After reading the following, I was inspired to add my extended version.
When The Music Stops
By: Elisabeth Elliot Copyright 1991
There are sometimes spaces in our lives which seem empty and silent. Things grind to a halt for one reason or another. Not long ago, in the span of a few days, the "music" in my life seemed to stop because of a rejection, a loss, and what seemed to me at the time, a "monumental failure". I was feeling rather desolate when I came across a paragraph written more than a hundred years ago by the painter, John Ruskin.
"A Musical Rest"
By: John Ruskin
"There is no music in a "rest", but there is making music in it. In our whole life-melody, the music is broken off here and there by "rests", and we foolishly think we have come to the end of "time". God sends a time of forced leisure, sickness, disappointed plans, frustrated efforts, and makes a sudden "pause" in the choral hymns of our lives, and we lament that our voices must be silent, and our part missing in the music which even goes up to the ear of the Creator. How does the musician read the "rest". They are not to be slurred over, nor to be omitted, nor to destroy the melody, nor to change the keynote. If we look, God Himself will "beat time" for us. With the eye on Him, we shall strike the next note full and clear."
My Life is a Symphony
By: Phyllis Brixey
I must always watch the director....steady beat...OK! I have made it to the fermata! How long can he possibly hold this fermata? Keep watching, keep watching.. But I thought there was a repeat coming up!?! Instead it is a "second ending"....and, what's that? A BRAND NEW Melody!?! But I did so well on the other melody! Why can't we just repeat it? And now I have to sight-read a BRAND NEW Melody! What about the old one? I had practiced so hard that it went perfectly! I don't sight-read well AT ALL! You never know how it will turn out. I want the old melody!! Yikes! Keep watching! This fermata is way too long! I am running out of air!! FINALLY! A cue. What if I get lost? Keep watching!
I never know when this symphony movement will end. I will.....Keep Watching until I come to the Double bar-line and the Fine!
Fermata = to hold until the director signals to move on.
2nd ending = a repeated passage but played in a different way; do not repeat the 1st passage.
Sight-reading = when the performer has never seen the passage before.
Double bar-line = In musical notation, a bar (or measure) is a segment of time defined by a given number of beats of a given duration.
Fine = The End.
