This MTC is brought to you by Jestertunes, the winner of the last Mystery Topic Challenge:
You know how you can be driving along, just minding your own business and suddenly a song will come on the radio that transports you through space and time so clearly and throughly that you miss your exit or rear end the car in front of you?
Here’s your topic: What song transports you through space and time, and where do you go?
Please visit the Mystery Topic Challenge Blog to view all of the other entries. Once you’ve read them all, please be sure to vote HERE in the Sidebar for your favorite.
Music has always held the power to transport me, to take me back in time, and to create new worlds for me to discover. I’ve had a love for music since I was very short. My brother Jack is an accomplished guitarist, singer and composer of music, and my brother Jim loves rhythm and drumming. He has a love of classical music as my husband does.
My brothers and I grew up listening to my parents collection of records (a wide collection of jazz, blues, and classical). We also listened to my mother play the piano. We had a beautiful piano that I later learned was known as an upright grand. It had a rich, beautiful sound that could just grab your heart. My mother is a wonderful pianist. She’d been taught by a teacher that had received his instruction from Paderewski. I think my appreciation for classical music came from what my mother played. One piece of music, though, would capture me wherever I was; in or outside the house. Edvard Grieg’s Wedding Day at Troldhaugen.
I loved watching my mother’s fingers run up and down the keys, drawing the music from the piano. She had a look of concentration and joy on her face and her love of the piano flowed through her body as well. I’ve always thought my mother is beautiful, but she was infused with an energy, a glorious aura, that I just cannot adequately describe. To me, it is what separated her from someone who just played the piano for fun and someone who was a master. I have seen this same aura when my brother Jack plays his guitar, so I think he inherited his mastery of music from her.
Wedding Day at Troldhaugen holds such vivid memories for me that it has caused me to weep with joy. I dearly wanted this music played at my wedding, but I didn’t have a huge wedding with muscians or a band. My husband bought me a cassette tape with a beautiful version of that music for me on our first anniversary. I’ve since played that cassette to death and now I have a CD.
I love music. I think music brings us so much. It inspires, it reminds us, it’s magic.
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8 Responses to “Mystery Topic #6”
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That’s a wonderful legacy all around and I can empathize (don’t know if that’s entirely the right word) – I love all sorts of music and I know that one of my favorite “classics” is Moonlight Sonata (well, along with Chopin’s Nocturnes). I have listened to, and liked, some Grieg as well.
I think I got the “eclectic” side from Mom and just growing up around it – although rap (if you can call that music) still has a tendency to bring out the, er, maniac (yea, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) in me so I tend to avoid it.
We have a terribly eclectic taste in music in our family. Rock, pop, jazz, classical… you name it, we probably have at least one CD of that genre somewhere. That sort of thing is nice to share with family and friends, both listening and playing.
The only musical skill my parents ever showed me was how they could press play on a tape deck which usually held something like Iron Butterfly. My Mom could really play that tape deck like a master.
I agree with Romi (I really have to beat her to a few of these posts). I thought the memories of your mom in this were great.
That’s such a lovely sentiment about your mother; I always wanted to learn how to play the piano when I was a kid, and everytime we’d be in an Electronics store, I would play the keyboard for as long as I could, haha ;-)
I also grew up with a classical pianist for a mother. Both of my parents are musicians, and I am as well, which explains why my life’s moments can be defined in music. The piece by Grieg is enjoyable to play, and the music does indeed draw out so many emotions from you when playing it, let alone listening to it. Nice choice!
How great for you to grow up with such talented musicians. Such beautiful memories of your mother.
Glad to see I am not the only classical music fan here. My dad also played, and while I would hesitate to call him a master, he is really quite good. I recall playing Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring with him once, him on Piano and me on trumpet playing the descant.