The Sound of Christmas
Janet Yuse
December 19, 2015
For me nothing evokes memories of
Christmas-past more than hearing the refrains of familiar carols. I am confident that if asked, “What was the
first carol you learned to sing?” the answer would be, “Away in a Manager.”
In my mind’s eye, I am a preschooler
standing with my peers at the front the Stoughton Universalist Church, dressed
in holiday finery, my parents sitting proudly near the front smiling encouragement
straight at me, and waiting for the cue to begin singing this simple lullaby. It
doesn’t take much effort for me to transfer my own little girl and boy into a
similar spot, singing the same sweet carol, and I, as the parent, watching with
swelling pride.
Christmas without music is
unthinkable. I grew up hearing the
familiar tunes we sang in church and in my school classrooms, using small booklets
of Christmas Carols provided by local businesses. As a child I used them at school performances
and community gatherings, and also to follow along as I listened to carols on
our radio. My schoolmates and I memorized
several verses of favorites such as “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” “We Three
Kings,” “Joy to the World,” “Oh Come All you Faithful,” “ Oh Little Town of Bethlehem,”
and of course my favorite, “Silent Night.”
As I grew older, I continued to
enjoy participation in the junior choir at church and later in several
different adult choirs. I added my alto
voice to organized school choruses from junior high all the way through
college. Shortly before retiring and
moving to Tennessee, my daughter Kristen encouraged me to join her in the
Wallingford Connecticut Community Chorus. This shared experience remains one of the most
enjoyable times in my life, especially participating in a performance of
Handel’s Messiah with a full orchestra.
An important part of this memoir,
The Sound of Christmas, is the back-story, which began four generations ago and
credits my children’s great-grandmother, Jennie Mulford.
Jennie Yeager and George Mulford
eloped and married in 1907 when she was just eighteen and he was six years
older. According to family oral history,
they met when he was a salesperson demonstrating songs for a New York publishing
company. He came into the store where Jennie
worked and where she played for customers from printed sheet music .
After they married, George managed a
local movie theater in Montgomery, New York, where, in addition to his managing
job, he performed in a vaudeville act. Jennie,
then the mother of two-year-old Ruth Vivian, played the piano accompaniment for
the silent movies.
George and Jennie Mulford returned
to Brockton, Massachusetts where George managed the Globe Theater before
becoming a Nabisco products salesperson.
Sometime before 1920, they gave up their careers with theater promotions
to raise a family of three girls and two boys. One of these girls became my
children’s grandmother, Ruth Mulford Clark,
Jennie, however, never stopped
playing the piano. She continued to stay current, listening to the latest hits
on the radio. She had the remarkable ability to listen to a song once, and then
sit at her piano and play the song flawlessly from start to finish without a
musical score. In addition, she was able
to transpose any song into a different key.
I witnessed Jennie’s impromptu performances
on many occasions and can attest to her abilities. I fondly recall family
gatherings where we made up stories similar to the long-ago silent movie plots
wherein villain wants woman to marry him; she refuses; villain takes woman and ties
her to train tracks; along comes hero just in time to rescue woman! Oh, how much fun to listen to the music as
she made the stories take shape.
Jennie died in 1969. She was a widow
for eight years by then and lived alone in a small apartment near her three daughters.
She was found dead, slumped over the
keys of her piano, having played one last song.
Everyone felt that it was a fitting ending to her life.
Kristen now owns the piano that
belonged to her paternal great-grandmother, Jennie Yeager Mulford. The original bench still holds sheet music
passed down through the generations. Kris’
father, John Clark, and I both took piano lessons in our youth, but he was more
accomplished than I was. Still, he never reached the level of talent shown by
his maternal grandmother Mulford.
When I married Jennie’s grandson, he
and I shared the hope that our children would carry on the love of music that
we knew. He, too, had sung in many choirs, and choral groups. John’s father had
sung in a barbershop quartet, and his aunt had voice training at The Julliard School.
We encouraged our children, Kristen
and Jonathan, to develop their musical talents, and both seemed to have
inherited the musical gene from Jennie Mulford on their father’s side of the family. From an early age, they both loved to sing and enjoyed being part of
church choirs, school performances, and vocal groups.
Kris took piano lessons for a while,
but never developed the skill of her great grandmother. Jonathan didn’t show an interest in piano, but
did express an interest in learning to play an instrument. When his opportunity was available in fourth
grade, he chose the clarinet. Each week Jon received a group lesson given by
the school’s teacher for instrumental music.
Space in a room off our home’s basement proved to be a good location for
his assigned practice sessions, and it was far enough away from the main part
of the house to ensure both privacy and sound deafening.
Jonathan was approaching his ninth
birthday at Christmas in his fourth grade year. He had been playing the
clarinet for just four short months, and from a mother’s perspective, I thought
he was showing wonderful progress. My
positive viewpoint was rewarded ten-fold on the morning of December 25th.
We had been up for several hours,
and presents had been unwrapped. I was about to begin the preparations for our
traditional Christmas morning breakfast when Jonathan asked me to wait a minute
because he had a special present he wanted to give to me. Unaware that one of the gifts had not been
opened, I agreed to wait. He left the room, and his father, sister, dog
Queenie, and I waited in the living room for his return. He came back wearing a
smile a mile wide, carrying his clarinet.
Jonathan took a spot in front of the
fireplace, looked at me, and said, “Mom, I know that your favorite song is ‘Silent
Night,’ so I learned to play it for your Christmas gift.”
If the tug on my heart had been
visible, you would have seen it popping out of my chest! I sat perfectly still, rejoicing in each note
he played. As the final strains of “sleep
in heavenly peace” squeaked out, so did the tears I was holding back!
In spite of the fact that his sister
rolled her eyes and groaned, and Queenie began to howl after the first measure,
my clapping in genuine celebration at the conclusion of the piece kept that
grin on his face. I rose from the coach
and gave him a much too-tight hug, telling him with complete sincerity how very
special he and the gift were to me and that I would never forget the moment.
And so, it is music that prompts my
memories of the joys of my Christmases past.
And--after all the years of unwrapping a multitude of long-forgotten gifts--the one gift that remains most vivid comes
back to me with joy each time I hear the familiar opening notes of “Silent
Night.”
