As A Composer
When Elias returned in disgrace to New York, he composed Cosmopolis, a descriptive piece which somewhat resembles Ottorino Respighi’s The Fountains of Rome. At this time, Elias found himself in the intensive care unit of a hospital, having suffered a ruptured appendix. Peritonitis had set in, and he was not expected to live. After considerable medical intervention, his life was saved, and he was due to be discharged from the hospital. He said goodbye to everyone, including Anna, the nurses’ orderly on the ward; he asked her in his typically dramatic way, “How can I possibly thank you for giving me back my life?” Anna looked him straight in the eye, and said, “You can marry me.” When Elias told his son John this story, the night before John's marriage, he reached his hand across the table in the bar on Broadway, tousled John's hair, and said, “It’s a good thing too, because you were three months along the way.” Anna gave birth to Elias' two sons, John first and Eugene (Gene) two years later.
Read more about this topic: Elias Breeskin
Famous quotes containing the word composer:
“A person taking stock in middle age is like an artist or composer looking at an unfinished work; but whereas the composer and the painter can erase some of their past efforts, we cannot. We are stuck with what we have lived through. The trick is to finish it with a sense of design and a flourish rather than to patch up the holes or merely to add new patches to it.”
—Harry S. Broudy (b. 1905)