Brain songs

In fulfilment of mom's wish for us to post about childhood memories, I have something that came to mind today.

As I was working in my kitchen today I began absentmindedly to hum a song from the deeper recesses of my brain. In light of mom's request for our memories, this aroused my thoughts.

I have a whole bunch of songs in my brain of whose titles I am ignorant and of whose lyrics my knowledge is spotty. These are the songs I learned (or partly learned) from hearing mom and dad practising choir pieces from the various choirs they were in over the years.

Today I was singing the one that goes "farewell my friends I'm bound for Canaan...". Fortuitously, we now have Google and I was able to look up those lyrics and find that the song is called "Parting Friends" and then listen to it on Google Music.

I have a few such songs floating around in my brain. There are several ancient hymns and folk songs like Parting Friends, the music from dad's Gift of the Magi musical, and other things I can't think of at the moment. Also, despite my modest abilities in music reading, I happen to be able to sing all the alto parts of church hymns because I had them coming in one ear every week.

  I'm glad we grew up with lots of music. My own ability to create music is limited but I learned a lot by osmosis and have somehow managed to have a basic musical education without having put in any effort.