I grew up listening to Frank Sinatra. My parents were huge fans but especially my father who was also a radio broadcaster. He broadcast in the days when folks had to create their own mixes using cuts from real records. I remember going with him into KHMO in Hannibal, Missouri. His sound booth had one or two turntables, lots of buttons, and toggle switches, and slider switches, and a microphone that was suspended on a metal arm. When my sister and I were in the sound booth,  and the red light was on, we had to be absolutely SILENT.

He created his own lists of music and had everything timed to last 15 minutes or 30 minutes because at those intervals, he had to read an advertisement or the weather or the latest headlines off the AP teletype machine. He loved Frank Sinatra and made sure to include Ol’ Blue Eyes every time.

He collected all of the albums and when he died and my mom moved after her retirement, I got his record collections with all those old original albums.

I have Frank on the one side and on the other Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. The first time my husband took me to visit his family in Germany, we rented a little car with a cassette player. We had not brought any cassettes so we stopped at a music store and he bought several cassettes. Now up to that point, I had not really listened to classical music but I did on that trip. I remember listening to the Ninth (while at the same time being car sick from the twisty German roads) while he drove me and his sister and her boyfriend from Hoechenschwand to Freiburg. As the Grand Chorus began, we were driving through the narrows of the valley, past pine trees. That is now Beethoven scenery for me.

The third piece of music that just fills my heart is Faure’s Requiem. The first time I heard it was in Boston. My good friend (the one mentioned earlier who is living with cancer) took me. Her parents could not come down from Maine for the concert — snow or some conflict — and gave my friend their tickets. We went together and sat in Symphony Hall while Seiji Ozawa conducted the Boston Orchestra. The piece also calls for a chorus and soloists. I had not heard it before and when they sang the last part and the organ came in, my eyes just flooded with tears.

Dover Books publishes complete scores of music pieces such as Handel’s Messiah. I bought the score of the Requiem, and I took the score with me last year to two different performances of the Requiem. The first was on All Soul’s Day at Bryn Mawr Church of the Redeemer and then the second was in March by the Philadelphia Orchestra. Now I am thinking about forcing my husband to travel with me to see other performances of the Requiem.