Magical musical memories

A long ago sage observed, “Music hath charm to soothe the savage beast.” That philosopher did not mean someone being charged by a grizzly bear should sit down and play a flute. What he had in mind was the universal benefits humans get from music. There have also been observations through the years on non-human effects such as cows giving more milk it there were soft melodies piped in at milking time. (We are not talking here about rap and heavy metal.) I recall one summer my sons and I worked on isolated land in the North Fork while living in a trailer. In the evening when our radio was playing, a couple of times we noticed deer in nearby trees, standing quietly facing the trailer … listening to music? A fascinating thought.

This power of music was brought back to mind last week when the North Valley Music School ran an ad in the daily paper with the leading line, “ENRICHING LIFE THROUGH MUSIC.” The school has well over 300 kid students and some adults, with the main office in Whitefish and satellites in Columbia Falls and Kalispell. A brief background story accompanied the promo wherein Officer Manager, Heidi Ostrom-Duncan, was quoted as saying, “We’re drawn to it, whether it’s a five-year-old at the piano or a teacher — music uplifts us.” Heidi cited tests showing children who start learning about music early in childhood perform better in school, including some direct correlation to higher math scores.

My maternal grandmother had a piano so my mother learned to play and got a high school job providing “background” at Camas Prairie when public movies were shown in the days before “talkies,” but her access to a piano ended when she got married in 1927. I reminisce over early years when my mother’s only music was a small ukulele to strum and sing with, after her little kids were in bed. There was no radio or phonograph in the depression shanty on the Prairie nor at first in our log cabin at Flathead mine, until Dad made shift boss … and the first thing he bought was a piano for my mother. A washing machine would come later. The after bedtime concerts wonderfully expanded with ragtime, folk ballads, and swing.

Mom taught me, my two brothers, and my sister basic piano but none of us showed Carnegie Hall potential. I made the High School band with a trumpet and took two years piano in Kalispell but quit, “because younger students could play better than I at recitals.”

An evening that influenced my life thereafter came late at the Kronberg castle in the mountains outside Frankfurt, Germany. As a troop “Information and Education” non-com. I had “helped” 400-plus G.I.s in the European Command Signal Battalion go 90 days without catching venereal diseases, an unheard of accomplishment in the U.S Occupation Army of 1948. First prize included three day passes for all with added goodies. (Admittedly, there was quite a little conniving and subterfuge behind my outfit’s amazing achievement.)

Back to Kronberg! Thirty men at a time were guests at the fabulous German estate where we could swim in an Olympic sized pool, ride horses on groomed trails, play pool, drink beer in a Rathskeller, etcetera, but my favorite was dinner in a lush dining lodge with fine linen and wine on the table and the first real steaks most of us had seen in a long time. During dinner it happened. Up on the balcony, an orchestra of world class violin, cello, and piano musicians played entrancing Austrian and German Classics. Thanks to my parents, I already loved music, but this …this was a new world. Shiver ran up my spine. I was hooked beyond words to describe.

Please excuse me! Must go to the stereo and play my all-time favorite ditty, Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 5, “The Emperor.”

Surely, that is one which might even soothe … the most savage grizzly bear.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.