Music and Family (Assignment 3)

 Welcome back folks to Ryan's musical musings. The subject of today's post is an interview I conducted with my mother, Katie Reynolds, about her musical experiences and opinions. In hindsight I should have gotten more specific with the questions I asked as, though interesting, the points we cover are rather default for a blog post. However I shall do my best to present my findings in an provocative way. So, off we go. But first, since my dog was barking during the interview I thought we should start with a picture of him. 

Now that you are in a good mood from that adorable face, time to get down to business.

First off I would like to say that I think my mother has influenced my somewhat eclectically old-fashioned music preferences more than anyone else, during the course of my interrogation interview I found this materiality to be very obvious. Step one in the process was reviewing her relationship to music and her background in the field itself. We commenced with a probe into what exactly she would define as music, the answer to which varies greatly from person to person. In essence, her definition was: emotions and stories put to a song; scientifically speaking, instruments making organized vibrations. Though this definition was not quite scholarly it performed its task to an adequate degree and was a good basis to start things off with. Referencing this definition moving forward would not be ill-advised. My mothers' foundational musical experiences were primarily related to church and hymn styles, which from my view likely influenced her taste (and mine) to this day. With that in mind she had limited experiences making music herself, singing in church in varying capacities during high school despite having no professional training. Furthermore she took piano lessons during the pre-college years but stopped when she moved. For a time she played flute in high school band but similarly stopped before going off to college. When I inquired as to whether she wished she played an instrument fluently at this point in time she said she definitely would, but only for pleasure and enjoyment, she stated that she couldn't see herself as a professional musician. 

Here is one hymn she likes a lot. I grew up hearing these types of things all the time around the house and I believe they have influenced my compositional style, plus hymns are simply beautiful.

When I probed into what she specifically liked in terms of genres and pieces/songs she was characteristically vague. As mentioned before her favorite genre overall is hymns/worship songs, but she gave no more specifics aside from that. To this I can attest, as it seems there is always some kind of hymn playing in the house, whether it be piano, choir or a solo singer. In spite of this, my mother also listens to a lot of 80s pop/rock music, probably for nostalgic reasons, and stated that rock was one of her next favorite genres. Oddly however, when I asked for specific tracks to input for the post none of them were even remotely in this vein. To me this was an interesting duo to have paired as favorites but from other questions I believe that I can explain why. About mid-way through the interview the question of degree of intellectual-ness when it comes to music came up. While she said that she loved classical music, her dearth of formal training and knowledge about music itself prevented it from being something she would pick when selecting the folding-the-clothes or driving soundtrack. This, in conjunction with her statement that music can tell a story may be why she is driven to both hymns, which are very easily accessible to non-musicians, and rock and pop which tell stories, and are typically simple, at least compared to Kodaly or Bartok or something like that. On the other side of this she did state that often she ignored the words of pop music and just focused on the overall effect of the music which is an interesting phenomena that I don't quite understand. 

 Towards the end of the interview we came to her obsession with certain jazz singers, a peculiarity but one that she has evidently passed down to me. In high school she was introduced to the music of Harry Connick junior who she stated was her favorite artist for a time, this led to an interest in Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett (all of whom she saw in concert) and the likes. While this is a far cry from the Hymns that began her musical interests, this music still falls into a similar genus from a standpoint of intelligibility, storytelling and logical harmonic language. In a similar vein, her favorite classical artists are generally those who take a melody forward approach to writing and interestingly those associated with outstanding piano compositions such as Rachmaninoff (who I adore) and Chopin. Her grandmother (my great-grandmother) would play this type of music so it most assuredly brings back happy memories.

Here is a bit of Harry Connick and his his big band, this is most assuredly where my jazz interest was born, leading to my love of swing dancing, something else my mom did before me interestingly enough.

And here is a sample of Rachmaninoff since she mentioned him as one of her (and my) favorite classical composers. Also, what blog post would be complete with out Rach-y 2?

We finished out by discussing her thoughts about the role music should take in the classroom. We both agreed after a bit of deliberation that music is so beneficial that it should be taught through all all stages of education. This was amusing for me to reflect upon as since I was homeschooled I can look back and see the way that this idea was taught to me by my mom herself. If not for her playing for, and teaching me about Mozart, Beethoven, etc. at a young age I would likely not be here in music school!

To wrap things up, though we did not dive into theoretical or philosophical details this interview with my mother showed me a bit about how her influence has greatly shaped my own musical tastes and view of how music works and should work. 

Thanks for reading

    See you next time!