Music Lessons

My young daughter, Rose, has started music lessons. She has chosen the harp with some enthusiasm (divining, already, that harpists are an exclusive musical breed), and I am quite pleased. Already, I see her future - there she is, seated poised and serene at the front of a hushed cathedral. She is wearing a long velvet dress...her thick caramel-colored hair is cascading to the floor like a glorious pelt. The candlelight is reflected on her lovely face, and she is plinking away like an angel.

We are renting a 52" Lyon & Healy beauty of a lever harp, and Rose is giving up the DisneyChannel for 20 minutes at a time to turn her attention to this perfect celestial thing in our disheveled midst. I feel peaceful just looking at it. The Pomeranian is fond of sleeping under it.

There is much to be said for the harp: even if you play it very badly, it stills sounds heavenly, even if you don't play it at all, it's so decorative. Visitors to your home can't help but exclaim, "Oh!!!...A HARP!" or words to that effect. There's always an audience for a harpist and you are likely to be in high musical demand as long as there are weddings, Christmas programs, Renaissance Dinners and cruise ships.

Choosing a compatible instrument early on strikes me as making one of the most significant decisions of a life time. Like committing to a college major or a marriage partner, the decision will reverberate through your years. As a harpist, you aren't likely to play in a garage band and wear a tiny leather skirt while performing. Harpists are hardly ever the focus of tabloid scandal or drug searches at the airport. If you keep with it, you are likely to find yourself playing in a concert space and have a closet full of gowns and tea-length skirts. Whatever you play, some musical doors will close while others will be thrown open, and it's hard to retool 15 years, or so, of musical training if you develop an active loathing for your instrument.

I well know how character-forming loving or despising your instrument can be. My parents did not consult me when it came time to choose a musical instrument. My aesthetics and preference were not a consideration (this was not in the day when children were consulted much about their inclinations or opinions), and my resentment for this common form of parental bullying has not abated despite decades of potential recovery time.

Sometimes parents just enlist whatever instrument is available. If they happen to have deceased Uncle Harlan's oboe in the closet, or if they find themselves in possession of a ukulele after a wild Mai Tai Tiki party (don't roll your eyes...you've been there), the choice of instrument might have been predetermined. Economy can also be a guiding force. The mother of a friend of mine happened to stop at a garage sale where she found a good deal on a marimba. My friend went on to take years and years of marimba lessons. Here's how it went in my nest-of-origin...

My father owned an accordion, so it was a strong contender. After all, the accordion is the star of any polka band and who wouldn't be proud to see their daughter standing up on the stage of the Czech Social Club leading the combo in the "I Don't Want Her, You Can Have Her, She's Too Fat For Me" polka?

Fortunately, before accordion lessons could ensure my total social annihilation, my father somehow determined that accordions were bad for women. His notion was that all of that chest action would either harm or hinder my breast development later in life - as if having a suitable bosom was going to make any difference once my classmates, circa 1968, found out I played accordion. (Accordion Awareness Stamp coming soon to your local post office.)

Before I had a chance to make a burnt offering of gratitude to my gods, my dad lighted on the idea that the organ is really just an accordion lying down. As such, it lends itself beautifully to the playing of polkas. Thus began almost ten years of study on an instrument that I dislike and, probably, can still actually play.

I spent my childhood playing the beloved polkas and organ standards like "Up the Lazy River", "Lady of Spain" and "Red Roses for a Blue Lady". Most of my teachers were lounge organists of the Lawrence Welk variety- competent and entertainment driven. In my early teens, I acquired a teacher named Miss Francis. Miss Francis had devoted her life to sacred music, and, as far as I could tell, her only passions were the organ and her miniature poodle, Cheri� (in French).

Miss Francis was not a fan of popular music. Miss Francis believed in really difficult music and playing the pedal board of a horseshoe Hammond with both feet while reading the bass and the treble lines all at the same time. She insisted that organists wear special organ-playing slippers that would enhance footwork (mine were lilac). Miss Francis once said that I had SOME musical talent...not a lot, mind you, but some.

Thankfully, I will never be called upon to showcase my tiny talent because organs no longer exist in normal reality. Unless I'm in the home of someone's grandparents and they just happen to have an ancient Wurlitzer gathering dust under the knick-knacks, others will not enjoy my musical gifts. Trust me on this. In the 80s, I could still wander into a shopping mall and find an organ and piano shop tucked in between a Honeybaked Hams and an Orange Julias. The type of organ I learned to play has gone the way of the phone booth, having been largely replaced by portable keyboards.

"What about church?" you say...Churches that have full-throttle organs with stops and octave pedal boards and pipes are not inclined to let anyone in off the street to play on a much revered and expensive instrument. The organ is under the control of someone who majored in organ in college and is waiting for the resurrection of Bach. This person is often the minister's wife and she is the church ORGANIST. She has the organ draw tabs set precisely where she wants them (tibia, fibula, vibrato, and clavicle) and only God Himself, or a high ranking Archangel, is coming near it.

My last public performance occurred in the early 90s at a junk mall in Wenatchee. Someone was selling a down-market little Baldwin that had seen some hard times, but she still had a few wheezes left in her. I like to think I rocked the Kasbah, there, among the abandoned beauty shop dryers, rusted tools and chipped garden gnomes. It was an ignoble ending for a decade of effort, for sure.

The other disadvantage of playing the organ is its embarrassing name, which gave rise to the kind of low humor I'm about to exploit here. Arnie Schwimmer was the local nightclub-type organist in my hometown. He played at the Gay 1890s lounge during cocktail hour, and was often the featured entertainer at the Historical Society luncheons and Lions Club suppers. I was mortified for Arnie when the local paper would review an event and add, "...and Arnie Schwimmer entertained the Rose Growers' meeting by playing on his organ." Not THE organ, but HIS organ. Arnie could really pack a house.

Despite my complete rejection of THE organ, those tedious lessons turned out to be a very good thing. My mother used to tell me that, someday, knowing how to play music (even a little) would be a great comfort to me. And, while I'm loath to admit it, she was right. Polkas aside, I developed an incurable addiction to music.

We are all so busy with media and our children are so technically competent, that music lessons seem almost anachronistic. We hardly need to make our own music in a world where we can download any music, any time onto a spectrum of devices. But playing music and understanding its structure brings with it a higher feeling. It awakens an aesthetic for beauty, creates bonds among fellow musicians and it is, really, never too late to learn. Love of music is innate and does not fade with the years. You cannot lose it. It will not leave you, and it may lead you to seek out remarkable experiences.

When friends of mine traveled to Italy, they made plans to visit the Violin Room located in the Town Hall of Cremona. Cremona was the home of such renowned violin makers as Antonio Stradivarius (circa 1715), Giuseppe Guarneri (circa 1689) and Nicolo Amati (circa 1658). The Town Hall houses a collection of their violins.

The collection is maintained by a master violinist who, periodically, frees the violins from their climate-controlled glass display cases, and plays for visitors. My friends were fortunate to be present on a day when the master played a Stradivari. I envy them the experience.

I have heard the recordings from these performances on CDs (Il Violini di Cremona). When I listen, I can see the maestro holding a violin that was made almost three hundred years ago, and whose sound, to this day, has not been replicated. Just listening to the CD is transcendental. It is as close to perfection as we humans will ever come, and it is timeless. The musical language spoken when Antonio Stradivarius made his violin is still spoken, fluently, today.

If reading this raises just a wee bit of longing for your own lost musical opportunities, meet Bruce Potterton. Mr. Potterton is a piano instructor who Down East Magazine describes as looking "like a brushed peach." Potterton was on vacation in Lubec, Maine when a series of synchronous events left him with a summer home and a painting that he bought for $3.50. When Sotheby's later sold the painting for over five thousand dollars, Potterton conceived of using his windfall to start an adult music program. SummerKeys was founded in 1992.

Potterton brings instructors to Lubec each summer to teach adult students on a variety of instruments. Students are often put up in private homes, and locals open their doors for lessons and practice space as well (pianos all over town are made available to piano students). Ensembles are formed; performances are held. Amazingly, students who attend the SummerKeys program range from complete novices to professionals working on performance pieces. You can find the details at www.summerkeys.com, but if you want to dust off that old viola and have another go at it a little closer to home, perhaps San Juan Islanders are ready for an adult music camp of our own.

Volunteers...? Anyone...? I can be there as soon as I find my lilac slippers.

Note-to-Self 2: If you have any love for those Public Encouragement Films of the 1950s (you know the ones...the films that exhort you to practice safe swimming and avoid bad influences who may lead you astray), you must go to YouTube.com and watch Mystery Science Theater's "Mr. B Natural". (This is also available on the DVD "Mystery Science Theater 3000: War of the Colossal Beast".)

I am (almost...not quite) at a loss to convey the special magic of this short film. Bud is a shy young man. He has the potential to be popular, but he lacks the confidence to go along when the other teens get together to listen to records and dance in someone's basement.

Instead, he sits in his room all despondent and confused, until an odd thing happens...suddenly, a fully grown woman in an elf suit materializes on his twin bed and explains to him that "I am Mr. B Natural, and I am going to instill in you a LOVE for music!", or words to that effect.

Mr. B appears in Bud's bedroom in intervals throughout the film, and one wonders why Bud doesn't suspect that he may be having a psychotic breakdown. But, since it IS the 50s, Bud is in a stupor and doesn't seem especially surprised. No...Bud finds a positive message in Mr. B's relentless badgering, and takes up the trumpet. By the end of the film, Bud is an excellent musician and in hot demand in basements all over town.

If you only see one movie this year where a mature woman pretending to be a man-elf keeps showing up in an underage boy's room, let this be the movie. You won't be sorry.

Previous column

Next column

Ingrid is currently living and respectably employed in Austin, Texas with a firm specializing in environmental law. She hopes to get back home to the San Juan Islands next spring to stay.
While Ingrid is spiritually promiscuous, she credits her guru, Jimmy Buffet, for her mantra..."If we couldn't laugh, we would all go insane." Besides a passion for Tiki Studies, Ingrid is borderline biblio-obsessive. She is an old-school Libran - i.e., she won't be leading the Revolution, but she'll work to make it an attractive affair and hire the musicians and caterers."

Her column appears every other Thursday in San Juan Islander. To contact Ingrid, send emails to ingrid@sanjuanislander.com

news@sanjuanislander.com

ABOUT US | ADVERTISING INFO | CONTACT INFORMATION |