Man of Music

I stood in the door to Mr. Lehr’s office, cornet in hand. It was time for my weekly lesson with the only instrumental music teacher in my small Iowa hometown. He had been teaching me since I was in fourth grade, and now I was on the verge of junior high–seventh grade. Mr. Lehr motioned me in.

The Instrumental Music Office, just off the high school band room, was a jumble of music, stray horn parts, drum sticks, and those mysterious papers all teachers possess. A hint of daylight through a small window lifted the basement space above grade. Mr. Lehr bore the faint smell of cigarette smoke, transported from the teachers’ hideout in the boiler room.

I do not remember if either of us closed the office door. On that summer day, we may have been the only two people in the sprawling building, so there was no need to. If anyone thought about the risks of adults and children–teachers and students–being alone in a room or building, it was never mentioned. And I never had reason to be concerned.

I handed Mr. Lehr the printed form on which I had recorded my practice hours during the previous week. A line at the top urged me to “Practice for Results.” As usual, it reported that I had invested the recommended half-hour each day–3 1/2 hours for the week–in my nascent music career. My mother had signed my practice record, so what it said was true. “Results” were Mr. Lehr’s call.

I sat down on a metal chair next to my teacher, placed music on the stand in front of me, and gently blew a few puffs of air through my battered, second-hand cornet. My parents had not invested in a new horn when I started. If I had quit in a month, what would they have done with it? I was ready to demonstrate the week’s results to my teacher.

Before I could play my first note, Mr. Lehr brought up a subject I had hoped we might avoid. At my last lesson he had asked me to play music that was sort of a “test,” though he probably used every other word available to describe it. The purpose of that call-it-anything-but-a-test, test was to help determine whether I should continue to play cornet, to study music. I knew I was not very good at sight-reading, and still felt the sting of my previous week’s performance. I had spent the seven days since hoping Mr. Lehr would let the whole “test” business fade into silence. If only I’d spent as much time Practicing for Improved Results.

The embarrassing matter was not be be ignored. Mr. Lehr, as he always did, sympathetically moved right to the point: “Dean, do you remember the music I had you play last week?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, you played some of it very well. But I am afraid you did not do well on the rhythmic patterns; you know, on counting.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No need to be sorry. That’s the way it is. Unfortunately, the result is that it says you probably shouldn’t continue studying music–taking lessons, being in the band, and so on–because, according to it, music is just not something you’ll ever be able to do well at.”

I sat there. What could I say that wouldn’t give way to tears?

A pause, and Mr. Lehr continued: “But I know how much you like playing cornet, and I know how hard you work at it. And you were very nervous last week. So I am not going to pay attention to that report. I think you can learn to count, and I will work with you for at least another year. I think you should continue.”

I hope the next thing I said was, “Thank you.”

Practicing’s results the following two years were good enough that as I entered high school my parents bought me a beautiful Olds Super Cornet. I played it in the concert, marching, and swing/pep bands through high school. I became a decent musician, good enough to win first chair. I did well at contests, mastering challenging solo pieces with Mr. Lehr’s help. On Wednesday evenings through each summer I took my place on the bandstand just east of our massive stone county courthouse and played with the best of the town’s musicians in the city band, under Mr. Lehr’s direction. I wasn’t always first chair in that band, but I got paid for it. It is the only time in my life I have been paid for making music.

In my senior year, Mr. Lehr talked me into playing a jazz solo as part of an all-school talent show. I worked and worked on it, but was never at ease with it, and never got it right. Improvising jazz’s rhythms was beyond me. If he recalled our conversation of several years earlier about whether I should go on, he didn’t say so. Such was the timing of our relationship.

I haven’t played my cornet in decades. I have been told I could sell it for a good deal more than my mom and dad paid for it, but it’s hard for me to imagine parting with it. It awaits its future in our attic.

Charles F. Lehr was the constant “music man” in our town, teaching there for 32 years. Vocal music teachers came and left, and string programs didn’t have a chance in rural Iowa in those days. But he was an institution as solid as the courthouse, and more reliable than the clock that overlooks the town from its tower. When I heard of his death, at the age of 90, on February 15, 2013, I remembered the last time I saw him, about three years ago, and that I tried to thank him in a way he would know was for real.

My love of music and my active participation in music-making have been constants throughout my life, largely because, one day in the mid-1950s, Chuck Lehr judged me by my person and not by some “test.”