Lydia Writes About Music

 As I was thinking about this post I realized that the rituals that I am most familiar with are primarily religious in nature. I spent most of my life attending church regularly, first a Catholic church and then protestant nondenominational churches. In both settings music is used every week through the services. There is often music playing before the service, and music to call the congregation’s attention to the altar, and music to sing together, and music to close the service.  I rarely, if ever, go to church anymore due to a number of reasons that I am, honestly, unwilling to go into. I also rarely, if ever, listen to the music of the church anymore, but I heard and played so much of the music that I can still recall nearly every lyric to a large number of both hymns and more contemporary worship songs to this day. And so I am struck by how influential and meaningful the music of rituals can be.  This past week was the anniversary of my uncle’s death and, while I was ...

 Hello, all! My name is Lydia and I am a Music Therapy major and violinist. Like many people, music has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. While my parents don’t consider themselves musical (I think the music therapy student in me would disagree with their assertion on that), there was always music playing in our house: James Taylor, Jimmy Buffett, Billy Joel, Journey, Jim Croce and several Broadway musicals were all big in our house.  I think my grandfather was listening to the Brahms Violin Concerto when I first really heard the violin and I was immediately obsessed. I loved everything about this instrument and knew I wanted to play it. I think I was around 5 years old.  I was finally able to start violin lessons three years later (three years is an eternity for a kid) and I haven’t looked back since. In the intervening years I picked up several other instruments and went to college (the first time) for Music Theory. Then I got married, moved to Ger...