Wildrose Music: Music For Everyone

The goal of Wildrose Music is to provide great original music, royalty free, that is downloadable in several formats. We have created a place where choir directors and musicians of all kinds can find good new music that is free and easy to download.

There is a need, we feel, to share the music that is being written. We feel that the copyright laws are too strict and actually restrict the circulation of great music. Some people feel that composers deserve to be paid for their work, as much as anyone. As a composer I have struggled with this question for many years. Certainly composers have to eat, but selling sheets of music is not the answer. Music is something you share. However, I realize that I am almost entirely alone in my opinion. I believe that people ought to be given the opportunity to have the great music that is being written. If it is of value to them, then they ought to give back what they think it is worth. However, I, as a composer will not hold the music ransom for money. In my opinion, this cheapens my life and makes me a slave to the dollar. What I write, I write for the good of myself, God and other people. I do not write it to make money for me or anyone else. I believe that the good music I send out will come back to me in the form of good will, good wishes and joy. It has already done so for these many years. I have shared all my music with anyone who asked me. I have been paid, again and again in things other than money. Once I make it a profitable venture; expecting money from every page printed, then the joy of giving is gone and the avarice of expectation sets in.

I choose to leave the avarice alone and live only with the joy of knowing that the music is going out and giving someone else a slice of happiness. That is enough for me.

The Real Thing

I'm the type of person who likes to do things herself. I like to have things to do and I like to be responsible for doing them. I like the feeling of knowing that there are people who depend on me for important things like meals and clean clothing. I also like to feel that I can do other significant things that are valuable to other people. These qualities about myself are, I'm sure, in no way unusual. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that these feelings are a common need among human beings. I noticed early in my career as a mother that children are extremely keen about their independence and desires for significant work. It is parents who discourage these qualities in their children and it's usually because they don't understand that it is a need.

From the first moment a child realizes that there is such a thing as a kitchen and that there are important things going on in it, a child is curious and desirous to participate in the action and work of this most interesting place in his world. To him it is an adventure in exploration and discovery. The child, if allowed will spend hours working with and experimenting on the tools and ingredients in a kitchen. However, as a mother who was interested in things like 'clean', 'safe', 'tidy', and 'convenience' I found it very difficult to overcome my feelings of frustration over the child's natural curiosity and desire to work at something significant. Often I would try to shoo the children out of the kitchen and away from the tools of my trade so that I could keep order and feel that I was a good housekeeper. But the more I tried it, the worse I felt.

I have known children whose bedrooms looked like a mini Toys-R-Us. The toys are so thick and so deep that it would take a week just to shuffle through them all, let alone play with each one. They are usually Christmas gifts which quickly lose their appeal after about the first 24 hours. They then get piled with the rest of the next-to-new toys that will eventually find their way to a thrift store. Parents are under the mistaken belief that children NEED toys. Every advertisement about children tells us this untruth in the most convincing ways. Even children will demand toys, saying that they need them in order to be happy, content and feel loved.

Children need one thing: usefulness. You can give a child the most expensive toy on the market today and still they will play with it for a few hours and lose interest, the same as if you had purchased a dollar store junk toy. In my opinion, most toys are an insult to a child's intelligence. They assume that a child needs and desires to be entertained. But this is a false assumption. Children need to feel that what they are doing is important to the people around them. Just like you and I, they need to have a work that gives them those feelings of self-satisfaction that come only from doing important work well. Toys are merely a distraction from life. Children need real life, not distractions.

It was the look on my daughter's face when I tried to get her to play with her toys instead of help me in the kitchen that taught me the truth about children. She was hurt beyond words when I told her that I wanted her to go out of the kitchen and play with her toys. What I was really saying was, “I will do the important work here. You are just a child. You can play with toys. You are not important enough to do something real.” The look on her face let me know that this was the message I was sending. When I understood that, I decided to put aside my personal feelings of frustration over a little chaos and let my daughter help me in the kitchen with whatever I was doing, regardless of the mess or inconvenience. The result? Well, she now cooks wonderful meals for hundreds of people, loves cooking, feels significant and important in her life as well as mine and is a happy, well-adjusted adult. She feels confident that she can accomplish anything she puts her mind to and has made her parents proud of her accomplishments more times than we can count.

Was it worth the inconvenience and extra mess? What do you think?

Choose to Choose

I remember a time when there were serious and continuous debates over whether people were the product of their heredity or of their environment. Each side seemed determined to prove conclusively that it was the only possible conclusion and each went to great lengths in the media to advance their opinions and make them widely known and believed. However, after living my life and witnessing first-hand the effects of both heredity and environment on myself and those around me I have come to the conclusion that humans are the product of neither heredity nor environment but of choice.

I was still a young mother when my sister came to me with a dilemma involving the disciplining of her children. I suggested a course of action which I myself had practiced and found both effective and helpful. It involved some thought and planning but in the end it was obviously beneficial to both myself and the children. My sister said that she could see that it would be effective. She agreed that it was a better solution than the one she had been trying and yet, she felt that she was not capable of such action. When I asked her why not, she simply responded that she had been 'raised that way'. She then went into a soliloquy about some of the parenting practices she had been subject to as a child which had affected her and which, she believed, somehow held her bound to continue.

I looked at her in disbelief as she enumerated and listed her various grievances until she had finished with a hopeless sigh. In my innocence I quietly replied that I had had the same parents and had simply learned that there were some things they practiced which I felt were not as effective as they ought to be, so I decided to find another and better way if possible. I said that I did not feel bound by my upbringing to practice certain faulty behaviors and then shift responsibility for my own actions onto my parents. I said I didn't think I ought to blame my parents for my own poor choices; that I was capable of choosing well, in spite of what they may have done to me.

It is easy to become a victim of life in a world where there are people who are dishing out unkind words and actions. Without even thinking about it people generally want to return unkindness with more unkindness. Children, especially, will exhibit this behavior automatically at a very early age. In my home I have always told my children that when someone was unkind to them, they ought to say to themselves “This is wrong and I don't like it, so I will never do this to someone else.” In this way, they take positive action toward the future by committing to be better. It also empowers the injured person with the strength to leave behind the poor choices of others and choose for himself actions he can approve of.

Still, there are some who would argue that choice is not entirely free; that it can be forced, stopped or coerced. But, when faced with this dilemma, I always go back to the mind and heart where choices occur. Humans use only a small percentage of their mental capacity. If we feel that our choices are limited, perhaps we should be looking harder for more choices. Knowledge is power, the power to choose. So if, instead of trying to make someone else choose something we like, or lamenting past choices of others that may have hurt us, we might try opening our consciousness to the vast array of choices available to us in the unexplored regions of knowledge, truth and wisdom.

The difference between me and my sister was only that I had chosen to expand my vision of choices that might be made while she was still choosing to be bound by the choices of others. She didn't even realize that she had made that choice but it confined her just the same.

Heredity and environment can influence and push us in certain directions and can even control our lives, if we let them. But ultimately, the choice to BE influenced or pushed is ours. When we realize this, then the freedom to choose begins and the tyranny of the past ends.

Here's to Freedom!

War And Peace

In my dictionary, Peace is defined as the absence of war or public disturbance or, a state of calm or quiet. These two definitions of Peace cover most of the applications of the word as we know it. But, as with many words in today's vernacular, Peace is being re-defined.

In the broadest sense Peace could be applied to the condition of large groups of people and the absence of strife between them, as in peace between nations. This condition however, is the same as peace between gangs only on a smaller scale, and the same as peace in a home which is on an even smaller scale. This inevitably leads us to peace between two people and finally peace in the individual. At this point one might even argue that within the individual their might be different factions striving within one person as in disorders of the mind or multiple personalities. More commonly, quiet voices within the normal mind speak differing opinions on any given subject, like when one is attempting to make an important decision and one weighs all of the facts and opinions on the subject in order to make an informed and intelligent decision.

Thus, it appears to me that Peace at any level is the same, whether in the individual or with a group of people, no matter how large. So, let's take for instance a person with multiple personalities who is not at peace with himself and becomes a problem to those around him and upsets their peace. Well-meaning people might take this person to an asylum in order to protect him from the rest of society, as well as to keep him from harming himself. At this point they have achieved Peace in their world but the root cause is still present, just ignored. Putting a person into an asylum does not create peace within the individual it merely keeps him from interacting with others in order to create the illusion of peace through the absence of the one causing the strife. Peace for the group can be achieved on a superficial level but still the individual does not know peace. Peace for the individual as well as the group would require healing on all levels: social, mental, spiritual, physical and emotional. If the individual were healed, incarceration would be unnecessary and a lasting peace would be achieved for both the individual and the group.

If two countries are at war there must be an underlying cause. One or the other or both countries may have experienced injustices which they are attempting to correct through fighting, which is usually preceded by extensive negotiations and treaties. When the discussions fail and they resort to war then everyone says we have lost peace. But, just as the man with multiple personalities has a disorder which is causing the strife among his peers, so nations have underlying problems which cause the outward strife which is merely the end of a long line of difficulty and the long-standing absence of peace.

Typically, people will treat the symptoms of a disease without actually healing or attempting to heal the disease itself. When a cold is contracted we are only interested in stopping the runny nose instead of finding out more about immunity, good health and healing. In health, marriage, communities, churches, states, nations and the world, there is always an underlying cause to any strife or pain. Peace can be obtained outwardly by treating the symptoms. This, unfortunately, always leads to more symptoms. Suppose you take a country which is at war with another country and you, with your large army, act the part of peacemaker and stand between the two warring nations and prevent the fighting...with fighting. You have obtained Peace with war. But this peace can only be a counterfeit of true peace which could only come by addressing the issues of both parties and healing the difficulty.

A true peacemaker makes peace within himself and others through healing underlying causes of strife or pain. Counterfeit peacemakers make peace by confining, ignoring or destroying those things that cause strife or pain. Both seem to create Peace, but one is real and lasting and the other is superficial and temporary. One actually creates Peace within individuals and nations, the other actually creates more strife.

The last definition of Peace is harmony or concord. This definition is, to me, the most instructive and helpful, for it not only teaches us what peace is but how to achieve it. And perhaps if we look at it in this way we will be less inclined to keep trying to create peace with war.

A Gift

In 1742 George Frideric Handel composed Messiah, a sacred oratorio for choir and orchestra. This amazing and beautiful work has lived on since the composer's death in 1759, a legacy to this man's genius as a composer. Originally designed and intended as a preparation for Lent, this work has instead become a traditional Christmas work, often to the exclusion of the crucifixion and resurrection images. Messiah, however, remains a world-wide favorite and the one work by which Handel is most widely recognized.

When I was a child, I discovered a recording of Messiah which immediately captured my interest. It continually drew me like a magnet to it's glorious sounds and messages. While my friends and other family members were engrossed in the Beatles, Elvis, Chicago, Styx, the Jackson Five and others, I was off in my own little world with Handel, listening to and conducting Messiah. I imagined a huge chorus and orchestra at my feet as I raised my hands to give the down beat. I dreamed of one day being in an orchestra or choir to perform that music, and I also dreamed of conducting it. Youth has no concept of the audacity of it's dreams. It only dreams.

When I got to college, I was still listening to my recording and conducting it in the privacy of my bedroom, but I also began using it in my conducting class. I learned all the techniques of conducting a complicated piece like “For Unto Us a Child is Born”. I never tired of hearing and conducting Handel's great work that seemed to speak to me across the years and give me a sense of direction and meaning in my life. During that time I was also given the opportunity to perform Messiah with the college choir and orchestra. One dream had come true.

When I began to have my family, Messiah was always at the back of my mind, waiting to be sung. Once, for a Christmas celebration, I asked my church choir to sing a couple of numbers from Messiah, which they reluctantly performed. I discovered that people are afraid of the music of Messiah because it seems so difficult. People who consider themselves amateur singers will rarely consent to tackle this work, partly because of it's imposing stature in history and tradition, and partly because they are afraid that they will do it badly. Thus, in all those years after college, it was a rare thing for me to be able to interact with the music of Messiah, except on a recording.

Two months ago, I sat pondering the question of a Christmas program. Budget constraints, economic challenges and busy schedules began to loom before me like a dark storm cloud. “People are having a hard time right now,” I thought. “What could we do that would not interfere too much with people's lives or be a burden to them. The answer came unexpectedly that instead of doing less, I should do more; that there is no better time than right now to give people an opportunity to both give and receive one of the greatest gifts ever given to mankind. The music of Handel and the message of Messiah are timely gifts for a time of trouble. I saw in my mind a choir and orchestra performing a large portion of Messiah to a grateful audience. “That would be another dream come true,” I thought.

The music of Handel's Messiah has followed me, taught me and helped me throughout my life. I now give this gift to my community with all my heart. May it bless your life as it has blessed mine.