Enchanted at Five

My first conscious memory is sitting on the floor as a five-year-old, listening to my father sing songs from films, musicals, and operettas as my mother accompanied him on the piano. I was enthralled, and this experience remains a vivid memory.

This was a magical event for me, and it took place in the living room of a tiny, three-room farmhouse in rural Oklahoma. Both of my parents were musically gifted. My mother had studied piano and voice at the University of Oklahoma. My father had studied geology, but he grew up playing trumpet and violin. I have a photograph of him sitting as assistant concertmaster for a local production of The Mikado. And he had a lovely voice.

After serving as a pilot in World War II, my father discovered he hated working in the oil industry. He hated traveling and relocating. Eventually, his father helped him buy a farm next to the one he had grown up on.

My Resonant Responses to Music

For me, that childhood evening of enchantment revealed my resonant responses to music, which set me on a path to becoming a professional musician (French horn) and composer.

I doubt my parents would have been thrilled to know how deeply that early experience influenced me. My father had been pushed to study geology, leading to a career he hated, so they didn’t oppose my decision to pursue a music career. However, their lukewarm enthusiasm for my choice was obvious. The same was true of my high school counselors who urged me to study medicine or engineering. The problem with their advice was I had no intrinsic interest in gaining skills in those fields.

What I did possess was an irrepressible interest in developing my musical skills and an fierce capacity for work. Fortunately, I had inherited my parents’ musical gifts, so, with supportive professors and colleagues, my musical aspirations have proved rewarding. Luckily, before my parents passed away, they heard a production of one of my operas they both found enchanting.

This was a rich experience for me. Their reaction, combined with the entranced reactions of other audience members, reconfirmed that composing music was a calling I was meant to follow.