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(entry for 10/9/24)

When I was ten years old, my dad decided it was time for me to become musically sophisticated. He knew that he himself wasn’t, and that none of my ancestors or other relatives were, but that I should be. I had been playing the piano for five years already (typical music-lesson stuff), and had heard recordings of things like Sousa Marches and Pipe Organ renditions of popular songs, but while those kinds of things were a bit above the average level of music appreciation, they weren’t quite as high-falutin’ as he thought I should be.

So he went to the only music store in town (Montrose, Colorado), where he had bought me a small beginner’s accordion a few months previously, and he asked the owner there if he had any recordings of classical music.

The guy grinned and said, “Yes, I have four 78rpm albums of classical music on hand. All brand new and in perfect condition, except one disc that is cracked. They’re outside the back door, waiting to be picked up by the garbage truck. That stuff doesn’t sell.” He didn’t add: ‘worth shit,’ but his face said it.

“Can I have them?” my dad asked.

“A dollar per album, and you have to take all four. All or nothing. And two of them are the same identical thing, so you’ll have two copies of one of the albums.”

This wasn’t exactly customer-friendly, but my dad said ‘OK’ anyway, and that aftenoon when I got home from school I was presented with them. Four albums of classical music, of which two were duplicates.

There were two copies (four discs each) of the Mozart Divertimento in E-flat Major for Violin, Viola, and ‘Cello.’ (Heifetz, Primrose, and Feuermann on RCA Victor, 1941.) One of the discs was broken, but both sets were otherwise intact: no scratches, no discolorations, no peeling labels. They really were brand new, and at a dollar per album, cheap, even if one record was useless. (In those days, classical 78rpm recordings went for about $7 per album.)

The next album, also four discs, was of the Leo Sowerby Organ Symphony in G Major. (Recording by E. Power Biggs on RCA Victor, 1942.)

The last one, five discs, was of the Berlioz Harold in Italy for full orchestra and solo viola. (Primrose again, plus the Boston Symphony Orchestra. RCA Victor, 1944.)

I played the Sowerby first, and fell in love. (I already loved pipe organ music, but this was a cut above.)

I played the Berlioz next, and fell even more in love. (I had never heard a full symphony orchestra before.)

Then I played the Mozart and was moved, but only a little. (String trios were a bit tame for my newly-sophisticated taste.)

But I thanked my dad vigorously and often, and he reported my reaction to the music store owner, who promptly ordered more classical albums! We bought everything he ordered. (And I still own, to this day, everything we ever got from him. Except the accordion and the duplicate Mozart with the broken record.)

I have forgotten a bit of what arrived next. I know the Beethoven Archduke Trio was one, and the same composer’s String Quartet Number 7 was another. But the big hit, then and now, was the 5-disc Symphony Number One in E minor of Jean Sibelius, with Sir John Barbirolli and the New York Philharmonic. (Columbia Masterworks, 1950, later re-issued as an LP.)

I remember vividly the first time I ever played it. It was bedtime and we had just moved into our newest house on North 4^th Ave. I was told by my mother that I was to fall asleep while I listened, but it was hopeless. I couldn’t miss any of that! In particular, I remember the second movement, the Andante ma non troppo lento, which means ‘walking speed but not too slowly.’ I did close my eyes, though I wasn’t sleeping or anywhere near it. I could see an Alaskan dog-sled team going at deliberate pace across the frozen tundra. (Rather appropriate climate since Sibelius was a Swedish-ancestry Finn.) It was a mental image and a sound that I can never forget. I think that perhaps by the vigorous third movement I had in fact fallen asleep, but I do know that during that Andante Sibelius had become (and still is) my favorite composer.

In 1953, when I was thirteen, we moved from Montrose to Grand Junction. And I moved from 78rpm to thirty-three and a third, and from very-breakable ‘shellac’ to unbreakable (but still scratchable) vinyl. Full-length recordings were still called ‘albums,’ but consisted of only one ‘long-playing’ record instead of multiple quick ones. Simultaneously with the invention of the LP, similarly-vinyl but much shorter recordings, known as ‘singles,’ with one song on each side and recorded on small 45rpm discs with a large hole in the middle, became popular. 

Strangely enough, record producers for a short time still sold true ‘albums,’ but pressed on 45s rather than 78s. That practice quickly died, though, and the only time I ever heard a 45rpm album was when my dad’s boss’s wife, Polly Brethower, came to our school and imposed a full-length listening session of Beethover’s Third Symphony, the ‘Eroica,’ on the whole school at once. Most of us were bewildered. I was not. I didn’t much like it (I found it very ‘long-winded’), but I understood what it was ‘about.’ 

I had become ‘sophisticated’ at last!

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