The Battle of Stuttgart

Almost every night my wife and I settle in with our books and read.  It is something we have always done; it’s a release from the work that we do during the day.  She is a tax accountant, and I am a piano teacher.  Both of us find that we spend most of the day deep in thought, working at 130% capacity to do justice to our clients and students.  Reading allows the brain to slip to another track.

A couple of nights ago I came across a phrase in my book that referred to the sounds and sights of war.  I experienced the most incredible series of images, all in a matter of 3 seconds.  The images were clear, vivid, and worthy of a Hollywood director.  I provided the sound track, thank you!  Below, I have written the scenario, as best I can relate it, with “flashbacks” intact.

I am on the familiar stage of Howard Auditorium at Louisiana Tech University, in Ruston Louisiana.  I love performing there.  It is a real concert hall, with proscenium stage, balcony and carved plaster for decoration.  The piano sits midway between the two chambers of pipes for the concert organ.  The curtain behind me is a deep blue, one of Tech’s colors, and to the best of my recollection, it does not sport the ugly Bulldog face of its mascot.  I love looking straight ahead at the round school clock; it is reassuring to me.  The clock has been there through every one of my many recitals on this state, and it has become almost a friend.  The time never registers on my mind; I think it functions like the focal point that Lamaze mothers choose when they’re in labor.  The clock helped me to NOT think about the extraneous.

I do hear everything that comes from the audience, but that just becomes part of my “script”.  I believe it has always been important to occupy my conscious mind during a performance.  One teacher I heard recently says that if we don’t occupy our conscious during performance, it will cause trouble.  I keep mine busy with images that bring my music to life… for me, and I hope, for my audiences.  On this wonderful Sunday afternoon, I heard a baby cry; I love that baby.  I have convinced myself over the years that it was my youngest daughter, who would have been at the recital.  She has never been shy about her utterances.  The wonderful part is that she let out her bellow during the “dead baby” section of the Sonata I was playing.

I guess that got your attention?  Yes, I had a section of this grand piece that I thought of as a cemetery, probably in Europe (France, I think) with long rows of white crosses.  This was a World War I graveyard; that was a brutal war that counted many civilians among its casualties.  The saddest part of my cemetery was where they buried the countless babies… the innocents that never even had a chance to object to war, or poverty or the cruel twists of fate that might have made up their lives.  I’m pretty sure that Cheryl, my daughter, helped me to convey that deep despair during that performance.  I did perform the Sonata of Charles Griffes again, but I never captured the emotion quite like that.

Charles Griffes was a remarkable American composer.  He spent four formative years from 1903-1906 at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin. He loved Germany, and one particular German composer, Konrad Wölcke, helped Griffes through rough times after Griffes’ father died in 1905. Wölcke even loaned Griffes money to continue his studies.  World War I was traumatic for Charles Griffes; he was an American patriot, but he had personal relations and friendships with Germans, and Germany, and the evils of war broke his heart.  His Piano Sonata of 1918 bristles with sounds of bombs and rockets, tension and trauma, and in one particular section, the wide-open sound of still and loneliness convey to me everything about war that is both fascinating and hateful.

I have never fought in a war, but I have a somewhat personal relationship to a different war that Charles Griffes did.  My father and several uncles fought in World War II.  One of my uncles fought in North Africa, against Field Marshall Rommel, and another was captured during the Battle of the Bulge, and incarcerated in a Nazi prison camp.  He made it out.  As a result, I’ve heard enough stories to enliven my fascination.  Uncle Reub gave me a Nazi armband, an insignia from a German officer’s hat, and a copy of Mein Kampf in German.  I interviewed Uncle Slug about his prison camp, and wrote a paper in high school.  I am possibly one of the few that read “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” while still in high school… twice!

I tease people who ask about my Army experience; I tell them that I fought the Battle of Stuttgart!  I did live in the Stuttgart area for almost two years.  I worked on the base that Field Marshall Rommel used as his administrative headquarters.  Four kilometers away was Panzer Kaserne, where Rommel’s tanks were housed.  The underground tunnel between Patch Barracks and Panzer Kaserne was sealed in 1945, flooded by the British and killing all who hid in the tunnel.  One night, late, as I was doing preventative maintenance in Bldg. 1 (Rommel’s living quarter, when he was at “home”) I know I saw a ghostly apparition walking down the staircase.  An MP told me that I was not the first to see the ghost of Rommel’s mistress.

I really knew I was in the Battle of Stuttgart however, when I drove home one day and found a sign taped to my door.  “Warnung vor schlusswaffen gebrauchen.”  Loosely translated, have your weapons ready when entering.  It turned out that my landlord had recently been released from a mental ward.  He sometimes transported himself into an era when blackout curtains and fear dominated the town of Stuttgart.  He had seen a friend of mine in army fatigues, and it triggered a little hysteria.  The next morning I was very convincing in explaining to a Frau Niebergall of the US Army Housing Office that my family, with one-year-old twins in tow, would be moving to another house.  The traumas of war seem to live on.

I’m once again on the stage of Howard Auditorium, this time in a recital of two-piano music; there is such a wealth in this literature, and it is too rarely touched.  With twin 9 foot Steinways to bring the music to life, my partner and I opened with En blanc et noir, by Claude Debussy.  Written in 1915, Debussy insisted the work was not a comment on the First World War, but since virtually all of his correspondence from this period indicates a near obsession with the subject, it’s hard to imagine this music without WWI as a backdrop.  There are suggestions of bugle calls and quiet military drum rhythms.  The second movement, dedicated to a French army officer that had been killed in battle is overpoweringly sad, filled with the sounds of drum beats, chimes, and out of the silence comes a powerful quote from the Lutheran hymn, A Mighty Fortress is Our God.  I can’t but help think that if that movement could bring chills and tears to the performers that day, the audience left unmoved.  A war which was over before my father was born, came back to inspire me to a powerfully satisfying musical experience.

Three seconds to evoke all of this.  I swear this to be true.  The images and experiences of life, and those of music, seem inseparable to me.  I hope they will always be thus.

MY HEARTFELT THANKS

As piano teachers, we spend great amounts of time… giving.  We meet so many different personalities, so many minds, during our workweek that we almost feel as if our “gears” were being stripped.  I have longed for the Vulcan Mind-Meld that Mr. Spock used so effectively in the Star Trek series.  Lacking that, I try as best I am able, to find where each student is, meet her there, and take her to the place she longs to be.  It’s fascinating, invigorating and exhausting work.  My colleagues and I attend workshops, recital, concerts and more extended conferences for our transfusion of “new blood”.  I am a confessed convention junky.

The MTNA Conference is one that I always anticipate.  It comes at the end of March every year.  Besides giving my mind and soul a refreshing, I look forward to one or two moments of transcendence…a workshop that gives me something totally new to chew on, or expresses old truths in new ways.  I am never disappointed, and sometimes I stumble into a session that underlines why I even bother to get up each morning.  And of course, the end of the Conference means the real beginning of spring for me.

I find that I am very protective of my time in general, and more so when I’m at MTNA.  I face the choices of several workshops for each hour with anguish, because often I would like to attend more than one.  Over the years, I’ve learned to deal with it, but it is never easy.  I like to find sessions that are different, possibly tangential to piano teaching and piano playing.  This year, with trepidation, I chose a session that seemed intriguing.  Its topic was Performance Medicine, a relatively new field related to the well-developed Sports Medicine field.  They promised a new collaborative endeavor that would bring Performance Medicine, the treatment for musicians with small muscle and joint injuries, to the level of it’s older and smarter cousin.

I knew this session had the possibility of disappointment.  It could be laden with medical lingo, filled with concepts of physiology and anatomy that were beyond my comprehension.  I knew I couldn’t WASTE an hour, but it beckoned to me.  I got there early.  Carrying my weird, flat muffin (it looked like someone stepped on it) and my ubiquitous coffee, I approached the door.  There was a girl pacing in the hallway; she seemed to move in a slightly jerky, unbalanced manner, but she had such an engaging smile!  She asked me where I got my coffee, and I told her.  But something in that meeting lingered; I didn’t know what it was.  I knew it was not a sexual attraction, but a sensual attraction, something mysterious she projected.  I soon forgot about her, and watched the huge group of presenters setting up their multi-media. 

The session proceeded on schedule, and it was very interesting.  There seems to be not only a promise of something happening with Music Medicine, but an extremely vibrant group of experts in many fields that are collaborating to make it a reality.  Just when I was settling in, the group leader said it was maybe time for a little musical interlude.  I was pleasantly surprised to see “the girl” introduced as an opera singer with experience in roles throughout Europe.  She moved, almost imperceptibly in her strange gait, across the stage, and proceeded to deliver a wonderful aria.  She was greatly gifted, and one of the best singers I have heard in a long time.  Still, it seemed strange that she was appearing in this particular session.

The group leader addressed that very question when the aria was done; he told us that within the last year she was the recipient of a bilateral lung transplant!  I don’t know if you have ever heard a collective gasp before, but it is very dramatic.  This singer had the breath control of Pavarotti, with no signs that she had ever had any related problems.  It seemed that this might be the worst thing that an opera singer could be faced with.  She had undergone a successful operation, and a year of rehabilitative therapy with several members of the panel presenting the Performance Medicine workshop.  That got our attention.  These professionals not only were determined to make Performance Medicine as advanced and prevalent as Sports Medicine, they were capable of a rehabilitative miracle.

With the information given through the workshop, I was certain that I had chosen well.  So many musicians have been incapacitated with overuse syndromes of one kind or another.  At least two major professional concert pianists have had career ending problems with their hands; tendonitis and carpal tunnel problems are minor compared to dystonia and other debilitating skeletal and muscular problems.  The world of medicine has seemed to ignore these maladies, while professional and collegiate sports personnel have some of the best restorative and rehabilitative treatments known.

It wasn’t until the end of this session that I fell in love with the session itself, and the little opera singer.  She rose to say a few words to us, knowing that we were 90% piano teachers, and 10% vocalists.  As she struggled to keep herself composed, she described her yearlong therapy.  When she began trying to sing after her bilateral transplant, she couldn’t get a sound out.  Years of study in private and in college, and years of professional experience in operatic roles seemed to be worthless.  She worked with her therapists, tried to remember the many vocal lessons she had completed, and nothing seemed to work.  She wanted to give up.

She said she wanted the piano teachers assembled before her to know that they had her supreme gratitude for a life saved.  “I was a terrible piano student”, she said.  “I loved my piano teacher, and she also was my first voice teacher.”  She went on, “I never worked as hard as she did.  But I want you to know that during my therapy, when it was too hard, and I wanted to give up, it was my piano teacher and the things she really taught me, that saved me.” 

“What I learned after all those years is what all of you teach now, to young students like me.  Self discipline, the spirit to never give up until it is finished, the mental calluses that allow a person to repeat and repeat and repeat.  Voice lessons did not get my voice back, but what my piano teacher gave me did, and I don’t have her to thank anymore, but I have all of you.  Please accept my heart-felt thanks for what you do everyday, even when it seems to you like you are getting nowhere with that particular little boy or girl.  When you wonder why you still teacher into your 70’s, and when you feel the pain of every student that quits lessons, remember that you never know how much you changed someone.”

Let me tell you that the sounds of collective sobbing are much more musical than a collective gasp.  I now feel good about going back to my students.  I’m refocused on what I might accomplish.  And I won’t forget the singer with the engaging smile and the need for a little morning caffeine.

Memory Triggers: Bach's Italian Concerto (first movement only)

The experts say that smells are one of the more powerful triggers to memory; if you have ever experienced nostalgia, chances are that a smell… apple pie, cookies, rich dark chocolate… might propel you to a fond memory.  Or in Iowa, possibly the smell of a pig farm, baking in the summer sun, might bring thoughts of chores, or state fair FFA exhibits.

Of course for me, pieces of music are a powerful trigger.  One of my high school students came in this morning with the first movement of the Italian Concerto by J.S. Bach.  I was overwhelmed with memories associated with this piece.  It was an important piece because it is still associated with my first college Juries.  All of my piano teacher-friends will know exactly what Juries are; and, yes, they are as scary sometimes as confronting a regular jury in a courthouse.  But, let me tell you about the Italian Concerto.

I have always loved to practice.  The only cajoling that I remember at home was to remember to play certain piece that would relieve me of chores around the house, and to “not practice too early” when people were sleeping.  When I discovered the grand piano, my love of practice transformed into an almost-on-steroids event.  I didn’t have many chances to play on a grand before college, so when I arrived at the University of Northern Iowa’s music building and discovered grands in the practice rooms, I thought I might be in heaven.  The real dream was yet to come true.

Explorer that I am, I soon discovered a little door in the band room; a person had to duck to go through it, and I found that it led to the main auditorium, where a 9-foot Steinway resided.  The door had no lock, and I could walk through a short tunnel from the band room to the stage.  It was dark, but I didn’t care.  I tucked this knowledge away for later.

One night, after practicing until almost 11:00 (when the building closed), I heard some very interesting sounds coming from the band room.  Jazz Band 1 was rehearsing; I knew nothing of jazz.  My high school was in a town of 2000, and we were lucky to have a good band director.  There was no budget for a jazz band.  The sound entranced me.  I found a balcony in the band room, where I could sit and listen.  It was so interesting to hear them rehearse.  But more interesting was to see Campus Security come through the music building to lock up at 11:00 pm.  The jazz band was allowed to stay, as they rehearsed from 10:00 to midnight.  Aha!  An idea was born.

The next night I went up to the balcony to listen; when Security came through, I simply laid down on the floor of the balcony.  When the jazz band left, I waited until it was totally dark.  I then went through the little door, to the stage, and found the beautiful concert grand waiting for me.  I was in the process of preparing pieces for my first Jury, so I had music prepared and almost memorized.  I found the lights, opened the piano, and proceeded to spend the next hour in the concert hall, playing proudly on the Steinway.  I felt like a concert artist.  I basked in the glow of my imaginary audience, and I simply stunned them all with my masterful performance of Bach’s Italian Concerto (first movement only… remember, I was a freshman!)

I spent many nights practicing in the concert hall.  Years later, when the janitor retired (he and I had become close buddies), I found out that he knew what I was doing all along.  I’m assuming that a piano nerd from Jesup, Iowa didn’t seem like too much of a threat to the security of UNI.  But my story of the Italian Concerto is not finished, dear reader.  Much is to be revealed.

When I approached my first Jury, I became increasingly frantic.  The whole piano faculty and the organ professor would all sit and listen to me play the music I had prepared that semester, and then they would give me my grade.  I was insane with fear.  I remember the night before my jury, practicing the Italian Concerto (first movement only) in the auditorium for hours on end.  I was very tired, but I persisted. 

I only went back to my dorm room when I jerked, woke up, and found myself STILL playing Bach.  I didn’t know that it was possible to play in your sleep, but I’m here to tell you that it can happen.  I felt ready.  I felt energized.  Right before the jury appointment, as I was walking down the hallway to my sure doom, I made a quick pit stop in the men’s restroom and divested myself of lunch.  I remember trying to vomit quietly; if an upperclassman had found me in that situation, I would have been too humiliated to live another day.

When it was my time, I walked onto the state of the main auditorium, where the Jury was assembled, seated behind a long table.  They looked so evil to me; on the end was the oldest member of the Jury, the teacher of one of my friends.  I was sure he knew every note of the Italian Concerto by memory.  I could imagine the tally marks he would make, as one note after another fell to his superior, evil mind. 

My teacher had the most deadpan look on his face.  Where was the stiff, but endearing smile that always greeted me, as he ushered me onto his piano bench for yet another lesson.  He was my only friend in the world, and he seemed to have forgotten that.  I knew I was condemned when I saw Dr. Joyce Gault, there in the middle of the table.  She was tall and gaunt; she was scowly; she was the head of the keyboard division.  Oh my God!  It no longer mattered that we were on my turf, in my auditorium, with my Steinway 9 foot concert grand.  They, SHE, wanted me dead!

Then it happened; one of the most significant events of my life was about to be interrupted by fate.  My stage, and my piano, had to share space with the pipe organ console.  It was huge, and since it shared the stage, it had to be able to be moved from backstage to the stage extension for performances.  Since pipe organs need air for their bellows, this organ was fitted with an “umbilical cord” that screwed into the stage floor.  This umbilical supplied the organ with its air supply electrically.  There were several holes in the stage floor where the umbilical could be attached; they were supposed to be covered by metal plates.  Someone, probably the evil organ professor, forgot to put the metal plate back in place after they finished with the organ.

As I walked toward the grand piano for my first jury, my foot slipped into the hole in the stage.  I tried to act like nothing had happened.  I subtly pulled my foot up, but in trying to hide my problem, I twisted, and my foot became helplessly stuck.  I could no longer hide my anguish, so I bent over and tried to see what the problem was.  I just couldn’t get it out.  I prayed for the angel of death to take me away.  Instead, I got Joyce Gault, feared leader of my Jury.  She bent over and tugged on my leg.  I knew this couldn’t be happening.  It had to be a vestige of a dream I was having, as I slept and continue to play the Italian Concerto by J.S. Bach (first movement only).

But somehow Dr. Gault lost a little of her “snap” as she smoothed her dress and mounted her perch at the table.  We had somehow bonded, she and I, and I no longer felt she was seeking my demise.  My performance of the Italian Concerto was adequate.  I think I would have done better with more sleep (sans piano).  We won’t talk about my (almost) Victor Borge impression of scale playing, where I was instructed to play an E Major scale, 4 octaves, in 16^th notes.  THAT would have been much better if I would have started the scale in a place where there were four octaves to complete it.  As it turned out, my right hand sort of ran off the end of the piano, seeking keys that were not there.  I recovered, finished the downward journey of E Major, and was relieved when I was dismissed.  I’m thinking that the Jury might have been relieved also.  I wonder if any of them ever told this story to anyone.  Probably not.  My current student will have a much less eventful, a much less interesting life with J.S. Bach’s Italian Concerto.  He’ll be doing all three movements, by the way.

Mr. Paul Humeston, the GOOD Teacher

I’ve been thinking about teachers quite a bit over the past couple of weeks.  I have to admit that, as a teacher, I’m conflicted about what I really think about teachers in general.  But maybe it’s not really teachers, but learning that has me torn.  You might posit that teachers and learning must go together.  I wonder.

This reflection was prompted by the recent death of, perhaps, my favorite teacher of all time.  He was a delight to my heart and soul while I was in high school.  I know both my sisters remember him with the same smiles that I do.  Mr. Humeston, never Paul, was an English teacher.

Many of my friends will wonder how it is that an English teacher… not a music teacher, a piano teacher… would be my favorite.  That does surprise me, too; I think it goes to the essence of what makes a teacher, and especially, what makes a good teacher.  God, I hope I get to that place someday! 

One of the “blogs” that I follow had a question posted last week, long after I started to ponder this thought:  What makes a teacher a GOOD teacher? Why did this teacher have such an influence on you, and why did you feel about her/him the way you did?  “Ah”, I thought; “that question answers MY questions… I think.”

I’d like to give you a little back-story here.  The following are (hopefully) short descriptions of my memories of the most notable teachers I have had.  I save Mr. Humeston for last, like a dessert-teacher.

My first piano teacher was sweet, and she loved me.  She was very eccentric, but I kind of warmed up to that, as I might not always walk with the other ducks, myself.  I think I was her best student.  When she died, her sister made sure that I received bound books of music she had owned and used.  That was very special; I even have her diplomas from the American Conservatory in Chicago.  She studied with Leo Sowerby!

I had two different band directors in school; the first, whom I preferred, left after my freshman year to direct a junior high band in another town.  I think he preferred teaching beginners to rehearsing a high school band for concerts and contest.  He made me “first chair” tuba player my freshman year.  A senior and a junior tuba player might have been described as disgruntled.  He liked my tuba playing, but didn’t really look at me as a leader in the band; I had some maturing ahead of me!

My second band director was simply a jerk.  He smirked and manipulated.  I think he could tell I didn’t like him.  He didn’t stack up to the previous man.  I was still his first chair tuba player, but that didn’t prevent me from disliking him.  I remember that my sister played French horn in the band and was the catcher for the Jesup girl’s softball team.  The softball team had a game at the same time as the band had a rehearsal.  The band director threw her out for going to a GAME and missing a REHEARSAL!  Jerk!

I only vaguely remember the choir director while I was in high school.  I mostly accompanied; I played for the mixed choir, and (dream of all dreams) the girl’s glee club.  One of my friends, a girl, but not a girlfriend, was the other accompanist.  The director liked both of us.  We could sight-read, and follow his beat.  I mainly remember going directly to the Superintendant and telling him that I felt mighty uncomfortable with this choir director giving this girl “breath support lessons” and putting his hot little hand on her diaphragm.  This was back in 1964, so maybe I was ahead of the curve on that one.

I had two piano teachers in undergraduate school.  What I remember most about the teacher I had for three years was his most usual comment after I had played for him: “That’s growing!”  One time when I had marked some things on my score that I thought were particularly ingenious, he looked at them, accurately told me what they looked like to him, and said, “Hmm!”  That was that.  After I graduated, I would sometimes go back to the college to see how it had changed.  I always looked him up, and he always smiled warmly.

The other teacher I had in college was a one-year replacement while my applied teacher finished his doctorate.  I think I learned more from him, but I had a miserable year of performing.  It wasn’t his fault; I was spending way too much time on a girl friend.  When my “real teacher” came back with his DMA from Northwestern, the replacement seemed to think I should stick with him.  I consider myself quite loyal, so I went back to the first teacher.  It could have been a toss-up.

My graduate teacher was a major talent.  He performed, recorded, and was dedicated to the piano.  I learned quite a bit.  He must have known me, because his parting words, when he knew I was to become a college professor myself, were, “Don’t try to change everything at once!”  Well, another story, but suffice it to say I should have listened better.

I had countless other teachers along the way.  Most of the teachers I remember were music teachers.  None of them were the best teachers.  I have not tried to model myself after them.  Sometimes I think I might have learned independently of them.  While I have a deep-seated belief that teachers should teach, I know the emphasis has to be on what the student learns.  Maybe teachers set the conditions for learning, and expect the students to embrace those conditions.  If that is the whole thing, then it seems that teachers are not necessary for the curious.  What is it that Mr. Humeston did that makes me remember him the way I do?

Maybe it’s nothing he DID.  He liked me; he read my creative writing out loud to the class.  Of course that felt good, and I learned that there was something I could do aside from play the piano.  But it was more than that.  Mr. Humeston had a way of making most of his students feel like they were his favorites!  And I’ve figured out what set him apart from my other notable teachers.  It was never about him; it was always about his students.  He had nothing to prove to us, and he didn’t try to exercise power over us, either with grades or threats of inclusion/exclusion.  His smile was genuine, and he probably went home and told his wife about each and every one of us; because we were important.  Teachers can’t fake that, especially with students.  They see through, even if they can’t articulate what they see.

A Lesson Learned

{This is a re-post from an earlier NOTE on Facebook}

When I begin a new year, I always remember Virginia Taylor. Like many students, I knew Virginia for a period of years, and then she moved on. I heard from her only one time after she “graduated”, when she wrote an extremely nice letter to my Dean, extolling my virtues (such as they are). However, in my first meeting with Virginia, “my virtues” were still on summer vacation.

I was in my studio, practicing up a storm; and the knock came at my door. I have to admit that when I’m deep into my own mind, I have great difficulty changing gears, and talking to a real human. I schedule a little time in between my practicing and lessons, so I can be totally focused on the student for their lesson. When I’m interrupted, God only knows how I appear to the person at the door; probably not very virtuous.

Virginia was standing there; being used to late teens and early twenty-somethings in a college setting, I wasn’t prepared for the seventy year old lady confronting me. Big smile, extended hand; I just stared, at a loss. It was early August, and I was used to having the music building almost to myself. Roaring through the Liszt Sonata in B Minor, limbs flailing, and heart soaring. After all, that was one of my life’s dreams, to play the Liszt that had appeared so intimidating when I was in school.

“I just retired from 35 years of teaching over in Simsboro, and I promised myself piano lessons. I’ve heard you take new students”. Virginia even knew about the new Louisiana law that gave senior citizens the right to take any college course for $10 per quarter. She needed my permission on her registration. I didn’t tell her "no", but I’m sure it was obvious that I was talking all around her idea, not addressing her promise to herself. I had explained all about the requirements, the juries (performances students were required to give to piano faculty); she just nodded. She seemed really nice, an intelligent lady who had taught for over three decades, so I signed.

When we got started, I discovered that mostly she had played hymns in her Baptist Sunday School; she couldn’t read very well, and her technique looked to be mostly self-taught. I thought her chances were pretty dim. But I didn’t know Virginia. She cut her fingernails; she learned and practiced her scales; she attended my performance classes, and… she cried in her lesson before it was time for her to perform for the other students. She was so scared, and she really had done every other thing I asked.

By the end of the first school year, Virginia was playing in Performance Class; she had played on Recital Hour for the whole student body of music majors. I still had not required a jury of her, but it was time for her to take a jury, or she wouldn’t be admitted to the next level of piano. So, we prepared, and she decided that it might just work.

It was about then that she asked if I would come to her senior group at church, to perform for them. I had heard about that group. They were all retired, and their butts never saw the seat of a rocking chair! They were a group focused on keeping the bodies and brains of seniors engaged. I loved that! I knew I’d perform for them. But, I had a (almost virtuous) thought. “Virginia,” I said. “I’ll play for your group, if you will.” We worked up a short program of literature she had mastered over the past year. We even decided to do a duet together for her group.

Virginia did so well! It was just the right balance of friend and the offering of her talent, and her hard work, and the determination the she had. I realized that she never would have been there if it had been up to me. That was probably not the first time I learned from one of my students, but…I still think of Virginia when I begin again, every fall.

Ear Worm

Anyone that has been around me for any length of time knows that I am always either humming or beating a rhythm on various and sundry body parts.  This latter only is a problem when the body happens to be someone else’s body.  I’ve often told my wife that she makes a wonderful percussion ensemble!  I just about always have music happening in my mind.  This has even caused discord when I have simultaneously heard music playing through speakers when other music was playing in my mind.  OK… I’ll admit to a certain degree of "weirdicity".

Recently, one such earworm has boiled over into a compulsion to create.  The Middle School choir that I accompany twice a week is preparing an arrangement of the spiritual, Joshua ‘Fit the Battle of Jericho; as I drive back to my studio each Monday and Wednesday, I have been singing the tune for myself; after a few sessions of this, I have begun improvising variations to the tune, the words to the extent that I have a whole arrangement tucked up in my head.  I hear soloists, back-up singers, and of course, a trumpet.

Although not an everyday experience, I have done this before.  I wrote one piece as I was driving from central Iowa to Chicago.  When I arrived at my uncle and aunt’s apartment, I clamored for scratch paper, so I could write down the basics; I knew if I didn’t I would forget the whole thing.  And, then there is the choral piece I wrote while mowing the lawn.  At one time I would have said these incidents were a mystery to me; I’ve now decided that it really has to do with the war & peace between the “right: and “left” brains.  When I am forced into a left-brain mode, my right brain fights for supremacy.  It seems to feel the pressure of the back burner, and if ignored, it finds a way to disrupt meals, sleep and any waking moment… until it gets the attention and control that it seems to require.

Before I explain further, I have to say that I thank up to a hundred thousand hours of piano practice for the fact that I can use both a right and left-brain.  I believe I was born mostly right-brained.  The right brain is the intuitive, creative part of the human mind.  The unfortunate fact is that discipline is lodged in the left-brain.  If both spheres are not developed, even superior creativity might never come to fruition.  In his wonderful book, With Your Own Two Hands, Seymour Bernstein discusses how the act of practicing the piano changes a person.  The creativity of a dominant left-brained person can be unleashed through hours of good piano practice.  For me, my unruly right-dominant brain was plenty creative and imaginative; what I needed was the logical and disciplined side that was mostly dormant.  Bernstein makes a very interesting case for the amazing results of piano practice.  I quite agree.  I have learned to accomplish things that those who knew me in my tender years never would have imagined for me.

I am eternally grateful for the activation of my left side.  When pressed, I can be quite logical; I have learned discipline, although it often seems totally bland, robotic and unimaginative.  When I need it, I can call it up.  It’s just that my right brain wants to stay in charge, with assistance from the left.  That, unfortunately, is not always possible.  Since September I have been forced into allowing my left-brain to dominate too often.  Piano teachers MUST be organized.  Getting a school year launched successfully means organized planning, and thinking ahead well into the future.  It requires familiarity with deadlines & schedules.  And we have to command those traits well enough to teach our protégés.  I have been busy planning repertoire, recitals and contest engagements for most of my students, as well as ushering several students through the necessary, but often boring task of studying for music theory exams.

Usually when I am overwhelmed by left-brain requirements, I satisfy my right brain by practicing, and playing the piano.  When a “brain emergency occurs”, the right brain has a tendency to emulate a protestors mugging for the CNN cameras.  This is one of those times.  I have been busy scheduling the timeslots for the Junior Festival, sponsored by our local club of the National Federation of Music Clubs.  Each student gets scheduled for a specific time to perform two pieces that will be critiqued by a judge.  This is a very positive experience for the student, as they take an opportunity to challenge themselves to perfection… to reach in to their knowledge and musical sensibilities to play beautifully for another human being.  This takes great focus and poise, and is not something that most children experience regularly in the 21^st Century. 

It might seem like creating a schedule for this event would not be too taxing to someone with advanced degrees; unless you consider that there are multiple rooms, with students performing on multiple levels of difficulty.  Also, the times of siblings and carpool members have to match closely.  And then, there are the requests that some students need to perform in the morning while others need the afternoon.  One mother still thinks that her request to carpool her two sons, while giving one a morning time and the other an afternoon, is completely reasonable.  The schedule is further complicated for those really wonderful students who play more than one instrument, or enter more than one event for that day.  It is like a giant, human jigsaw puzzle.  The schedule required every cell of my left-brain.

I have to say that even though this is a demand of our more logical natures, and it seems that an objective way to accomplish the task would be possible, I felt my right brain protesting.  I was tempted to look back at the way I did it last year.  You could save time, I said to myself.  And yet, I couldn’t do more than open the 2010 spreadsheet.  It looked so foreign that I closed it, and decided that I was certainly more intelligent in 2011, and I would just invent a better way.  I think I moved through the various permutations of creating this schedule in the most right brained, intuitive and creative way possible.  I’ll never be able to write down the process, just as I find it impossible to write down a recipe for making jambalaya.

But the real triumph of the right brain is in the way that it asserts the creativity of a full arrangement of Joshua ‘Fit the Battle of Jericho.  I will create this arrangement.  It will be a real, tangible creation; and it will have been created to spite the left-brain, in all of its presumption.  I can hardly wait.

“What’s He Like Today?”

I can distinctly remember the awe that I felt when I first realized that my grad school piano teacher was practicing at 11:00 pm.  I learned, after inquiries, that he worked from 6:00 to midnight frequently, after teaching all afternoon.  He was a consummate artist that had set about recording all of Alexander Scriabin’s piano works, including the mystical “Prometheus:  Poem of Fire”.  I was proud to attend a historical performance, with my teacher at the piano.  This is the first and only realization of Scriabin’s fantastic conception.  See http://www.lowellcross.com/artmusic/prometheus/

My memories of, and respect for, this man, as well as my undergraduate teachers, pose an impossible model for me.  There was to be no easy answer, no short cut, and no prescription for my becoming an effective piano teacher.  Like most of the things I have learned to do, I had to make it up as I went along; I couldn’t be James Avery.

I have never known exactly how my students view me; I have had glimpses over the years.  I remember two students passing… one just finishing a lesson, the other ready to begin.  “What kind of mood is he in today?”  That was a shock.  Mood?  Do I have a mood that affects a lesson?  Does this mean that sometimes I’m grouchy at my students?  I didn’t think so; I’ve never quite found out.  I’ve usually had good relationships with students, and I think they’ve always felt comfortable in my studio.  I don’t remember wondering if James Avery or John Holstad were in good or bad moods.

Recently I’ve been working very hard with an 11 year-old boy; he has inherent talent, an obvious love of the piano, and a developing prowess for performance.  He has had the luxury of having his mom as a practice partner since he began lessons.  She has been his discipline, and now it is time for him to take the lead.  The problem is, he is having a hard time doing that.  I work during his lessons to focus him on what needs to be done on each piece, in a broad sense; he seems to understand the scope of the work that needs to be accomplished.  I ask him to become more aggressive in his approach to conquering his music, rather than waiting for “further instructions”.  All the while, I feel I have to remind him of his abilities, his accomplishments, and the fact that I recognize all the good things he has done.  How do we teach initiative, self-reliance, or the strong desire to achieve?  I told him yesterday that I get tired when I feel that I am pushing him up hill. 

Then I had a brilliant idea.  “Stick around for a minute at the end of your lesson today; ask the next student what I’m like during his lessons.”  “Well,” he said; “you’re probably just like you are with me.”  I told him that I was a totally DIFFERENT teacher with each student.  His face showed surprise, or maybe confusion.  When he probed the next “victim” for Wednesday, he got quite an earful!  “Rory gets quite agitated sometimes; he will sometimes yell out, ‘YES!’ or more often, ‘No, No, No!  You’re killing me’!  I’ve seen him jump up in the air, pace around the piano bench, get down on his knees and BEG me to do it again… but with my brain engaged this time!” 

“Really??” said the younger student.  I thought maybe he was confused, and my “brilliant idea” was falling flat.  Then the older student saved the whole thing; “He only does that when he thinks you’re getting better, and he only does that when he thinks you’re capable of more.”  Oh, yeah!  How did he know my whole teaching philosophy?  I’m much more calm with those students that try hard, but just aren’t ready to achieve.  But, when they are moving, changing, evolving, becoming… I become, shall we say, vociferous!?

Lest you begin to think I am that “warm and fuzzy” piano teacher, I have to share my Memory of the Year.  I allow one major reminiscence each year to myself; I would rather focus on what’s coming, but this has become a tradition in my own mind; so, here goes…

I am remembering Sophie (name changed to protect the not-so-innocent), a married graduate student.  She had studied at a different university for her undergraduate degree; Sophie never missed a chance to tell me how much she adored her undergraduate teacher, how well they got along, and how much progress she had made studying with him.  In my mind, I conjured up this amazing god-like pedagogue, somehow thrust into the bowels of a Louisiana university… a teacher with whom I could never compare.  OK, so I’ll just do my best!  I have always required my graduate students to work from memory in each lesson.  I do not think I need to Master of Music candidates reading piano repertoire for me.  At first, Sophie seemed to come well prepared, even if the quantity of work seemed to be less than I expected.  She was fairly flexible during lessons, and was able to try new things, although she LOVED to argue a point.  {Psst, Sophie!  I LIKE that, so you’re not bothering me.} Within 3 months, after becoming fairly comfortable in our relationship, Sophie started to make excuses about her lack of memory work.  I let it slide a time or two, but soon I tired of hearing “husband excuses”.  So… I called her into my studio for a “sit-down”.

“Sophie, we’re going to try another kind of schedule for your lessons.  From now on, I will make your assignment, you will follow through, memorize your music, and when that has been accomplished, you call me, and we’ll schedule a lesson for you.”  Well, I tell you, Sophie had not used up all of her ‘surprise” at that point in her life.  I think she was almost relieved that she could control the situation.  “But wait, I’m not done”, I told her.  “Every day, twice a day, you will call me here in my studio.  In the morning, you will tell me what your practice goals are for today.  By 4:30, you will call again, and tell me what you’ve accomplished.  If you have specific problems or questions on your music, you can make an appointment at any time.”  I told her that I didn’t want to lose track, even for a day, of how she was doing.  If I were an artist, I could have painted a portrait of shock that day.

It worked!  Months later we went back to regular lessons; Sophie won the Concerto Contest, and played Beethoven’s 4^th Piano Concerto with the University-Civic Symphony that year, and her graduate recital made me proud.  She became an independent piano teacher, first in northern Arkansas, and later in Florida.  I haven’t heard from her for a long time, and I’m sure that she doesn’t remember me as warm & fuzzy.  But, I think I did my job well with her.

On Silence

{Reprinted from an earlier posting elsewhere in the blogosphere}

“Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation... tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.” ~Jean Arp

“Everybody should have his personal sounds to listen for - sounds that will make him exhilarated and alive or quite and calm.... One of the greatest sounds of them all - and to me it is a sound - is utter, complete silence.” ~Andre Kostelanetz

“Let us be silent, that we may hear the whispers of the gods.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Not to be ironic, but Thursday night my mind wandered of to the concept of SILENCE. I was waiting in my assigned place, for the prescribed time for me to go to the piano to accompany the Northeast Middle School choir on their portion of the concert. Preceding the choir was the Beginning Band.

It would be easy for the reader to assume that a Middle School band might make one wish for silence, but that would be a false assumption, I assure you. My daughters are former denizens of Middle School bands, and some of my old friends (and current friends) direct Middle School bands.

The truth is that the time, waiting for my portion of the concert, was the first opportunity to think back on something the Pastor said during Ash Wednesday service... about silence. In my experience, silence in church scares people. It shouldn’t, and indeed, we plan silence into the service; have you noticed that planned silence needs a good introduction… an announcement, to legitimize it? Even then, the length of the silence is often truncated, to avoid the discomfort that it causes. Silence must be filled, we too often think!

We fill our grocery stores and elevators with sound (music); movies blare music to cover a lack of constant dialogue; people we know become nervous if we sit in silence. Is it about control? If we don’t hear words spill from someone, we don’t know what they’re thinking? And then, we can’t CHANGE what they’re thinking? Is it about loneliness, and the sounds of voices calm us?

I have to confess that, in my teaching, the silent students are the most challenging. I want to know how they are reacting, absorbing, interpreting; I rely on musical actions and verbal reactions. If I sense a lack of audible engagement, I tend to “fill in” the silence with more “help”; this is undoubtedly NOT helpful. Talking too much in our teaching is indeed, a sin!

I fully understand the function of silence in music; it is completely necessary. Rests, in all of their rhythmic vividness, are the punctuation, the spice, of music. In accompaniment, and in improvisation, less is more; silence… a reticence to fill in the void with sound, is laudable.

Composer John Cage, a true revolutionary in 20th century music, was fascinated by the relationship of music to sound, and sound to noise. He composed a piece entitled 4:33 (four minutes and thirty three seconds). The composition is for any sound medium. The performer is directed to come out on stage, approach his/her seat, and prepare to play… for 4 minutes and 33 seconds. The performer never does play; in one way, it is theatre. In another, it is an experiment. The joy, for Cage, was that the audience invariably fills in the silence; with rustling, fidgeting, coughing, murmurs, etc. That, for Cage, was the music.

In 1974, while in graduate school, I took classes in Transcendental Meditation. These were fascinating; there was the ubiquitous mantra that had to be repeated; this, I was told, should be done silently. One never repeats his mantra out loud. At first I was uncomfortable with the mantra; it seemed nigh unto superstitious that a word would have some, almost magical, significance. Ah! I was told, the mantra is not a word, and we don’t care about the word itself, but the aspects of the word. Sibilants, glottals… the sounds that are the mantra, when one considers it from different “angles”. The mantra was hypnotic, and cleared my mind of other things. For 20 glorious minutes, I could feel the tension dissipate; I would be award of sounds in the room, or movement, but my mind was somehow relieved of the commotion. When I would finish my meditation, I would feel very clear, energetic; somehow invigorated. I think I never would have made it through graduate school without this vehicle for removing the residue of sound/noise pollution from my body and mind.

I do not fear silence; I am alone with my thoughts at times, and I need that. My creative juices will not flow if I can’t have silence. And, like rests in music, giving shape and meaning to the music, the lack of sound, dialogue, conversation, make those things more meaningful when they are present.

On Nurturing Students

Last weekend two of my students shared a recital.  One is a high school junior, and he played the bulk of the program; a high school sophomore “assisted” with a nice set of pieces in the middle of the program.  Her role, besides the experience of performing a larger set of pieces than usual, was to give a little focus-time to her cohort.  They did marvelously!

I’ve thought about the recital quite a bit this week.  I try hard to give my students perspective when they accomplish something significant.  I think they look up to me, and my playing abilities, so when I tell them that I had never done such an extended performance until college, they are amazed.  And, I think, flattered.

I’ve also pondered the array of things that I am trying to teach my students.  They learn how to read music (a much greater task than learning to read notes!); they learn how to practice; learn how to listen and interpret a score, and how to memorize their music.  Finally, they learn how to perform.  None of these items naturally lead to the next.  They form a comprehensive curriculum to be mastered, and then integrated into a whole, a total musician.

I spent a whole day re-amazing myself that these two students have come so far on the path to musical magic in the age of short attention spans, digital devices and a demand for instant gratification.  These two students are not the only ones that are developing in such a positive manner.  How blessed I am to be able to hang out with superior people!

Actually, I think all of my own accomplishments are the result of luck, fate, or whatever it might be called.  So much came so easily to me.  Reading musical notation never posed a problem.  I had a teacher that assigned me mass quantities of music every week.  Virtually no polishing was done, and no finesse was expected.  Once a year I would perform one piece in her home, along with all of her other students.  I loved spending time at the piano, so inefficient as my “practicing” was, I absorbed a love for the piano, and the ability to read music easily.

Learning how to practice well, and how to perform came with some pain, and only small successes for a long time.  Memorizing was my curse.  I don’t think anyone ever attempted to help me with that.  Trial and error was my god!  In a large way, I think I was as much self-taught as I was tutored.  Even through multiple degrees in piano performance!  I think that the teacher I am is the result of being the best in my own teachers, and being what none of my teachers ever were… nurturers.  As a result, my students are stunningly better at being students that I ever was.