The Gift of Curiosity: A Music Therapy Memoir

When I first met Mr. K., his handshake was firm, his gaze alert.
“Samuel!” he said with a grin, then broke into a mock-solemn tone: “Samiel! Samiel! Erschein!” — the famous call from Weber’s Freischütz.

Samiel, he explained with a laugh, was the devilish figure of the Black Huntsman, tempting the hero with magic bullets. “But of course, I don’t mean you like that!” he added quickly, still smiling. In that moment, I caught the humor that would thread its way through our years of work together.

In those early sessions, he was the expert, the storyteller. He knew the operas and symphonies in every detail, could recount entire librettos from memory — complete with background, context, and atmosphere: the ghostly Wolf’s Glen, the swell of a triumphant final chord, the lingering echo of a dark harmony. Over the years we went through more than thirty works, from Mozart to Mahler, from Wagner to Berg.

Early on, we started a binder. For every work, I printed a picture of the composer or the score cover and added a blank page. On that page, I noted the plot, the key motifs, and, most importantly, the memories the music evoked in him: an evening concert decades ago, the voice of a colleague, the feel of the horn in his hands. Because that was his instrument — he had played the French horn for decades, and often spoke about what it was like to be part of a great orchestra. Whenever we came across a particularly striking horn passage, his eyes lit up: “That’s where you feel the power of the brass — that sound always carried me.”

One piece, though, kept coming back: Schoenberg’s Gurre-Lieder. He mentioned it months after our first listen, then again, and again. One day, he told me he had dreamed about it.

Gurre-Lieder is an immense work for soloists, chorus, and orchestra — a late-Romantic flood of sound and color. Its text tells of King Waldemar’s love for Tove, her death, his rage at God, and his ghostly ride through the night, before culminating in a blazing hymn to the sun. For Mr. K., it seemed to be more than music. Perhaps it reflected his longing for his late wife; perhaps it was the comfort of knowing that even after darkness, the sun will rise again. We didn’t press too much on the why; the meaning was already there, unspoken, between us.

As the years passed, his explanations grew shorter. Where once he could describe the entire arc of a story, later there would just be a sentence: “It’s about love and loss.” Or a quiet: “Beautiful.” Sometimes only a smile. And yet, the binder kept growing, page by page. Even as words faded, the ritual of adding a new work, hearing its first bars, became an anchor — a steady thread binding us together.

In the final year, as his strength declined, we began co-therapy sessions with the movement therapist. Two therapists for one resident — and he seemed to come alive. He sat taller, listened with sharper focus, and reveled in the doubled attention.

In those last weeks, words were scarce. But when I entered the room, that familiar expression was still there, that light in his eyes. We no longer needed to speak much; the listening was enough.

I was never the classical music expert in this relationship, and perhaps that was the gift. He brought the knowledge; I brought the curiosity. Together, over years of visits, we created something uniquely ours — not written, not performed, but kept, like our binder: a quiet testament to what can happen when music becomes the language between two people.