A childhood memory of music

I was driving home from my stepdance class today, and CKUA, our local radio station was playing classical music as they usually do weekday evenings. As a piece of music wrapped up they said it was Mario Bernardi conducting.

This immediately recalled my childhood when we would go to the orchestra frequently and Mario Bernardi was the conductor. I spent quite a few hours looking at the back of his head, if I wasn’t looking up at the ceiling or at the organ. Back then classical concerts were more formal and I do not recall ever hearing Bernardi speak. Nowadays the conductor is also a sort of PR representative for the orchestra and will turn around between pieces and talk to the audience about the music. But as a child I was left entirely to my own imagination, which was quite up to the task of keeping me entertained with my own interpretations of what I heard.

I hadn’t thought about Bernardi in years however, and my first thought was that he must be dead, and to feel a sense of belated loss at the thought. He did in fact pass away in 2013, after a lifetime of musical achievement and honours. He was born in 1930, eight years before my dad, and would have been in his 50s when I saw him on stage.  He was married, had one daughter born in 1969, and two grandsons.

There is a kind of existential terror in the realization that I’m slowly outliving the icons of my childhood. One, it’s a reminder of my mortality. But even more poignantly, it’s the realization that whatever they were going to pass on to me, they now have, and their role has ended, and I’m left with whatever I can remember, interpret, pass on. This is really very humbling, especially as I can still quite clearly recall being the daydreaming child in the concert hall, and most days, I don’t feel a great deal cleverer either. I’m mostly just the same person, getting lost in the music.

I suppose, if I want to quantify all the ways music has affected me, the list would look something like this:

—I have danced all my life, and consider it a key part of my identity;

—I did join an amateur concert band as an adult, and those experiences were key to me becoming, shall we say, a reasonably functional adult (I put most of my angst aside; I learned to be happy and belong) I haven’t kept up my music since having kids, but I still benefit in the big picture from the experience.

—Until recently I attended live music regularly, including classical

—I encourage my children to dance and play music 

I guess that is pretty decent. A life that is worthwhile , and not dull (at least to me!), and touched by beauty and meaningful patterns is an appropriate appreciation of this man who shared his art with me, a child way up in the second balcony.

I liked this interview: a bit of his personality comes through. 

An interview with Mario Bernardi