RE: Between Love, Grief, and Christmas, While Blessed and Blessed (Brahms, Handel, Jozef Elsner)

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I am sorry for the loss of your mentor. This was a beautiful, thought-provoking post, full of important truths and lessons learned. I do have one question: was this an imagined conversation with the recently-deceased, or memories from previous conversations, or was it a conversation with someone else? I feel as if I somehow missed an important detail. And perhaps you wrote it that way on purpose, for good reasons.

hive-192806
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(Edited)

The Ghost of Musical Greatness Past has lived over here in Q-Inspired for 20 months ... he literally says he is the echo of many past mentors and also my spiritual learning, and he is .. but he is designed on a real-life peer of my first classical music teacher who in real life literally echoes the same thing!

German basso profundo Kurt Möll (1938-2017) is the historical character whose legacy of love literally ties together all the strands of wisdom from the classical side of my musical life that I was exposed to starting with Haydn's oratorio "The Creation" through Beethoven, Bach, and on down ... he LITERALLY left a roadmap from his own life and repertoire on purpose that sits in parallel to the roadmap left by my own ancestors' Negro Spiritual, and literally began to chart the same course in life at about the same time that I have: late thirties/early forties, opting out of seeking the most famous roles in order to preserve his voice to sing the best stories of his people and give deeply to his students and community. Now, he became famous anyhow -- but remained a humble man who would have fit in perfectly with my own mentors. The most beautiful male voice I have ever heard -- yes -- but more importantly, so far as my limited German will allow me to know beyond my English, his life matched up just as beautifully, and his students are still out there, walking in his footsteps. He is the one and only classical musician who has comforted me for the loss on my own first teacher, Linda Anne Kotcher (1938-2015), in whose footsteps I walk, and train my students.

So, what happened was, there was an initiative here in Q-Inspired: who is your favorite musician, and what would you do if you could meet him or her, even through the portal of imagination? I could not write at length about Ms. Kotcher ... the heartbreak is still too raw ... so, her peer stepped in through the portal of imagination, and I have the same kinds of conversations that I had with her, and later with the love of my life, walking in the park ... so, every week, I sum up the thoughts from my life, the music I am listening to, my studies, and my walks, and just resume the conversation with the "echo," the Ghost of Musical Greatness Past ... who, 20 months on, has developed as a character with quite a life of his own and even a name for the role: K.M. (obviously, Kurt Möll) Altesrouge, which is German for "Old Blush," which has to do with a whole comedic situation in San Francisco's Rose Garden in July (a rose by any other name).

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Thank you for the explanation! I had, indeed, missed something. That's what I get for not reading posts as often as I could/should.

It's interesting how intensely our music teachers often affect our lives. I can name a piano instructor, two band directors, and a choir director who helped to shape me into the person I am.

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One general music teacher who taught church choir for kids (taught me how to sing alto), one piano instructor (Ms. Kotcher herself), two choir directors, and a composition teacher ... almost every day, one of them still blesses my life, for indeed, they shaped who I am. One might say that what happened as I was out here exploring music is that I found a German analog to all these, whose students STILL are saying the same thing about his impact on them, while I work to be that person for my own students as best I can. There are musicians, there are great musicians, and then there are the class of people in every field who are of the mind of "I am on a mission to bless as I have been blessed." I'm a No. 1, aiming for No. 3!

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