MY ORIGINS

Just a few words (or more) about my origins:   My parents were both educators - my father was the district superintendent, and mother  taught later in the high school when my brother and I were about 10 and 12.     They encouraged us to read regularly, but I remember learning how to read notes before I learned to read books.   Mother played the piano (she had popular song books) and she taught me songs to sing when I was age 3.  (She also taught me the names of the notes I was singing, thus I learned how to read notes then.)   Soon I was performing in school programs very often.   Since my father was the school superintendent, there was no question that I be allowed to perform when the opportunity arose.   So I used to sing "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus, Silent Night, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, " while sitting in my little rocking chair brought from home - getting up only to place an ornament carefully on the petite tree on stage.   Also "The Teddy Bears Picnic,"  and "Marzie Doats and Doazie Doats" (Mares eat Oats and Does Eat Oats) were other favorites.   I was a big hit, as I sang in a very clear voice and totally on pitch.   When my little brother (2 years younger) reached age 4, he joined me on stage, and we sang duets.    How we both loved performing!   He didn't study music professionally as I did later, (my parents nixed that one, much to his disappointment), but he became a fine bass-baritone, went on to sing light opera, and to this day sings in choral groups and barbershop quartets.  Our parents felt that one musician in the family was enough!   I believe they didn't know how to handle one gifted musician, and certainly didn't relish dealing with two of them.   (I didn't know until recently that they had told my brother that he would, under no circumstances, be studying music - but should concentrate on the sciences, in which he excelled.)   
     When I was between 4 and 5 years old, my mother bought a new piano for herself.   I remember sitting on the dining room table (!) when I saw that piano come into the house, and I immediately fell in love with it - telling mother that "it was going to be MY piano, that I was going to play it, and be really good!"    When I was 6 years old, the band director told my mother I should also play another instrument, such as the clarinet or oboe.   I chose the clarinet, and within a year, could play very well..    So the director placed me into the high school band, and made me first chair of the clarinet section.  He was severely criticized for this decision, so  I was promptly challenged by two of the high school clarinetists, who were annoyed that I had been placed as first chair - and I was only in the first grade!!    However, I proceeded to win the challenge. (This is like a competition, intended to keep people on their toes.)    After that, however, no one questioned my place as first chair!   Nor did they have any remarks about my abilities as by then I had performed at the piano very often, and was considered to be without peer in that town.      (Looking back, I am sure that many of the students in the school must have detested me - as I was this little precocious prodigy, and generally praised to the skies!    Also I got excellent grades, and was at the top of my class!)  The only thing I couldn't do was march with the band in the Lilac parade, as I was much too short!  
     The piano was my first love, however, and I used to practice as many hours as possible.   Mother had to tell me to stop practicing, so I could eat dinner and do whatever homework there was, and then go to bed.    I never had to be told to practice or be supervised - I took to it like a duck to water!     Soon I surpassed my mother's knowledge of music, and since there was no teacher in that town better than she, I just kept learning pieces mother bought for me.    I remember when she brought home the first volume of the Beethoven Piano Sonatas, and also a volume of Mozart Sonatas - and various other pieces.   I was always so excited to practice new music, so I just learned and memorized everything I could, and generally taught myself until age 11 (about 5 years), until we moved to Spokane, Washington.  (I also practiced the clarinet every day as well, and became very proficient on that instrument, studying with the band director who actually did play the clarinet as his first instrument).   
     In Spokane, I met Dr. Hans Moldenhauer, who was Director of the Spokane Conservatory of Music, at the time, with his wife, Rosaleen.   (They were two of the most wonderful people I have ever known, and we remained friends long after I stopped studying with him, until the end of his life.)   Dr. Moldenhauer was a world-renowned musicologist and author ( he wrote many books, including a definitive tome on Anton von Webern).    As a hobby, he also collected manuscripts from everywhere in the world, and accumulated huge archives of material by various composers.    These were all kept in a bank vault in Spokane, until it became necessary to disperse them.   By then they had become very valuable - so that what had started as a hobby, became a very lucrative venture, and a source of income for him.   Various of the archives were placed in a museum in Basel, some went to Yale Music School, and some to the Chicago Institute of Music.    Sometimes he would take me to the vault, where I could peruse these valuable works, and see the originals of I might be playing.    He also insisted that I learn German, and read certain books on music.   I had to keep a list of words I didn't know, and basically read the dictionary!    He was a real scholar, in the truest sense of the word,  and passed on his desire for knowledge  to me.    He was very demanding, but I learned an enormous amount during those years and have always been very grateful for his dedication and care.