symphony. How I love that work! I think there should be a law somewhere that every time Dvorak’s 9th (“New World”) is played, the 8th must be played as well. It well deserves an equal hearing.

Last week we ordered a CD of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical, Cats. My wife and I and our daughters share a long and happy history with Webber’s marvelous music and dance interpretations of T.S. Eliot’s poems. When we received a Barnes and Noble gift card for Christmas we decided it was time to retire our cassette tape of the original cast performance. Cats is a joyous celebration of unique individuality and community cohesion, and even has a simple and important story line (which people often miss). I listened to the CD Friday night, and smiled and smiled and smiled. Lots of good Memory there. Thanks, all you Jellicle Cats!

Wednesday afternoon I attended the first in a four-week series of presentations about three composers and one composition. Donald Rosenberg, a Plain Dealer classical music critic, is lecturing about about and playing examples from Wagner, Verdi, Britten, and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. It’s part of CWRU’s Laura and Alvin Seigal Lifelong Learning Program (that is, it’s for senior citizens). I’ve never been a real Wagner fan, in part because I’ve never gotten into opera as deeply as I’ve gotten into other musical forms. But I learned quite a bit about him and enjoyed the musical samples I heard. How long would it take me to listen to all of his operas should I decide it’s something I want to do?

(A sidebar: I felt younger than most in that crowd; I know it’s a fool’s feeling, but it’s a good one. I was embarrassed by our impatience when the sound system didn’t work just right at the start. You’d have thought we were a room of starving people fighting for the last crust of bread on earth. Do we have to get so demanding just because we get old?)

Finally, Saturday morning I tutored a fifth grade boy who had read a story in school about a Tsar and a Firebird. He had a worksheet he was supposed to fill out, and I was trying to help him without having read the story itself. Sadly, he didn’t know what a “Tsar” was, where the story had taken place, or what a Firebird is/was. I wished I could have pulled out a recording of Stravinsky’s ballet, played it for him, and said, “Now that’s a Firebird!

It’s great to have time to wander the halls of music.