Althea was my piano teacher, and one of my very favorite people ever. She was positive about everything she said and taught. She called her students “her children.” For sure, her music studio felt like a foster home, safe from the emotional hazards of childhood.
There are many kinds of music teachers; I wouldn’t want to claim that Althea was better than other types of music teachers. But Althea was my music teacher, to whom I owe so much of my musical identity and my overall personality.
Althea never demanded perfection. Perhaps I should blame Althea for my imprecise piano playing, but I don’t. It’s just not in me play perfectly. If Althea had demanded perfection, I would not have lasted six months. Althea taught music, and the love for it. Althea never spoke about religious ideas; she never preached; but through demonstration she taught love itself, by highly valuing me as a young person, by encouraging me to express myself musically.
Althea was my music teacher from my first lesson, on my eight birthday (the lesson was a present from my parents) until I left for college. I was one of Althea’s many children who have loved her as she did us.
3 responses so far ↓
1 A melody writing exercise // Mar 27, 2008 at 12:29 am
[…] March 2008 ← Althea, my music teacher […]
2 Adrian Allan // Mar 27, 2008 at 3:37 pm
Funny you should say that, but my music teacher too did not demand perfection. But it’s that approach, of enjoyment rather than stress, that encourages lifelong learning. It was only later, when I made a conscious decision to take my playing more seriously, that I did exams in the guitar. Before then, music lessons were fun; and we “jammed” together on guitar and accordion. Had I been forced to do scales and arpeggios from an early stage I wouldn’t still be doing it now. After all, making music is simply a form of “play” - you “play” the instrument. A spirit of play in all things encourages freedom and ultimately, creativity.
3 mg jacobs // Jan 20, 2009 at 12:48 am
My first music teacher was a Miss Name not remembered. One was supposed to practice the scale of the week, one octave with each hand, six or seven times a day, and move through one of the graduated series of teaching books, always moving on to the next piece if one could stumble through the week’s assignment. I was stubborn enough for long enough to quit. But I kept playing, mostly improvising.
Then a few years later, was Stu, my real piano teacher, whose idea of what a student should do, if really interested in the instrument, was quite different. He believed in Hannon, tons of scales and arpeggios using the whole keyboard and in every key, weighted keys, studying harmony, exercises for building relaxation, strength, and dexterity, like raising the hands until it hurt to play octaves, playing with a quarter balanced on each wrist, and squeezing rubber balls.
But he considered technique a (necessary) means to an end. When he assigned a composition, he tried to make it something that you had never heard, and he refused to play it for you. Each composition has instructions in tempo and dynamics, and often phrasing. It’s up to you to work out what you see on the page until you are satisfied. Only then would he play it, and the discussion of interpretation would begin.
I remember being assigned Chopin’s “Minute” Waltz, which I worked up into a blur of sound, if I didn’t make a minute. Then he played it as I had, or probably faster, and didn’t slow down a bit for the lyrical middle section. Then, saying it was really quite a melodic piece all the way through, he played it at perhaps the speed Rubenstein used. The discussion probably centered around the difference between bringing out the music that lies on the page and showing off.
Stu, taught a lot of adults at a local studio. (He gave me lessons at home, mostly because his keys were weighted.) He also tuned pianos and rebuilt actions. On weekend evenings, he played “cocktail” piano, mostly at private parties in the upscale sections of the city. He might play “Deep Purple” or the “Warsaw Concerto,” or “Kitten on the Keys,” but his forte was improvisation, and the sounds into which he could weave a page from an extensive fake book demonstrated an enormous technique. But whether he played a Chopin Nocturne or Etude, Tenderly or a Polka, you swore it should be played no other way.
He encouraged me to try writing some music, which I did, all for piano, all short because unfinished, and unfinished because a few changes meant copying everything all over again.
Leave a Comment