I was struck this morning by a memory of going to the old SLC public library, when it occupied the building that now houses the Leonardo Museum. It was a late morning in the summer, probably a Saturday, and I was on the west side of the 5th floor where the music and art holdings were. I was sitting at a table thumbing through a copy of Steve Reich’s Writings about Music. I had just graduated from high school.
The southwest corner of the 5th floor was devoted to the library’s record collection. I listened to a lot of new music and even some recordings of Balinese gamelan (distributed by outfits like Nonesuch in their Explorer series). The guy at the desk, seeing that I was interested in new music, even made some suggestions: a mix of hits, like Pendercki (the Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima was a sonic gut punch) and misses, like Xenakis (I still just can’t). That record collection is where I learned about music written after 1900.
Everything felt new, even though it was library-old. Even the dust motes lit by the sun coming in through the windows on the east side where there was a little courtyard with a pool.
Man, I miss that place.
