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| 'Ik Hou Van Holland' - Elly with necklace |
Luky
LIKE MOST PEOPLE I KNOW, I'm a music lover.
Never having been educated very far in the line of music, however, I am grieved to admit that the finer points of classical music elude me. Yet I draw tremendous solace from the lighter varieties.
I have a true ear. Listening to the most complicated music, I can pinpoint a dissonant, even if I have never heard the piece before, but that doesn't mean to say I appreciate the rest.
My children took music at school, however, and I draw a vicarious enjoyment from their accomplishments.
Compartmented
At school we had a huge number of music rooms, each of which was big enough only to hold a piano and stool and leave some space for the player and her teacher to move around.
Every afternoon after lunch the boarders used to practise their scales and pieces for an hour. Passing by the music rooms you'd hear an extraordinary jumble of chords but strange, when you'd go into one of the rooms, you'd hear only one person's playing!
A somewhat larger room was Sister Veronica's domain.
Sister Veronica was tiny, under five foot, and you never saw her without her brolly.
Banished
"This girl is trying to practise while you are doing everything to distract her . . . leave the room immediately", Sister Veronica would say, her umbrella pointing at the quadrangle whenever she'd catch me listening to Pam's rendering of The Maiden's Prayer, Deanna's Dream of Olwen, Helen's Jealousy or Conny's Chopin polonaises.
Actually she was making a mistake. Far from distracting the musicians, I spurred them on to greater effort, because to me everything they played sounded heavenly and they wouldn't have been human had they not played to the gallery.
She'd never come in a second time, once her tour of inspection was completed so that gave me the remainder of an hour for my request programme.
Music on tap
All the same, I never really had my fill of music until my eldest child learned to play. Her fingers are as true as my ear, and whether she played the flute, the harmonium, organ or the piano, I dropped everything and sat beside her, listening with a joyful heart.
No matter how cross or despondent I was, when she said: "Can I play you some music?" I was cheerful at once.
She never tired of playing the same piece over and over again until I was happy, and I always made her laugh when telling her of Sister Veronica and her umbrella and my cowering in that little space between the piano and the wall.
Training needed
She had been going to singing lessons because she experienced the problem most of us have, it sounds so good inside and comes out so strained.
Since I was the chauffeuse, and disliked waiting outside in the cold - petrol costing what it does - I also enrolled for the singing lessons, much to the entertainment of our teacher who hadn't got it in her to tell me that my voice is no great shakes.
So we sang together, skipping the scales at my request, and going instead for songs like "O promise me", "Where we can be alone and faith renew, and find the hollows where those flowers grew . . ."
My daughter got the good ones like "I'm in love with Vienna" while my teacher fed me on surrogates like the Unchained Melody, which I sang with gusto, fondly imagining that if an audience could hear me moan: "I need your love . . . I need your love . . . God SPEED your love TO me!" there would not be a dry eye in the hall.
Who knows?
Years ago, when my sister was overseas she wrote and told us she was singing at Benediction and a man kept looking at her, so she sang louder and louder in the hope he was a TV talent scout.
After my singing lessons I felt myself on her wavelength, so I gave our practices all my energy.
At one practice my husband needed my help in the kitchen, and I told him, "First we must finish our singing. I'll help you afterwards".
Hopes dashed
He'd been surprisingly taciturn about our singing and had made me wonder a little; so my daughter and I beamed expectantly at one another as he said:
"Yes, I know the two of you are always singing like two . . ."
"Birds in a tree?" I suggested hopefully.
". . . cats on a wall", he concluded, and went off in search of his newspaper, well contented with the outraged effect his broadside had produced.
We still sing together from time to time, and often one of us starts chuckling midway at the memory of his words and the other joins in without a trace of wounded pride.
Catherine Nicolette
Ah yes, music for the heart and for the soul. Every time I visit Mom we land up playing the piano and the organ, and practising scales which have alas, grown somewhat rusty over the past hectic years. And when I visit my cousins and my aunts and uncles on my Dutch side, we end up doing the same. And my cousin's children, and my sister's daughters . . . music has a long tradition in our family.
There is a very sweet letter from my great, great, (I'm not sure how many greats it is) grandfather in Holland who wrote to his parents to ask them most courteously indeed whether he could take up music lessons. I am told my great aunts sang in the Amsterdam Cathedrals. One of my aunts sang in Operetta for some years. So we are big into music.
On my recent visit to my Mom, I spent some time going through our old photo albums, and came across some pictures of a long gone family get together. I was just learning "Ik hou van Holland", and "Tulips from Amsterdam", and the family and Aunt Elly sang them together with me.
A great singer, Elly really got into the spirit of things, and at the end of the song - overcome with Dutch nationalist emotion at the thought of her mother country - she got a rose between her teeth and ended up doing Dutch dances with my cousin. Elly's philosophy was seize and enjoy the day; and music rules the earth. I'm sure she's singing in Heaven now (and delighting all with her vivacity and dance. . .)
Viva la musica!
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| Viva la musica! |
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| Dancing to the music |
Photos by R K
Ik hou van Holland
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kWgb4KKnwI
With thanks to Youtube
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