Piano Playing - IV

I wrote about my mother's influence in my piano history but my father was thoroughly supportive. The dollar a week for my lessons meant the same to both. How inexpensive that sounds. But it wasn't. It was not a sacrifice, but I had to become an adult before I understood how poor my family -- and indeed most people in the area -- were. We did not want for basic things but we did not have a lot either. Beyond the lessons and the piano itself they gave me an extremely valuable gift.

One day a salesman appeared at our door. He had surely been given their name and address by Janette, the teacher. He was selling the Shirmer Music Library, a set of nine bound books of music for the piano. $50 remains in my mind but if it was only that, it was an amazing bargain. It must have been about 1950. $50 would have been a big gift to me, a serious dent in the month's finances. I don't remember a discussion although I'm sure there was one and I think my father made the final decision. The set of books was purchased. It has been a treasure trove; it has given me more hours of pleasure than any other gift I've ever had, I still have it and still use it. From it's pages, I learned both the music [which was not simplified although the opera transcriptions are not difficult] and I became acquainted with a variety of musicians I would not have became learned about otherwise. One of the books was full of the kind of moderately difficult, but musically light "concert" pieces young women played at home to impressed family and potential beaux.

Books 1 and 2 contain "classical" music up to the 20th century but stopping with Rachmaninoff and a few others who were born in the 19th century. The third book has lighter "classics", one book is all waltzes and other dances, one is all opera transcription, another is largely vocal music, including some sacred music. Book 9 is an afterthought with pieces that probably should have been in the other books.

At the time it was a bargain considering the prices of sheet music; today it is priceless. I still cannot play everything in these books -- some I'm not interested in playing but only a little. As I write I look across the room at those books that I've had 60 or more years and I cannot begin to calculate all that the music in them has meant to me, not just to play but to hear in concerts, on records, on the radio. These were better than any encyclopedia would have been. They were surly the best gift anyone ever bought for me.

Different lifestyle

When I was growing up nothing was more boring than family gatherings. As an adult I have not been a big family event person although I believe in marking the important points, weddings, graduations, funerals, births, of course. Being here, now, very close to Rachel who is far more a "family" person than I, clearly I'm going to be drawn into a more family oriented life. This is not a bad thing -- just different, an adjustment, not a difficult adjustment but worth noting.

Today is Mother's Day and Rachel had decided we should have a croquet afternoon in her backyard, we being her family, with Cori and husband Jason, and Joel, down from Boston -- but without Noah who had to work in the pizza place which he does on weekends. It was to be a high tea kind of event. So I made cucumber sandwiches and salmon [lox] sandwiches in proper triangles, and she made fruit salad and tea and had brownies. Best of all the weather cooperated wonderfully, it was sunny all day and warm -- breezy but the yard is somewhat sheltered. As my mother-in-law used to write in letters, copying it, of course, from society pages of small town newspapers, "A good time was had by all." Hackneyed vintage cliche, but we enjoyed the croquet game.

I remember playing croquet in the yard of the house we lived in until I was 10 and not after that. So it's fair to say I haven't played croquet for 60 years. I was not a star. But I don't take games very seriously and am never competitive -- except sometimes playing Scrabble. It was very nice to be in a secluded backyard with a group of people who are all related, with blossoming trees and plantings all around the edge. And to eat a lovely light meal and sit around and talk and also take pictures. Cori took the above picture with the automatic setting of her camera and then immediately emailed it to me. We all look happy although the guys are somewhat swalloed up by cheery tree blossoms. I look pretty happy entering a new phase of life -- in fact, it's good.

Piano Playing - III

[Clara Weick Schuman - a most amazing pianist and woman]

In the book I'm still reading, Wilson, says the question that started his piano playing and his research into the neurobiology of music making was "How can she play so fast?" about his daughter at her recital. My father's question was, "How can you find the right keys?" Wilson writes much about the brain and music but so far and from future chapter titles, doesn't deal with that question. Anyone who does a repetitive manual job probably uses the same mental abilities. Typists, for instance, may have soinernalized the QUERTY keyboard that they can't say where a certain letter is but their fingers know. Also like the speed the speed of piano playing, typists too [I've typed nearly as long as played the piano] have certain letter sequences "in" their fingers. Pianists have turns and trills, scales and arpeggios "in" their fingers. Likewise to type "the" or "and" or "ing" does not require thought.

The piano keyboard is larger, of course, and organ keyboards are astonishingly complex -- and require pedal use skills too. Musicians learn these things and never have to think about them. I've long ago stopped thinking about putting my thumb on middle C as I first learned nor do I think where my hands go on a typewriter or computer keyboard unless it's a new one with a slightly different configuration.

However all the physiology in Wilson's book is beginning to bore me. I'm skipping through much of it but taking to heart his insistence that music uses many sectors of the brain and it is not exclusively a right brain activity. All humans have the brain skills to make music, largely it's a matter of practice. And practice is just what I have to do now to regain skills I've lost. I am self-consciously aware that my neighbors can hear me so when I stop and go over and over difficult passages, I play very softly. There's a Schubert Arpeggio that is, like so much of his music, breathtakingly beautiful in places [when played correctly] but his writing is so full of incidental sharps and flats it has to be worked out carefully. The sound has to become a part of what I expect as I play. And I have to know where the musical line is going in each of the variations.

A friend, Ellen, has a keyboard in her small NYC apartment which she can play using earphones so only she hears it. That was a very wise choice; I wish I had thought of it some time ago. But I've got an ordinary piano and life-long self-consciousness about my musical shortcomings. I've always known how little I know. After studying with Wayne as an adult, I am even more aware of all I don't know and that I will never be a good pianist, just a competent one who can make herself very, very happy went melodies like so much of Schubert and Mozart actually are produced by my fingers.

AA consolation I am aware most people know less than I do about how these pieces of music are supposed to sound. Most people are easily impressed by others skills when it's something they are not proficient at. So most of my accidental audience are somewhat ignorant of my incompetence and I'm sure they are also living their lives and not paying close attention. So I tell myself: get over it already! Aren't I too old to be a shrinking violet?

Piano Playing - II

We lived in rural Southeastern Indiana. At the time this photo of my mother with me and my little brother was taken the tiny farm house had no electricity or phone, no running water and my father had horses instead of a tractor. They had waited out the worst of the Depression to get married.

My mother would probably have liked to have had a career -- although that word was not used much back then -- a job would have been fine, especially writing for a newspaper. That never happened. Like many women, being a good wife and mother was her career. She took mothering seriously. Raising a daughter meant providing at least some things she did not have and that she considered necessary for a well rounded woman. Piano playing was, perhaps, the creme de la creme. She was not very musical, my father had sawed at a fiddle but that soon dropped by the wayside.

Somehow they acquired a big old upright piano during my sixth year. Prosperity was beginning to come to the farmlands -- not much prosperity but enough that I didn't know how poor we were until much later when I had an adult perspective. No one around us had much more than we and no one had even heard of television so we weren't exposed to a richer way of life. What we saw in movies was all fantasy and magazines too. Still electrification had come and so had a telephone. Dad had sold the horses, the piano teacher in town, who began me in the first John Thompson piano book. I still remember the words of the simple first song that could be played with the right hand alone, thumb on middle C. "Off I go to music land, training ear and eye and hand."

Mom set the precedent. When I was lazy and didn't practice toward spring of that year she said, "No more lessons until you're ready to do it right." Within two years I was ready to learn although I didn't want to go back to Mrs. Creech because she had a Downs syndrome son who was large and gentle but whose difference frightened me. I didn't tell anyone because I knew it was shameful to feel that way about him.

So I went to Janette, whose last name I have forgotten, once a week for a dollar a lesson, in the next town. I worked my way through the John Thompson books. By the time I was twelve I was competent enough to play the piano at the tiny country church we attended which had only a small spinet piano on which an older woman thumped out the tried and true Baptist hymns. She was not always well and I was pressed into replacing her. The Sunday School superintendent understood I was scared but no one else in the congregation could play the piano. He told me each week what hymns would be s sung next Sunday and I took the hymnal home and practiced them all week along with my lesson.

I don't remember a conversation at home but I think my parents were proud of me. I was at first nervous enough to feel my mouth go dry, my breath shallow and my palms sweaty, When I heard myself play a wrong note I wanted to crawl inside the piano and disappear. But the congregation sang loudly -- and mostly badly but with enthusiasm. And they told me how good it was I was there to play for them. Surely my mother knew that she was giving me an important lesson in self-confidence and in responsibility to a community, to share what talents one had. Eventually I understood how badly I had played -- the left hand usually hit it's keys a split second after the right. I do remember my mother saying playing the piano would make me popular. It didn't. But it gave me much, much more important things. More about that in the future.

Piano Playing

]The Mozart family]

As often happens when a subject is on my mind, a book appeared. Not magically, really. I suppose I bought it at the thrift store but I don't remember doing so and in my move I don't remember handling it although surely it was in the handfuls I packed and unpacked from and onto my to-read shelves. I've been thinking of piano playing and yesterday my eyes fell on Frank R. Wilson's 1987 paperback, Tone Dead and All Thumbs? A book about learning to make music in mid-life. Wilson, a neurologist, says he watched his daughter at a piano recital and became so jealous of her ability he decided to take piano lessons himself. He also researched the brain/small muscle interactions which he likens to any athletic ability and which I think he's going to say, if maintained into age, will keep the brain young.

Even before my move I promised myself about an hour a day of piano playing and I have attempted to do so. Like Wilson I took piano lessons as an adult, but unlike him, I had already had lessons from 6 to 16. When both my daughters found teenage activities far more interesting than piano practice and the teacher found his time too valuable to waste on indifferent students, I let them stop and asked him to teach he real music and decent technique both of which I knew I lacked. In fact, when I first played for him his remark was "Okay, we'll start with the C major scale." You can't get more basic than that. I had dexterity and read music easily, I had historical and biographical musical knowledge but I had bad habits, was basically tone deaf with only the minimal talent Wilson says all human beings have. I knew how little I knew. Wayne and I had a lovely collaboration for 4 or 5 years. I was able to play 3/4ths of Schubert's "Wanderer Fantasy" when I had to leave -- of which I'm quite proud and most of which facility I have lost.

In the 30 years since then I have played sporadically, certainly not with discipline. I know a fair amount of the facility can be regained, slowly, patiently. If it should keep my brain young that would be a very welcome perk. Making something musical happen is reward enough. For now, however, I am embarrassed by my stumbling fingers, the sour notes, the pauses, repeats. I met neighbors in the hallway and discovered that not only the nearest can hear me but one woman who lives down at the end of the hall can hear me too -- the place has particle board walls - and ceilings too for I hear my upstairs neighbor's footsteps all too clearly, which means they hear my piano too.

What to do? I am determined to continue playing/practicing because I know the proficiency is possible. Perhaps I will never again play "The Wanderer" but there is SO much music. For now, I am choosing to play nice soft, melodic music that surely none of my neighbors can complain of except if they are musical enough to be badly bothered by sour notes and I hope the walls at least muffle some of that. I assume they won't cringe if I plod through Chopin's Waltz in a minor, or Schubert's Stanchen, or delicate early Mozart or Beethoven sonatas and maybe some favorite opera transcriptions. If I'm interrupting a soap opera well ... so be it.

We are approaching Mother's Day so in my next installment I will explain how a farmer's daughter in a home only recently electrified had the privilege of a rackety upright piano and lessons on it.

Adjustments, Large and Small

[A rainbow because it is a symbol of changing weather, thus of all change. This one was in Hwange Park in Zimbabwe after a shower at dawn.]

I've been looking forward to various changes and challenges but all adjustments fit into our days with the sense of Velcro pulling apart and being repositioned. The largest adjustments happen over time. The small ones must be fitted in and may become invisible soon. I have a mobility adjustment. This a car-centric country -- except in very big cities like NYC. So I cannot get on a bus or subway to go to a store. Some I can walk to and that's very fine, some I can walk to but then cannot carry home what I might purchase. A time will come when I must have a car. But for now I'm thinking bicycle. But don't have one yet. Also I have not yet mapped out in my mind interesting walks except to the town center. I can't decide to walk beside the river -- there is no river and the beach is a bit far [except if I have a bicycle]. So in fact, that's a big adjustment. It will take time.

A small adjustment I knew I would face is the bathtub. Knowing I was coming to a typical late 20th century tub that is barely more than a receptacle for the shower -- not the big, deep wonderful tub I had both in my NYC apartment and in the house I left before that, I took many long, lovely baths before I left. So now it will be showers like about 99% of Americans. A lost luxury -- like the fire places I left behind when I move to NYC. Losses. But there will be pluses too.

A big plus is a dishwasher and a disposal in the kitchen, which has more than enough cabinet space -- a luxury like the other closets I have which also are large and still have empty spots. It is easier, of course to adjust to the pluses than the minuses -- that must be a rule of human behavior. Comforts are so much more, well, comforting.

Like most people who leave an active job and find themselves with expanses of time, I am dealing with that adjustment. I've long had an agenda in mind that includes writing, exercise, piano playing, sewing, reading and a social life. I mentally gave myself until tomorrow to put my physical surroundings in order and as of tomorrow I'll try to fit those activities into my day. I've already begun the piano -- a pleasure I think I'll write about in another post. It's not that I"m a fine musician -- definitely not! -- but that it has always been a joy. Blogging, too, is writing so I feel I'm partly fulfilling my agenda. Reinstituting lifelong yoga which as been on hiatus for some time is also a pleasure but requires discipline. Yes, my whole agenda requires discipline but, indeed, I have practiced discipline most of my life, a good habit not to be broken. So life moves along, changing.

The Things We Have

I can't help thinking more and more about the things we own and about sentimental attachements to them -- or not. Helen comment about the previous post here that perhaps we keep so many things because of fear. I think that is true for quite a few people. But I think it is sentiment for many as well, and the sense of familiarity. A rug I had for some 40 years was beautiful to me all that time, and I could not leave it behind in NYC, but here, a friend said it would be fine in his library and I was glad to give it to him because I felt it did not fit in my current situation -- which includes complete new carpeting throughout the apartment. Comes a time when sentiment fades like the pangs of a heartbreak. Letting go is not so hard. I think I gave away about 2000 books. I knew I was never going to read them again -- there are too many I want to read and new and more appear all the time and I truly do remember most of the ones I've read.

Perhaps this is a perception that comes with growing older, whatever fear was earlier no longer seems important in the same way the sentiment faded. In a forum of women who are partially my contemporaries some have mentioned moving to smaller homes or to RVs, and having to dispose of many possessions. They speak of a cleansing, a refreshing of perception. I think that is true. A lightness as one disposes of burdens of the past Less furniture to dust, fewer things to care for, tend to, look after. More time for the interior matters. Then too, energy is not as great so we want to use our energy in ways that are important to us. I actually have some bookshelves that hold only travel mementos! I treasure them. Perhaps when we are in an autumn of life we experience a different kind of spring when we unburden ourselves; it's not all dumping the dead leaves, it's a renewal as well. That's what this new move should be, another fresh start, a new garden to watch grow, different, of course, but change and growth. This is not the usual perception but it does not seen contradictory to me.

Thus the picture above, taken my last day in NYC when Rachel and I went to Riverside Park garden to eat our sandwiches beside the beautiful community garden that I've watch grow many dirferent years. And now, somewhat further north, I get to watch spring bursting out all over again -- the great patches of forsythia sunshine, the flowering trees, the patches of daffadils and narcissis. And this is only the beginning for every summer when I have visited I exclaimd over and over about the beauty of the flowers.