Indiana Canticle

By Robin McNeil

Indiana Canticle is a set of autobiographical essays that resemble snapshots from my memory. Each chapter is an isolated event which allows the reader to glimpse my childhood life from 1944 to 1951, circumscribed, as it was, by music and books and the forested hills of Southern Indiana. Though I became a Professor of Piano and Musicology, this seemingly far-away life has left an indelible imprint, even though my life, now, is not so sheltered. The observations that I learned to make of people and places still have an impact on me, though I sometimes long for the simplicity of my early life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robin McNeil
• Release date: Aug 31, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466134300

Robin McNeil

About the Author Robin McNeil Robin McNeil began his study of piano at DePauw University at the age of four. He has a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance from Indiana University and a Master of Music in Piano Performance from the University of Illinois. Mr. McNeil began his teaching career at the University of Illinois. He then went to the University of South Dakota where he was Chairman of the Piano Department and taught both graduate and undergraduate piano, piano literature, general music history, Medieval and Renaissance music literature, and a graduate course in bibliographic citation and the techniques of music research. He has performed over three hundred concerts throughout the Midwest and east as soloist, soloist with several symphony orchestras, duo pianist, a partner in four-hand concerts, chamber groups, and was the pianist with the University of South Dakota Contemporary Chamber Players. Mr. McNeil has written many musicology book reviews for Choice magazine of the American Library Association and Publisher’s Weekly, in addition to writing over three hundred articles on music criticism and commentary for newspapers. Mr. McNeil maintains a blog site, opuscolorado.com, which is dedicated to music criticism and commentary. He is also a published poet, and the Denver composer, David Mullikin, has used his poems for art song texts. Robin teaches regularly at the Academy for Lifelong Learning and has also taught at The St. John Vianney Theological Seminary where he taught Medieval Liturgical Music. In spite of his retirement, he has also presented guest lectures at the universities in the Denver area and the United States. In the past, Mr. McNeil has been thoroughly involved in arts management as the Executive Director of the Fine Arts Center of Clinton (Illinois), State Treasurer of the Association of Illinois Arts Agencies, and member of the Long Range Planning Committee of the Central Illinois Cultural Affairs Consortium. Mr. McNeil has been the Executive Director of the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra and has been a member of the Board of Directors of the Denver Philharmonic Orchestra Foundation. Outside the sphere of music, Robin has raced Alfa Romeo and Ferrari automobiles, and he is a member of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association. Mr. McNeil now lives with his wife in Littleton where he teaches privately and continues to do research on the French composer, Théodore Gouvy and the Medieval Mass. Mr. McNeil is President of the Piano Arts Association, and an Honorary Member of the Institut Théodore Gouvy of Hombourg-Haut, France, and a member of The American Liszt Society.

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Indiana Canticle

By Robin McNeil

Copyright 2011 Robin McNeil

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Indiana Canticle

Table of Contents

Forward

Chapter 1 – My House

Chapter 2 – The Old Man in the Overcoat

Chapter 3 – Waiting for the Queen

Chapter 4 – Shooting the Fox

Chapter 5 – The Recital

Chapter 6 – The Airport

Chapter 7 – The Accident

Chapter 8 – April 1948

Chapter 9 – Orville

Chapter 10 – Everyday Things

Chapter 11 – Fall

Chapter 12 – Winter

Chapter 13 – Harmonies of the Evening

Chapter 14 – The Welcome Wagon Hostess

Chapter 15 – Leaving

Chapter 16 - Epilogue

About the Author

INDIANA CANTICLE

Foreword

These stories are true. They come from the well-worn paths of memory of an early childhood life that I shared with my brother, Tom, and my twin-sister, Rosetta, in the remote woods and hills of Southern Indiana. It was a place full of color, hard times, forests, foxfire, and ghosts.

It amazes me still, as I look back on those times, that I had no real understanding, then, of how impoverished we were. But even though there was no electricity and no plumbing, there were always books which were read and music which was listened to. And there was the incredibly thick hardwood forest in which I spent so much time when I wasn’t practicing the piano. Our neighbors had no books and no record player, even though most of them had electricity and most had plumbing of some sort. It would be too easy to say that because of our books and music, we were not so poor after all. But I remember all too clearly, when I was seven, what it was like to carry two buckets of water one hundred yards from a natural spring to my house.

How my hands ached! But my hands survived, and I did become a pianist. However, it is still not completely clear to me why my father chose that lifestyle for us.

I did, however, learn to read at an earlier age than most because there was no distracting television, there were very few children my own age to play with, and no genuinely close place to go except the woods. I learned self-sufficiency in many forms, from entertaining myself to finding my way back home when I thought I was lost. And though I am now surrounded by music, libraries, computers, and many more friends than the woods could afford, I still have the ability to be silent in the woods and watch what the animals are doing.

These are random stories, which have stayed with me for a long time. Sometimes, the reason for their persistence in my memory is obvious; they are funny or sad or, for me at least, profound. I have not changed the names of anyone, for I have no fear that they will be offended; these stories are for them as much as they are for you.

Chapter One

My House

At the base of the hill the air was cool, almost chill, and there was always the sound and smell of the creek and the things that moldered by it. The damp browns were slow to give way to the hint of green that would signal newness and underfoot the ground was just beginning to thaw. Impossibly thin crusts of ice, crystal clear, clung to the banks of the creek, and in and under them were myriad colors of rainbows changing each time a glance was stolen. Yet, one could tell that newness was coming even though the creek sounded so very softly cold. The late afternoon sun was still white - not quite the gold of spring and summer. It made wan shadows on the ground that helped to conceal all with a sameness of color. But hidden deep in the foot of the endless thicket was the startling green of dock and dandelion. Behind me, in the garden, stood a corn shock house - a remnant of late fall. I knew that inside there would still be a lingering sweet smell of the stalks as they leaned together and came to a point at the top. Here and there were shards of pumpkins that had been flattened by the winter snow. Though they had been forgotten, they would bring new life from the seeds still within their crushed, tan bodies. There were onions, gone to seed, with one, tough and hide-bound, that had refused to fall. It was as if it had a duty to stand watch: to alert the garden to come back to life when warmth finally returned. And to the left, on a slow rise, just past the clothesline, stood my house.

Imitation brick, made from tarpaper, covered half its height. The rest was clapboard siding, old and decaying and unpainted for many, many years. One corner of the house had boards nailed over the imitation brick to keep the field mice from gaining entry.

On the front of the house was a small porch, painted light green, with low walls of wide clapboard on the sides and front. Above the porch were two fraudulent dormers. Inside the dormers, behind their window glass, were vestiges of lace curtains that now failed in their attempt to convince they hid full rooms. Long ago the curtains had begun to disintegrate and they now hung lifeless and grey. Behind them, one could see the rise of the roof that they had tried so hard to conceal.

On the west side of the house grew a thick row of currant bushes; they provided fruit for jam, and the leftovers, once dried, were put directly into the scones my mother used to bake. In the summer, the currant bushes provided entertainment as well, for they were always inhabited by small, gentle, green snakes with remarkable emerald eyes and bright red tongues. On the other side of the bushes, the ground fell away sharply to a second garden below and the small hill curved around in front of the house to make a ravine between my house and the road, which was up on a dike. In front of the house, the edge of the ravine was lined for the length of the yard by iris, tulips, hyacinths, snapdragons, zinnias, and flowers of all description. The ravine itself was covered with Queen Anne’s lace just as the woods around the house was full of dogwood, red bud trees, violets, night-shade, squirrel corn, and Jack-in-the-pulpit.

Entering the house, one was confronted immediately by a round wood-burning stove whose pipe went into a fireplace chimney just above the mantle. The fireplace, made of round geodes, had long been blocked off because it was too dangerous to use. It had been painted the same color as the walls, pale green, and the paint hid what must have been a wonderful intricacy of the rock. The floor of the living room was covered in linoleum in varying square patterns colored green and ocher. Much of it was worn down past the colors to black.

On one wall were bookcases crammed to overflowing with novels, poetry, and books that my parents referred to as the classics. By the time I was ten, I had read most of them. In the corner of the room was a mechanical Victrola record player. I was constantly astonished