Of Apples and Trees
My sisters and I were all subjected to a rigorous musical education as we grew up. We all took piano lessons from the age of five, and by the fourth or fifth grade we all had taken up a second instrument as well. Two of the sisters quit taking piano lessons by the ninth grade; the other two—my sister Sarah and I—continued through high school. Sarah and I both began college as music majors, and she went on to graduate with a BA, two MAs, and a PhD in music-related fields.
All this was instigated by my mother, I think, who in her strict upbringing was required to play piano as well as the saxophone, for the singular reason that her grandfather had lots of them lying around. My father also took piano lessons as a child but it was never as religious a practice as it was in my mother’s family, and for good reason. It seems we are the inheritors of a matrilineal dictum to play piano that, dutifully, I have passed down to my own daughters.
My great-great grandmother and her sister were accomplished pianists. My great-grandmother was an uninspired student, but her daughter, my grandmother, became quite proficient on both the piano and the organ. Fresh out of Grinnell College in the years following World War I, she supported herself for a time playing background music for silent movies. Mostly she played from memory, or improvised according to the mood of the film. Sometimes the piano was positioned so she couldn’t watch while she played, so had no way of knowing whether she was playing a march during a love scene, or a sentimental ballad during a duel. And when a movie ended with a tragic death, she would be in tears through every showing.
My mother was forbidden by her father to learn popular music, but at night she would listen to the radio and the next day went to the piano to pick out the tunes by ear. In this way she was able to help support herself playing old standards in cocktail lounges, while she worked days as a physical therapist. She could play any tune, in any key. I still aspire to this. Our childhood years were punctuated by the parties our parents threw, which inevitably would end with all their friends gathered around the piano singing favorite songs while my mother played the piano.
From this background, somehow I wound up studying the liturgy and ballads of Pagan music, and Sarah wound up in Wales studying Welsh popular music and the resurgence of Welsh language and culture. I don’t quite understand how this happened, but it is a useful coincidence because each of us can appreciate in some way the quirky interests of the other, and the route taken to such an end. Not only that, but we actually read what the other has written on the subject with interest rather than purely a sense of duty.
So I was thrilled when Sarah told me today that one of her articles had been published recently in a peer reviewed journal. Viva la niche! We were raised with a deep appreciation of classical music, at a time and in an area that was the very nexus of the music of the counterculture. Seen in that light, it is no surprise that Sarah has such a keen eye for the untold stories behind a broader cultural movement, and an appreciation of both the traditional and radical influences on each of the women she writes about.
Not only that, but she has also inherited one of the traits from our father’s side of the family: a sardonic writing style and flair for the double entendre. Yes, the apple does not fall far from the tree. But if an apple falls and nobody eats it, what fun is that? Enjoy her article, if you do follow the link. I think it is well worth the read.