The voice of the clarinet has been stifled

Since being benched a few years ago for substandard and ill-tempered Christmas decorating, Ive been reassigned to special teams duty.

I haul decorations out of the attic; adjust items beyond the range of my wifes vertical leap; and am dispatched from the house to buy greenery after receiving detailed instructions on the length of needle required a detail I suspect is meant to extend the length of my absence as long as permissible within the boundaries of a working relationship.

However, I have carved out a niche that allows me to earn a holiday certificate of participation. Each Christmas season, I make it my job to locate the one slot out of five in which our CD of the The Nutcracker has spent the past year and push the buttons required to rotate that disc into the play position.

The first notes of the overture are welcome because they relieve the holiday stress that has visions of heart attacks dancing in my head. But my favorite moment arrives when the low tones of the clarinet slide smooth as eggnog down the scales in the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.

Its then that Im reminded how rare it is now to hear the voice of the clarinet.

Dixieland fans may get their share, along with those whose flanks endure the cold, hard aluminum stands during football halftimes or the flexible plastic chairs of school band and orchestra concerts. But for most of us born too late for the Big Band era, hearing a clarinet now usually means having to endure reruns of the Lawrence Walk Show and exposure to the toxic pastel suits now leaching out of rusty barrels in some EPA Superfund site.

Largely because the clarinet was a fixture in what psychotherapists call my family of origin, I was glad to receive a request from an old neighbor, Karen Birt, to write about it.

If put to clarinet music, the story would begin with mournful notes appropriate for the funeral of Birts great-grandmother, Carrie McArthur DePoy, whose death on Aug. 5, 1890, in Greenfield, Ohio, left her 10-year-old son, Frank, motherless.

It was about that time young Frank got a needed sense of belonging while playing clarinet in the Greenfield schools. The young man who would become an electrical engineer at the citys power plant and an excellent carpenter and furniture maker also became, in 1901, part of an organization Greenfielders took pride in: Prices IOOF Band.

Frank was one of three clarinets in the band that also had four cornets, three trombones, four saxophones, one baritone horn, one piccolo and two drums all of which traveled by horse-and-wagon to perform in Chillicothe.

In 1907, the renaming to Prices Premier Band was testimony to the part the band played in parties, fairs, parades, picnics, political rallies and other events, where audience applause followed the punchy ending of John Phillip Sousa marches or gentler denouement of In the Shade of the Old Apple Tree.

In 1908, the community pride showed itself when all 30 of Greenfields automobiles were made available to take the band on tour, surely one of the highlights in a music career for Price, who directed the bands at Greenfield McLain High School until his death in 1939.

By the time of Prices passing, Frank DePoys daughter, Joan, had served as one of the eight clarinets of the schools 34-strong marching band, as had her bother, Stewart. Stewart would become a mining engineer, and Joan would take a job with Greenfields Wil-Knit Hosiery, which did a mail order business whose clientele included Hollywood stars and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

When Joans daughter, Karen Hyer, was forced to miss a school year because of histoplasmosis in her lungs, one of her joys at returning to school was playing clarinet in the band again, something she continued in high school.

J. Harold Lyle was the director of a marching band 50-some strong, and Sousa Marches were still in the repertoire, including The Stars and Stripes Forever and The Washington Post March, aka The Monkey Wrapped Its Tail Around the Flag Pole.

Young Karens band also was playing Rock Around the Clock and The Yellow Rose of Texas at events ranging from the Highland County Fair and the Circleville Pumpkin Show, to the local Christmas, Halloween and Memorial Day parades.

Years later, she would still dream about being in the marching band, just as she would remember the foreign stamps her mother brought home from the mail order business and recall seeing her mother off on the train to Cincinnati, where she took organ lessons on the way to becoming organist at the First Baptist Church in Greenfield.

After graduation, Karen came to the Springfield City School of Nursing to begin a career that lasted 52 years, and that she was in the midst of when her dying mother asked that all her grandchildren play musical instruments.

Karen and Danny Birts daughters Debbie and Bonita played in the bands at McGuffey and Lagonda elementary schools, Roosevelt Middle School and North High School, though the girls later switched to other band instruments and picked up piano along the way. Son Tim played piano, trumpet and French horn.

Debbie, now the Rev. Debbie Vickers, still uses music with husband, Chad, in their work at the NewSong Church in Fairborn. Duets recorded with her late father, Dan, are among her favorite possessions, and she says that singing and playing praise music often takes me to another place.

She prefers rehearsals to services, though, because the technical side sometimes plays tricks, as when the lesson at the church involved the Sermon on the Mount and a technical glitch led to a voice from the wilderness saying Im John Boehner, and I approved this message.

Bonita Nulls daughter, Cheyenne, has picked up the clarinet, and the spirit of those who embrace an instrument that can, at any moment, squeak like Sponge Bobs pal Squidward.

Says Cheyenne: Its better to have challenge than not to have challenge.

Cheyennes brother, Tim, is a drummer.

Debbies 9-year-old daughter Corrie will pick up an instrument next year at Lagonda Elementary. And although shes already confessing to be a band nerd, she has vocal talent as well, singing solos at the Maiden Lane Church of G*d and at school.

Tim Birts kids, meanwhile, have gone the orchestra route, playing violin, cello and viola.

Just as clarinet is not the only instrument, music, is not the only form of expression. And Karen Birt has found a way to express musics meaning to for her family in another form. Its no judgment on other band parents and grandparents whose pressing schedules may not allow the time. After all, Karen is retired.

Nonetheless, when it comes time for their family to provide the band with cookies for the Springfield High marching bands home games, Karen doesnt buy them from the store. She bakes them up in the warmth of her own kitchen, which seems an expression of regard as rich as the eggnog smooth tones of the clarinets in Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies.

Source: http://www.springfieldnewssun.com/news/news/local/the-voice-of-the-clarinet-has-been-stifled/njQhN/