Old friends
I'm back in the Twin Cities and settling into my new house - the movers arrived yesterday with several tons of belongings (pianos and scores are very, very heavy), and with the cable installed I finally have internet access! I managed to unpack most of my books today and am in the midst of the arduous process of reordering, recataloging and reshelving several hundred scores.
Often, hearing just a few moments of an old, familiar song on the radio (80's nostalgia, anyone?), we're taken back into a particular moment in life - the summer of a first love, a memorable high school dance - (for me, 50 Cent's "In Da Club" takes me back to a difficult couple of months during the messy dissolution of an orchestra with which I was working, but that's a whole other story...) . I experience something similar when I merely glance at certain scores, because they bring back powerful memories of when I first encountered them.
Dvorak - Symphony #8: the first piece I ever conducted, at 16. My high school orchestra director handed me a baton and took off to take a phone call. I was both utterly enthralled and completely terrified; it's the moment I got totally hooked.
Chausson - Symphony in Bb Major: on the podium at the Monteux School in Maine many years ago, being yelled at by Charles Bruck. One of the very few times I've had to fight back tears on the podium.
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto #1 onstage at the Curtis Institute with an all-star cast of classmates; extraordinary music-making, but more importantly, an extraordinary sense of cameraderie and a unity of purpose that one rarely experiences. The death of one of the performers several years ago only adds to the poignancy of the memory.
Brahms - Symphony #4: a subscription debut with a professional orchestra during my final student years; I had carefully annotated my own parts, and the concertmaster and I came to loggerheads with the bowings for the third movement. "It's backwards!" he said; "But it puts the accent and the long note in the right place!" I replied. I won the argument - after several rehearsals, I finally won the concertmaster's approval.
Strauss - Egyptian March: one of the pieces I conducted on a concert the night after my father died. I've done everything else on the program since then; subsequently, the memory of that awful period has been erased from them. But this is a piece I've not encountered since, and hearing it takes me back to a very dark time.
Stravinsky - Petrouchka: first heard as a young kid on "Dance in America" as part of a tribute to Nijinsky featuring Rudolf Nureyev. I had never been so mesmerized in my (at that point, very short) life, and hearing the whirling exuberance of the opening carnival tableau always reminds me of the sense of thrill and wonder I felt then.
It's been a ridiculously busy couple of weeks moving my household (and husband) half-way across the country, an effort not without it's stresses. But there's a deep reassurance in opening box after box of my old friends, a flitting memory accompanying each, as I ease each volume onto the shelf.
Often, hearing just a few moments of an old, familiar song on the radio (80's nostalgia, anyone?), we're taken back into a particular moment in life - the summer of a first love, a memorable high school dance - (for me, 50 Cent's "In Da Club" takes me back to a difficult couple of months during the messy dissolution of an orchestra with which I was working, but that's a whole other story...) . I experience something similar when I merely glance at certain scores, because they bring back powerful memories of when I first encountered them.
Dvorak - Symphony #8: the first piece I ever conducted, at 16. My high school orchestra director handed me a baton and took off to take a phone call. I was both utterly enthralled and completely terrified; it's the moment I got totally hooked.
Chausson - Symphony in Bb Major: on the podium at the Monteux School in Maine many years ago, being yelled at by Charles Bruck. One of the very few times I've had to fight back tears on the podium.
Bach - Brandenburg Concerto #1 onstage at the Curtis Institute with an all-star cast of classmates; extraordinary music-making, but more importantly, an extraordinary sense of cameraderie and a unity of purpose that one rarely experiences. The death of one of the performers several years ago only adds to the poignancy of the memory.
Brahms - Symphony #4: a subscription debut with a professional orchestra during my final student years; I had carefully annotated my own parts, and the concertmaster and I came to loggerheads with the bowings for the third movement. "It's backwards!" he said; "But it puts the accent and the long note in the right place!" I replied. I won the argument - after several rehearsals, I finally won the concertmaster's approval.
Strauss - Egyptian March: one of the pieces I conducted on a concert the night after my father died. I've done everything else on the program since then; subsequently, the memory of that awful period has been erased from them. But this is a piece I've not encountered since, and hearing it takes me back to a very dark time.
Stravinsky - Petrouchka: first heard as a young kid on "Dance in America" as part of a tribute to Nijinsky featuring Rudolf Nureyev. I had never been so mesmerized in my (at that point, very short) life, and hearing the whirling exuberance of the opening carnival tableau always reminds me of the sense of thrill and wonder I felt then.
It's been a ridiculously busy couple of weeks moving my household (and husband) half-way across the country, an effort not without it's stresses. But there's a deep reassurance in opening box after box of my old friends, a flitting memory accompanying each, as I ease each volume onto the shelf.
Labels: conductors and conducting, music and psychology, philosophical musings
posted by Sarah at
8:00 AM
1 Comments:
Beautiful...thank you. Music and memory form a potent partnership. Scores are indeed precious repositories of memories and the sensations we experienced during memorable performances. I annotate my scores lovingly and cherish them as keepsakes. More musings at http://quodlibet-sarah.blogspot.com/2008/11/confessions-of-obsessive-score-keeper.html
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