Wow. That was a moment of grace if I ever had one.

If you’ve been on the blog this month, you know I’ve been thinking about music recently, and how it can affect our emotions.

Music has always been a part of my life. My mom sang to me when I was small. I started piano lessons at five, singing around second grade, and flute in fourth grade or so. Funny aside there . . .

I Wanted to Play the Clarinet

When I was in grade school, there was an orchestra. The school had a few of the more common instruments available, and basically you could rent one of the school instruments to get started and make sure you really like the instrument before making a significant financial investment in it. A great idea, very practical for parents who did not want to buy musical instruments at a child’s whim (ahem, in other words, practical parents like mine). I had been lucky in that my mom played the piano and we had one at home, and I was also lucky in a way that my mom made me practice piano every day while she made dinner. “I don’t hear you . . . that was only three times, play it twice more . . . good job, honey!” Now that I think about it, my mom is probably more of the source of my work ethic than my dad, though I have always been more like my dad professionally. But Mom made me practice, every day, and I became a very good piano player.

But when it came to joining the orchestra, I didn’t want to play the piano. There was another girl the grade ahead of me that was very, very good, and so the orchestra already had a piano player, which probably had something to do with my lack of interest in doing an audition challenge in third grade. Not that I wasn’t competitive, but she was my friend and older than me and she really was a better pianist in my opinion. And as long as I kept taking piano lessons and playing in piano recitals and competitions and practicing piano at home, my mom was fine with me playing a different instrument in the school orchestra. But what instrument to play?

My choice turned out to not be my choice, but rather a matter of economics. I wanted to play the clarinet. I liked the sound of the clarinet best then, and some other instruments were an absolute “No” for me, like violin. I was sooooo glad to get out of orchestra and into band in middle school, to get away from those squeaky scratchy things. Even now, I pretty much only like violin when it’s played by a virtuoso. In and of itself, the instrument doesn’t do anything for me. Whereas, clarinet, or even saxophone, had a nice distinct but mellow sound that was appealing to me, even when beginners were playing. So I wanted to play the clarinet.

But, as it turns out the school didn’t have any clarinets left, and my parents were not going to blindly purchase an instrument just because I thought I wanted to play it. Mom told me to choose an instrument I could get from the school now, or wait another year until more instruments were available.

The school did have a flute available, and it just so happened that my piano teacher’s teaching assistant was also a flute player, so I think she gave my mom a sweet package deal on lessons, because I started having a flute lesson each week before my piano lesson, and I played flute in the school orchestra.

So that’s how I became a flute player. I became a little more specialized in high school and college, as the piccolo player, which was neat because there is only one piccoloist so I got to play piccolo in the symphony when as a flute player I was decent but nothing special, at least not when I started college.

My Life With Music

I played the flute and piano all through school, then in one of our moves we ended up in a town where we couldn’t find a piano teacher I worked well with, and I stopped piano lessons when I was a senior, but it was just as well because I got a music scholarship at the University to play the flute and piccolo. In the end I had a mid-life crisis and dropped out the summer after my sophomore year but my brother talked me into transferring to another university and I ended up with my degree in economics. Wow, are there ever a lot of tangential stories not being told today, or what?

I really did become a good piano player, I won a national competition when I was thirteen, but I was playing flute more. We had moved to a suburb of Houston, and the cathedral had this amazing music director and a small symphonic ensemble. We all called her “Ma,” and her family kind of adopted me, their flute player, and the Predmores were an extended family to me. Both of Ma’s sons played brass and her daughter was our piano player, while Ma and her husband (funny, we didn’t call him Pa, or at least I didn’t) were both wonderful singers. And Ma Predmore took every song and wrote a symphonic composition for our little group. From then on, I played the flute for school, for lessons, and for church. Even as an adult.

Somehow, I always seemed to get adopted by the adults in my church music group, and by the whole church, actually. Texas, Virginia, Fargo, San Jose . . . the entire congregations thought of me as “their” flute player. San Jose is where my heart stopped while playing The Lord’s Prayer (I was maybe six feet from the priest, and everyone knew me from seeing and hearing me play right there every Sunday for years), and the entire congregation flipped out when I collapsed, the day I died three times and my my heart condition was diagnosed.

It wasn’t just playing though. Over time I made a fascinating discovery that is the reason I still play today. I learned how to give people an emotional experience through music. A spiritual experience.

The Spiritual Experience of Music

I played every Sunday for years and years and years, plus tons of weddings and some funerals, besides all the symphony and school stuff. I learned to be a good technician in college (practicing three to six hours every day for a year or two will work wonders), but in churches I played with smaller groups, and, good Catholic schoolgirl that I was, I learned a lot about the flow of a Mass and what type of music was appropriate at every point in that flow. Prelude is quieting and beautiful, so often that would be just me and a pianist. Then there’s the wake-em-up rouser (processional, when the priest comes down the aisle to the altar), then there’s a psalm between the two readings and the mood of the psalm changes with the time it is in the church year (as do the colors the priest wears for each season of the church year). There’s a bunch of service music where it basically feels like the music is to keep the congregation directly engaged while the priest blesses the bread and wine, then there’s something beautiful and contemplative for the second song of communion and while people were kneeling in prayer after receiving communion, then finally there is the recessional, which is always something peppy to make people feel good on their way out. Well, except for Good Friday which is the most depressing day of the year to play in a Catholic church, and Christmas Eve, which always ends with Silent Night.  🙂

I learned all this from Ma back when I was a kid playing in her little symphony at the cathedral (ach, what sound!). Music helps people have a more spiritual experience in church. Placed properly, of course. The wrong type of music at a given time can easily ruin the mood too. You don’t play rollicking pep-em-up music when they’re trying to pray, for example. That would be just plain rude.

It turns out that the flute was the perfect instrument for me because it is a vehicle to contribute to people’s spiritual experience, with great versatility for all kinds of musical styles that engender all kinds of different emotions. I don’t think any other instrument would have enabled me for a lifetime of sharing a musical gift with people.

I rarely play for Catholic churches any more, though I do play when invited. My sense of God is pretty different from traditional Western religions, and I realized a long time ago that I was still playing the flute in churches simply because it was my gift to give and not because I had grown up in a Catholic setting. I was a singer too, and often when someone heard me sing they would ask why I didn’t sing any of the solos at church. But they always understood when I replied that “I can sing, but lots of people sing, very well, whereas the flute is my gift.” It’s what I have to give to people. Uff da, I played a half hour of solo flute prelude for the funeral of my friend’s son last April, and it was both haunting and beautiful to have that simple unaccompanied flute sound floating out of the choir loft while everyone was arriving before the funeral began. On Eagles Wings always makes me cry because it’s always been one of my favorites and it was sung at Artie’s funeral and practically every Catholic funeral. It’s basically about going to Heaven, and it has this vast difference from contemplative to hopeful when you go from the verse to the refrain. Ever since Artie died over eight years ago, I always cry while playing On Eagles Wings on my flute. But I still can play, my vibrato just gets a little more fluttery but in a way that’s really good because then other people feel my emotion even more, I think.

It can raise you up, it can release you, help you to cry and grieve, help you to celebrate. I’ve even been told by someone that she felt like the music from my flute was lifting her prayers up to Heaven. That’s probably a bit over the top, eh? But inspiration is funny that way.

My Moment of Grace

This Christmas is, I think, the first time I’ve done two flute solos with pipe organ accompaniment during Christmas Eve midnight service (this was at my mom’s church, which is Lutheran, so it’s not called a Mass and they don’t have priests, they have ministers). I’ve played lots of prelude music and solos at Mom’s church, and I’ve played with her choir every Christmas for the past five years or so. Even the year I had chemo and radiation, actually. But this Christmas Eve was the first time they scheduled a flute solo two solos, in the service.

Lutherans are very different from Catholics, at least in terms of their approach to the service and what it’s for. Catholics are very quiet before Mass. You’re taught to kneel and pray as soon as you get there, and then you either keep praying until Mass starts or you sit silently in respect of those around you that are still praying. At a Catholic church, the time for being social is after Mass is over. The Lutherans, however, don’t seem as, well, reverent. Sorry, I know that’s insulting, but it’s just my observation. They come to church fairly early and they sit and chat full volume with everyone around them. Sometimes the minister will even be chatting it up with people in the fifteen minutes or so before the service begins, and he’s wearing a microphone! Needless to say, if I wanted to pray before a church service, I would never go to a Lutheran church to do it.

The reason I explain all that is so you understand that, even though I’ve been playing at Mom’s church for five years or more now, most of them have never really heard me. It’s hard to really get the emotional side of a flute solo when someone is talking about a football game right behind you as if there were no music to hear. Uff da, last Easter some idiot was standing right behind me in the choir loft because the downstairs seating overflowed, and I was playing a technically difficult solo without so much as a single measure of rest where I could turn around and tell the jerk just two feet behind me that he was being rude and please leave or be quiet. It’s just as well, I hate catching myself speaking harshly or upset at someone. He obviously didn’t know how disrespectful he was being, or he wouldn’t have done it. So even if I had turned around to say something to him, it should have been something simple and quiet and calm, not a snapped “please shut up!” between measures.

So this Christmas Eve was special. We played Christmas carols for about half an hour before service, but then there were these two flute solos during service, and I was playing a Silent Night variation with Mom’s choir at the end. So, for the first time, these raucous Lutherans were going to be sitting quiet as Catholics while the flute was playing.

Both solos were pretty amazing works, actually, true flute solos and not just simple melody lines with some fancy organ playing.The first one was a solo I did in college when I was a flute major. The rhythms are intricate and the range covers practically every note I can play from the top of my range to the bottom. And let me tell ya, a pure high A is not the easiest thing to do with gentleness and compassion and strength and lift and . . . 🙂  People were completely silent, and there was a section where it was just flute, no accompaniment. A powerful high note held, then a jump even higher for a slow lead into a quick run down two octaves to hold in a deep resonate low note. Then a little more solo flutey stuff before the organ came back in. It gave me chills, and I thought to myself “if I were sitting down there hearing this, I would be crying at the beauty of it.” I don’t mean that to be read as pride or ego that I think I’m just such a wonderful flute player or anything. It was just a beautiful peaceful moment of grace.