94 and 4

94 and 4! A few weeks ago, I witnessed the most powerful and wonderful interaction between my 94-year-old mother and 4-year-old grandson. Giggles and laughter filled the room, and the pleasure and delight were obviously mutual. It was truly a demonstration of communication at its best – when each listens attentively to the other, responds appropriately and enthusiastically and does not interrupt or try to change the other’s perception.

Yes, they enjoyed being silly together, but in case you are thinking that a 94-year-old often becomes like a child, in this instance, you are wrong. My mother is mentally as keen as you and I. Unlike most of us busy and preoccupied adults, it was my mother’s ability to focus completely on her great-grandson that made the connection genuine and special. When he was being silly, with a smile on her face, she told him without implied judgment, “You are silly.” He laughed even more and was thrilled to discover that it was okay, even fun, to have someone else enjoy his silliness. What a change from the usual adult admonition: “Stop acting so silly!” And so the play went on with unabashed enthusiasm and unbounded glee.

Although ten years shy of a century separates them in age, there was no difference in how they felt as human beings. They were two individuals who clearly enjoyed being together, respected each other and generated reciprocal positive energy. People are people regardless of age. The need for human connection does not diminish over the years. We all need to be validated, and we all thrive when someone else gives us undivided attention and unconditional acceptance.

Witnessing a Miracle of Love and Dedication

This past weekend in Toronto, I heard Rosemarie Blanc’s piano students perform. There were nearly 70 of them. Normally, one would expect some to play excellently, some very well and maybe a few to be not-so-well prepared for any number of reasons. What an incredible experience to hear each child play with joy, confidence, musicality and competence, covering the full range of beginner to advanced repertoire. Every piece flowed rhythmically and accurately, with a clarity of purpose and total engagement from the performer. It was only after the last student finished that I fully realized the miracle of what I had witnessed.

Over the past twenty-five years, Rosie has been my friend, Suzuki trainee, Mastering the Piano and Bigler~Lloyd-Watts Music Camp teacher. For approximately fifteen of those years, I have journeyed annually to her studio for a workshop. It has been such a privilege to observe her ever-upward trajectory as a pedagogue. This year, there seemed to be a gigantic leap forward in the pleasure and accomplishment of her students.

Rosemarie embodies what I wish every student of every subject could have: a loving teacher who cares first about the well-being of her pupils, who has the goal of giving the best lesson she can every time to every child, who learns from each lesson and who spends her spare time exploring, learning and growing so that the next lessons will be even better.

Hats off to my beloved friend and esteemed colleague!

A Debate Swirls

The question: Teaching popular music as well as classical music to piano students is good.

Since this is my blog, you are going to read my opinion on this topic. We would, of course, like very much to hear your opinions.

When I was 12, I heard, over the radio, Jack Fina playing Bumble Boogie, loved it, and managed some time later to acquire a copy of the score. It is a challenging piece, both to read and to play well and is based on the fabulous Flight of the Bumble Bee by Rimsky-Korsakov.

I was a good student but, as you know from previous blogs, a poor sight-reader. One of my biggest lacks was the ability to work out the rhythms with any kind of consistent underlying beat. So anyway, I bashed my way through it, sort of. There were many places where I was too inexperienced and sloppy to be able to manage the complex rhythms. No adult I knew was willing to help me with the difficulties I encountered. The attitude at the time was, “That stuff is junk and if you want to play it on your own time, OK, but we’re not going to help you with it.”

The result was that I played about half of the piece, always to great acclaim from the listeners, but only at private gatherings. I wish I could say that I learned all of it by the time I was an adult but the truth is that I didn’t learn it properly, totally, until I taught it to one of my students. I told Jamie, who had heard me play it in the cut version, that I wanted him to be able to play it better than I did, so I would help him if he would agree to work carefully. Deal. By this time, I did know how to count and work out the rhythms so both Jamie and I learned it completely and well. I play it as my encore now at all concerts because everyone loves it so much.

My attitude is that students learn a tremendous amount about resolving rhythmical challenges from playing popular or jazzy music. You have to count to be able to do it! Besides, teens need to have something to wow their peers with. First you have to get their attention, then it is possible, and I have heard about it over and over again from the kids, that they can then play their Bach and Clementi Sonatinas and their friends love hearing what they can do.

I would opine that the Royal Conservatory of Music agrees with me, since they now permit wonderful arrangements of popular music to be used as studies as well as eight levels of jazz pieces by Christopher Norton.

Another Lesson Learned from Tennis Players

Some years ago, a fabulous tennis player named Bjorn Borg was winning everything in sight. Naturally, everyone wanted to know how he came to be so good. In an interview, he said that he practiced tennis five hours each day, in itself an excellent display of discipline. So far, so good.

There is a quote, attributed to Artur Rubinstein, the late, great, much-loved pianist, “Don’t tell me how talented you are, tell me how hard you work”.

Yeah, well, lots of people work hard, or at least put in the hours, and they are not necessarily the best at anything.

Here’s the kicker. Borg went on to say that every second of that five hours was at the intensity of tournament play and that every shot counted as though it was a match point. Now we’re talking a whole other thing. We are including, along with physical stamina, incredible mental focus, motivation and sustained commitment. Anyone can play at an intense level for a game, or a set, once in a while. To play at that level of engagement for five hours, every single day, year in and year out, is awe-inspiring.

How that translates for me is that I aspire to be engaged all the time when practicing. I believe that practicing and performing are, ideally, the same. If I can be totally present, in the moment, and focused on the task at hand in the privacy of my practice room, I stand a vastly greater chance of staying with that kind of focus out on stage.

It sure makes practice time fly!

A Miracle Called Carole Bigler

Last year, two weeks before our 30th Summer Music Festival~Suzuki Kingston program in July, Carole’s illness took a nasty turn and put her in hospital, on dialysis. The outlook was grim, to say the least.

Over the course of the previous year, various unexplained symptoms, such as swollen, red hands and intermittently swelling feet, had been incorrectly diagnosed as rheumatoid arthritis. Finally, the term scleroderma reared its nasty head. It is related to arthritis in that they are both auto-immune diseases. The prognosis was not pleasant yet it was thought that Carole could manage for many years. Then suddenly her kidneys faltered in a big way.

So, on to dialysis, about which we all learned more than we ever wanted to know. Even though the process keeps people alive, it is truly a wrenching procedure that takes place three time a week for several hours at a time. It was terribly hard on Carole, to the point where she had to take a tranquilizer in order to endure the treatment.

Carole is one determined and strong person, as I have learned to love and admire over the course of our 30 year working relationship. She concluded that as long as her kidneys were having their work done for them by a machine, they had no incentive to get up off their hind legs and start taking care of business themselves.

So she went off dialysis, with the approval of her physician. She has 15% kidney function which is the minimum required for independent living. She holds the thought that her body knows how to heal itself and she is giving it a chance to do just that. Every night, as she is falling asleep, she pictures her blood flowing easily and perfectly through her kidneys, cleansing and renewing itself.

Last week, the dialysis ports were removed from her body. For the first time in nine months, Carole could take a shower! For a person who loathes baths, this was bliss! She stayed in the shower until the water ran cold.

Carole is feeling so feisty, her natural state of being, that she is planning on being with us in July. We will have a glorious celebration to welcome her back.

I want to invite the world to come celebrate our living, breathing miracle, called Carole Bigler, with us.

A Sight-reading Triumph for Me

At a gathering in Vancouver recently, the host, who loves piano music but doesn’t play well himself, asked if I would play his favorite piece, Schubert’s Serenade. That meant, sight-read his score. Hmm. In public, so to speak, in front of my childhood piano teacher and other musically well-educated people. This was a daunting prospect for someone who has always considered herself to be a limited (what a lovely euphemism for “rotten”) sight-reader.

OK, let’s do it! Looking at the score, I saw that the melody was played by the hight hand in the middle of the keyboard and the left hand played single notes below and chords above – in other words, crossing hands in every measure! I noticed that the key was D minor and began to count inside myself, “1 and 2 and 3 and."

I played it perfectly!

So what, you might ask? It wasn’t the world’s most complex piece, was it? No, but no one can really know how awful I have always felt about my sight-reading! Reading the Serenade well was an incredible payoff for me, of my months of effort of practicing sight-reading every day for 15 minutes, using fresh-to-my-eyes music, employing the Sight-reading Checklist (the list of steps great sightreaders go through before they start to play, to be blogged next), counting out loud and reading with the metronome at a very slow tempo.

It was one of those “I felt 10-feet tall” moments.

Megan and the Gossec Gavotte

As a young mother in 1967, newly introduced to and excited about the Suzuki method for violin, I wondered how much effect being exposed to the same recording day after day would have on my then-five year old daughter Megan.

I was certainly a keener so I bought the only recording available at that time, John Kendall’s LP Listen and Play. On the recording, for reasons best known to Summy-Birchard, there was a stop after each approximately 30 second piece. This might have been of benefit to a teacher but for one who wanted to let it play all the way through, it was irritating to have to lift the record arm and place it on the next piece. So I made a tape-recording of the platter. In the middle of the Gossec Gavotte, the machine had a kind of hiccup and instead of “da de da da de de dah” it went” da de glup de de dah”. “Oh, well”, I thought to myself, “Megan will know what is intended”.

I put the recording on every day, as I was supposed to do. Some weeks later, Megan was lying on the living room carpet, coloring and singing to herself. I heard the Gossec Gavotte, “da de glup de de dah”.

I made a new recording that day.

Classical Calm

This past week I got an entirely different slant on the broader benefits of listening to classical music. And this one is for the dogs!

As I was finishing up a lesson with an exceptionally talented 18-year-old young man, I commented on his remarkable ability to connect with the music and communicate through his playing. I asked him how he gets himself into this seemingly altered state when he plays the piano, particularly Mozart. He really could not answer my question, but he told me that ever since he was a little boy, classical music has had a powerful effect on him. Giving an example, he shared his experience as a little boy. Whenever the family went on a long car trip and he got rambunctious or irritable, his mother turned on the Pachelbel Cannon. Soon thereafter, he “zoned out,” as he described the feeling, settled down and usually fell asleep.

Two sisters waiting for the next lesson heard this conversation and added their special story. The interesting difference was that their story was about their dogs! Each of them had gotten her own fluffy white puppy for Christmas. One day when the dogs were with them in the car, the teenage sister turned on the radio and tuned in some rock music. The dogs suddenly became agitated and began to bark incessantly. So the girls turned the rock off. A bit later their mother tuned in the classical music station. The dogs appeared to calm down even more. The girls and their mother talked about how the dogs reacted to the music. They tested the little Bichon Frise/Poodle pups by playing both rock and classical music. Sure enough, the dogs barked frantically during the rock music and quieted down immediately when the classical music was played. Ever since discovering that classical music has such a soothing effect on the dogs, they tune in the classical music station whenever they leave the dogs home alone. The dogs consequently stay calm and out of trouble. Perhaps this is a potential new market for music therapists.

Batman and the Boy Who Couldn’t Play the Piano

In the mid-1960s, the TV show Batman was a wonder to a 5-year old boy. Not only did my son, Lloyd, love drawing the cartoon character, he was passionate about the music. I bought the printed score and played it for him. Written by Neal Hefti, the music is clever, punchy and rhythmically complex. It took some practicing on my part to play the syncopated middle section.

Lloyd loved it. He announced that he wanted to learn to play it. Holy cow, Batman! He couldn’t play the piano at all. So I showed him one little bit at a time, hands separately. He was listening to it constantly, either played live by me – we didn’t have even a reel-to-reel tape recorder then – or on the TV.

Lloyd played the bits he knew for hours. As he was learning them, he would get frustrated and furious. When it all got to be too much, he would climb down from the piano bench and hop with rage. This was fascinating to watch because I had only read about people hopping with rage in the fairy tale, The King of the Golden River. I would think to myself, 'Well, I guess that’s the last of his wanting to play "Batman."' Yet a few minutes later, he would be at the piano again.

Eventually, he got the first and last parts down pat. I explained to him that the middle section was way more complicated rhythmically, but he was determined to get it all and, by golly, he did.

It occurs to me now that the principles behind Lloyd’s learning of "Batman" are the same ones that it’s taken me decades of piano teaching to define. The student listens to a piece and gets excited about it; he learns it bit by bit, with lots of help from a teacher who can break the process into small chunks.

When students come to lessons excited about wanting to play pieces that are miles beyond their current ability, those of us using Mastering The Piano say, “Great! You can learn it, taking as much time as you need, nibbling a few measures each week.” We know that children who are self-motivated can climb mountains and accomplish miracles.

The Lesson and the Gift

Dealing with a major illness has a way of consuming your life – physically and emotionally. With the relentless schedule of doctor’s appointments, medical tests and treatments, plus the tremendous frustration of physical limitations and overall discomfort, it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself, to spend too many hours in bed or just to give up. I found myself heading that way. Then one day while I was hooked up to a dialysis machine, one of my young students came to visit me. With wide eyes and obvious concern, she said, “You always know how to make me feel better, and I know you can do it for yourself.”

Her comment triggered one of those “Ah-ha!” moments, forcing me to look for something positive about my situation. It was a tough assignment. But that 9-year-old kid made me realize that from these otherwise unpleasant experiences, I learned a life-enhancing lesson and received a priceless gift. It’s been a long time coming, but fortunately, life’s a persistent teacher.

The lesson is to accept help from others gratefully and graciously and even to ask for it when needed. This isn’t easy for an independent person. I’ve prided myself on my ability to do things by myself and make it on my own – to be tough. So much for pride and self-sufficiency! They rapidly dissipated when suddenly I had to rely on family and friends for the simple requirements of daily living. As it turns out, allowing others to help me made them feel better, too. I know how satisfying it is to do something for someone else. Now, I know that to refuse help is to deny others that satisfaction.

The incredible gift that has come out of this is human connection. As word spread about my illness, the number of letters, emails, phone calls and visits I received was overwhelming. It’s been years since I’ve seen or heard from many who contacted me. All of them told me how I’d touched their lives in special ways. To hear and read such tributes is one of the most precious gifts a person can receive. It’s like being at your own memorial service while you’re alive to enjoy it! My father always said, “Send the flowers to people when they can smell them.” I am going to try to send “flowers of appreciation” much more often than I do.

Cracked Notes and Aussies

In crude terms, playing a piece of music on the piano requires the fingers to play the right notes in the right rhythm with the right dynamics. Sometimes the music goes very fast, so getting the fingers into position is tricky. Hitting two keys at once, called “cracked notes,” is a perpetual challenge for pianists. The fear of having cracked notes can make a performer so careful that all spontaneity and joy evaporate.

As a young student in England, I moaned to my teacher about the challenging leaps in a Bach Partita. His response was a scornful snort. Much as I would have liked a useful strategy from him, it wasn't forthcoming. Years later, I developed my own strategy as the result of meeting an Australian tennis champion.

On a trip to Australia in 1978, I took tennis lessons with a Davis Cup champion, Geoff Pollard. He said ten words that improved my tennis game and my piano performance: "Wait until you can read the writing on the ball."

Most people, explained the pro, have poor judgement about the distance of the tennis ball as it speeds towards them. They swing too early and miss. Instructed not to swing my racket until I could read the writing on the ball, I was confident. The writing is pretty big. The pro then lobbed a ball at me. Suddenly I realized that it was spinning around very fast and would be almost on my nose before being legible. In the last instant, I read the words and swung. To my complete astonishment, I hit the ball squarely with my racket and lobbed it back to the pro.

I've adapted this successful strategy for hitting a tennis ball accurately into one for hitting a key accurately: "Wait until you are over the centre of the key." The pianist is now really looking at, and focusing on, the position of the fingers.

How do you learn to find the centre of the key quickly enough to produce excellent accuracy, rhythm and dynamics in a dizzyingly fast piece? The practice solution is to separate the speed of getting the hand into position from the speed of depressing the key. I call this technique "practicing fast very slow." There are five steps.

Step 1. Play the key that occurs before you need to change hand position, using the appropriate amount of strength required for the dynamic you want, then STOP.
Step 2. Look for the key (or chord) that will be played next.
Step 3. Move the entire hand AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE to the new key but DO NOT PLAY IT.
Step 4. Look to see that the correct finger is over the center of the key to be played.
Step 5. Play the key with the appropriate dynamic level.

When you're comfortable and can play the notes correctly because you've practiced moving your hand quickly, speed up the tempo of the piece until it's at performance level. This strategy is very effective for reducing cracked notes to a minimum in any performance.

It also improves your tennis game.

The Pay-off of Being "In the Moment"

A couple of weeks ago, I sat down at the piano for my last practice sessions before heading to tropical St. Maarten. Even the lure of a week on sun-warmed beaches wasn't enough to quell nagging thoughts that I'd lose momentum in my practicing. Any skill that requires eye-hand coordination plus mental sharpness needs daily reinforcement to be at its best. There's that old saw about Rachmaninoff (or pick any pianist of note) who said, “If I miss one day’s practice, I notice; if I miss two days' practice, my wife notices; if I miss three days' practice, everyone notices.”

In practicing, the challenge is to pay attention to each note and not day-dream about, say, an upcoming sunny holiday. I've been very influenced by Jon Kabat-Zinn’s statement that if you aren't present here, when you get there, you won't be present either. The same challenge faces everyone who meditates: when trying to focus on one thing, the mind breaks off and introduces other thoughts. We can be two people – one who does the task, and one who watches the doing. In practicing and performing, keeping these parts together is the goal. So-called memory lapses occur when the split happens. In my experience, it isn't that notes are forgotten but that concentration falters.

I'm happy to report that I didn’t think an edifying thought the entire week in St. Maarten. I enjoyed watching the water, sun and sand, I enjoyed the pleasure of my friends, and I recklessly enjoyed the wonderful French food. It was pretty easy to stay focused in those moments! By week's end, my walk had changed from an energetic, get-from-here-to-there-as-quickly-as-possible gait, to a relaxed, loose-limbed saunter.

Now, I'm back in the saddle again, and I love it. After loosening up my fingers, I'm noticing that the practice I did before leaving has taken me to new, deeper levels. I'm feeling so refreshed and happy that my love of playing the piano is even more intense and rewarding, moment by moment.

Collaboration's time has come!

Jugglers were among the first to openly embrace sharing and growing. The spoken rule for jugglers is, "You teach me a trick, and I'll teach you one, and then we'll both know two!"

The idea of collaboration began for me with Dr. Suzuki, who encouraged all teachers to share teaching tips and stragegies through regular meetings of two or more teachers. Until then, the piano teachers I had known were secretive about their methods. The entire system was so competitive that the feeling seemed to be, "If I tell you my secrets, then you will know mine plus your own, and then your students will be better than mine," with the implied subtext, "and I wouldn't be able to stand that!"

It has been a joy to see how greater openness has filtered down to the students. Instead of having rival studios in which one dare not speak to another teacher's student, fellow students become best friends and root for each other to do well in competitions, even when they are going head-to-head in the same one.

We all win.

Re-framing: one of my most valuable tools as a teacher

It happens in piano teaching more often than one would expect: a child tries an activity for the first time, cannot do it perfectly and becomes frustrated and angry faster than the speed of light. One can tell almost immediately that this has happened by the sounds of the hands slamming down on the keyboard. Separating the child’s brain from the fingers (figuratively, of course) seems to be a powerful aid to relieving the frustration.

I talk to the child about his or her wonderful brain that has a clear picture of what needs to happen. At this time, though, the fingers have never attempted this action before. The brain is sending messages to the fingers but, since they are inexperienced at the activity, the fingers don’t always understand what they are being asked to do. This is why we need to ask them over and over until they really know what is required. It means, then, that the child’s brain needs to be kind to the fingers because the fingers are doing the best they can and the brain needs to help until, again figuratively speaking, the fingers turn around and say to the brain, OK, we know how to do that now.

The children respond wonderfully to this strategy, feel great about themselves and display real patience and compassion for their fingers. That is why re-framing is one of my most valuable tools as a teacher.

What Makes Me Happy

All the regular items that fall under the makes-me-happy list apply, of course. But I realized today, after a nearly week-long Christmas hiatus from practicing (geez, I hate it when I don’t practice for a week!) that when I wrote in my daily journal (morning pages in The Artist’s Way speak) and began to dream about how I wanted to create a special performance of the Rachmaninoff Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini, I felt totally energized and alive.

The sages say that in order to be happy, a person needs three things: 1. someone to love, 2. something to do and 3. something to look forward to. It is the third item that caused me to feel so soul-poppingly awake. The invitation to play the Rach-Pag Variations, as they are familiarly known, is for October 2007. Slightly more than ten months seems like a long way off but there are other commitments to be met before then and there are new aspects of this performance that really have me all a-twit.

The details of how I go about preparing this performance I hope to share in an on-going diary. The feeling I am relishing today is the sudden laser focus and excitement that the prospect of the performance is giving my life. Now even jogging takes on new meaning: I want to be physically fit. I want to have the release of energy and positive glow about life that jogging seems to give me.

I want to create the most powerful experience for the audience that I possibly can. I want to share the magic of Rachmaninoff’s ballet score that tells the legend of the great violinist Paganini selling his soul to the Devil in order to be able to play better than anyone else. Practicing needs to be the most specific and intensely attended-to that I have ever done. I want to know the sound of every note and to be totally connected with those sounds, each one of which has meaning and place in the score. In addition to the research on the story, the historical context of the legend, Rachmaninoff and ballet will all of which be incorporated into the performance. Therefore, the other parts of my life need to be unfolding in a logical and well-organized manner each day.

Boy, am I lucky. Imagine having the opportunity to play this great piece of music with a fine orchestra.

The Power of Music to Create Community

Last night my heart soared and I felt completely connected with the capacity audience at Sydenham Street United Church, temporary home for concerts of the Kingston Symphony Orchestra. Why did I have this encompassing and joyous feeling? Because the conductor invited the audience to sing a few Christmas carols.

I love the traditional carols, but that's not the reason the feeling was so powerful. It was because all of us were singing together, creating a community from our shared voices.

When I was a small child during the Second World War, at the movies there was always a short subject, as they were called then, of a few songs. The lyrics were displayed on the screen, and we were invited to sing along and “follow the bouncing ball." At school we sang every day for thirty minutes out of the book called “the Canadian Song Book." How I loved those songs like “Flow Gently Sweet Afton” and looked forward to singing them.

Singing around the campfire on the beach in the summer evenings was traditional. Someone always had a ukulele, and “Bye, Bye, Blackbird” was invariably part of the song list.

Much later I attended a small church in a village in BC, where the temporary minister, who loved the old hymns, would come early to services and sing them, inviting everyone to join him. Attendance more than doubled within a few weeks.

We're fortunate to have many fine choral groups in Kingston. I guess I'll have to join one of them.

The Miracle of Friendship

There is a painting of a wooden barn with a round stone silo. The light is glancing from a place low in the sky. It is probably around 5 pm on a long summer’s day. Looking at this painting by my friend Carrel takes me to the years I spent in Wisconsin and in particular to the farm owned by Carrel and her husband. The painting will be delivered to my house tomorrow and I am going to hang it in the hallway where I will see it every time I enter the house or walk from my bedroom to the kitchen.

I visited Carrel at the farm in Wisconsin last week. She and I played Mozart duets for several hours each day. She is also, like me, a pianist and teacher, and having the opportunity to make music with her after such a long time away was slaking a thirst I was unaware I had. Carrel plays the piano every single day as a way of keeping her increasingly arthritic fingers supple. I was happy and astonished at how fluid the running passages were and how musical her playing continues to be in spite of the physical challenges of being 87.

As we were playing, and indeed all the time we were together, we laughed and laughed. When I told her that nobody makes me laugh the way she does, she said that no one laughs with her the way I do. I felt good.

Nuannaarpoq: The taking of extravagant pleasure in being alive

We have access to so many and varied sources of music. The most significant and valuable source for the developing human brain appears to be classical music. More and more articles are appearing about research that shows how the brains of infants are stimulated and enriched by hearing the highly patterned and structured sounds of the great classical composers.

Human beings are hard-wired, scientists now believe, to make music. There’s no culture without some form of music, no matter how primitive it may appear to be. Even as recently as today’s Globe and Mail (Nov. 29, 2006), a segment in the Social Studies column states that when a person hears a rhythm, an immediate and physical response occurs. The music triggers the release of chemicals into the bloodstream that are directly linked to pleasure (quoted from Tom Horan in the The Daily Telegraph).

When I read the Inuktitut word nuannaarpoq in an article by Yann Martel, (Globe and Mail, Nov. 26, 2006), I felt a shiver of recognition, the kind of reaction one has when something is articulated that you didn’t know you felt until you saw it written.

What a magnificent concept this word captures: the taking of extravagant pleasure in being alive. I do feel this way in general often nowadays and find that kind of pleasure in listening to or making music.

Music entertains, inspires and educates

Sir John Reith, the first head of the BBC, was asked if he was going to give the people what they wanted. No, he said, something better than that. We will inform, educate and entertain them.
Music does this for us already! Listening to music is a pleasure and is certainly entertaining. With instruction, we learn how to appreciate the magnificent works of our greatest composers. There are so many different kinds of music, each with its geniuses and outstanding pieces. Teachers who present them in informative and interesting ways, with an evident love of music, are blessings to children.
One of my favorite experiences is to listen to Clayton Scott bring opera and ballet to life. The experience is as easy and pleasurable as hearing an exciting story being read for the first time. With a guide such as Clayton, even very young children learn to listen and watch with great discernment to operas and ballet. For adults, the experience is enlightening and enlarging. To discover more about Clayton Scott’s performances, visit her website "http://www.claytonscottmusic.com".

My Lifetime Dream of Walking in the Footsteps of Mozart and Beethoven

The excitement, the thrill, the feeling in the core of my being when I stood in the room where Mozart was born, then in the room where Beethoven wrote the heartfelt Heiligenstadt Document, will stay with me forever.

My trip to Salzburg, Vienna and Prague during the summer of 2006 was a pilgrimage of love and respect. The more my life has been filled with the music of these two great masters, the more I have longed to see where they lived and worked, where they created their glorious music that has inspired and sustained millions of people for two hundred and fifty years and gives no sign of waning.

Over the course of the two weeks I journeyed in the company of my dear friends and colleagues, Rosemarie and Jean Blanc. We were excited to visit the Mozart Haus, where Amadeus entered the world. In that ancient house there were ceramic stoves the size of an old-fashioned wood stove, only prettier and decorated with flowery designs. There were no openings in the part of the stove that was in the room. In a corridor meant for the servants, each of the stoves had a doorway for removing the wood ash and stoking with fresh wood for burning. Unlike North American fireplaces or woodstoves, no dirty ashes could enter the living rooms to soil the pretty silk clothing so loved in Mozart’s time.

We saw the tiny violin that Mozart played when he was four years old as well as the piano that travelled with Mozart on his journeys. We stood in the gorgeous yellow room in Schonbrunn castle where the little Mozart climbed into the lap of the Empress Maria-Theresa, covered her face with kisses, and told her that he would marry her when he grew up. Fickle woman, when Mozart was grown and in need of a secure post, she wrote a letter trashing him to the prospective employer, saying that he wasn’t so wonderful and besides, he had a large and hungry family!

I sat in the cathedral where Mozart was baptized and heard the massive organ that he played occasionally. The sound filled the huge space and resonated in every cell of my body.

The Vienna opera house, which performs a different opera each day of the week, ten months a year, is vast and gorgeous yet somehow welcoming and people-friendly. The luxury of the building enhances one’s sense of how wonderful it is to be human, to know, to see, to hear the magnificence that our fellows are capable of creating and sharing. Sitting in the Emperor’s box, at the end of the comprehensive and informative tour, I suddenly knew just how I was meant to live! I love to imagine what it must have been like to sit in those luxurious, perfectly-placed seats, hearing Mozart’s glorious operas and watching him conduct in the pit!

In Heiligenstadt, now a suburb of Vienna, we visited the two medium-sized rooms in a pretty but not luxurious house where Beethoven wrote the document, now known as the Heilgenstadt Testament, in which he speaks for the first time about his hearing affliction to his brother Carl. We have had such a distorted picture or Beethoven as being uncouth, uncultured and socially unacceptable when in fact he was tortured by not being able to hear and afraid of being ostracized because he was deaf. It was terrible for him to be in society, incapable of hearing what was being said and equally incapable of telling anyone why. To hear him express his longing to be loved and accepted is anguishing. To stand in the rooms where he wrote this agonizing confession made me feel conscious of the deep expression of emotions that lives in every note of every piece of music he composed.

My feelings of awe and privilege have caused me to listen with greater joy and keenness to experience more fully the progression of every sound, knowing that each time I hear a piece again, I have the possibility of resonating more deeply with the power and beauty of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s music.