Our own Joe Gandelman put this wonderful quote and image he found on Facebook on his Facebook page and it really grabbed my attention. While normally I write about music these two stories both involve music related issues. First a bit of personal background, I had polio when I was 2 years old in the epidemic of 1946. From 10 months in an Iron Lung to 3073 days in hospitals and a couple dozen surgeries until I was 18 years old.
Now I bring that up not to induce pity parties because I had enough of those in my youth to last a lifetime. The key is how I changed from spending all my thought processes on what happened to me, to choose a future. I started when my polio doctor told my mother to arrange for piano lessons for me since I would never be able to run and play like other boys.
Thus it was at a piano lesson when I was 14 that I broke down into a major pity party. In the middle of a lesson I broke down and started in a very loud voice to damn G-d for making me a cripple – a word I heard on school playgrounds a lot. It was a major breakdown with lots of tears and pounding on the piano. My piano teacher, Joan Elander, grabbed me by the shoulders a turned me to face her and said “ NEVER spend a minute thinking about what you cannot do, spend all your time thinking and dreaming about all the possible things you can and will do”.
I stopped crying and thought about what she said and came to the conclusion it made sense. It gave me a lot to ponder over the following week. The next week when I came for my piano lesson, I was a little reluctant to enter Joan’s house because of my previous breakdown. So I was about 5 minutes late for my lesson when I finally entered the house.
There was Joan playing the first movement of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. My knees buckled at the beauty of the sound and I politely asked for the music. Joan said I was NOT ready to play something like this and refused to give me the music. After much pleading and whining, she gave in and gave me the music. That week, I probably practiced it some 70-75 hours and came to my lesson the next week and played it almost perfectly for Joan and we both broke into tears, this time of Joy rather than Anger. From that week on I was a good piano student rather than an angry, resentful and sassy student and this new attitude was carried into other facets of my Life.. This piece of music was my muse and when I wanted a date with the woman who become my wife, I sat her down and played it for her and she said yes and that first date has lasted more than 50 years. To refresh your memory here is a link to the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata.
Moonlight Sonata – !st Movement
We all know how powerful music is and the tremendous impact it can have on the lives of people. Three years ago, one of my teen girl students, Katie, asked me for help learning a song that she always heard her mother humming. The only words of the song she ever heard her mother try to sing was “My Father always promised me”. Of course, being of a certain age, I immediately recognized it as Judy Collins song “My Father”.
The reason Katie wanted to learn the song is they had just returned from the funeral of her mother’s father in Dayton, Ohio. She knew her mother was very sad and Katie wanted to sing this song at the upcoming recital to surprise her mom. I said sure I would help her but how are you going to surprise her when she hears you practice it. After a little discussion, we decided that Katie could use one of the practice rooms in our house whenever she could bike over here. With a couple months of practice and learning to use a wireless mike, Katie was sounding pretty darn good. A week before the recital, she was ready.
Her mother had said her father was a teacher and while they did not have much extra money her father was a great storyteller and reader of books. He would always tell his children stories about places around the globe that he had read about and literally make them come alive in her head. He had always said, someday they would visit these exotic places.
At the recital Katie was very nervous. This was unlike her since this was about the 16th student recital of ours that she has performed and normally she is cool, calm and collected. But I knew the real reason Katie was nervous, this song was very important to her.
Katie played and sang like an angel. Her mother was totally overcome with emotion and was sobbing the last half of the song, but Katie never missed a beat. At the end, almost before Katie was able to finish bowing, her mother rushed up and hugged Katie. Most surprisingly, her stern, no nonsense father went up and joined the group hug. There was not a dry eye in the audience.
What is more important than the song at the recital is the impact it had on this family’s everyday life. It the two years since the recital Katie has repeatedly said how her home life has improved dramatically. Katie admitted she was probably a little sassy around her parents but since the recital, her mother has become her best friend and supporter and even her father seemed warmer and more gentle. After 9 years of lessons, Katie is getting ready to attend college but admitted that after years of yearning to get away to college, she is now a little sad at leaving home. Such is the impact of one piece of music and for those of you unfamiliar with the song here is a YouTube link.