Brahms' Requiem, Pools of Luck, and the Rainbow Connection

One of the Top Ten Moments of My Life so Far was performing Brahms' "Ein Deutsches Requiem" with a 100+ voice choir and full orchestra in a college gymnasium in the middle of Kansas. The setting, of course, is not the important part, although the fact that it was so ordinary made the transcendent power of the music even more evident.

I remember, maybe two-thirds of the way through the performance, coming to the awareness that (a) much time had passed but (b) it didn't feel like it because (c) I was sitting in a pure shining pool of good luck to be alive, making this music with 150 other people.

Ah... I hear a high horse stamping outside my window. It's delivering a copy of an editorial I once wrote about how great music is for impractical things like feeling good. The Monteverdi Choir has just finished singing the Brahms on my stereo, so I'll go get the epistle and reproduce it below for your pleasure.

When [the children's music reviewer] and I were discussing [the magazine's music-review column], the issue of “educational value” came up. Heavy-handedly, I said I didn’t want to use that as a criterion for review. So you’ll see albums rated on how good they are for dancing or relaxing to, how well adult ears might tolerate them and how good they might be for months or years of play.

Why won’t you see a rating for how educational a recording is? I have two strong opinions on this topic, and since they’re a little contradictory, I will explain myself.

First, I believe all music is educational. Second, I believe “educational value” is overrated.

Especially for young children, music is educational in the same way that play is: stealthily. Exposure to melody, harmony and rhythm—whether by Rachmaninoff, Raffi or R.E.M.—lays the foundation for understanding language, numbers and turn-taking. It also develops discriminatory listening skills and encourages verbal and motor expression.

Further, music is so deeply a part of our humanity that we learn things which are more essential even than counting or clapping in time. We discover our individuality and our likeness to others at an emotional level. ...   

Because this kind of learning is so hard to articulate and is non-quantifiable, I think it gets overlooked in favor of music’s more explicitly educational aspects. The value of playing Mozart to sleeping children can’t be quantified, either, but the potential benefits are usually described in quantifiable terms designed to make parents believe they’re creating geniuses by simply pushing “Play”: increased math skills, advanced reasoning, and so on.

Older children are subjected to music’s ability to accommodate lyrics about colors, weather, grammar, history, morality, insects, the alphabet and tooth-brushing. Now, I have nothing against Conjunction Junction, and I think music could be used as a vehicle for teaching classroom knowledge even more than it is.

But don’t place a higher value on this music than on, for example, the amazingly, horrifyingly, riotously uneducational music of Marvin Suggs and his Muppaphone! (In our house, we all love classic Muppet Show tunes. And sometimes, when the mood is right, I choke up over “Rainbow Connection.”)

“My Hair had a Party Last Night” by Trout Fishing in America—another household favorite—does not teach the importance of personal hygiene, thank goodness. Its only redeeming values are the great tune, the charming mandolin-picking, the bouncy bass thwacks and the funny lyrics.

Then there’s the classic craziness: “Here We Go Looby-Loo” or “Do Your Ears Hang Low?” What do they teach? Nothing!

So here’s to uneducational music! ...

Still Magic After All These Years

From a dusty high shelf last week I pulled down some cassette tapes. My car contains the only functioning implement with which to decode these messages from the previous century, so today as I drove I listened to "Peter, Paul and Mommy."


I had the original 1969 PP&M record--the dust jacket folded open to reveal a 20-inch version of the front photo and the injunction to "Pin a mustache on Peter and Paul." I loved that record. When my older daughter was 4 or so, I bought the cassette for her, and she liked it, but I don't think she dreamed to it the way I did.


Listening to it again today, with my younger daughter in the back seat, I was amazed that I had liked these songs--many of them are quite adult, or at the least, sentimental. There are two lullabies, not counting Peter Yarrow's "Day is Done," which strikes me now as an obscene combination of adult angst and tender bedtime wishes. Here's a verse and the chorus:



Do you ask why I'm sighing, my son?
You shall inherit what mankind has done.
In a world filled with sorrow and woe
If you ask me why this is so, I really don't know.

And if you take my hand my son
All will be well when the day is done.
And if you take my hand my son
All will be well when the day is done.


After listening a little, Helen asked me to turn up the volume, and when we got to our destination she was sad that we had to turn off the car. (I explained that the music would start from the same spot when we turned the car back on. "But in Dad's car, the music doesn't stay where you left it," she said. She accepted my answer that a radio is different than a tape player, but clearly, the distinction between these ancient technologies was not a matter of concern for a 6-year-old child of the 21st century.)


On the return trip, as we were pulling up to the house in the middle of "Puff, the Magic Dragon," Helen asked with more sincerity than one would think possible in a child whose favorite song is quite possibly "Cat Flushing a Toilet," "Could you not turn off the car until the song is over?"

Oh, sweet child, of course I won't. This is the song I used to almost cry to. I had a private worry, each time, that somehow the words would have changed and Puff would slip into his grave instead of his cave.

Best of all, throughout the whole ride, she never once asked me to stop singing along.

I like to think that the absolute beauty of the music --the shifting melody and harmony lines among the three voices, the detailed guitar work-- are what touched my obstinate, opinionated, independent younger daughter. Maybe she was just in a mellow mood this afternoon.

Pearls! Pearls! PEARLS!

The other night, I turned on the record player to make it feel wanted, and the disc that happened to be on the turntable was the Original Motion Picture Soundtrack Recording of "Fiddler on the Roof," Side 3.
Let me tell you: if you've ever seen the musical performed by your local high school or college ensemble, you may think you know the songs, but you haven't truly heard "Tevye's Dream" until you've heard Fruma-Sarah belted out by Ruth Madoc. (I think--I've lost the original liner notes. And actually, the Fruma-Sarah at my college's production was almost better, but I can't remember who sang it.)

My parents took me along to this movie when I was 3 years old. I still remember the dried leaves swirling as Fruma-Sarah returned from the grave. Then I dove under the seat, but no sticky little fingers in the ears could keep out that mighty shriek. Had nightmares for a long time after that.

For 99 cents, the pleasure can be yours!

Liner Notes As Ink Blots

This is the last paragraph of the anonymously written notes that accompany a recording of Schubert's Trout Quintet by the Endres Quartet with Rolf Reinhardt:

"It is amusing to note how almost every commentator, severely picking holes in the formal structure of the Trout, abjectly surrenders to its musical charm. In short, Schubert may not have made the greatest intellectual or emotional contribution to music with the Trout Quintet--but he went ahead and composed a work of genius, one that is so spontaneous, so lyric and free-flowing, that criticism remains pedantic and impertinent."


You may guess for yourselves why these are my all-time favorite liner notes, with the italics-added portions standing as your clues.