Albert Maysles - My Father's Cornet 

 

 

Way, way back when I was maybe 7 or 8 years old, my father and I had this custom. Each year we would go to the big closet and put on my father's World War I uniform. I'd wear the blouse, he might put on the boots, and so forth. But I noticed that way, way back in the closet, there was this leather sort of bag of sorts, but it was somehow tabooed so that neither he nor I said anything about it, except that one time we caught each other's eyes looking at that case. And my father went back into the rear of the closet, pulled the case forward, opened it up and pulled a cornet out of it. He held it to his lips in such a way that I knew that he knew the instrument very well, and played with the valves. And then put the cornet back in the case and back in the closet.

 

Several years later, the subject came up with my mother. And my mother said, "Oh, you have to understand that just as you know that your Uncle Sam plays the violin, and your Uncle Joe plays percussion, you also had an Uncle George who played another musical instrument. And when your Uncle George died before you were born, your father just didn't have the heart to play anymore. And so, he's never played it." And so, years go by, and I have the cornet on the kitchen wall. And I look at it every time I'm having breakfast, and it reminds me of my father. And one day I noticed that the cornet needed to be polished. So, I asked the housekeeper if she would polish it.

 

A couple of days later, as I gazed upon the cornet from something of a distance, I noticed that the front end had been smashed in. She'd polished it, but she must have dropped it. And I took the cornet to my studio, thinking, "Well, I don't know what's going to happen. I've got to get this fixed. But I don't know how I can possibly restore it to the way it was." And just around that time, Wynton Marsalis comes to my studio to watch a film that my brother and I had just made of him and Kathleen Battle. And when he was through looking at the film, as he was about to leave, I brought the cornet to him and began to tell him the story. When he put the cornet to his lips, moved the valves up and down and played it for 5 or 10 minutes, the only time that I've heard the instrument played. And so, when I walked back to my desk, I thought, "Oh, I got to tell my mother,” But she had died. "I got to tell my brother," But he had died.

 

And so, that's the story of the cornet, but it's not the end of the story. Because my father, although he never played for me, he gave me a music appreciation course that was the best I could possibly imagine because he would play wonderful classical music, and I would just watch his face as his expressions changed according to the music. It gave me a profound love for music, and it also supplied me with a way of looking at music with my camera. In that when you may have seen Gimme Shelter, one of the most beautiful scenes in the film is of the Rolling Stones listening to the playback of "Wild Horses". And I think because of my love for my father's facial expressions connected with music, I focused on the face of each one of these guys as they were listening to the playback of the music. 

 

Just one thing more. When I was in the army in 1944 and only 18 years old, I got news that my father wasn't well. And so, I got home. It took three days to get home. And as I entered the door, I saw that all the drawings and paintings had been covered. And my sister said, "I've got to tell you that dad died." And right away I said, "But where's mom?" And she said, "You can't disturb her because she's been in bed now for three days, reading whatever she can get her hands on, trying to find exactly the words that described dad and describe him beautifully."

 

And maybe it was two or three hours later that my mother called us all in, my brother and my sister and I with a big smile on her face, "I discovered it”, and I think it was from the Bible. 'With clean hands and a pure heart.'" And I would add to that, with a love for music that gave me that love to express as best I could through my camera. Thank you.