On Father's Day this year I received a great gift from my sister-in-law. She enjoys genealogy and this year she sent me something priceless. Poking around in the archives of the University of Georgia's student newspaper, The Red and Black, she happened upon three articles about my father, two of which contained information I never knew about him.
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The first article wasn't all that revelatory. Published on May 30, 1947, it was simply a listing of the 29 recent graduates who had been named to Phi Beta Kappa, "the highest scholastic honor obtainable at the University." Well, I knew about that one because I have my dad's Phi Beta Kappa key, a legacy I will leave to my younger son, as it was left to me. But it was cool to see it in print.
The second article, dated August 1, 1947, announced a piano concert sponsored by the Men's Music Club. What was surprising was that the club was "newly formed" and my father was listed as the president and contact person of the club. It was "composed of men studying music and men interested in music." That was pretty neat to find out. My dad organized a music club at UGA while he was a graduate student.
The third article, however, floored me. It was a description of a concert performance of an original composition by my father dated July 23, 1948, 65 years ago this week.
Here's a photo of the article and below that is the full text (I have removed his last name to (somewhat) preserve my pseudonymity).
William B., University music student, heard last night what many musicians wait years to hear--one of his own compositions being performed in concert.
B.'s Trio in D Minor, Opus No. Four for violin, piano, and cello, was performed last evening at the regular music appreciation hour at the Chapel. Members of the trio included Michael McDowell, piano; Robert Harrison, violin; and Rudolph Kratina, cello.
B. is a graduate student majoring in musicology and composition. He expects to receive his master of fine arts degree at the end of the summer session.
The young composer began his trio in the spring quarter and finished it only this summer. The entire composition, which runs about 13 minutes, was about three months in the making.
"The composition is not written in any special style or patterned after any composer," he explained. "I just sat down and wrote a trio and that was all there was to it. No special or unusual inspiration," he insisted.
Some listeners, however, believed that the trio, though a modern composition, inclined somewhat to the 19th century romantic school.
The work was written as part of a composition course in which B. was enrolled this past spring. The work was completed under the guidance of Hugh Hodgson, head of the department of music, and Donald Morrison, assistant professor of music.
The composer has also written other works, it was discovered. He has composed art songs, a piano sonata, and an intermezzo for piano and violin. The latter work was performed at a student recital here last quarter on May 20.
At the moment B. is engaged in putting the finishing touches to a lengthy thesis, "The Faust-Legend in Music." The thesis is a study of the various applications in music of the classic story of Dr. Faust.
My dad was a public school music teacher. He began teaching in the fall of 1948, not long after that article was written, in a small town in NW Georgia where I was born in September 1951, the youngest of three kids. A year later, we moved to a suburb of Atlanta, and my dad took a position at a new high school that opened that year. He taught choral music there from 1952-1978, when he retired. Occasionally over the years, he taught German, French, and Latin as well. He spent countless weekends driving to music competitions around the state with his own students or as a judge. He took tour groups of students to Europe.
An Austrian Jew who came to the US in 1938 and fought in New Guinea in WWII, my dad was a classical music lover. He grew up in Vienna and was always enamored with music. He loved opera and symphonic music, but he also loved operettas. Each year he directed a musical at the high school that always ran two nights and was always packed. I grew up with Oklahoma, Carousel, The King and I, The Sound of Music, Lil' Abner, South Pacific, et al. Often, when a child was needed, I was drafted for a small part.
He taught piano and voice lessons privately after school to supplement his bare subsistence teacher salary. He also directed the choir at the First Methodist Church for many years (he had converted to Christianity before I was born). In retirement, he would spend hours listening to his classical record collection with the headphones on and the volume cranked up.
But what I learned from the third article was that he was also a composer. I had no idea he had written any serious music. I also didn't realize his MFA was in musicology and composing. I always thought it was just an MFA in music. He is described as a "Budding Beethoven" in the picture that accompanies the article.
My dad, as it turns out, was a sort of Mr. Holland. Only he got to hear his composition performed before he started teaching. His thesis, "The Faust-Legend in Music," is 240 typed, double-spaced pages long. I have it beside me as I write this. But I have never seen nor heard of the compositions he wrote. I would dearly like to have them and, even more, to hear them played, but I fear they are lost forever. Nevertheless, just knowing about them is a gift I will always cherish.
I don't ever recall his expressing any regrets over the career he chose. If ever anyone loved the work that he did, it was my father. It was a labor of love for him every day (except when he had to teach general math in summer school!). Several of his students became music teachers themselves, something he was very proud of.
My dad was one of the gentlest souls I have ever known and a kind and loving father. He put a belt on my butt a few times, but not many, and never in anger. He hated doing it, and I hated making him do it. I am so blessed to have been his son. He died on December 29, 1980, at age 61 after a year-long battle with cancer. With my 62nd birthday looming in September, I now realize just how young that was.
Who knows if my father could have been a great composer? But I know this: He was a great teacher, a great father, and a great husband. I'd like to close with a few lines of poetry from e.e. cummings about his father, who was a minister:
my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height
...
joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice
...
Scorning the pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain
...
—i say though hate were why man breathe—
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all
Oh, and my dad was a die-hard Democrat and a true liberal, of course!
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July 26, 2013
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