at Holy Redeemer, was a color that became identified as IHM Blue. They also wore a black scapular that slipped over their shoulders and draped to the floor fore and aft. This was capped by a stiff bonnet that pinched the cheeks and eventually wore an almost permanent ridge in the forehead.
They began each day with Mass in the convent at an ungodly early hour. Breakfast was followed by another Mass with the children in attendance. They taught school all day. Prayed, dined, prepared lesson plans, and retired. Only to do the selfsame thing the next day. And the next and the next. During summers they usually returned to college to pile up more hours toward another academic degree.
In an office just large enough for a small desk and chair and a spinet piano, Sister Mary George, IHM, is conducting a music lesson.
Seated at the piano is Robert Koesler, undergoing his weekly humiliation.
“No, no, Robert . . .” Sister vigorously taps a baton against the piano. “. . . you have a left hand. It’s not just for waving at the keys. It’s supposed to play the correct notes.”
“Yes, Sister.”
“It’s not that you don’t have talent, Robert. It’s that you don’t practice, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Sister.”
“How many hours did you practice this week?”
“Uh . . . I don’t know, Sister.”
“Not many, I’ll wager. Robert, you don’t like Czerny, do you?”
“Uh . . . no. Sister.” Actually, Koesler had nothing against the composer personally. He just did not enjoy scales and arpeggios that had no tunes worth mentioning. But whether or not Koesler liked Czerny, his answer would have been the same. To small obedient Catholic children of that day, nuns’ questions, like that just posed by Sister Mary George, were rhetorical.
“That’s another one of your problems, Robert: You don’t build foundations. All you want to do is put in windows.”
“Sister?”
“I know you want to play beautiful music, lyric music, Robert. But you can’t do that unless you practice these fundamentals. First you build the foundations, then you can put in the beautiful ornaments. Do you see, Robert?”
“Yes, Sister.”
“Do you have any questions?”
“Uh . . .” There was one question Koesler had been wrestling with for a very long time: Why did all nuns smell exactly the same? Something like Fels Naphtha or Ivory soap. But he would never have the boldness to ask it. Or rather, by the time he would have the courage to ask, it no longer mattered. “No, Sister.”
“Very well, then, Robert. Next week do the same Czerny exercises. And this time pay attention to your left hand. Then, only after you master that, you can go on to that little Mozart prelude. Now, don’t forget orchestra practice this afternoon.”
“No, Sister.” Koesler would have much preferred a quick game of baseball after school. But he would be there for orchestra practice. For starters, he would be killed if he didn’t show up. First blood would go to Sister. The coup de grace would be delivered by his parents.
Music lessons cost one dollar an hour, a laughably low price even then. But Koesler’s hard-pressed parents found it difficult to produce that extra dollar. And they had emphatically impressed upon their son that they expected some results for their investment. He might not practice what he considered “the dull stuff” assiduously, but neither would he skip a lesson nor miss orchestra practice.
Another family in Koesler’s neighborhood could afford money for lessons even less than the Koeslers. But the other family had even more reason to invest whatever they could in their son’s musical career. They were the Palmers and their son, David, was a prodigy.
Both Fred and Agnes Palmer were musicians. Both played in chamber ensembles regularly. Agnes gave lessons. But her instrument was not the violin, and David’s was. Besides, there was that peculiar impediment that makes it problematical for a parent to undertake the formal education of one’s own child.
The first inkling the Palmers had of their son’s gift was when he was three years old. Agnes Palmer had just completed playing Debussy’s “Clair de lune.” As she walked away from the piano, she heard a small high sound. It was her son, humming perfectly what she had just performed. Soon thereafter, David began repeating on the piano the melodic lines of works his parents played. At the age of five, he found a violin and the violin found him. In no time, he convinced his parents that it would be through the violin that he would most perfectly express his God- given talent.
With one thing and another, the Palmers concluded it would be a crime not to do everything in their power to advance the boy’s musical education. So, for a hard-earned dollar a week, they sent him to Sister Mary George.
Sister, for her part, was painfully aware that David’s talent far surpassed her ability to challenge it. But she knew the Palmers could not afford anything beyond her. So she began to make plans with regard to David and a relatively new musical camp in northern Michigan called Interlochen Arts Academy.
There was one other boy in that neighborhood, and in the same class with Koesler and Palmer, who showed some considerable musical talent. Ridley Groendal.
Koesler could be mentioned in this threesome only because he was a classmate and took lessons from the same teacher as the other two. Outside of that superficial connection, he was simply not in their class and he and everyone else knew it.
Actually, Groendal was not in Palmer’s class either. Groendal was an adequate pianist for a young student. But he was not especially gifted. Palmer was the one and only wonder child of the group.
Unfortunately, while almost everyone was in awe of David Palmer’s musical gift, no one was paying enough attention to the rest of Palmer’s personality. As a result, few people realized that all this special attention had gone straight to Palmer’s head. He was becoming a first-class brat. Those adults who were aware of David’s bumptiousness tended to overlook it as the natural eccentricity of a budding genius.
The memory fades as Father Koesler becomes aware of an altar girl standing before him, holding an open ritual.
Koesler read aloud:
As he looked up from the book, Koesler once again noticed Palmer, as isolated as if in a telescope. This time their eyes locked. David Palmer, musician extraordinaire. At least an extraordinary musician for a parochial setting such as Holy Redeemer.
The memory gains strength.
It is orchestra practice.
Robert Koesler has had a difficult day. He had been poorly prepared not only for the piano lesson but for most of the rest of his classes as well. And, worse luck, he had been called on for recitation frequently and fruitlessly.
But now this practice is important. It is a rehearsal for the annual recital wherein Sister Mary George is able to showcase the progress her music students have made. The recital is mostly for the benefit of proud and hopeful parents.
Over the past several years, there has been no doubt which of her pupils Sister has wanted to star. In a parochial setting, a David Palmer comes along once in a lifetime, if then.
As far as the orchestra is concerned, Robert Koesler plays the drums. That thinking is as follows: Koesler could have been the orchestra’s pianist, except that Ridley Groendal is a better pianist—much better. But Koesler did play the piano on special occasions, such as the annual recital. Thus, to keep him around, he was given the drums—bass and snare—to play. (This under the amateur assumption that anyone—at least anyone with a sense of rhythm—can play the drums, an assumption that would definitely not be shared by a professional.)
Rehearsal began with the orchestra performing Kettelby’s “In a Persian Market.” Even Koesler could tell that
