Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios.

I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, June 2, 2025.

Today's poem is a sonnet by Gene Murray Walker, and it's called The Music Before the Music.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.

The music before the music.

When the concert master gestures to the elbow,

silence flutters through the massive hall.

Then comes the tuning up. Before that, though,

go back. Before the obedient violin falls to his A, before the flutes, trombones, and tuba,

head like horses in the same direction to plow and plant one of Beethoven's great fields, go back.

Here the nickering run of the scale, the brash symbol, a bright lash of squeaks,

the wigged out chug of a base vial, script scraps of bang and clank, a swirling flash of flotsam.

Go back to the unselfconscious style before style, a grace that's not yet botched

before they know that they're being heard or watched. If I had to compose my own list of favorite

things a la Julie Andrews and the Sound of Music.

One of those favorite things would most certainly be the sound of an orchestra warming up.

There's this kind of warm, electric hum of all of the instruments making their little quirky sounds.

They kind of, they don't coalesce in the same beautiful and ordered way that the composition

does when it's played a few minutes later. But there is a kind of synergy of all of those

sounds and it lends support to the feeling of anticipation in the room.

It fills the room, but not in a cacophonous way.

There's something unique and magical about it, and I'm glad that this poem

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