Music Saved My Life.

Music educators take note!

I vividly recall the day that Mr. Filiatro, sporting a green bow tie appeared out of nowhere, or so it seemed to my eleven-year-old senses. He took off his suit coat placed it on the back of a chair, rolled up his white shirt sleeves, then set up his music stand in the school cafeteria. He passed out sheet music for “Oliver” which if you recall was the story of the orphan boy who dared to say: “More please, Sir.” Then, he lifted his baton and said: “Ladies, let’s sing."

Mr. Filiatro had no idea he was to become my savior. I have often wished that I had had the presence of mind, the maturity, and the understanding to tell him so. If only I had understood then the impact that he would have on my entire life going forward, I would have "climbed every mountain" to sing his praises. Forte!

God knows I could belt it out! My father had encouraged me and I had loved so much our time together at the piano which he had bought brand new for his three daughters so we could take lessons when he had never been given that chance. He knew music by heart and shared it unabashedly around the house singing all the musical theatre scores that he performed in community groups. I sang with him, as did my sisters, and we were something like the Von Trapps though not in the highlands but in the lowlands of a rural town. “Nothing could be finer,” to my ears.

In the first grade my sister and I, wearing beautiful handmade taffeta dresses (sewn by our seamstress mother), took the stage to sing: “Snow, snow, snow. Happy snow, snow, snow. Where does it come from? Where does it go? Snow, snow, snow.” Then we swished away behind the heavy, red velvet curtain as enthusiastic parents applauded. Those three minutes of my young life mattered in a big way.

On weekends my father was prone to working in the yard while I, always nearby to wherever he was, sang with him from the swing: “Oh, what a beautiful morning. Oh what a beautiful day. I have a wonderful feeling, everything’s going my way.” One song after another, we sang our duets: “If you were a picture, I'd hang you on the wall, sit back where I could see you, never move at all ...'Cause that’s how much I love you, baby.” One day, Daddy came home with sheet music for the song: "MOTHER". He secretly gave it to his three girls and asked us to learn it for Mother’s Day. Somehow without my mother’s knowledge (I doubt that) we did so, surprising her that May with my older sister at the piano while we sang. “M is for the million things she gave me.” She applauded and my Dad called for an encore. We obliged. Such was life. Until it wasn’t.

On a cold and frigid February night the music stopped when my father’s heart stopped beating. From then on, the piano sat silent except when I would hear the clink of a note or two at the brush of my mother’s feather duster. Silence does not always come in a welcome way. Silence does not always indicate harmony. Silence as we know, can be deafening. But, it was not so much silence, as absence. There would be three very long years living, so to speak, without the sound of music . If I sang at all, it was alone: A wailing song in the woods behind that little house.

So, when the day came in the school cafeteria, I knew exactly how that young orphaned boy, Oliver, felt when I sang those words: "Where is love? Does it fall from skies above? Is it underneath the willow tree that I’ve been dreaming of?” It had been a long, very long intermission between the acts of my young life. The second act opened when Mr. Filiatro brought his unassuming self with that precious gift of music back where it and I belonged, together, as one. Mister Filiatro had come just at the right time, in the nick of time. Time did heal. Music saved me.

This past Sunday, at long last, a moment presented itself for a an overdue thank you. I stood on the stage with the musicians of the string quartet* for whom I had served as Board President. They were honoring me, but I felt myself honoring Mr. Filiatro, my father, Edward Vincent, and Music itself. Unbeknownst to me, as I turned to thank everyone for sharing "Music Among Friends" I was holding in an unopened box the gift of a ticking clock: Time. Music is all about keeping time in a way that measures not just the beats of the notes, but the beats of our hearts. Music is a mysterious, magical, gift from the unseen realm that if left unheard leaves a hole in one's heart. I asked a composer friend how it can be that he hears a few sounds/ jots them onto a page as notes/ then when read and played by a musician or singer / another hears what began in his own mind? His response was: "the paper is superfluous"! Let that sink in the way that music itself sinks into every heart that hears her sound.

*flchambermusic.org