Marvin Gann, 1925-2006
My father sang in church choirs most of his life, and his favorite pieces were Handel's Messiah and Beethoven's Ninth. Once he sang in the chorus for the Dallas Opera production of Boris Godunov. Along with the Steinway baby grand he bought me when I was 15, which stands in my living room today, such was his contribution to classical music. He was an accountant for Mobil Oil, and spent the last three of his 29 years there as an office manager in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Having grown up dirt-poor on a farm in what is now a rather stylish section of Dallas, he landed at Omaha Beach three days after D-Day, and was a corporal in the 7th Armored Division under Patton at the Battle of the Bulge. He heard the gunfire of the massacre of American prisoners at Malmedy as he was frantically trying to fix a tire on his halftrack.
Luckily - since I was stubborn - he attempted his paternal duty only once. In my last year of high school he warned me that to be a musician was a difficult and insecure life. What would I do about retirement?, he asked. As an artist, I replied, I had no wish to retire. It seemed to me, at 17, unwise to plan one's entire life around retirement. But Dad eventually retired at the age of 57, and enjoyed his leisure for 23 wonderful years. On my side, I know that he sometimes hated going in to work - whereas I, in my often financially precarious adult life, have never once woken up and had to go do anything for a living that wasn't music-related. The jury on who won that argument is still out. Meanwhile, my son's middle name is Marvin.
Dad died Saturday, and we buried him Monday, in Frisco, Texas.
Categories:
Sites To See
American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)
Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects
Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station
New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking
The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross
William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer
Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation
Eve Beglarian's Home Page - great Downtown composer
Just Intonation Network - a meeting place for people interested in alternative tunings
Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site
The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer
Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues
AJ Ads
AJ Arts Blog Ads
Now you can reach the most discerning arts blog readers on the internet. Target individual blogs or topics in the ArtsJournal ad network.
Advertise Here
AJ Blogs
AJBlogCentral | rssculture
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
Andrew Taylor on the business of arts & culture
rock culture approximately
Rebuilding Gulf Culture after Katrina
Richard Kessler on arts education
Douglas McLennan's blog
Art from the American Outback
For immediate release: the arts are marketable
No genre is the new genre
John Rockwell on the arts
Jan Herman - arts, media & culture with 'tude
dance
Apollinaire Scherr talks about dance
Tobi Tobias on dance et al...
jazz
Howard Mandel's freelance Urban Improvisation
Focus on New Orleans. Jazz and Other Sounds
Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...
media
Jeff Weinstein's Cultural Mixology
Martha Bayles on Film...
classical music
Greg Sandow performs a book-in-progress
Exploring Orchestras w/ Henry Fogel
Harvey Sachs on music, and various digressions
Kyle Gann on music after the fact
Greg Sandow on the future of Classical Music
Norman Lebrecht on Shifting Sound Worlds
publishing
Jerome Weeks on Books
Scott McLemee on books, ideas & trash-culture ephemera
theatre
Wendy Rosenfield: covering drama, onstage and off
Chloe Veltman on how culture will save the world
Elizabeth Zimmer on time-based art forms
visual
Public Art, Public Space
John Perreault's art diary
Lee Rosenbaum's Cultural Commentary
Tyler Green's modern & contemporary art blog

19 Comments
Leave a comment