I took piano lessons for eight years as a child. I loved playing the piano until my first piano teacher, a nun and music teacher at my Catholic grammar school left the convent and lost her Catholic school teaching gig. I loved my piano teacher. I loved being able to leave class for my weekly half hour lesson, walking down the silent school halls to the music room and having that one on one attention.
I am surprised I can't remember the name of my first piano teacher. I adored her and took in her focused attention like a child dying of thirst. No one paid much attention to me, not adults anyway. I had two lessons a week, one in music theory where I learned chords, scales,
rhythm, how to read music. She taught me how to transpose whole songs from one key to another. I don't remember all the stuff I learned about reading music and converting the instructions on the sheet music into how I played but I knew all that stuff then. I didn't understand why she taught me all those things until I got sentenced to lessons with my next teacher.
Mom switched me over to a cranky, stern, cold woman who gave piano lessons in her home, in a dark, poorly lit room. That piano teacher had me play music I didn't like. I quit piano lessons, after begging my mom for some time to either find me a teacher I liked or let me quit. I quit when my cold teacher announced she did a recital with all her students once a year. I liked playing recitals. My nun music teacher had always had recitals. I loved performing in front of my proud family, getting polite applause. This new gal, however, informed me I would be playing a duet and I was to play the left hand.
I kept expecting her to pull out a ruler and rap my knuckles when I displeased her, which I seemed to have a knack for. She often remarked that she was used to teaching students from the beginning and she thought I had been poorly taught until then.
I may not have impressed the new teacher with my ability. She impressed me with her ignorance of
rhythm. At the beginning of every piece, there are anotations that tell the player what key the song is written in and at what pace it should be played. If it is written in B flat, then you play different keys then if it is written in B minor, or G. Or C. My first teacher taught me this stuff. I don't know someone could really play the piano if they didn't know this stuff. If one doesn't feel the
rhythm in what they play, they aren't destined to play. The new teacher seemed oblivious to the annotations at the beginning of a piece, at least oblivious to the
rhythm the composer annotated at the beginning of a piece. She pushed me to play every piece as fast as I possibly could. Even when I pointed out to her that certain pieces were not supposed to be played as fast as she said, she insisted she was right. She even ratted me out for insubordination to my mom. And I was right. I knew how to read music, not just the notes, but the key and the pace at which it should be played. My mom loved hearing I had been insubordinate. My mom loved to accuse me of sassing her when I stood up for myself in any way.
I wish I could still read music as I once could. Now I can remember the trickier finger poses required to play some of the sharps and flats. You had to know how to move your hands to get to the next note, at the right time, in the right position. And then the next one. The new teacher never once talked to me about how to move my hands. She never reminded me of the pace. And she wouldn't let me use the pedals, even when the sheet music told the player when to use them. I don't think she knew how to read music as well as I had been taught to read it. She just pushed me to knock out her boring songs as fast as I possible could with no discernible
rhythm. I was no virtuoso but I knew the difference between 3/4 time and 2/4 time. I don't know the difference now.
If you don't know piano duets, you might not know that the left hand in a duet plays chords, not melodies. It was the melodies that I played piano to hear and feel. I didn't mind playing chords for solo pieces but no way was I going to play background music for someone assigned the melody of a duet.
I discovered a bit of my own power. I told mom I would never go back. She argued some. I brought dad into the discussion and he said if she wants to quit, let her quit. "If she's unhappy with this teacher, find another one or let her quit." Mom claimed there was no one else. We lived in Chicago. I do not believe there was no one else.
That cold piano teacher did assign me one song I liked during the months I studied with her. Another thing she did: she would only assign a few stanzas per week so it took weeks, sometimes months, to learn a whole piece. Since I didn't usually like the music she assigned, I was happy to only play small pieces of it week to week. And get this, this woman never had me play a piece all the way through. Looking back, I conclude that woman did not understand music. Not in a meaningful way. She approached playing the piano mechanistically. Music is about vibration and spirit. Not letting me play pieces all the way through was like a bird beginning to soar and then crashing into a window. Maybe not that dramatic but it was a flat, non-energizing way to play piano.
When she gave me Bach's
Minuet in C, I loved it. I can still remember the first time I tried to play it. I was instantly drawn to the music. I practiced more that week than I had since my nun piano teacher left my school. I learned the whole piece. I got fairly fluent in it. And I also felt guilty, feeling like I was doing something wrong because I had not been assigned the whole song. At my next lesson, however, I only intended to play the few assigned stanzas.
This piano teacher was not completely tone deaf. She heard instantly that I had learned the piece well. When I got to the end of the assigned stanzas, when it was time to look at the next page of music to play on, she said "You might as well play the whole thing". She spoke in a tone that made it sound like I had done something criminal. I swear to goddess she sneered when she said 'go ahead, play the whole thing." I had soared with the beauty of
Minuet in C. I had played many more hours that whole week from joy.
Minuet in C was one of the best moments playing music I ever knew. I happily concluded that I had finally shown that teacher that I could play more complicated music than she was giving me. I assumed she would start assigning me whole songs and give me better songs. I believe it was the very next week when she told me I was going to be playing the left hand in a duet for her recital. I believe it was crashing after my soaring joy from
Minuet in C that gave me the courage to stand up to my mom. And the courage to enlist my dad, something I rarely did, mostly because he was not around much and he mostly left me to my mom, being a girl. Gender roles were less flexible than they are today, even in families, at least the gender roles in my family. I had four brothers and no sister until I was fourteen. Mom and Dad both told me only I had to do lots of housework, dinner preparation on school nights and endless babysitting for their endless sons. They couldn't, they both explained to me, ask boys to do girl work.
A girl in my class at school had always studied piano with my second teacher. I was shocked one time when she played in front of me. She played a piece I knew but which was barely recognizable because my classmate played it as fast as she possibly could, as that teacher pressed her students to do. My classmate was her star pupil. Believe it or not, I was too polite to tell my classmate she played the piece too fast. And I never told the teacher she didn't seem to understand the rhythm notes on the sheet music. I told my mom who was, like most of the adults in my childhood, except a couple nuns at school, dismissive of me. I was just a girl at home, not a boy.
I was oppressed. In a way, that oppression strongly shaped who I am still.
I had also asked my mom to talk to the piano teacher about the left hand role. Mom refused, telling me I should respect my elders and trust the teacher's judgment of my ability. I had proved my ability when I played Minute in C. The teacher, however, asked why I was quitting and when mom told her I wouldn't play the left hand of a duet, she offered to give me another piece. No way. I had found my out. And dad said it was okay. In those days, dads totally ruled the universe of their family.
I missed the piano for a long time. Mom occassionally brought up more lessons, telling me as soon as she found someone, I could start up again. Now I realize Mom only looked in our parish for another piano teacher. When she said 'there was no one else' to teach me, she meant there was no other piano teacher in our parish, in our small patch of Chicago's South Side.
Someone in my apartment building plays piano. It is a student. I believe it is a Chinese girl, whose parents don't speak much English but always nod friendly to me. She's maybe 12 now.
Once at a community meeting or party or something, I remarked on the student piano player. The woman who lives next to me, also lives just across the courtyard from piano practice, and she exclaimed "It's more than a student. That's a real piano player, a skilled musician." This next door neighbor doesn't seem to like me so I did not tell her that she must not know much about piano playing if she thought the music we hear from the piano across the courtyard was a sophisticated player's work.
I don't think the girl on my floor is going to be a concert pianist. Her playing has not appreciably improved in the five years we have all lived here. Well, she's better. And she practices a lot. I have not yet heard her play a piece with soaring joy, with fluency, working the pedals at all the right points, moving in an even tempo throughout a piece. She's a student.
I hope my piano playing neighbor has a Minute in C moment.
My daughter played cello. Her school insisted all the children play in the string ensemble, take lessons. When she was in h.s. and doing a lot of dancing, with regular dance recitals throughout the year, as I sat in the audience for a recital, her favorite dance teacher sat next to me. We chatted a bit about Katie. I mentioned, for some reason, that she played the cello. Her teacher said "I didn't know she played the cello. That explains a lot about her dancing. She feels music and it shows when she moves."
I wish all the apartments in my courtyard with children had music practice floating out windows. I wish I heard many kids, many instruments practicing. There is only one person who practices music lessons in the courtyard. The Chinese girl who takes piano lessons.
Music is a way to more closely connect with the vibrations of this amazing cosmos.
I spent one semester studying in Mexico. I went with a good friend who was much more accomplished on the piano. She had continued playing through her high school years and practiced daily back home at college. When we were in Mexico, we discovered that the only bar women could go in, which was in the hotel on the main plaza, had a piano. The bartenders were happy to have her play all she wanted. I loved going along and listening. We would go in the afternoon so men did not bother us. And we would gone stoned. Very stoned.
She played Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring with the joyful fluency I had once played Minuet in C. Both Bach pieces, of course. I was humbled to hear her skill level and thrilled to hear that song played over and over. She couldn't get enough of it, so she always played the whole piece, knew it from heart.
Isn't that a lovely expression: to know something, or someone, by heart.
I had another nun buddy, a nun who had been my kindergarden teacher and then my second grade teacher when she was reassigned. I'll write about her another time.
I also was forced to take flute lessons for a couple years. My grammar school had quite an elaborate band program. Our band performed at McCormick Place, a massive event venue on the Chicago lakefront. I hated the flute and disliked my flute teacher. I guess I only disliked her because she gave me flute lessons.
Hated the flute. Loved the piano.
I guess my parents, especially my mom, placed a high priority on music lessons. I think all my siblings took some kind of music lessons.
Now I remember. My mom played the piano pretty well. The piano was just outside my bedroom. When I was still young enough to nap, I loved to have mom play "They call me little buttercup". She would sing with operatic flair, very dramatically.
The song went on: dear little buttercup, sweet little buttercup, though I will never know why. It's dear little buttercup sweet little buttercup," then something else I don't remember. I did feel loved when mom played and sang for me. I stopped feeling loved by her when I was seven. Something awful happened. I think I still have some PTSD from what happened.
