TRIO
It seems odd that three musical events should suddenly come to mind yesterday afternoon when I was walking around the cul-de-sac turn-around near which we now live.
That's my daily trek location now during my eighty-eighth year - and it is not unusual to use it as think-back-when locale, as well.
During my walk yersterday I found myself thinking of a time when Ullyses S. Grant is said to have visited Staunton, Virginia - possibly on an electioneering junket, and who was to be entertained, quite logically, by their justly famed and respected "Stonewall Jackson Brigade Band."
When asked what tune he would like to hear them play Grant, without hesitation, replied: "Dixie!
"
Never was the piece played with such intensity an feeling. Grant had heard them play the song before, but in different circumstances and from afar in Wilderness battlefields.
Think what courage and depths of courage and understand to both make and to fulfill and to fullfll that request.
The second musical memory was of the same locale - Staunton, Virginia but half a century later, where, many years ago, a member of a trapeze troupe with a visiting circus was brutally murdered by another member of the circus. She was buried in Thornrose Cemetery in Staunton and eech year afterward on the anniversary of her death
surviving members of the circus band showed up at her graveside to play the circus tunes she loved. Instrumentation varied, of course, and to this date people don't seem to remember exactly when the graveside recitals ceased. It was comparativly recent when someone realized the annual event was no longer being observed.
The third incident I remembered happened in West Virginia, just out of Fayetteville.
When the engineering wonder which is the high span of bridge over the 800 foot-plus depths of the New River Gorge, was dedicated I, listened to the ceremonies on, I think, NPR. It was many years before I actually got to visit the site. When I did so, the music of the dedication of the bridge flooded over me as it does to this very day.
I don't know who the production genius might have been, but instead of featuring a large band, a full orchestra or marching batallions, or, perhaps modern dancers in frilly costumes – someone had the brilliant idea of having one ,lone harmonica player starding midway of the high span playing folk melodies which were electronically amplified and sent vibrating through the high moutains; moulding themselves to fit the contours of even the deep chasm which is the New River Gorge, as a natural part of their own heritage.
No one musical moment has impressed me so deeply. The sheer simplicity of it was an artistic triumph and whoever did it should be forever enrolled in a special place in whatever book records such musical milestones.
Take a walk and think about your musical treasures. It will prove to be time well spent.
A.L.M. February 29, 2004ll [c516wds]
P.S: Happy Birthday, Buddy Rogers, Swoope, Va., on your Leap Year birthday!
