A Horn, A Mouthpiece, A Music Stand
Apr. 10th, 2019 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thisnewdaySixty years ago, when I was 14, my parents signed working papers from the local school district so that I could get my first "real" job. Before that, I'd had my own "business" mowing lawns and doing odd jobs in the neighborhood, but I needed something that would carry me through the fall and winter as well as generating enough money for the first major purchase of my life.
Since the fifth grade, I'd pursued my musical interests on a variety of borrowed and used instruments: an alto horn on loan for the school year from the elementary school I attended, a silver Conn B-flat trumpet which had belonged to my uncle back in the 1930s, and a slightly newer horn, again silver and of a forgotten brand, which my parents had purchased, used, for me one Christmas.
Now, however, I needed something newer--and, I guess, sexier--in a gold lacquer finish. And so I went to work and, within 6 months, I had enough saved for the Olds Studio model which I ultimately purchased from Markham's Music in Erie, where I was taking private lessons.
Four years or so later, after deciding that the trumpet and a career in music education were not for me, I sold it for about a third of what I'd paid for it to the uncle who'd loaned me his old horn from the '30s.
Today, I did two very short practice sessions on the Stagg pocket trumpet which I'd bought a few weeks before going into the hospital for the abdominal surgery which I'd need in order to resume walking--not to mention playing the high brass.
And the Stagg is a nice little horn--its valves are as good as anything I've ever had my fingers on. I bought it because of the novelty--it's cute as a button and just about as big--and because it seemed like a pretty good buy at the lower end of the brass spectrum.
But as I was putting it away, it occurred to me that I'd paid for it, in 2019 dollars, the same number of dollars as I'd earned, by the very considerable sweat of my brow, for my Olds back in 1959.
Like I said, it's not a bad little horn and it's certainly more than good enough for me to attempt to recoup some part of the skills I left by the wayside over half a century ago.
But the thing I've learned, from that and the time in between, is that you can buy all the pieces of a thing--a horn, a mouthpiece, a music stand--and still not have what Carson McCullers called "the science of it." It's something she talks about in her story, "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud."
My apologies, Carson. You must be quaking in Nyack...
LPK
Dreamwidth
4.10.2019
Since the fifth grade, I'd pursued my musical interests on a variety of borrowed and used instruments: an alto horn on loan for the school year from the elementary school I attended, a silver Conn B-flat trumpet which had belonged to my uncle back in the 1930s, and a slightly newer horn, again silver and of a forgotten brand, which my parents had purchased, used, for me one Christmas.
Now, however, I needed something newer--and, I guess, sexier--in a gold lacquer finish. And so I went to work and, within 6 months, I had enough saved for the Olds Studio model which I ultimately purchased from Markham's Music in Erie, where I was taking private lessons.
Four years or so later, after deciding that the trumpet and a career in music education were not for me, I sold it for about a third of what I'd paid for it to the uncle who'd loaned me his old horn from the '30s.
Today, I did two very short practice sessions on the Stagg pocket trumpet which I'd bought a few weeks before going into the hospital for the abdominal surgery which I'd need in order to resume walking--not to mention playing the high brass.
And the Stagg is a nice little horn--its valves are as good as anything I've ever had my fingers on. I bought it because of the novelty--it's cute as a button and just about as big--and because it seemed like a pretty good buy at the lower end of the brass spectrum.
But as I was putting it away, it occurred to me that I'd paid for it, in 2019 dollars, the same number of dollars as I'd earned, by the very considerable sweat of my brow, for my Olds back in 1959.
Like I said, it's not a bad little horn and it's certainly more than good enough for me to attempt to recoup some part of the skills I left by the wayside over half a century ago.
But the thing I've learned, from that and the time in between, is that you can buy all the pieces of a thing--a horn, a mouthpiece, a music stand--and still not have what Carson McCullers called "the science of it." It's something she talks about in her story, "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud."
My apologies, Carson. You must be quaking in Nyack...
LPK
Dreamwidth
4.10.2019
