My father and mother, Ray and Marion, were always making music, together, or alone, around the house, and especially when we traveled. Singing in harmony was a revelation that burst into my awareness at age 3 on one of our driving vacations to visit grandparents in Alabama ("Heigh-ho, anybody home.."). I felt I'd been allowed into a secret club—people who know how to harmonize. The membership perks came in the form of intimacy, a kind of psychic connectedness, and always good feelings. Music was woven into the very heart of our family, a source of happiness and an expression of love between my parents.
We didn't know it at the time, but our father passed up the opportunity to be the principal tenor soloist for the Boston Opera Company's first professional season. They just couldn't offer enough income to support his (then) five children. As a child, he'd known poverty, and he was determined that his family would never know it. Instead, he joined the Lexington Choral Society, aka Handel-Haydn Society, which performed and recorded, earning a reputation for quality choral music.
I remember the day, when we still lived at 24 Chelmsford Road, when they delivered the spinet piano that Ray had bought for Marion. We all were required to take piano lessons. I really wanted to learn piano, and loved our piano teacher. And then he died in a terrible auto accident. His grieving father took over the instruction, and all the joy was lost for a while. And yet, I would sneak into the living room when nobody was around, pull out the yellow books of Chopin, Beethoven, Mozart, Sonatinas, etc., and fiddle around until my heart was satisfied. As a troubled teen, the heart-achingly beautiful and sometimes booming Polonaises would somehow soothe and restore. Ray stocked up the music cabinet, and the music was there when we needed it.
Ray always kept classical music playing in the living room when he was home. I remember one Sunday as a teen, coming back from church service, hearing the radio tuned to WCRB, and there was my dad's voice, soaring in Beethoven's 9th. Or was it Carmina Burana? Maybe it was the Hovannes Magnificat. We heard them all at one time or another, and I was so proud.
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Gifts From My Dad
Non-FictionA tribute to my father, Carroll Raymond Bryan, Jr. This bit of writing is my gift to my father who passed from this world three weeks ago. It is about art and love, and anything that is not up to that measure will not be found here. Author, artist...
