Music history 104

After my positive lyrics, raise-the-energy-through-dance phase, I managed to get myself back on track enough to return to SF State University and finish my undergraduate degree in flute performance. Thus began the intensely classical music period of my personal music history.

Three specific instances capture what I now believe was the true significance of this phase of my life…

The first was when I went to the library at SF State to complete a homework assignment for a music theory class. This was waaayyyy back when you had to go into the library, check out the vinyl LP, then take it into a little room in order to listen. I had been procrastinating for some weeks, but finally forced myself to go do the assignment.

Well, I dropped the needle and started listening to the first movement of the Brahms violin sonata #1 in G major…and promptly burst into tears. I had no idea what was causing such an deeply felt response, but I sat there and played that first movement over and over again. It was as if all the beauty in the world was coming through the opening measures of that sublime melody and my heart simply couldn’t contain it.

I finished my undergrad degree that year and went on to get my Master degree in flute performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I played in orchestra and chamber music ensembles, did recitals, and played lots and lots of weddings and other “gigs”. I especially loved playing the music  of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tschaichovsky, Dvorak, Prokofiev, and other favorites too numerous to list!

Living in San Francisco as I did, I also spent a fair amount of time attending concerts at Davies Symphony Hall and seeing the ballet and opera in the War Memorial Opera House just up the street.

The second powerful memory from that time was a San Francisco Ballet performance of Stravinsky’s Firebird, in which the choreographer depicted the Firebird as a revolutionary male figure rallying his partisan comrades. It was downright stark, with a bare stage, drab partisan costumes, and a simple red unitard for the Firebird. But it captured the essence of Stravinsky’s score and amplified it in a way that was absolutely thrilling to me. I still remember it all these decades later (the video contains only the last five minutes or so of the ballet, but you might be able to get an idea of the power of it all).

The final memory I want to relate took place in Davies Symphony Hall at the end of the London Symphony’s performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. I haven’t said much here about Mahler, but his music really spoke to me in those years. And the Fifth Symphony…!

Well, suffice it to say that at the end of the performance I sat in my seat unable to move, I was sobbing so hard. It was actually embarrassing because that’s just not the typical behavior of symphony patrons! But I couldn’t do anything different because I felt like the music had turned me completely inside out — mind, heart, and soul.

In retrospect, I believe this is the significance of this period of my personal music history. Music had helped me raise my energy; now it was helping me crack open my heart and ignite the deep yearnings of my soul.