LEARNING TO APPRECIATE SERIOUS MUSIC

I don’t think I ever really goT the hang of how to do social life on a college campus.   It didn’t take me long to realize that I was at a considerable social disadvantage.   I commuted to school.  Most of the other students either lived on campus, in the barracks or in a nearby apartment.   My social opportunities were limited.

I did have one experience during my Freshman year that put me in a different environment.   My degree plan called for me to enroll in a class called “Church Music.”   I thought I would breeze through it.   I had been to several singing schools and I knew how to read shape notes fairly well.   Richard Palm, our instructor hated shape notes.   He wanted us to learn how to read round notes because that’s what the rest of the world did.  I learned his system, but not very well.  I could have done better with a different attitude.

That particular year he directed the school opera.   I knew very little about classical music and didn’t care to know much.  However they were always pushing it on campus.  Leonard Burford was the head of the music department and he was devoted to improving musical tastes.   He was a great man.  Even though he was blind, he had a master’s degree in music from Columbia.  He founded the famous “Acapella Chorus.”  I did not appreciate him the way I should have.   He probably went to an extreme.  He wanted every student to understand and appreciate great music.  That went beyond vocal music.   The band and the orchestra were expected to conform to his vision.  

When I was a Freshman, the school hired a popular band director from Brady Texas named Doug Fry.   He later became known as “Fessor Fry.”   Quite often we would hear musical selections from the various performing groups right after the chapel devotional.   In that first fall, Fessor Fry decided the band would play a program of Glenn Miller favorites.   It created quite a havoc for awhile.   I’m sure he must have had some rather difficult sessions in Burford’s office.    Even when he did classical music, he created problems.   Once he decided to perform the “1812 Overture” in a Sewell Auditorium Concert.    There is a place the overture that calls for cannon fire.   Normally it’s done with drums, but Fessor got the idea that it would really be impressive to fire some really artillery at that point in the program.  Somehow he arranged to have the National Guard bring in their artillery.   When it went off, the noise was so loud it actually broke windows in the neighborhood.

However, I will give Leonard Burford credit for this.  By the time I graduated from ACC, I knew a thing or two about classical music.  I have never forsaken my country music roots, but I still enjoy a good symphony performance and I think it’s sad that many of today’s young people simply don’t want to hear the music of Mozart, Beethoven, and Bach.   I hate to see it fall into disuse.

But back to the opera experience.   One day Richard Palm came into my church music class and said that he needed some volunteers for a non-singing part in Aida, so I volunteered to become an Egyptian solider.   It was a fun thing.  It also helped me to develop cordial relationships with people who didn’t have farm backgrounds.