Klarinet Archive - Posting 000990.txt from 2000/01

From: LeliaLoban@-----.com
Subj: [kl] Why?
Date: Sat, 29 Jan 2000 21:06:40 -0500

Bryan Cholfin wrote,
>[W]as there a particular player whose music was inspirational to your
deciding to be a clarinet player?>

I think my parents hooked me on music before I came out of the womb. My
mother, a former music teacher, sang to herself all the time and when Dad was
home, he sang with her. In fact, my earliest conscious memory is of music.
I looked through wooden bars into a room with torn and patched aqua, white,
black and red wallpaper of redcoats on horses, jumping over fences. My
parents sat up in their bed and sang,

My father was the keeper of the Eddystone Light.
He slept with a mermaid one fine night,
And from this union, there came three:
A porpoise and a porgy and the other was me!
Yo, ho ho, the wind blows free--
This old salt for the rolling sea!

When I described this scene to my father, he was shocked to realize how much
babies retained of what they observed, and how soon (and he probably worried
about what else I might have noticed -- nothing that I can recall, actually),
because we moved out of that shabby rented flat before I turned six months
old. The bars were the bars of my crib.

My mom claims I was born feet first and I've been doing things backwards ever
since, so, not surprisingly, I never wanted to learn to play the clarinet. I
most urgently *didn't* want to play it. The grade school band director
forced me into it because, "Girls don't play the drums," and, "Girls don't
play the trumpet." Not his fault, really. This happened in 1957.

Well, I'd had it right about up to HERE with being a gooooood little girl. I
wanted to cut loose and MAKE SOME NOISE. But I also wanted to play in the
band desperately enough to settle for the clarinet, since the only other
instrument he thought girls played was the flute, out of which I could not
coax one single high-pitched, squealing note that I didn't want to hear
anyway.

I changed my mind about the clarinet after my aunt, a retired coloratura
soprano, gave me Jack Brymer's LP recording of the Mozart clarinet concerto.
I listened to that a few times and got serious about practicing.

Welcome to music and hang in there. The learning curve does start to flatten
out after the first year or so.

Lelia

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