Other Glimpses of the past

Musical Memories

The first and one of only three grand operas I have ever seen and heard on stage was Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida performed in the Brooklyn Academy of Music sometime in the mid-1950s.  And what do I remember of it?  Not much, to be sure.  Only one scene perhaps, or even less: the great triumphant procession when the hero comes home after defeating the Ethiopian enemy, with what seemed like hundreds of singers, several elephants, and a very strange on-stage orchestra, or rather, a small group of trumpet players who were probably hired as extra that morning from the musicians’ union line-up.  One of the trumpeters was very tall and lanky, the other short and pudgy, a sort of Laurel and Hardy or Abbot and Costello duo.  It was not a choice to instil a great deal of seriousness in the audience, or that part of the assembly which consisted of me and some friends.  The two musicians giggled and gossiped all the time they were on stage, except when they had to play on their horns. I can’t recall anything else.

As a trumpeter myself, in high school I tried to be in all the band and orchestra activities possible.  The trick used at high school was to make playing in the concert band contingent on showing up in the spots band on Saturdays.  The orchestra was separate.  But still, to have to go see the football team in various schools around the city, what a bother.  The one consolation was that it was not a marching band.  Instead, we had to sit on benches near the playing field, play various pieces before and after the games, and especially the school anthem whenever “our tem” scored a point.  I had no idea about football itself and hardly watched the games in progress, spending the time not in short little marches we kept in a small booklet tucked into the holder screwed to the top of the trumpet by either reading a book or gossiping to my fellow musicians.  The whole point seemed to be to make a lot of noise at certain moments, not to entertain an audience. 

To me, let me say, when I was asked to join the local theatre orchestra, the opportunity as both to be part of the entertainment and to be entertained.  In other words, while my trumpet teacher invited me to sit next him as one of the second or third trumpets in the orchestra when they put on big Broadway style musicals, like Guys and Dolls or South Pacific, there was not a great deal of interest or pleasure in just playing um-peh-um-peh-um-peh on syncopation or long notes under the elaborate melodic line of the singers on stage or the occasional solo by one of the main musicians, but there was multiple enjoyment in watching and listening to the musical play being performed right up close, watching the way the director and the dancers, singers and others worked out their moves during rehearsals, and also observing the reactions of the audience seated in the semi-darkened theatre on the several nights when the drama was acted. But if there was not much pleasure in the second and third trumpet parts, that doesn’t mean there was a total lack of pleasure and interest in realizing oneself to be part of large production, making harmonies work, and helping to give the beat to the dancers and singers.  Often, too, I could dream that the audience was pleased with me, and I would sing the songs along the main players, and dance with the dancers as I counted the beats between by little outbursts of umpeh two three four umpeh two three four umpeh-peh-peh breath peehhh!