When aunts, uncles and cousins used to get together for holiday celebrations, all of us held our breath when my Uncle Tom finished greeting people and headed for the piano. He’d take his jacket off, roll up his sleeves, and hold his hands up in the air for a minute or so. Then he’d bring his hands down on the keyboard, and what followed was miraculous. There was no score on the piano. He’d look around, wait for someone to call out a title, and play a few notes to be sure they were thinking of the same piece. If they were, he’d play the most incredible rendition any of us had ever heard.
“Can you play anything?” one of the children would ask. “Only if I’ve heard it,” Tom would reply, before taking the next request.
Uncle Tom played by ear. He couldn’t read musical notation, so a hymnal or score wasn’t of any use to him. What he needed was to hear someone else play the piece, and then he was all set to amaze us.
That’s how people still learn music in traditional cultures. The idea is to be able to match a performance in every way. Innovation is discouraged, so music can be traced back to the earliest known examples. When people listen to a recording over and over again, that’s what they’re aiming for.
When we learn to sing or play something from memory, we honor that tradition. When we sing chants such as #400, “Shalom Havayreem,” #180, “Alhamdulilah,” or #387, “The Earth, Water, Fire, Air,” we’re part of a practice that links us all the way back to the time when people beat on any hollow object for the rhythm. We can move our bodies, keep time with our fingers, and really get into the spirit of the music.
Next month’s “Music Mouse” column will be about how musical notation came into the picture. In the meantime, we hope you’ll come and join Katherine Price as she directs the UUFH choir in rehearsal on Tuesday evenings. Then you can be part of the choir on Sunday mornings. It’s an experience that can’t be matched.