![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Music books
Feb. 18th, 2004 11:03 amThe most important thing about this visit with my parents was the unexpected recovery of my piano music. I can play piano well, despite learning relatively late.
At age thirteen I inquired why I had never been sent for lessons. My older brothers had detested them, my parents explained.
It was a strange answer, considering my love of music was so much different from my brothers'. When my father would sit down to play his signature piece, Chopin's grand Polonaise in A-flat Major, I would start leaping and twirling exultantly like a ballet dancer. In the evenings while my parents watched television in the family room, I would sit in the darkened living room listening for hours to Classic music records. Of course I even tried to bang out dramatic impromptu performances on the piano.
I was a busy, reclusive child who didn't cause much trouble. My parents paid relatively little attention and rarely challenged me. Taking me to piano lessons probably seemed like more trouble than necessary, until I complained about the deficit.
On my insistence I started taking lessons from an older boy in my high school. Andrew McCormick was the son of our town's elderly country doctor. The McCormicks were widely loved. They had a big Victorian house with an upright piano in the parlour. I took to playing with a passion. I had no knack for playing by ear, but had a talent for sight reading. I was always curious to try harder and harder pieces. The keyboard gave me a perfect place to hammer out my frustrations.
When Andrew left town for university my parents started driving me a half hour to Essex for lessons with a certified teacher, Diana Dennis. She was pleasant, practical and undemanding, the perfect compliment for a sensitive but motivated student like myself. At the age of fifteen I passed the Grade VI exam from University of Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music.
My father was an excellent player, but he didn't give much encouragement. While I was practicing, he would often turn on the television nearby. Even with the volume on low it would distract and annoy me. He ignored my protests and the occasional ones from my mother.
One autumn my cousin Cathy, a professional cellist, asked me to practice some music. She sent the piano accompaniments to Saint-Saens' The Swan and Bruch's Kol Nidrei. They were a little difficult for me, but I worked hard to polish them. At the family's Christmas reunion we performed them together. My grandparents were so impressed that they gave me their Heinzman baby grand as an early graduation gift. It is still at my parents' house.
During my last year of high school I passed my grade VIII exam. This made me eligible to study music at any university in Ontario, but my parents did not encourage me to do so. I received little guidance, apart from the subtle message that art was an unsuitable and unprofitable occupation for life's primary purpose of raising a family. I went into biology.
I continued to take lessons during my first year of university from Valerie Candelaria. I had never heard anyone with such a foul mouth, but she was a brilliant teacher and pushed me hard. I didn't work toward another exam, but she gave me difficult music and taught me how to play more expressively. Unfortunately I was taxed by the demands of first-year science courses and exploring my embryonic social life, so I rarely practiced through the week.
At the end of the year Valerie told me I shouldn't continue. I was her most brilliant pupil, she said, but unless I applied myself more, further lessons would not be worth the expense. I was bitterly disappointed, but that was the end of my musical studies.
Once I had my own house, my parents gave me their old upright piano and I continued to play whenever inspiration moved me, which was frequently. It was a Wurlitzer covered with peculiar greenish-gold vinyl, probably salvaged from a 1940s jazz lounge. It was in rough shape, but I was just happy to have something to play on. My wife, who didn't particularly like Classical music, was less appreciative.
When my marriage broke up in 1996, many things were lost. I moved into an apartment that had no room for the piano. Without warning, my wife gave it to someone who agreed to cart the old thing away for free. She delivered the news to me with relish.
I rescued my music collection, but over the next few years most of it went missing. I was never sure when or where. My greatest fear was that I had left a box sitting on a curb somewhere when I moved to this apartment in 1998.
A couple years ago I became friends with Sylvie, a music student, and started finding more opportunities to play again. I still had three of my favourite books, that was all.
Last winter I thoroughly cleaned my apartment, going through several boxes that had not been opened since the divorce, carting away piles of things I no longer valued. At the bottom of an old suitcase filled with worthless papers I found several more music books. One of them was my favourite, Rachmaninoff's Ten Preludes, Opus 23. The majority failed to surface, however, and I finally gave it up for lost.
Until now. Recently my parents found a large box marked "sheet music" in one of their hall closets. They knew I had been looking, and told me about it when they picked me up from the train on Monday. Sure enough, it turned out to be the missing collection of books, mixed with some odd sheet music from the 30s and 40s, probably from my grandmother who died in 1994.
I sat down at that lovely grand piano, opened Saint-Säens' Second Piano Concerto and tinkered through the first movement. It's way too hard for me, of course, but the difficult parts amuse me and the simpler, more lyrical ones are within my capability to play expressively. It is mysterious, dreamy and dark, and makes me very happy.
I didn't bring the whole box back to Guelph. I couldn't have carried it. Besides I don't have room or many opportunities to play anything out of it. I chose just a few favourites to bring. They're fuel for my dream of a time when I might once again have a piano of my own.
( A list of piano music I have with me now. )
At age thirteen I inquired why I had never been sent for lessons. My older brothers had detested them, my parents explained.
It was a strange answer, considering my love of music was so much different from my brothers'. When my father would sit down to play his signature piece, Chopin's grand Polonaise in A-flat Major, I would start leaping and twirling exultantly like a ballet dancer. In the evenings while my parents watched television in the family room, I would sit in the darkened living room listening for hours to Classic music records. Of course I even tried to bang out dramatic impromptu performances on the piano.
I was a busy, reclusive child who didn't cause much trouble. My parents paid relatively little attention and rarely challenged me. Taking me to piano lessons probably seemed like more trouble than necessary, until I complained about the deficit.
On my insistence I started taking lessons from an older boy in my high school. Andrew McCormick was the son of our town's elderly country doctor. The McCormicks were widely loved. They had a big Victorian house with an upright piano in the parlour. I took to playing with a passion. I had no knack for playing by ear, but had a talent for sight reading. I was always curious to try harder and harder pieces. The keyboard gave me a perfect place to hammer out my frustrations.
When Andrew left town for university my parents started driving me a half hour to Essex for lessons with a certified teacher, Diana Dennis. She was pleasant, practical and undemanding, the perfect compliment for a sensitive but motivated student like myself. At the age of fifteen I passed the Grade VI exam from University of Toronto's Royal Conservatory of Music.
My father was an excellent player, but he didn't give much encouragement. While I was practicing, he would often turn on the television nearby. Even with the volume on low it would distract and annoy me. He ignored my protests and the occasional ones from my mother.
One autumn my cousin Cathy, a professional cellist, asked me to practice some music. She sent the piano accompaniments to Saint-Saens' The Swan and Bruch's Kol Nidrei. They were a little difficult for me, but I worked hard to polish them. At the family's Christmas reunion we performed them together. My grandparents were so impressed that they gave me their Heinzman baby grand as an early graduation gift. It is still at my parents' house.
During my last year of high school I passed my grade VIII exam. This made me eligible to study music at any university in Ontario, but my parents did not encourage me to do so. I received little guidance, apart from the subtle message that art was an unsuitable and unprofitable occupation for life's primary purpose of raising a family. I went into biology.
I continued to take lessons during my first year of university from Valerie Candelaria. I had never heard anyone with such a foul mouth, but she was a brilliant teacher and pushed me hard. I didn't work toward another exam, but she gave me difficult music and taught me how to play more expressively. Unfortunately I was taxed by the demands of first-year science courses and exploring my embryonic social life, so I rarely practiced through the week.
At the end of the year Valerie told me I shouldn't continue. I was her most brilliant pupil, she said, but unless I applied myself more, further lessons would not be worth the expense. I was bitterly disappointed, but that was the end of my musical studies.
Once I had my own house, my parents gave me their old upright piano and I continued to play whenever inspiration moved me, which was frequently. It was a Wurlitzer covered with peculiar greenish-gold vinyl, probably salvaged from a 1940s jazz lounge. It was in rough shape, but I was just happy to have something to play on. My wife, who didn't particularly like Classical music, was less appreciative.
When my marriage broke up in 1996, many things were lost. I moved into an apartment that had no room for the piano. Without warning, my wife gave it to someone who agreed to cart the old thing away for free. She delivered the news to me with relish.
I rescued my music collection, but over the next few years most of it went missing. I was never sure when or where. My greatest fear was that I had left a box sitting on a curb somewhere when I moved to this apartment in 1998.
A couple years ago I became friends with Sylvie, a music student, and started finding more opportunities to play again. I still had three of my favourite books, that was all.
Last winter I thoroughly cleaned my apartment, going through several boxes that had not been opened since the divorce, carting away piles of things I no longer valued. At the bottom of an old suitcase filled with worthless papers I found several more music books. One of them was my favourite, Rachmaninoff's Ten Preludes, Opus 23. The majority failed to surface, however, and I finally gave it up for lost.
Until now. Recently my parents found a large box marked "sheet music" in one of their hall closets. They knew I had been looking, and told me about it when they picked me up from the train on Monday. Sure enough, it turned out to be the missing collection of books, mixed with some odd sheet music from the 30s and 40s, probably from my grandmother who died in 1994.
I sat down at that lovely grand piano, opened Saint-Säens' Second Piano Concerto and tinkered through the first movement. It's way too hard for me, of course, but the difficult parts amuse me and the simpler, more lyrical ones are within my capability to play expressively. It is mysterious, dreamy and dark, and makes me very happy.
I didn't bring the whole box back to Guelph. I couldn't have carried it. Besides I don't have room or many opportunities to play anything out of it. I chose just a few favourites to bring. They're fuel for my dream of a time when I might once again have a piano of my own.
( A list of piano music I have with me now. )
