JAVS Spring 2025

In Memoriam

Burton Fine (1930-2024)

line (in any piece of music) is as real as any love from (or to) a human being. My mother, who met my father in 1950, married him in the early 1950s, and divorced him in the 1970s, expressed her love through her painting. She always did art, but became serious about it when she could no longer play the flute. My father didn’t think much of her artwork. I know very little about either of my parents. Both were puzzles. Their first child, my brother Marshall, was not neurotypical. He, like my father, had a tremendous intellect, but neither of our parents, like most new parents in the 1950s, understood much about parenting. They did bring Marshall to Dr. Spock in Cleveland (my father’s first job was at the Cleveland-based government agency that was to become NASA), but anything regarding the autism spectrum, where Marshall self identified as an adult, was unknown in the 1950s. I came out neurotypical in 1959, and my younger brother Richard, born in 1961, came out really gifted in math and things related to the world of computers, where he has been working since he graduated from college. Marshall and I were compelled as teenagers and as adults to express ourselves musically by playing and writing music. Richard is happy as a choral singer and as an avid listener. Joshua, my half-brother, who grew up in the 1980s is, like Marshall, not neurotypical, and he benefited (eventually) from an environment of understanding about the autism spectrum that has allowed him to thrive as a choral singer and as a responsibly employed person. When Marshall, Richard, and I were children, our father did all the driving in the family. He did all the shopping and all the outings. Perhaps it was to take us off our mother’s hands for a while. I remember being almost five and going in a rowboat on Jamaica Pond in West Roxbury. It was shortly after my father joined the Boston Symphony as a violinist. The story goes that he saw an ad in International Musician one day, took the next day

Burton Fine (1930-2024)

My Father.

I would say that the Burton Fine (August 7, 1930 - November 15, 2024) I grew up knowing was a person of tremendous intelligence and tremendous integrity, who expressed himself musically in the most elegant ways. He also had beautiful handwriting. It was fluid, unique, and elegant—unlike any handwriting I had or have ever seen. My father was a puzzle to me when I was a child. He wasn’t at all like other fathers. I don’t remember him ever hugging me or ever telling me that he loved me. I do remember him singing “I want to hold your hand” when we would cross the street. Occasionally he sang snippets of pieces of music, and made parody patter songs, which he sometimes sang for us at dinner, but otherwise I don’t remember him singing. But I do remember him practicing. The greatest memories of my childhood were hearing him practice in the basement. What I remember most are solo Bach (Cello Suites and Sonatas and Partitas), Reger, Brahms (G major Violin Sonata on viola), Franck (Violin Sonata), and Paganini Caprices. When he practiced, he expressed love very freely. To me, love for the musical

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 41, No. 1, Spring 2025

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