When I was a preschooler in the United States, let's say around 1949, I began to make some sense of the adult conversations that went on around me. Just a little, you know. There were countless words that I didn't understand and, worse, pairs of words that sounded an awful lot alike to my little ears.

A case in point: People were always talking about Communists and Congress, and they seldom seemed happy with either. It would be another year or two before I could sort out who were the real bad guys and who just behaved like bad guys. I did understand that Russians were evil, skinny soldiers with long, streaky hair who were going to pour into our country with rifles in their hands. They were bent on “ruining” us, whatever that meant, but I wasn't clear as to whether they were Communists or Congressmen.

Another confusing pair was “magician” and “musician.” I thought I knew what magic was, and may have known the word “music,” though more likely I just thought of it as “songs.” What I heard the most were the popular songs of the day on the radio. I still remember a few of them, especially those by the Weavers, almost in their entirety.

But what really stuck with me was a handful of classical pieces that my dad sometimes played on my tiny record player: Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet, the William Tell Overture (at least the Lone Ranger section), and Scheherezade. The last of these was a little above my head at the time though a few years later I listened to it over and over and became increasingly amazed by the subtleties and complexities that were possible in classical music.

I stopped believing in magic when I was about nine, though I continued to enjoy trying to figure out how magicians' tricks were performed. Music was more of a mystery, though. My mind was abuzz with questions about what instruments were playing what, why the conductors on television stood there waving their arms and just about everything else a young fellow with no musical background could wonder about.

When I was twelve I saved my money and bought a ticket for a Pittsburgh Symphony concert. From the first chord of the Die Meistersinger Prelude to the last glorious blaze of The Great Gate at Kiev I was awed by how much more there was to music than I had ever imagined.

As I was pondering the experience on the homeward-bound streetcar, I noticed a man amusing and amazing a little girl by finding dimes behind her ears. And that's when it all came clear to me: Magicians create the illusion of magic; musicians deliver the real thing.