Why I play the Horn

 When I was in elementary school, 6th grade was when you could start a band instrument. I wanted to play trumpet. However, it was 1964 and everyone in my life thought that girls don't play trumpet. Thinking back, it is astonishing how much effort was put into talking me out of trumpet. 

My mother called my orthodontist. I don't know what he actually said, but she implied he said no trumpet. My father got out my brother's toy trumpet and had me try to play it. I didn't realize it wouldn't make a sound unless you pressed one of the buttons, so my dad insisted that I couldn't make a sound and therefore could not play trumpet.

Finally, a compromise of sorts was reached - I could start learning cornet. Now, a cornet is basically a trumpet. The difference is trumpets have a cylindrical bore while cornets are conical, giving the cornet a more mellow sound. [shrugs shoulders]

Band was big in my hometown of Neenah, Wisconsin. I was in a group lesson with 5 or 6 boys as I remember. The beginner band included all the elementary schools in town, so it was huge. 

The next year we moved to Connecticut and I joined the junior high band in our new town, playing my uncle's old cornet. 

People kept telling me that I should be playing French horn. And they didn't say that because trumpet/cornet was not for girls. They said it because something about the way I played said that French horn would be a better fit. Finally in 9th grade, I saw that the world was filled with trumpet players and was lacking in French horn players. So I agreed to take a horn home along with a beginner method book. 

Side note: (9th grade was still junior high in my school district in Connecticut.)

(I will now call my instrument the "horn" as that is the universally accepted name for it.)

It is much, much more difficult to find the correct pitches on a horn than on a trumpet. I struggled for months, but I got better. When I arrived in high school, I was the only horn player in the school. And it was not a small high school. My band director told my parents I should take private lessons. They eventually found an excellent teacher for me in a neighboring town. With his  influence, I went to his alma mater for college, the Eastman School of Music.

Along the way I fell in love with this beautiful instrument.

And my father was incredibly proud of me. And repeatedly embarrassed the teenage me in front of numerous relatives and friends. 

If you ask any horn player why they play the horn, almost all of us will say "the sound." But there's also the incredible repertoire of music written for the horn, from Bach to 21st century pieces. I am lucky that so many people kept nudging me to try it. 

I'll be off to a rehearsal tonight!

"Where were you born?"

 Today I turned again to my book of writing prompts/ideas (642 Things to Write About-Young Writer's Edition - I bought when I was teaching young writers, but a lot of it works for adults too), not being able to think of a good topic. I turned to "Where were you born? Using your imagination, describe the day you were born."

I was born in Seattle, in August 1953. My parents had been married for a year, but they had known each other since they were children. They were from the same small town in Minnesota and their mothers were good friends. My dad's parents and brothers had moved to Seattle during World War II in order to work in the defense industries there. 

In 1952, my mother and grandmother visited my dad's family in Seattle. By then my dad was out of the Navy and had joined his parents there. 

My uncle Don, who was a few years older than my dad told me years later, "Your mother and her mother came to visit. Trev [his wife] and I went away for the weekend. When we came back, they were engaged." He said sounding both a little bewildered and affronted. Don liked to be in charge.

Anyway, my parents were married not too long after that, back in Minnesota. I was born one year and one week after the wedding. 

That day might have been sunny, even in Seattle. Since it was 1953, my father would have been elsewhere, fathers not being allowed at their children's births. I imagine him going back to their little house, waiting for a phone call. He picked up his cello and began to play. He probably would have played some hymns, but I'm going to imagine him playing some of the Bach Cello Suites. [If you'd like to hear a bit of one of the Suites played by the incredible Yo-Yo Ma, click this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1prweT95Mo0]

When the phone call came, telling him he had a daughter and his wife was resting comfortably, he took a deep breath and said a prayer thanking God. Then he drove to the hospital to see us. 

I was a large baby with quite a lot of dark hair and a black eye, thanks to the doctor. But to my parents I was the most wonderful thing in the world at that moment. I know that because that's how I felt when each of my children was born.