Music, children and love

26/1/20: This article has been updated to include a link to the short of the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.

Yes. My copy of 14 Lives arrived and I have now read it all. What a treasure it is.

The last life I read was that of John Reardon. It is beautiful, but the most interesting part for me was at the end where John tells of having performed on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood on TV. How topical is that, when the movie A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood is getting so much publicity and praise right now. John sang opera on the show, which was for children.

So. I had to look up John Reardon on the Internet. There he is singing to the “King” puppet, the bird catcher's song from Mozart's The Magic Flute. It is sung in German – the song being Der Vogelfänger and the character Papageno (very Italian). Delightful!

In the book John illustrates how young people can be introduced to opera. An amusing story:

He was out West (of the USA) on tour with a production of the opera Tosca. He explains, “The opera company has a policy of selling student tickets at a dollar apiece, but at a private girls' school of 250 students in that area the company had sold only one ticket. So the management asked the tenor, the soprano, and myself to go out to the school and try to sell a few tickets. We appeared at the school during lunch hour. After relating sequences of our opera roles, the tenor then sang the line “Vittoria, vittoria,” from the second act of Tosca, ending on a high A-sharp.

“Pandemonium broke loose in that dining hall. The students had never heard a human voice making a sound like that. They had grown up listening to transistors. Now they heard the actual sound of a tone so vital they couldn't contain their excitement. Here was proof that when young people have the proper exposure to great music, they respond with vigor. We sold many tickets at the school that day” (p. 96-7). 

John adds, “I believe that our young people have suffered culturally because they have not been sufficiently exposed to its exalting influence” (p. 97).

An inspiring approach to progress in a career: “Christian Science has taught me that progress comes when we are ready to receive it. Consequently I never felt it was necessary to go after anything. Everything in my career has led naturally to the next step” (p. 90-1).

It was nice to have John's description of Leonard Bernstein: “Bernstein had that spontaneous welling-up of love that was felt by everyone. He loved the music; he loved the musicians; he loved the audience....Bernstein is quoted as saying that music is spiritual – something with which most musicians agree. Being a spiritual outpouring music partakes of the nature of God, the great Spirit of all harmony” (p. 83).

Joyce Voysey