Folklore of Enid's Performing Past:

"Spirited" Stories Surrounding the Places and People of Enid's Oldest Theatres.

A Project for Mythology & Folklore, by Brady Henderson

 Stories of the Knox Building: Forever

One night prior to a benefit concert for the Enid Symphony Orchestra, Dena Haselwander and Steven Conrady decided to go up to the Symphony Hall in the Knox Building to practice a few duets.  Ironically, they were playing a piece by Ives when some very strange things began to happen.  You see Ives was actually a transcendentalist composer; that is, he believed that once a note of music was played or emotion was exerted through sound, it was forever resonating through the place in which it occurred.  Once created it was forever, without end and without time, neither movable nor erasable.  Often Dena had contemplated this eternal performance, thinking of all the beauty and ugliness, love and hate, that had been blasted out of brass horns and wafted slowly from strained strings in the mysterious eight-decade history of the great hall. 

It was as Dena and Steven joined their instruments in an eerie minor 3rd that it happened.  Suddenly Dena felt an intense chill around her legs, soon coming up through her whole body.  It was as if a whirlwind of pure ice was careening around her.  As she stopped playing and contracted from the sudden cold, Steven turned to ask what was the matter.  Then without warning both their music stands rocketed violently forward, the sheet music flying off towards the seats, carried by a blast of freezing air.  Steven and Dena both stood aghast as their heavy steel stands now lay flat on the stage in front of them blown over by a frigid hurricane.  Now the cold swirling “wind” became filled with light, a great swirling cyclone of pure white luminescence.  Faster and higher it swirled, growing brighter and brighter, carrying dozens of pieces of music a loft in a great circle about the ceiling.

Three players on the Symphony Hall stage

Then it was gone.  The light ceased and the warmth and stillness returned to the room as quickly as it had left it.  For the next few moments page after page of Ives floated listlessly to the floor.

No explanation was ever found for what occurred on the fourth floor that night.  Many have now dismissed it since it has never happened before or since, and never been reported by anyone else.  But as anyone who knows Ives knows: once passion and pain find form in music, they know no time, only a place to be resonating forever, performing rests and crescendos as they see fit.

Based on an interview with Dena Haselwander, of Enid Oklahoma, about 40 years of age, conducted 9-11-2000 by Brady Henderson; and on Douglass Newell’s lecture “The Music of Charles Ives,” given 12-31-1999 during an Enid Symphony performance.