There was a fine violinist named Gaston in the Battle Creek Symphony some years ago. He was from France and had been in a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II. Because I had lived in France for three years, I really enjoyed speaking French with him during our orchestra rehearsal breaks.
As he explained to me, soon after France was invaded and he was imprisoned, his wife had their baby whom he didn’t even meet until the war was finally over five years later.
Prison was, of course, a terrible experience, especially because he knew he had a child he hadn’t even met. Because he was a professional musician, however, he was able to leave his cell in the evenings, dress up and play in an orchestra for operas and concerts. He said that he got better food and clothing because of his role as a musician, and sometimes it made him almost forget that he was in prison.
I was reminded of this friend Gaston when I read a fascinating article about another musician, Alice Herz-Sommer, who just died in February, at the age of 110. She was a Jewish piano teacher and performer from eastern Europe who gave concerts all across Europe until the Nazis refused to let her play in public or teach non-Jewish students.
She was imprisoned in the Theresienstadt concentration camp during the war, and she also had a child whom she had to leave. She was 40 years old then, so that when she died, she was the oldest Holocaust survivor--as well as being one of the oldest people in the world.
Fortunately, Alice, like Gaston, was also allowed to play regularly while she was in prison. In fact, she played more than 100 concerts along with other musicians, for prisoners and guards.
And this opportunity made all of the difference for her. As she put it, “When ever I knew that I had a concert, I was happy. Music is magic. We performed in the council hall before an audience of 150 old, hopeless, sick and hungry people. They lived for the music. It was like food to them. If they hadn’t come [to hear us], they would have died long before. As we would have.”
I was really impressed by what Alice said about her life. Though she suffered badly during the war, she was a model of optimism. As she said, “I look at the good. When you are relaxed, your body is always relaxed. When you are pessimistic, your body behaves in an unnatural way. It is up to us whether we look at the good or the bad. When you are nice to others, they are nice to you. When you give, you receive.”
I loved another quote from her, as well: "Music saved my life and music saves me still... I am Jewish, but Beethoven is my religion."
I am certainly thankful that I haven’t suffered as Gaston and Alice did, but when I had open heart surgery a year ago, I wasn’t able to play my violin for two months. When I finally picked it up and found that I could play, I felt much better right away.
The best way to end this column is by a beautiful quote from Beethoven which I must say I believe: “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.”
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
Monday, April 21, 2014
The Two Koreas
When I spent a year teaching at a university in South Korea back in the mid 70s, some of my colleagues had had no contact with family and friends north of the border for over 20 years. That border between the two Koreas was - and still is - the most fortified border in the whole world.
Now, 60 years after the war, most of those who lost family and friends to North Korea are probably no longer living.
True enough there was a limited reunion three years ago during which 22,000 South and North Koreans got to see each other at least for a short time, 18,000 in person and the rest by video. And just this year there was another much smaller reunion, but for many, these possible get-togethers were of course too late. Sadly, one woman who was 90 and had never seen her relatives again died just 15 days before she had a chance to see any who might still be living.
This whole situation is particularly sad, for Koreans used to be a very close group of citizens who considered themselves family. But after World War II the whole situation changed, for the northern part of the country was occupied by Soviet military forces while the south was occupied by the U.S. military forces.
There is an excellent new book called “Shattered By the Wars but Sustained by Love,” written by Hi-Dong Chai who was born in Korea in 1936. Hi-Dong’s father was a Christian minister who refused to bow down to a picture of the Japanese emperor and was therefore imprisoned in Japan. He had a stroke and was sent home, but then, near the beginning of the Korean War, he was again imprisoned, this time by the North Koreans. After that, poor Hi-Dong never saw his father again.
Hi-Dong’s older brother had volunteered to join the Japanese military at age 15, in order to try to rescue their father. By the time he turned 18 and came home, however, he was badly wounded and died a year later.
Meanwhile another older brother had become a communist, thinking theirs was a better system for equalizing everyone’s lives. He became disillusioned and returned home, but he was so threatened by his own people that he disappeared, never to be seen again.
Hi-Dong even lost his beloved dog because his mother said there was not enough food for the family, much less for a pet.
Like thousands of others, Hi-Dong and his mother had to leave their home and their lives in Seoul during the Korean War. They went down to Cheju Island, where they lived in poverty until a minister friend made it possible for 16-year-old Hi-Dong to come to the United States for schooling. He eventually received a doctorate in electrical engineering and had a very successful career in this country.
He never forgot the pain his family had been through, however, and wrote this book to try to inform people of the horrors of war and to encourage them to “seek harmony at home and peace in the world.”
He dedicated the book to his mother, who suffered through most of her life “and to all mothers in the world whose love and sacrifice have been permanently etched in the hearts of men and women who were nurtured by them.”
Now, 60 years after the war, most of those who lost family and friends to North Korea are probably no longer living.
True enough there was a limited reunion three years ago during which 22,000 South and North Koreans got to see each other at least for a short time, 18,000 in person and the rest by video. And just this year there was another much smaller reunion, but for many, these possible get-togethers were of course too late. Sadly, one woman who was 90 and had never seen her relatives again died just 15 days before she had a chance to see any who might still be living.
This whole situation is particularly sad, for Koreans used to be a very close group of citizens who considered themselves family. But after World War II the whole situation changed, for the northern part of the country was occupied by Soviet military forces while the south was occupied by the U.S. military forces.
There is an excellent new book called “Shattered By the Wars but Sustained by Love,” written by Hi-Dong Chai who was born in Korea in 1936. Hi-Dong’s father was a Christian minister who refused to bow down to a picture of the Japanese emperor and was therefore imprisoned in Japan. He had a stroke and was sent home, but then, near the beginning of the Korean War, he was again imprisoned, this time by the North Koreans. After that, poor Hi-Dong never saw his father again.
Hi-Dong’s older brother had volunteered to join the Japanese military at age 15, in order to try to rescue their father. By the time he turned 18 and came home, however, he was badly wounded and died a year later.
Meanwhile another older brother had become a communist, thinking theirs was a better system for equalizing everyone’s lives. He became disillusioned and returned home, but he was so threatened by his own people that he disappeared, never to be seen again.
Hi-Dong even lost his beloved dog because his mother said there was not enough food for the family, much less for a pet.
Like thousands of others, Hi-Dong and his mother had to leave their home and their lives in Seoul during the Korean War. They went down to Cheju Island, where they lived in poverty until a minister friend made it possible for 16-year-old Hi-Dong to come to the United States for schooling. He eventually received a doctorate in electrical engineering and had a very successful career in this country.
He never forgot the pain his family had been through, however, and wrote this book to try to inform people of the horrors of war and to encourage them to “seek harmony at home and peace in the world.”
He dedicated the book to his mother, who suffered through most of her life “and to all mothers in the world whose love and sacrifice have been permanently etched in the hearts of men and women who were nurtured by them.”
Monday, April 14, 2014
My Most Meaningful Column
I've written well over 200 columns for this newspaper, and they have certainly made me more appreciative of new people I've met and interviewed. They've also provided me with valuable new ideas I've encountered by special reading in preparation for my writing.
There was one particular column which has had the deepest meaning for me--and I hope for my readers as well. It was the one last year about the wonderful Jewish writer, Elie Wiesel, and his memorable comments on the power of prayer.
As I said in that column about him, “After going through the horror of a concentration camp and losing his parents and younger sister, he of course became terribly depressed and full of doubt.”
But that was just the beginning of my column--and of his story.
For 10 years after the war he understandably couldn't talk or write about his horrible experiences. Rather than allowing himself to suffer and become bitter for long, however, he grew to feel gratitude that he was still alive and a deep desire to help anyone in need.
After that decade of silence, he made a lifelong commitment to tell the story and to beg people in general to remain actively committed to justice and compassion for all who are suffering. As he put it, he had personally learned over that decade that “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Wiesel is 85 now and still considers prayer an essential in his own life. His quote on that subject which has truly changed me is the following: “If the only prayer you say throughout your life is ‘Thank You,’ then that will be enough.”
Since reading about Wiesel in his autobiography and writing that column, I’ve been practicing daily his statement about simply thanking God for all of my blessings. I don’t ask for favors, I don’t make suggestions to Him, and I don’t complain. This new practice of simply telling God all that I am grateful for makes me feel much closer to Him, much more positive about life in general.
I can’t begin to know why God created me or what is in my future--or in anyone else’s, for that matter. But Wiesel’s statement is sufficient, and it makes my prayers and my general attitude about life more meaningful, more filled with genuine gratitude.
Alice Walker expressed this same feeling well when she said, “'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.”
I also liked the amusing way the French novelist, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr spoke about being positive: “Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.”
Then there’s another good quote on the subject by Izaak Walton from nearly 400 years ago: “God has two dwellings; one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart.”
And, finally, Gilbert K. Chesterton is also very quotable on this subject: “Thanks are the highest form of thought, and gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
I realize that I have based a good bit of this column upon others’ quotes and concepts rather than my own. It is fitting, however, for my message this week is my deep gratitude to many, but especially to Wiesel for his wonderful words about thankfulness.
There was one particular column which has had the deepest meaning for me--and I hope for my readers as well. It was the one last year about the wonderful Jewish writer, Elie Wiesel, and his memorable comments on the power of prayer.
As I said in that column about him, “After going through the horror of a concentration camp and losing his parents and younger sister, he of course became terribly depressed and full of doubt.”
But that was just the beginning of my column--and of his story.
For 10 years after the war he understandably couldn't talk or write about his horrible experiences. Rather than allowing himself to suffer and become bitter for long, however, he grew to feel gratitude that he was still alive and a deep desire to help anyone in need.
After that decade of silence, he made a lifelong commitment to tell the story and to beg people in general to remain actively committed to justice and compassion for all who are suffering. As he put it, he had personally learned over that decade that “Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”
Wiesel is 85 now and still considers prayer an essential in his own life. His quote on that subject which has truly changed me is the following: “If the only prayer you say throughout your life is ‘Thank You,’ then that will be enough.”
Since reading about Wiesel in his autobiography and writing that column, I’ve been practicing daily his statement about simply thanking God for all of my blessings. I don’t ask for favors, I don’t make suggestions to Him, and I don’t complain. This new practice of simply telling God all that I am grateful for makes me feel much closer to Him, much more positive about life in general.
I can’t begin to know why God created me or what is in my future--or in anyone else’s, for that matter. But Wiesel’s statement is sufficient, and it makes my prayers and my general attitude about life more meaningful, more filled with genuine gratitude.
Alice Walker expressed this same feeling well when she said, “'Thank you' is the best prayer that anyone could say. I say that one a lot. Thank you expresses extreme gratitude, humility, understanding.”
I also liked the amusing way the French novelist, Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr spoke about being positive: “Some people are always grumbling because roses have thorns; I am thankful that thorns have roses.”
Then there’s another good quote on the subject by Izaak Walton from nearly 400 years ago: “God has two dwellings; one in heaven, and the other in a meek and thankful heart.”
And, finally, Gilbert K. Chesterton is also very quotable on this subject: “Thanks are the highest form of thought, and gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.”
I realize that I have based a good bit of this column upon others’ quotes and concepts rather than my own. It is fitting, however, for my message this week is my deep gratitude to many, but especially to Wiesel for his wonderful words about thankfulness.
Tuesday, April 8, 2014
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Forgotten Composer
As a retired English professor I am certainly familiar with the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge and have always admired him tremendously. But as a musician, even though I know about many composers, I had never heard of an English composer named Samuel Coleridge-Taylor until just recently.
His story is most interesting in terms not only of his name and his achievement but also of his acceptance, for he was half black and lived in England over 100 years ago, mostly in the late 19th century.
Coleridge-Taylor’s mother, Alice Hare Martin, was British, but his father, Dr. Daniel Peter Hughes Taylor, was a Sierra Leonean Creole man who was visiting in England. His parents may or may not have married, and his father may have returned to Africa before the child’s birth or as late as a year after: accounts vary.
In any case, Coleridge-Taylor was fortunate in inheriting outstanding musical talents from his uncle on his mother’s side and was encouraged by his mother and grandfather to study violin at the Royal College of Music. He also studied composition under Charles Villiers Stanford, the famous Irish composer, music teacher, and conductor.
After this fine training, Coleridge-Taylor started right in teaching music and even conducted an orchestra at the Croydon Conservatoire before he was 20 years old.
He fell in love with a fellow music student, a white woman named Jessie, and at age 24 he married her, despite her parents’ objection to an interracial marriage. They had two children, a son named Hiawatha and a daughter named Avril, who also became a conductor and composer. He must have been especially fond of the name Hiawatha, for one of his most famous compositions was called “Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast.”
Coleridge-Taylor became famous even as a young man and made three trips to this country. He was even invited to meet President Theodore Roosevelt at the White House.
Though he spent most of his life in England with his white relatives, Coleridge-Taylor took his half-black side seriously and composed many works that reflected the rich style of African music.
Because of his success with this emphasis, Coleridge-Taylor was warmly accepted by African Americans, and in 1901 a 200-voice African American chorus popularized his work and even named itself the Samuel Coleridge-Taylor Society.
This talented man lived for only 37 years, but he had an interesting tie with another talented black man, Paul Laurence Dunbar, an American poet who lived for only 34 years. The two of them met in London, and Coleridge-Taylor was so impressed with Dunbar’s poems that he set some of them to music, and they performed them together.
I would urge you to go on line to a wonderful YouTube video, “A Samuel Coleridge-Taylor tribute,” which tells the story of Coleridge-Taylor, as narrated by his talented, musical daughter, Avril. She not only shows pictures of her father and tells about his life, but she also includes a few of his finest works, some of which were conducted by her.
Looking at the viewing numbers shown on the YouTube videos of his music, I'm saddened to see how few have listened to his many works there. I hope when I look again after this column is published, I'll see some improvement!
As one commentator put it, “All should know the legend that was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor. Most don’t and that’s the greatest pity of all.”
Tuesday, April 1, 2014
The Little Brown Church
“There's a church in the valley by the Wildwood
No lovelier spot in the dale,
No place is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale.”
No place is so dear to my childhood
As the little brown church in the vale.”
These are the words of a favorite hymn of mine, “The Little Brown Church in the Wildwood,” which we sang often at our family’s Congregational church in Illinois.
The history of that song is quite amazing. Back in the 1850s, before the “Little Brown Church” in Iowa was even built, William Pitts, a young music teacher, happened to be traveling from Wisconsin to Bradford, a small town in Iowa, on his way to visit his fiancee, Ann.
While waiting for his stagecoach horses to be replaced, he happened to notice an attractive empty lot there in the town in a wooded valley formed by the Cedar River. He liked the area very much and somehow got to thinking what a nice place it would be for a church.
He was so moved by the thought that when he got back to Wisconsin, he composed the words and music for a song which he called “The Church in the Wildwood.”
By 1862, even though it was during the Civil War, the Congregationalists in Bradford had found the money and labor to build a church, and for the location they happened to choose the very spot Pitts had liked so well. They even had the church painted brown, though Pitts’ song was hidden away in his home and unknown to anyone but him.
Pitts eventually married Ann during the Civil War, and they settled in Iowa, to live closer to her family. When Pitts was hired to teach a chorus at the nearby Bradford Academy, he was amazed to see a new “little brown church” in the very spot he had liked so well. He immediately dug out the song he had hidden away and taught it to the children in Bradford. Soon after, they were asked to sing it for the dedication of the church.
Sadly, the church was closed by 1888 because the town had become much smaller. By 1914, however, it was reopened, and the song had become quite famous by that time. In fact, the “Weatherwax Quartet” from Canada had made it their theme song.
Since that time the church has become extremely popular not only as a place for services but as a historical monument and also as a favorite spot for weddings.
By 2009, there had been 73,000 marriages held there, and each year more than 40,000 people go there to worship, to attend weddings or just to see the famous building.
Fittingly, it is still painted brown and is known by all as “The Little Brown Church in the Vale.”
In recent years the Iowa State Historical Society has taken a special interest in the church and has not only helped make a new foundation but also added air conditioning to the building.
Next time you sing--or at least hear--”The Little Brown Church in the Vale,” I hope you will think of the famous little church in Iowa. Perhaps it will make you want to go see the church. Or, better still, how about encouraging your family or your friends to schedule their weddings there?
And, finally, while organizing the ceremonies, how about asking this columnist to bring her violin and play “The Little Brown Church” for the occasion?:)
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