May Musicant Cared For Music

May Musicant had a love for all kinds of music throughout her life. As a child, I remember hearing her play records of works as diverse as Beethoven, Dvorak, Chopin, jazz by Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and vocal music from around the world including folk songs and operatic works that my father cared for, too.
May also had a lovely singing voice and among my deepest and happiest memories as a girl were those in which she sang, especially the Yiddish songs Oyfen Pripechik and Rozinkes mit Mandlen. An upcoming post will be her paper on Handel's Messiah, based on this principle of Aesthetic Realism stated by Eli Siegel: "All beauty is a making one of opposites, and the making one of opposites is what we are going after in ourselves." This paper, which she presented in an event at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation, has fresh, exciting thought about this magnificent work. --Alice Bernstein