{"id":482495,"date":"2010-03-26T18:36:34","date_gmt":"2010-03-26T22:36:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattletimes.nwsource.com\/html\/northwestvoices\/2011453390_courtrulingonplayingofavemaria.html?syndication=rss"},"modified":"2010-03-26T18:36:34","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T22:36:34","slug":"court-ruling-on-playing-of-ave-maria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/482495","title":{"rendered":"Court ruling on playing of ‘Ave Maria’"},"content":{"rendered":"

The long history of musical censorship<\/strong><\/p>\n

Editor, The Times:<\/p>\n

I read your account of the Everett School District and its decision to bar the playing of an instrumental version of \u201cAve Maria\u201d at a graduation ceremony [\u201cTop court rejects appeal of \u2018Ave Maria\u2019 ruling,\u201d NWTuesday, March 23] and recalled my own school experience with musical censorship.<\/p>\n

Way back in 1965, at the height of the Cold War when I was 11 years old and in fifth grade, our teacher told us we could bring a Christmas album into class and he would play it.<\/p>\n

My father, a U.S. naval commander, was also an amateur opera singer with a love for big, baritone voices, and he used to play a record by the Soviet Army Men\u2019s Chorus. One song in particular always struck me as sounding like winter and Christmas \u2014 without understanding a word of Russian, you could get the sense of horse-drawn carriages with sleigh bells jingling as they rushed through the snowy woods, and the swirling balalaika\u2019s added a taste of something exotic and exciting.<\/p>\n

So when I brought the record to class and presented it to my teacher, he took one look at the cover, gave me a withering look of disdain and refused to play it. He also put it away in a desk drawer and wouldn\u2019t give it back until the end of the school day, presumably so I wouldn\u2019t infect any other students with my communist sympathies or whatever it was he was afraid of.<\/p>\n

Though it puzzled me at the time, that lesson stayed with me, this notion that musical notes in the air could be a threat of some kind and couldn\u2019t be enjoyed even when separated from any lyrical content.<\/p>\n

Musician Kathryn Nurre\u2019s quote goes to the heart of the matter: \u201cWe liked the way it sounded.\u201d This latest decision by our Supreme Court to let the ruling stand indicates that fear of music is apparently still alive and well. My fifth-grade teacher would be pleased.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Ron Dickson, Seattle<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The long history of musical censorship Editor, The Times: I read your account of the Everett School District and its decision to bar the playing of an instrumental version of \u201cAve Maria\u201d at a graduation ceremony [\u201cTop court rejects appeal of \u2018Ave Maria\u2019 ruling,\u201d NWTuesday, March 23] and recalled my own school experience with musical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2861,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-482495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2861"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=482495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/482495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=482495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=482495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=482495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}