Choir Notes

Blessed with the Sound of Music
From Music and the Spoken Word
Delivered By: Lloyd D. Newell • Program 4206

Arturo Toscanini, famed music director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, was well known for his weekly broadcasts that carried beautiful music into the homes and hearts of millions. One of those was a lonely sheepherder in the desolate mountains of Wyoming. One day Toscanini received a rumpled note from this far-off listener with an unusual plea. “I have only two possessions,” the man wrote, “a radio and an old violin. The batteries in my radio are getting low and will soon die. My violin is so out of tune I can’t use it. Please help me. . . . When you begin your [next] concert, sound a loud ‘A’ so I can tune my ‘A’ string; then I can tune the other strings.”

As requested, the next week Toscanini had his orchestra sound a perfect A just for that listener so he might tune his violin and, when his radio batteries died, he could still have beautiful music.1

We need and love music. We may sing along with the radio in the car, whistle while we work, or even sing in the shower. Words put to music seem to say more than they do without it. And when we hear good news of any kind, we declare that it’s “music to our ears.”

Music is more than just entertainment. It is a good friend and companion; it can bring us peace when we are grieving and hope when things are hard. How that happens we don’t exactly know, but something about music reaches into our souls and heals, lifts, and inspires us.

A few of us may remember playing tunes on a gramophone; today it might be a cell phone, but the result is the same—a lift in our step, a light in our eyes, and a sense that we may, at any minute, break into song, filled with gratitude that our hearts are “blessed with the sound of music.”2

1 See David B. Haight, “People to People” Ensign, Nov. 1981, 54.

2 Oscar Hammerstein, “The Sound of Music,” 1959.