The Power of Music (1)

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Anton Dvorak

My introduction to music began in a very novel way. My father was an avid fan of barbershop harmony and he had a desire to sing in harmony with his children. I had an older brother and a younger sister, and when the three of us were between five and nine years old he had us memorize our parts to music individually, after that we would practice singing our parts with our fingers in our ears, and finally we would sing a piece all together in harmony with my father filling in the bass. This part singing was an integral feature of our everyday life and as such I never gave much thought to the uniqueness of the experience.

This musical training ended abruptly when I was thirteen, as my father died. Being in junior high school and without a father I began to act out in school and was frequently disciplined and at times I was in danger of failing.

At this time I had another remarkable musical experience. In school there were often school assemblies and they began with the entire school body standing up and singing the “Star Spangled Banner.” No one actually sang however, but we just stood there mumbling something to pass the time while the music teacher played the piano. Invariably, after this, the principal would admonish us for not singing and for having no school spirit. No one however paid the slightest attention to any of this except one boy in a grade one higher than myself. He was an older boy, and an inveterate trouble maker. He had failed more than one grade, and was reputed to be in trouble with the police. He was tall, awkward and over weight. One day during the singing of the “Star Spangled Banner,” he began to sing loudly with a good rich baritone voice. As no one else was really singing his voice could be heard above every thing else, and as he began to sense that we were becoming his audience, he began to sing louder and even more fully. As he began to sing the second stanza, elements of pathos and passion appeared in his voice and by the time he reached the end of the song his voice had attained a level of great emotional force and volume. The auditorium gave to his singing the additional acoustics and amplification of a music hall, and the fact that he was in many ways still a child gave to the power of his singing a naive innocence completely at odds with his reputation and actual character. He was doing this simply and obviously to be bad, and for no other reason, and yet he succeeded in an unexpected way in that we were moved to a feeling of intensely emotional patriotism, and at the same instant we understood that he was a boy of great talent who was being slowly crucified by circumstance! I began to understand the power of music.

Dimensions:9.25” X 6.5”
Materials: Black wax pencil on painted and prepared watercolor paper
Signature: In the bottom border: Richard Britell, January, 3, 2002