Areas of Unrest

16 July 2000 - Piano Was Never My Forte

QOTD: "Yea, though goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, chances are they will never catch up." - Steve Post

Reading: Deborah Woodworth, A Deadly Shaker Spring

Listening to: Angelique Kidjo, Fifa

I endured yet another business trip this past week. One positive aspect of that was that I finished reading Piano Lessons by Noah Adams, which led me to thinking back about my experience with music classes, in general.

The piano fell into the general category of things that my mother had always wanted as a child but there hadn't been money for and her children were not going to be similarly deprived. If I recall correctly, my grandparents actually paid for it, a form of atonement to my mother for her having been a child of the Depression. It was actually intended strictly for my brother. However, sibling rivalry was a ruling motif in my childhood and I didn't want Elliot to ever know how to do something I didn't know how to do. So I insisted on learning, too.

Once a week we went to Mr. Manassian's house for our lessons. The main thing I remember is that Mr. Manassian had a strong obsession with not letting us look at our hands when we played. So he'd hold a notebook over my hands and slap me with it when I tried to look. He also made me play duets with Elliot, which was pretty dreadful.

I have conflicting memories of why we left Mr. Manassian. There's something about wanting to learn "modern" instead of "classical" but there was also the threat of a recital. I know that I hated the idea of playing in front of anybody, although I did perform on demand at family gatherings. At any rate, we switched to Mr. Mattson at the Oceanside Music School. This was a mixed success, since his idea of popular music was circa 1940's and he had never heard of any of the Beatles' songs I wanted to play. I did learn something about chords and was able to accompany my grandfather as he sang Yiddish theatre songs. (Elliot was a better player but preferred showing off solo virtuosity.)

The lessons with Mr. Mattson lasted just one summer. In the fall, his regular students returned and we were bumped from the schedule. Elliot returned to Mr. Manassian and I quit piano. I didn't quit music lessons, though, as I was now in fourth grade and eligible to take an instrument in school. Elliot had taken clarinet the past year, but given it up. I must have been past the worst sibling rivalry, because I never considered clarinet at all. Instead, I chose the viola. Violin would have been a far more conventional choice, but I liked the greater resonance of the viola.

Viola lessons were not a great success. The fundamental problem with the viola is that you only get to play about three notes every ten measures. Well, actually, that is the second problem with the viola. The bigger problem is one that applies to strings in general - namely, they don't stay in tune for more than four minutes at a time. I endured two years of constant retuning, constant rosining of bows, and almost nothing to play. Then I quit. I hadn't entirely quit music, though, because I was still in chorus.

That I was in chorus at all had more to do with Mrs. Meyers, the general music teacher at Audubon Boulevard Elementary School, than with any innate ability. Mrs. Meyers tended to like students who took piano lessons, since we knew how to read music. She might never have admitted favoritism, but one could tell by how often one got privileges like playing the autoharp in class. (Or, even better, helping to tune the autoharp after school.) I was instructed to mouth certain notes I couldn't reach, but that was a minor barrier. Twice a week I went to school early for chorus practice and I sang joyfully (except those high notes which I mouthed) at recitals.

But Mrs. Meyers only taught elementary school music and there was no way I was going to audition for chorus in front of a stranger in junior high. There were no formal lessons then. Which, oddly, made the piano all the more appealing and I secretly practiced when nobody else was home. My best friend, Kathy, had a cousin, Johanna, who was a music student at a local college and who gave piano lessons to earn money for school. Somewhere along the way, Elliot switched from Mr. Manassian to Johanna. I eavesdropped on lessons and practiced secretly. Eventually, I persuaded my parents that I was serious about wanting to take lessons again and also signed up with Johanna. What was different about her was that she appreciated all types of music. We had classical pieces, but we also got to play Paul Simon songs and jazz and our exercises were from Bartok's Mikrokosmos, which was infinitely stranger (and, hence, more intriguing) than Hannon.

Johanna helped in ways that I didn't know I needed help. I thought of myself as hopelessly untalented. She showed me what I could do well, while not letting me avoid having to work. The most important lesson I learned was that there were things that really were hard and, that if I struggled to play eighth notes in one hand and triplets in the other, it really was complicated and my struggles didn't mean I was a musical idiot.

The lessons lasted just a couple of years, ending when Johanna married and moved to Brazil. They were the last music lessons of any type that I took. In college, I used to go to the music room in my dorm and play when I got very frustrated, working my frustrations out by sightreading through books like Classics to Moderns in the Intermediate Grades. After college, I didn't have regular access to a piano, though I had brought my father's accordion to California with me and worked through rather inept renditions of assorted folk tunes. I fooled around with electronic keyboards and tin whistles and the bowed psaltery.

But in the past several years, my musical experiences have been strictly as a listener. Reading Adams describe his struggles as an adult beginner, I longed to go to the Autumn Sonata and spend ten days working seriously on playing one piece. (No doubt what I'd pick either - it would have to be part of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition", a piece that is hard enough to require significant work, but not entirely out of range of my abilities.) I don't have room for a piano or time for regular lessons, though. But I can go and take the accordion and psaltery out of storage and play them again.

And if I ever do manage to buy a house and my mother asks what I want as a housewarming gift, I can tell her what would be just right. She gave Elliot a washer and dryer, but I can always go to the laundromat. A house just wouldn't be home without a piano.