Tuesday, March 6, 2007

The Day the Music Tried

A remembrance of my short lived musical childhood. A later picture from C.H.S. of George Matrician.



...............1955. Monday morning. First class of the week. 8:20 am.There wasn't a more pleasant time to welcome the week at school than in sleepily floating up to the second floor, winding the light green corridor to the back rooms of Mr. Matrician. There were only fifteen of us chosen for this vocal class.....I was considered a mixed voice, a singer unknown to tenors,aritones or basses.
The classroom was bigger than most. Not only did screeching, maturing, teenage voices cling to the walls, but treble cleffs, notes, sharp, flats and musical military marches hung from the ceiling. The Coaldale High School Alma Mater was sung and practiced so many times in that room that the song itself seemed to be etched into the north wall plaster.

“Oh the wind through the trees blows cheerful
It sways them in their glory
It whispers a little earful
It tells a wonderous story
Of spirit true and athletes too
Of deeds both brave and gory
Of courage that has been true blue
Our Alma Mater’s glory.”

Only when the large bottom-swing windows were opened would the music escape.
When we didn't practice in the music room, we would be forced to use the cloak room on the first floor, a long narrow space where some of the instruments were kept.

Mr. Matrician was soft spoken and of a good nature most of the time. He always gave us a sense of a favorite uncle, and didn't act like a teacher at all!

One October afternoon, Bobby Davis, the tuba player, failed to show up for practice. Mr. Matrician put aside his violin and attempted to "get into" the junior sized tuba. His arms flailing through the opening of the mighty brass horn, he looked like a giant octopus caught in a cave underwater. He laughed for about two seconds, became aware that he might actually be stuck in the confines of the bellowing beast, and finally asked us for help to free him of the embarrassment. It took three of us from the reed section to give George his freedom again. After Bobby returned the following Wednesday, he gave up the tuba and started to practice on the bass drum. He said he “wasn’t gonna get into that tuba no more after Matrician stretched it !”

I took private clarinet lessons from Mr. George Matrician in his home on Ridge Street. Each Tuesday, after school, for four years I practiced the clarinet in his living room. I was in the Coaldale High Band, although I was less than fluent in conversation with the other clarinets in the troupe.

Mr. Matrician was very gentle and kind man but did have a mean streak. When I was not prepared for the lesson of the day as witnessed by "very poor fingering", George would threaten me with playing his trumpet. He usually practiced with me on his violin.

The trumpet would make the neighbor's Irish Setter bark, stop the mahogany mantel clock, pierce the eardrums of this student and would upset his wife, who sweetly appealed to me to learn to practice at home so this sort of thing did not happen again.

I always felt inadequateb with that clarinet. It was one of those old fashioned siler metal types, Everyone else had a sleek new black ebony wood style. I despise them because they could play better than me. No doubt, a black licorice stick sounded better and has memory of the notes played. Mine didn't.

The song's over now. My memory of that clarinet and of our school Alma Mater exposes an embarrassment and a peaceful moment of long ago.

It is as if the banshees were tapping on my shoulder again, telling tales to a long lost boy of another world, another time and place.

The boy is still within me, here, even now. But I've lost the clarinet and my mixed voice !