Point of View
Failed musician recalls his marching orders
By Carl Heintze
This essay is a memorial to two men who tried--and failed--to make me into a musician.
The first was Luigi Catalano, who taught music in middle school, or, as we called it then, intermediate school, the seventh and eighth grades. Mr. Catalano had been born in Italy, spoke broken English and had somehow ended up, as a lot of Italian immigrants, in California.
He taught music as a way of making a living, but it must have been a trial. It was during the lean '30s in the United States and music was not high on the list of most Americans, especially most American parents.
I am not sure where I got the idea that I should be a violin player, but it probably was from some romantic misunderstanding. Whatever it was and because public school music lessons were free I persuaded my mother to get me a violin.
As a lot of things in my life in those days, it came from Montgomery Wards--a whole kit, a violin, a plastic case, a bow, a mute and a metal music stand--all for the sum of $11.50, postpaid. Not exactly a Strad, but still a violin.
I cannot think what Mr. Catalano must have thought of this so-called instrument when he first saw it. Whatever he thought, it must have been nothing to what he thought after I scraped the bow across the strings a few times.
He insisted I sand off the wooden bridge for reasons I never discovered, that my mother make a little pillow to put under it so it would fit my flat chest and that I practice weekly. It didn't matter. Even though I practiced a lot--to my parents' and grandparents' sorrow--I never progressed much. I never learned how to finger, I never really learned to read music, I never really pleased Mr. Catalano, who appeared to grit his teeth whenever I came through the classroom door.
Finally, to his good fortune, I passed out of the eighth grade and his ken into high school. I also passed out of the realm of the violin, although I kept it for a long time, mostly to prove to my children and grandchildren that you could get a violin, complete with bow, case and metal music stand for under $12.
I arrived in high school at about the time when jazz had turned into swing. Indeed, swing music, in the person of Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman, had come to occupy much the same position in American culture as does rock in all its various manifestations today.
Somewhere in my sophomore year in high school I became enamored of the idea that I would be another Benny Goodman. I decided to take up the clarinet.
As it happened, this coincided with the arrival at our school of Mr. Merle K. Good. Mr. Good was a little like the hero of The Music Man. He had been hired by our high school for the express purpose of heading up a new music program--and for forming a marching band.
Until that time the high school had had a band of sorts, but it couldn't, or didn't, march. It was small, it wore blue and gold capes and it played, raggedly, in the stands. It was a kind of school disgrace. The schools we played in football--under the lights on Friday nights--all had marching bands. Our band, however, toodled off-key from the stands, looking a little like the rejects from John Phillip Souza.
So, my mother got me a clarinet. This time, however, she prudently rented it, rather than buying it. It was an aluminum beauty. The only problem was I had no lip for a clarinet. I still couldn't read music. I squeaked and squawked and occasionally hit a true note, but I was hardly Benny Goodman.
Mr. Good, however, saw something in me I did not see myself. He knew I was alive and able to move about. He also knew that it didn't really matter much if I played the clarinet or not. What did matter was that I could march.
He enlisted me in the band. He did make some vague and futile efforts to teach me how to play what we called the licorice stick (even though my clarinet was not wood, but shiny metal). But he made sure I turned out for marching rehearsals and that when Friday night game time came, I marched in the band. He cautioned me, however, not to play.
So I didn't. I pretended. I marched, mostly in step, wiggled my fingers over the clarinet keys, did not dare blow any wind through it and had a brief career as a band member, albeit a ringer. I filled a space and never made a sound.
Beyond that, my music career never advanced. Eventually, I returned the rented clarinet, adopted a pen name which I thought made me a writer and never played anything again--or even tried to.
And to this day I cannot read music.
But the world undoubtedly is a better place because of it.
|
Saratoga, California Since 1955
