Musical Interludes
I lay in bed fighting the heaviness of sleep while listening to the delicate notes of a Chopin piano concerto gently winding up the narrow stairwell from the living room. My father’s piano performances were a nightly ritual when I was growing up, a way for him to unwind from the stresses of college professor life. I was brought up on the richness of classical music. If not emanating from the piano, it was playing on the stereo—the Berliner Philharmoniker playing the Tragic Overture of Brahms Third Symphony or Beethoven’s towering Symphony No. 7 played by the New York Philharmonic (conducted by my dad’s Harvard classmate Leonard Bernstein.) It was a given, then, that when I was old enough, I would start piano lessons and choose a band instrument at school. Many of us witness similarities in interests, in aptitudes, and in professions among siblings and cousins and aunts and uncles—those similarities become even more profound when we look two or three generations back and see a reflection of our own talents staring back at us. My family has produced innumerable educators, a multitude of scientists and engineers, a smattering of writers and, yes, many musicians. These musicians have mostly been hobbyists, like my dad, with a respectable few entering the musical realm professionally. The lure of chords and melodies, always so strong in me, came from the past, and now it is pulling on the future, proof that this cultural tradition is undeniably a genetic one.
When I was first exploring my musicality at the Sarah Lawrence College Nursery School from 1970 to 1971, singing along to “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “This Land Is Your Land,” I took for granted that everyone sang, strummed on guitar, and jingled the hand bells. As life went along and I started learning to play the piano, I asked my mother questions, like, “Why don’t you ever play?” My mother had, after all, minored in music in college. Like many of us, the needs of her family and requirements of her everyday obligations stole time away from artistic expression. The genetic pull of music seems to have limits. I knew from my dad that his much older half sister, affectionately known as Babe, had the gift of perfect pitch—the ability to hit a note without any reference point. While I never developed a passion for the piano—it had to do with my desire for long pretty nails (again genetic limits)—I did fall in love with the sweet sound of the flute and played all through my teenage years. My music “career” culminated in attending the first Estherwood Music Festival, run by Juilliard, near my home in Westchester County, New York (no audition required.) “Uncle” Lloyd, my mom’s much older cousin and a 1930s Juilliard graduate in piano, would have been very proud.
While spending my childhood summers in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, I absorbed stories of the town’s history, which intertwined with my family’s history. I was always aware that some relative or another had started the town band; as I have delved more into my ancestry, I have come to realize how very dominant our musical gene was in this previous generation. Solomon and Martin Merrill, my great-great grandfather Ira’s younger brothers, were at home in 1835 with a friend, likely bored, and somehow acquired two clarinets and a bugle “and commenced to torment all the neighbors, for a mile or more, on both sides of the [Deerfield] river” (History and Tradition of Shelburne, Massachusetts). Like many teenagers starting on musical instruments, they practiced and persisted. This was the start of the “Merrill Band,” later rebranded as the Shelburne Falls Military Band, and still in existence today, almost two hundred years old. Solomon Fellows Merrill was the band’s first leader, eventually taking the group—which grew to a number of fourteen men from town during his tenure—around western Massachusetts in a bandwagon, playing at political and military rallies, civil war musters, as well as at local dances.
Members of the Shelburne Falls Military Band included not only Solomon and Martin, but also youngest brother Nathaniel. Solomon would compose much of the music for the band, could play any one of the band instruments, and any music presented to him. He insisted that the band play the pieces from sight and not take the music home to practice. One piece, so the story goes, included a very difficult section intended for his brother Nat. When the band “first tried it, the part completely floored ‘Nat.’ ‘Sol’ stopped the band and started around to where his brother was, saying he would show him how to play the passage. But it was so difficult that he [Sol] failed to do so. Then ‘Nat’ took the instrument and said he would play it and he did, which caused a great laugh at the expense of the leader.” (The Recorder, Greenfield, Massachusetts, 1 Sep 1900, p. 9) Musical diligence, indeed—and a passion for perfection (as well as brotherly one-upmanship).
While Martin and Nat ended up following the family business of stonemasonry, Solomon bucked that
tradition and forged ahead to a professional career in music. He not only served as Bandmaster in the Fourth Vermont Regiment during the Civil War, but later became a prominent New Hampshire musician and music educator, continuing to serve as a coach and mentor to various musical communities in western Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and even in Monmouth, Illinois during a visit to next oldest brother Thaddeus. Sol, Martin, and Nat may have been influenced by older brother, David, already grown by 1835 when the Merrill band venture was born. He migrated to the midwest in 1841, setting up in Beloit, Wisconsin where he dabbled in real estate, music, and higher education. David started by establishing a string of singing schools from Rockford, Illinois to Whitewater, Wisconsin between which he traveled daily on horseback. He also invested in real estate, helping to develop the fledgling town and its first institution of higher education—Beloit College, becoming not only the choir director there, but also a professor of music.
I take great pride and comfort knowing of my family’s predisposition to musical talents. Of course each of my own children have investigated their musical abilities through viola, violin, cello, french horn, clarinet, trombone, drums–and, yes, piano. Each one very talented, quickly learned and produced actual songs within the first few weeks of picking up their respective instrument du jour. The musical allure, though, would wear off within a few months for three of the four, and while they each continued to play for several years, they rarely practiced. It was my youngest who not only learned his instrument (the viola) quickly, but—most importantly—took to actually rehearsing his parts while also developing a love of classical music. Through years of intense studies and youth orchestra rehearsals, and now at a conservatory as a viola performance major, he has decided, much like Sol and David, to enter the professional world of music.
If I close my eyes, I can still hear the squeaking notes of that 1835 clarinet and the penetrating shrill of the bugle wafting across the Deerfield River. How fun to imagine the origins of this family tradition, this intense value of music in the family, the genetic pull coming from within. Sol, David, Martin, and Nat were just one generation. I can now see the gene sprinkled elsewhere too—a cousin in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Babe’s grandson the “legendary” bandleader at a West Virginia university. Recently I even connected with a third cousin–also descended from the same Merrills—and learned her brother is a professional classical pianist. Genes are funny things. They hop, skip, twist, and jump through the generations and, when given the right conditions, express themselves to their full potential. And now, just as I once fell asleep to the calming tones of the piano, I look forward to my son’s visits home when I can drift off to “Prelude” from Bach’s Cello Suite #4 or the dulcet notes of Brahms' Sonata #1 in F Minor translated through the mellow tones of the viola.
When I was first exploring my musicality at the Sarah Lawrence College Nursery School from 1970 to 1971, singing along to “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “This Land Is Your Land,” I took for granted that everyone sang, strummed on guitar, and jingled the hand bells. As life went along and I started learning to play the piano, I asked my mother questions, like, “Why don’t you ever play?” My mother had, after all, minored in music in college. Like many of us, the needs of her family and requirements of her everyday obligations stole time away from artistic expression. The genetic pull of music seems to have limits. I knew from my dad that his much older half sister, affectionately known as Babe, had the gift of perfect pitch—the ability to hit a note without any reference point. While I never developed a passion for the piano—it had to do with my desire for long pretty nails (again genetic limits)—I did fall in love with the sweet sound of the flute and played all through my teenage years. My music “career” culminated in attending the first Estherwood Music Festival, run by Juilliard, near my home in Westchester County, New York (no audition required.) “Uncle” Lloyd, my mom’s much older cousin and a 1930s Juilliard graduate in piano, would have been very proud.
While spending my childhood summers in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts, I absorbed stories of the town’s history, which intertwined with my family’s history. I was always aware that some relative or another had started the town band; as I have delved more into my ancestry, I have come to realize how very dominant our musical gene was in this previous generation. Solomon and Martin Merrill, my great-great grandfather Ira’s younger brothers, were at home in 1835 with a friend, likely bored, and somehow acquired two clarinets and a bugle “and commenced to torment all the neighbors, for a mile or more, on both sides of the [Deerfield] river” (History and Tradition of Shelburne, Massachusetts). Like many teenagers starting on musical instruments, they practiced and persisted. This was the start of the “Merrill Band,” later rebranded as the Shelburne Falls Military Band, and still in existence today, almost two hundred years old. Solomon Fellows Merrill was the band’s first leader, eventually taking the group—which grew to a number of fourteen men from town during his tenure—around western Massachusetts in a bandwagon, playing at political and military rallies, civil war musters, as well as at local dances.
 |
| Shelburne Falls Military Band in 1935 |
While Martin and Nat ended up following the family business of stonemasonry, Solomon bucked that
 |
| David Merrill |
I take great pride and comfort knowing of my family’s predisposition to musical talents. Of course each of my own children have investigated their musical abilities through viola, violin, cello, french horn, clarinet, trombone, drums–and, yes, piano. Each one very talented, quickly learned and produced actual songs within the first few weeks of picking up their respective instrument du jour. The musical allure, though, would wear off within a few months for three of the four, and while they each continued to play for several years, they rarely practiced. It was my youngest who not only learned his instrument (the viola) quickly, but—most importantly—took to actually rehearsing his parts while also developing a love of classical music. Through years of intense studies and youth orchestra rehearsals, and now at a conservatory as a viola performance major, he has decided, much like Sol and David, to enter the professional world of music.
If I close my eyes, I can still hear the squeaking notes of that 1835 clarinet and the penetrating shrill of the bugle wafting across the Deerfield River. How fun to imagine the origins of this family tradition, this intense value of music in the family, the genetic pull coming from within. Sol, David, Martin, and Nat were just one generation. I can now see the gene sprinkled elsewhere too—a cousin in the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Babe’s grandson the “legendary” bandleader at a West Virginia university. Recently I even connected with a third cousin–also descended from the same Merrills—and learned her brother is a professional classical pianist. Genes are funny things. They hop, skip, twist, and jump through the generations and, when given the right conditions, express themselves to their full potential. And now, just as I once fell asleep to the calming tones of the piano, I look forward to my son’s visits home when I can drift off to “Prelude” from Bach’s Cello Suite #4 or the dulcet notes of Brahms' Sonata #1 in F Minor translated through the mellow tones of the viola.
Comments
Post a Comment