If you'll indulge me a slight deviation from regular programming... (get comfy, it's a long one)
I meant to write this post yesterday, on October 5, but as life tends to do, I ran out of time and it's now after midnight on October 6 - which isn't as significant a day, though I guess you could say it was the first day of looking at the world differently. October 6, 1998 to be exact.
Though I'm now a total CrossFit junkie, in high school and in college I was a band nerd. Alright. I'm Still a band nerd. Music is something that's in my soul, a first love that will always be a huge part of who I am. I like to play music, listen to music, sing music. I haven't played in several years now and I really miss playing in a band. There's something about music that you can't really explain to someone who doesn't already get it, and it's something that I think is probably different for everyone. I'll try, but it may not make much sense.
The part that I love best about playing music is being a part of a bigger whole. I was never the best musician as I lacked the discipline to practice consistently and the confidence to play as well as I could have, but I never aspired to be a professional euphonium player. (All of you who just asked "What's a Euphonium"? That's why Google was invented.) It's not like there's a huge demand for professional euphonium players in the world. I wanted to teach music and be a band director and help other kids find the feeling that I found when I was a part of the whole.
Euphoniums are, I feel, the forgotten section. No one really notices you until you screw up. You rarely get the melody, you aren't really the coolest or most well known instrument. Euphoniums are big and bulky and heavy. Who would willingly choose to haul that thing around when you could play a 5oz piccolo? But I loved the sound of a euphonium. Mellow, deep, full. Melody can be over-rated. Give me a nice contrasting counter melody or an interesting harmony. That's what the euphoniums do. Or hold out whole notes. Or hit the 1s and 4s. It's not all exciting, but important nonetheless. I digress.
Back to what I love. I love to play a piece and feel the swell of a crescendo or feel each beat on the timpani pulse in my chest or hear a contrasting line soar over the rest of the band and to feel the tension of a discord and the relief of the resolution. To have all of that give you the all over goosebumps. To see a crowd of hundreds of people leap to their feet and cheer as you play as hard and as fast and as loud as you can during a halftime show. There's something about those moments in music that you feel and can't express and there's those pieces of music that will always give you those feelings. Which brings me back to the beginning of this post.
This last week I've been listening to a lot of the instrumental music that I have on my iPod, which sadly isn't a lot and they are probably not the most "music major" quality kinds of pieces, but they are the ones that I love the most. Several pieces are from film and TV scores - the themes from Jurassic Park, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, others are just pieces that I've always enjoyed like Jupiter from The Planets and Eternal Father done by the US Navy Band and Chorus. But the one that has the most meaning is one that I played in high school and college, On a Hymnsong of Philip Bliss. It's a fairly simple piece, only one page, lots of whole notes in my part as I recall, but I always really liked it from the first time we played it in band class. This piece holds meaning for me mostly because of a very important performance, after that day when I started looking at the world differently.
I've been listening to this piece over the last week because I've been thinking about Josh. Josh was a tuba player in my high school band; my marching partner during my junior year season. An all-around great guy who could fix anything with duct tape. I started looking at the world differently on October 6, 1998 because on October 5th, Josh passed away. It was sudden, and tragic, and sad, and as he was the first person close to me I had ever known to die, this day changed my life. I began to question things and realize my own mortality in a way that hadn't occurred to my 16 year old mind the day before.
Being in band is like being part of any kind of group. Every member is important, every part is integral to putting forth the best and most complete work. Even though euphoniums are sometimes only playing whole notes, without them the sound would not be as full and as rich. Without Josh in the band, we were less. Without him in the world, we were less. Though our pain and sorrow could never equal that of his parents and sister, the band became a second family for me, and many others, and we mourned our loss as only we could - with music. We performed several pieces in a memorial ceremony in Josh's honor, one of them being On a Hymnsong of Philip Bliss. The piece is based on the hymn It is Well with My Soul which I hadn't heard until it was sung at Josh's funeral. As I sat on stage in a black dress with Josh's family on the front row of our high school auditorium, playing this song I'd played many times before, each note started to fill with more and more meaning. The music swelled and gave me goosebumps, the timpani pounded in my heart, and tears filled my eyes as me and my fellow band members paid tribute to the friend we had lost.
I didn't finish playing the piece during the concert that night, I couldn't, and as sad as it had made me, I never wanted to play it again. It hurt too much and brought up too much feeling. My freshman year in college, I had to play it again. Of course the band director didn't know the back story, but there I sat in rehearsal after the piece was passed out, bawling my eyes out (to the horror of my stand partner) as this familiar piece began to pull up all my memories of Josh again. But just as any memory of those we have lost, at first it is painful as you long to have them with you again and you are still dealing with the fact that this can never be. As time goes on though, memories start to bring you joy instead of sadness. Which is why I can now listen to this piece and smile when I remember Josh, even if it's sometimes through tears.
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