Another Music
Jean L. Kreiling
Another Music
Notes left behind by strangers long since dead entranced my mother—not the squiggles, dots and lines themselves, but what musicians read from them on radio, the sounds ink spots had spelled. In quartets and in Claire de lune, her young ears heard what many can’t discern: enchanting, complex things—beyond the tune— about which she had little chance to learn. When she grew up, her voice was warm and rich as those of many singers who’d been schooled in breath control and quarter notes and pitch. She was as musical as some who’ve ruled the concert stage—but she sang in the car and kitchen; we heard her wide repertoire. We heard her car and kitchen repertoire of opera arias, concerto themes, and deep regret she never got as far as piano lessons. Her childhood daydreams were seeded by the sagging upright housed at her Aunt Margaret’s—maybe she’d learn there?— and fed by radio: Puccini roused her love of opera, Brahms made her aware of string-sung drama. She pursued her chances to learn and listen—and also to plead for lessons, though her parents’ circumstances made that impossible. But she’d succeed in giving her kids what she’d never had— assisted in that effort by my dad. It took substantial effort. Mom and Dad lacked wealth, but not love or imagination. Wrong turns became adventures, plans gone bad would show up later in a wry narration. Fun for us kids was low-cost, even free: a paper crown on birthdays, or a game made out of raking leaves, or a decree that it was Ice Cream Tuesday. We became as skilled as they were at composing joy: we heard another music in our days of sibling harmony, learned to deploy exuberance and laughter as one plays an instrument. And then catastrophe and cleverness brought opportunity. Our clever dad saw opportunity when fire destroyed a nearby school, with all its contents lost—including, doubtlessly, the old piano. But Dad made a call and had the badly damaged upright brought to our garage. It was a rescue mission: the smoky wreck could be revived, he thought. He’d never played, and he had no ambition to do so, but he always had been good at fixing things. And so he scrubbed the keys, patched felts and hammers, and restored the wood of the disfigured case. And by degrees, the sooty hulk became something we prized. Untrained, unmusical, he’d improvised. With talents of his own, he’d improvised, so we could, too. And he and Mom had planned and saved so we’d have lessons. Though advised to start us at age seven, Mom had grand ambitions for my younger hands. At six, I got to know the keys and clefs with smart, no-nonsense Mrs. Steffen, who would mix high standards and commitment to the art of making music with kid-friendly stuff. I played a little Mozart (simplified), a piece called “Crunchy Flakes” and other fluff, some basic boogie-woogie, drills that tried my patience. And my two sisters and I all played—too loudly—Brahms’s lullaby. We all played Brahms’s famous lullaby, and argued over which of us would get to practice next; I knew the time would fly when it was my hour. Paired in a duet, two sisters often bickered just as much as we made music, but we learned to work together, synchronize tempo and touch, forget the other could be such a jerk. Years later I made music my profession, and it became both job and joy, a route to self-sufficiency and self-expression— a gift whose worth I never could compute, from parents who would never read a score, but who would give us music and much more. They gave us music, but a great deal more than just the audible variety. Their well-tuned lives—examples set before us kids—were also music. They taught me to practice patience in both work and play; to face discord and my mistakes with poise; to transpose trouble to keys far away; to find and share the song within the noise. My mother’s dreams, my father’s diligence, and love composed a priceless education. And those gifts all enrich the resonance I hear in Bach and Brahms—in my translation of small black symbols in the scores I’ve read: notes left behind by strangers long since dead.
Jean L. Kreiling is the author of four collections of poetry; her work has been awarded the Frost Farm Prize, the Rhina Espaillat Poetry Prize, and the Kim Bridgford Memorial Sonnet Prize, among other honors. A Professor Emeritus of Music at Bridgewater State University, she has published articles on the intersections between music and literature in numerous academic journals.
Poet’s Note
I don’t often write a poem as thoroughly autobiographical as this sonnet crown, but in honoring my devoted and fun-loving parents, I wanted to introduce them to the reader in all their true glory. My mother’s love of music and my father’s brilliance did shape much of my life, and they gave me (and my siblings) a richly happy and secure childhood. They supported my work as a poet just as enthusiastically as they supported my musical endeavors, and I’m grateful that Mom and Dad both lived to see my first book of poems published.
Note from Mary
We all know the Tolstoy quote from Anna Karenina: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. It’s the kind of statement that seems true, unless you think about actual life and not just the needs of the novelist. Of course, happy families share similar attributes, but so do unhappy families. Either way, writers and artists often render the wicked and the weird in their art. Some might claim that this is because the wicked and the weird are more interesting, but I’m not so sure about that. I love dark and devastating work, but if that work is only dark and devastating then it is not reflecting the fullness of reality, and that gets old.
In some ways, goodness is the more perplexing and fascinating thing. It’s easy to be bad. Pretty much everything in modern culture propels us to be wicked, warped, selfish, stunted. That’s partly why I think Jean Kreiling has done something special here. In this crown of sonnets, she has rendered a happy family. It’s beautiful and believable. The meter is assured and orderly (like this diligent family), but not stunted or constrained (there are dreams, music, play, not just diligence). As Anthony noted, the “self-indulgence, hubris, showiness, and cleverness,”—I’d call it the snark of modern art—”which are all too often present in modern poems . . . are not to be found in this poem.” Instead, we get a quiet beauty, a steadiness, an assurance that, yes, there is good—good music, good work, good company—in this world. “Another Music” is the mature work of a woman who was blessed enough to grow up in a good family and wise enough to absorb that goodness and generous enough to share it. Deo gratias.



This is absolutely lovely! I have never believed that famous assertion about all happy families being the same, but I believed this sonnet crown.
Goodness gracious, what a poem! And so lovely to see a sonnet crown these days!