For years, a small, simple tune has run through my head. Sometimes I hummed it aloud, but for the most part, it was just one of those snippets of music that seemed to surface within me at stressful moments. I couldn't identify it, and assumed that it was just something my musical imagination had "made up." Yesterday, at my job, I was listening to a classical music station and sat up with a sudden lurch when, in the midst of a huge orchestral/piano concerto-y piece, there was "my" tune! Clearly it was from the 19th century (when your main musical interests are evensong canticles and Anglican chant, you are lucky to come even this close to identifying unfamiliar music!) but that's all I could tell about the piece, so I kept my ear glued to the radio until the end when the announcer identified it: Franz Liszt's Fantasy on Hungarian Folk Tunes (better known, apparently, as the Hungarian Fantasy).
Now, my parents' record collection ran mostly to Broadway musicals like "Oklahoma" and "My Fair Lady," and humor like Bob Newhart. They rarely listened to classical music. Mom and Dad were not musicians, and did not take us to symphony concerts. So I don't think it is likely I heard Liszt's Fantasy in its proper context as a child. The only thing I can think is that possibly one of my elementary piano books included an extremely simplified version of the piece, and the eleven-note theme stayed in my head, out of context, a musical phantasm.
Life. A fantasy finally becomes a reality, and it is a "Fantasy." You can't make these things up.
Life. A fantasy finally becomes a reality, and it is a "Fantasy." You can't make these things up.
