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[personal profile] auntbijou
I was writing an email to an old friend from high school, describing a piano performance course I took my first year in college and it hit me. My piano teacher at that time was my very own version of Professor Snape.

He was a very dry man with a sharp, sarcastic wit. And he said things that totally pissed me off, but, it always made me determined to prove him wrong, and actually improved my playing... though I couldn't see it at the time.

He said lovely things like, "Well, Miss C, I have never heard Bach played quite that way before... and I hope to never hear it played that way again."

Or, "I was under the impression that you were supposed to be playing a delightful little invention by Scarlatti. Imagine my surprise when instead, you played something apparently written by Sesame Street. Did you even practice? Oh, yes, your practice studio is just above my office. I've heard you practicing every day. Badly."

When someone knocked on the studio door during one of my lessons, he said, "Go wait in my office with the door closed. There's no need for us both to suffer."

When I was struggling with a piece by Chopin, he said, "Odd. I would have thought, Miss C., that you were coordinated enough to use your right and and your left hand... at the same time. After all, is that not a prerequisite for being able to play the piano?" Followed by, "I was informed that you knew how to read music. Was I wrong? Should I turn the book upside down? Maybe you'll understand it better then!"

There were times when I very much wanted to give up, or to take my music, roll it up, and stuff it down his throat.

That wasn't the worst of it. I also had him for my piano performance class. This was a special hell where a group of piano majors were required to meet once weekly and play the pieces they'd been working on for each other. Everyone was required to critique the performance, not just the playing, but everything, like, how you held yourself while you played, how you communicated to the audience while you played (???), and how you handled technical difficulties.

Now, if everyone in the class had been freshman like myself, that wouldn't have been so bad. But, the university music department, in its infinite wisdom, had decided to mix things up when they put the performance class groups together. So, there were nine people (including yours truly) in my class. I was the only froshie. The rest were a mix of juniors, seniors, and two grad students. I didn't even have a single sophomore to commiserate with. Talk about intimidated!! And to make it worse?? The university had just acquired a Bösendorfer. Oh... my... gods. It was beautiful. It had this wonderful silky tone that you could feel throughout your entire body when you played it. If you could work up the nerve to actually play it, that is. At least I shared that with the entire class. We all would sit down nervously, all staring at the beautiful gleaming keys, the black keys a little longer than on a normal keyboard, and try to force ourselves just to touch the damn thing. Really, it felt like a desecration to play it. One of the grad students, an insanely talented guy named Tim, said, "I feel like I don't deserve to play this thing!!"

But we were all required to play on this thing, since it was a concert quality instrument, and we would all have to get used to it. Dr. F would stand next to the piano, arms folded over his chest as he glared at us, watching us slink nervously to the piano and sit down, hands folded nervously in our laps as we all stared at the keyboard and tried to will feeling back into our hands.

After about a month, we all got to where we could touch it and not jump when we heard the first notes. Personally, I never got over the feeling I was profaning the damn thing by playing it with clumsy fingers. I felt like a Neanderthal at times, and I had constant nightmares the night before performance class where either my fingers would tie themselves into knots as I tried to play, or they'd get stuck between the keys and the piano would devour my hands. Worse were the ones where I would sit down to play and I would gradually shrink until I was four years old, my feet swinging high above the floor as I desperately tried to play, "Kitten on the Keys" until I ended up sobbing and saying, "I don't remember! I don't remember!!"

Then one day, I was supposed to perform the Scarlatti piece, the "Sonata K96 in D Major" which had these double arpeggio runs that were giving me fits. I had been practicing them over and over again, trying to get them staccato, and in the right tempo without my fingers tripping me up, and I was in despair of ever being able to play it correctly (little did I know it was the fact I had broken my hand the previous summer and never got it set that was causing my problem). I did not want to go on that stage and play that day, and I especially did not want to follow the insanely talented Tim, who was working on Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue." He was actually working with Dr. F on this, as they would sit in the music library with headphones on, composition notebooks on their knees, rapidly scribbling notes down as they tried to transcribe what they were hearing onto paper. Apparently, the version of "Rhapsody" that Gershwin played himself, and the version he published, are different, and they were trying to transcribe Gershwin's version. Wonder if they ever succeeded?

*ponders*

Oh well, on with the story. I was following this guy, who could play in his sleep. I did not want to follow him. Gods, I did not want to follow him, because the contrast... *sighs* Anyhow, what you need to know here is that Tim was a tall, lanky guy with extremely long legs and arms, and these absolutely beautiful hands with long, clever fingers. Think... spider. Really, you'd see him walking along and wonder where the other four limbs were. He must have been about 6 foot 5 or so. And me? Five foot three on my best days. Even with my long legs.

And Tim was almost obsessive/compulsive about adjusting the piano bench to accommodate his lanky frame. Up, down, up down, forward, backward, we'd sit there sighing while he would adjust, play a scale, adjust, play a scale, adjust, play a scale... you get the picture. We'd almost doze off when he'd suddenly start playing and we'd all jump and look around like, "Huh, what??"

So, I finally sat down and my feet were hanging well above the floor, so... I had to adjust the bench myself. However, I wasn't picky. I mean, I had learned to play sitting on a pillow on a piano bench, I had played sitting in a kitchen chair... I could play standing up, though not well. As long as my feet could reach the pedals, I was good. So, I adjusted the bench, sat for a moment gathering my nerve, and finally decided it was now or never, just get it over with, and started playing.

I had made it through the first arpeggio run when I noticed something. I was having to work a little harder to play. It almost felt like I was having to reach up to play. And then, it got harder, and harder, and it began to dawn on me that I was... shrinking? Oh, geez, I thought, horrified as I kept playing. My nightmare is coming true. I'm shrinking!!! I kept playing desperately, hoping they wouldn't notice, and that I would finish before I was four again. I kept getting smaller and smaller, the piano kept getting taller and taller... by the time I was done, my eyes were level with the keyboard.

No one laughed.

It wasn't until I was done that I realized what had happened. Tim, in his incessant fiddling, had loosened the locking mechanism on the bench. It allows you to adjust the bench and not have to tighten things after adjusting. You only loosen it for extreme adjustments, like for the difference between an adult and a child. So, instead of shrinking, I had been sinking, and there I was, with my arms stretched up to the keyboard, my knees next to my ears.

I had some interesting critiques that day. No one criticized my playing, but everyone commented on my ability to play under extreme duress!! Even Dr. F said, "An admirable determination to continue with the program, despite a less than ideal environment for playing. And you need to work on those arpeggio runs again."

Oh, well, can't have everything, I guess.

Of course, he did notice the difficulty I was having with my left hand, and sent me to have it x-rayed, where I was told it had healed badly, and would need to be re-broken and re-set, complete with screws and plates, and no guarantee that I would still be able to play after surgery and therapy, or even use my hand, period. This was in the early 80's, mind you. I decided to not do that, and also to change my major to something less harrowing.

Dr. F was actually disappointed. "You're actually quite talented, with an interesting and refreshing ability to interpret the music in ways I've never considered. I've actually enjoyed our lessons, Miss C, and I do beg you to reconsider your decision."

Yes, he really talked like that.

But, I had made up my mind, because I knew I wasn't going to be able to play any better than I was, not with my hand the way it was, and I also knew that performance, at least in classical music, wasn't really my thing. It wasn't what I wanted to do with my life.

It is funny, though, that when I think of those dry, lazily drawled statements in that precise British accent of his, I get mad all over again!

May 2020

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