There's really only one regret I've had in life, and it has to do with my education. My older sisters told me that when I was a few years old, I used to stand on the platter of an old kiddy record player I had been given, and I'd spin around and around on it while pretending to conduct an orchestra. I remember the record player, but not that particular incident.

Years later, my sister Linda became an elementary school music teacher and occasionally would give me piano lessons at home using the simple sheet music she had (including the ubiquitous Schaum series). But shortly after that she moved out of the house.

My father hosted chess players over the house each week for informal games. He had been doing that for about a decade. One of the players was the person who taught him how to play chess, Eli Bourdon. Bourdon was an aluminum siding salesman from Holyoke who loved chess and formed the Western Massachusetts Chess Association. He was also involved with the Springfield Symphony Orchestra. Somehow, Bourdon knew I liked music and when I was about ten or twelve years old, he offered to give me piano lessons, picking up where Linda had left off. He brought some scores with him and I diligently practiced the lessons he gave me. As I progressed, he told me when I got good at the piano, he was going to teach me how to play other instruments of the orchestra, starting with violin. One day while Bourdon was walking me through a lesson, my dad approached him and said, "If you're not here to play chess, get out of my house." That ended my music lessons.

All during my childhood I was surrounded with music. My mother had a beautiful voice and was often singing popular songs from her youth (the 1930s and '40s) as she baked or did her household chores. My sisters were always listening to current popular music on their stereos. And I was saturated with music on network television. I could quickly memorize music used on shows and advertisements, and still can remember most of them note for note. I wondered why there were some tunes that I immediately loved and others that I couldn't stand. I particularly loved a lot of the soundtracks by Hoyt Curtin, written for the Hanna-Barbera cartoons, which introduced me to modern jazz music and harmonies. I remember how electrifying it was when I first heard Henry Mancini's Peter Gunn theme. (Actually, I first heard it as a Dwayne Eddy cover via one of my sister's LPs.) I also remember an old western called The Iron Horse. I loved the theme song (actually a rip-off of Elmer Bernstein's Magnificent Seven soundtrack) and it was the first piece I can remember writing out in score form.

When I entered high school, I never considered joining the school band. I never realized it was an option. Instead I found friends in the drama club. I also focused a lot of my energies into creative writing. I did have a friend, John Palecki, who was into modern railroading, astronomy and classical music. He was really smart and got me into classical music through Isao Tomita, who had created synthesizer versions of popular classical pieces. That got me curious about the source material and I began acquiring a large library of classical music. I also began listening to public radio which ran a five-hour morning classical program hosted by the affable Robert J. Lurtsema. That exposed me to hundreds of pieces I otherwise never would have heard. Palecki also introduced me to the music of the great Peter Schikele, and his alter-ego PDQ Bach. Over the next two decades I was a musical sponge, soaking up a wide variety of styles and influences.

When I headed off to college, I decided to audition for the fall theater musical production, Anything Goes. I had never auditioned for a musical before and had no idea what was involved. I had no vocal training at that point. For some odd reason, I chose "O Holy Night" as my audition piece. I had never sung with an accompanist before. So, predictably, it was a horrible audition. At least I made everyone laugh. After I got off the stage, the music director, Dan Oberholtzer (who was also the chair of the college music department), approached me and said, "Let me give you a piece of advice: you have no talent. Don't bother auditioning for any more musicals. You'll never get cast." So from that point on I assumed I wasn't a musical person.

Ironically, from that point on I also began composing an enormous catalogue of music. I moved into a small apartment in Holyoke and acquired a Jewett upright piano. I knew some basics of how to write a score, but mostly just made it up as I went along. I would go to the college library and research scores. I also acquired the complete piano music of Debussy and the complete piano sonatas of Beethoven and used them as guides. I wrote a lot of incidental music for plays at the college. I attempted to write orchestral music, but struggled because I had no frame of reference. When I left junior college and transferred to the University of Massachusetts, I was still in theater but I spent much more time in their extensive music library. I would spend hours there listening to classical recordings while following along with the score. I got up the courage to meet with the university's head of music composition. I had given him copies of some of my piano pieces. He was kind enough to meet with me and suggested I try writing for more melodic instruments, like flutes. So I went home and cranked out the Sonatina for Flute and Piano. It was pretty terrible, but it did get me thinking about writing for instruments that were less percussive than a piano. UMass was also where I created my adaptation of Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. I also performed it there and one of the people in the audience was a graduate student in directing, Bill Pullman. He approached me afterward and told me how impressed he was. That was the encouragement I needed to hear. Oberholtzer's words faded into the past.

When I left the next year for Columbia University to again major in theater, I ended up rooming with Steve Freeman, a British trombonist who was attending the Manhattan School of Music (which is really where I should have gone). During my time at Columbia, I wrote more music than worked in theater. In that one short year, I wrote incidental music for two shows (playing for one of them) and music and lyrics for a musical that was performed at the lower east end. I wish I had known about all the music clubs in Manhattan; I probably would have spent most of my time there. When I left Columbia, I stayed away from schools for a few years to earn money and then I headed off to the University of Mississippi, again for theater. On breaks from Ole Miss, I would take a long bus ride back home and brought blank sheet music books with me. Along the way I would composed pieces and play them when I either got home or back to the school. During that time some friends exposed me to the exploding New Wave scene, with bands like the Fixx, Thompson Twins, Dead Can Dance, Cocteau Twins, Eurythmics ... their novel electronic sounds fascinated me. When I finally graduated from the university, I decided I was going to be a pop star. So I taught myself how to play guitar and threw myself into writing synth-pop music.

So what was my big regret? It was that I never got a formal music education. During all those years I was composing page after page of music without really knowing what I was doing. It was like a mouse going after cheese in a maze, bumping into walls and hitting dead ends without a clear path. I knew there was this thing called music theory, but I had no clue how to learn about it without going back to school. And at that point, I was burned out on schooling. Local libraries didn't seem to have much to offer. It wasn't until the advent of the Internet that things started to change. I began discovering more and more sites that talked about music theory principles, and I gradually began filling in the missing pieces. When I would write, I'd inevitably hit a point where I knew the result I wanted, but I had no idea how to make it happen. Theory gave me some of the answers.

Then came my quarter-century teaching electronic media. I was still composing off and on, but nothing like my earlier years. I would challenge myself to create two short soundtracks each year for the animation class I taught. But it wasn't until I retired that I threw myself headlong into composing, first with the Mass in A Major and then with the Mount Tom Suite. I was still struggling with a lot of aspects, usually key changes. But by that point I was beginning to learn some of the fundamentals I was lacking.

That change occurred when I happened upon the Music Matters YouTube channel. I had been hunting around for music theory courses and most that I found either seemed to assume I already knew a lot of music theory, or were there just to try to sell me more advanced courses. Gareth Greene on Music Matters was different; he shared his extensive knowledge in an easily-digestible way, with very clearly constructed lessons on specific aspects of music theory. I finally was getting the music education that I had wanted since I was a child.

What I eventually discovered, though, was that it really didn't change me much as a composer. It turned out I already knew what I needed to know; I just did it instinctively rather than methodically. So maybe I didn't need a full education after all. A lifetime of writing music was my education. I also discovered that there were many successful composers who weren't formally trained; they learned on their own, as I had. The most frustrating aspect was composing pieces that languished on paper, seemingly with no hope of getting them performed. That's one way a music education would have been really helpful, giving me access to resources like a variety of instruments and performers who could breathe life into my pieces. And it would have introduced me to a network of musicians and composers, colleagues with whom I could form professional and personal relationships. I've finally begun doing that now, about fifty years behind schedule.

I'm glad I didn't pay too much attention to Oberholtzer's off-putting comment. He could have said to me, "You seem to like music but you could use some work. Why don't you take some courses in the music department?" If he had, my life might have followed a very different path. But that didn't happen. And back then I didn't know any better and just continued doing what I'd been doing ever since I was a toddler, going around in circles with music filling my brain.

March 5, 2024

Springfield's Tuesday Morning Music Club has been around for over a century. Originally formed as a social gathering to hear classical music performed in a sort of parlor setting, it now attracts dozens of music lovers to Asbury Hall in the massive edifice of Trinity United Methodist Church in Springfield, MA. As the name states, the concerts are on Tuesday mornings (actually, every other Tuesday) at 10:30. This obviously limits most of the attendees to retirees. The club keeps an extensive roster of area musicians and performers. Each season, the program features performances by musicians chosen off that roster. Many of them got their start musically by participating in the club's youth programs.

Last season, Kara Noble was voted in as President of the club, and her husband Clifton J. Noble, Jr. ("Jerry") was voted in as Program Director. His job was to line up all the performers. Karen had known Jerry for a long time. In fact, nearly everyone connected with music in the Pioneer Valley knew Jerry. He was a well-know composer, performer (often with his wife) and for decades also wrote a music column for the local press. I knew him as an acquaintance through Karen.

So I was quite honored when last autumn, Jerry invited me to participate in a new type of program that he wanted to present. He chose a set of instrumentalists and invited a few area composers to write a new piece using that ensemble. There was no restriction on the subject matter or style; the only requirement was to stick to those instrumentalists. We could use as many or as few of them as we wanted. They were: soprano, baritone, flute, French horn, piano, violin, viola and cello. Around that same time, Jerry introduced me to the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore. That served as my inspiration. I chose one of his pieces that drew me in with its final line: "In the meanwhile, the air is filling with the perfume of promise." I found that to be a surprising and lovely turn of phrase. So I set to work.

The combination of instruments was an interesting challenge. I decided to use them all except for the piano, since Jerry was acting as the pianist and he already had plenty else to do. The challenge was how to balance the timbre of the instruments. The horn could easily obliterate all the others, plus it had a similar range to the viola. And pairing the two wind instruments might not work that well. I figured the best approach would be to have a motif that the instruments could pass around between them. I would keep a continuous background texture with the string section, and then have the winds punctuate various passages. I also had to be careful because the vocalists needed to be heard clearly above the ensemble.

I wanted the opening to seem a bit mysterious and untethered, like being in a fog. I originally structured the piece to be in 6/8 time but found that to work against what I was trying to do. So I changed it to simple 3/4 time, but had the instruments enter on the off-beats, so the listener wasn't sure where the rhythmic center was. I created a simple but instantly indentifiable motif on the violin, which the soprano then picked up. That became the thematic "glue" for the piece. I tossed it around from instrument to instrument. I knew I wanted the climax of the piece to be the line, "the happy moment will arrive when I shall see." The only problem was that the last word had the worst vowel for singing loud and high. I preferred having an "ahh" or "oh" sound. But I wasn't about the change the text. It took me about a month to finish the piece. For much of it, I plotted out the chord progressions in advance to create the feeling I wanted. I also managed to work in two completely incongruous Easter eggs.

In February, Jerry scheduled two rehearsals with the performers. I was confident that was going to be plenty of time. All of the performers were seasoned professionals. I made sure I gave Jerry all of their parts with cues marked in them. I asked Jerry if he wanted me to conduct it, or whether he wanted to, and he opted to do it. I suggested conducting it in one at the beginning, since no one had a solid beat to latch onto. If he wanted, he could switch to conducting in three after "the breath of the evening breeze is sweet," where the instruments all finally join together in a waltz. Jerry and I met ahead of time with Anita Anderson Cooper, the soprano, to run through the piece, since she would have to miss one of the other rehearsals. As I did with the Mass last year, I watched to see how she negotiated the piece, where any trouble spots were. Jerry tried to replicate the orchestral textures on a piano, which was a challenge. Counting was definitely going to be an issue, because of how every instrument entered on a different beat. It reminded me of one of the pieces I was rehearsing for the spring Greater Westfield Choral Concert, Gaudete Omnes by Jan Sweelinck, which had very similar issues.

The first full rehearsal on February 25 was missing the French horn. Much of that session was working out timing and cueing, and getting the players to wrap their heads around the piece. They did play it remarkably well for the first time. I had sent Jerry a MIDI version of the piece so that the players could hear some semblance of how it all went together. For the next rehearsal on March 3, everyone was there except for Cooper. So I sang her part. The performers were a lot more confident at that rehearsal and it was pulling together nicely. They all rehearsed once more the morning of the performance. On the program, my piece was the finale. The program opened with Tiyptych, a complicated piece by Zeke Hecker that made my piece look like child's play. Michael Nix submitted two cowboy songs that were sung by Peter Shea. Mark Fraser, the cellist, had three duos for flute and cello. Anita Anderson Cooper composed two pieces. Then two of Jerry's pieces were performed, both of them based on other Tagore poems. And finally, my piece, This Is My Delight.

All of the pieces were very well received by the audience, and many said how they hoped something like that would be offered again. So congratulations to Jerry on taking a chance on something a bit different. It was fascinating to see how different composers approached the challenge, bringing out their own unique voices.