#I took piano lessons for five years and cello for three or four

[laughinglynx]

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[tevotbegotnaught]

“The conductor…in the power he has over others…it is in his interest as a human being, as well as that of his musical achievements, to resist the temptation to misuse it. Tyranny can never bring to fruition artistic-or for that matter human- gifts; subordination under a despot does not make for joy in one’s music-making. Intimidation deprives the musician of the full enjoyment of his talent and proficiency. Yet I should certainly not want to impugn the employment of earnest severity or even the occasional borrowing of the Bolt of Zeus; the latter if the hand knows how to wield it, can in exceptional situations bring surprisingly good results. Severity is a legitimate even indispensable means of dealing with people...”

Bruno Walter

In my Summer of 42 (years), I was a college freshman…again. With neither Mexican weed nor dormitory hijinks to distract me, I worked through the full Brooklyn College Core Curriculum and a handful of music courses. My degree plan also required an ensemble each semester. When the Assistant Dean interviewed me, he looked over my CV and immediately suggested their Jazz Band. After hearing them, I chose a contemporary music ensemble founded by a composition professor. Fall semester, she was on sabbatical and a trumpet prof, Juilliard guy and veteran freelancer, ran the class. To begin, he sat everyone in a circle and asked us to play “Happy Birthday" in hocket. Most of the class was unsure of the melody and some also thought it a stupid idea. With our nonstandard instrumentation, we massacred Second Viennese School composers for the rest of the term.

Spring term, the founder returned. She was just over five feet tall, brown-skinned, with narrow shoulders and mineshaft dark eyes. When she listened, her head nodded while bottomless eyes fixed on you. Raised in a distressed country, her life moved from prodigy to conservatory-trained professional with impeccable musicianship: piano, score reading, solfege, conducting, improvising, composing. Then, she came to the US, with zero money and English and rebuilt her career from scratch. At BC, she conducted the orchestra until politics pushed her out. Now, she gave composition lessons and led this ensemble.

Our roster still read as spare parts: three singers, three pianists, two flutes, violin, saxophone, clarinet, guitar; some highly skilled, others not. For most, English was a second or even third language. Our professor's first assignment: list your colleagues’ instruments, find pieces for a subset of our forces, select only pieces written after 1960, bring scores/parts for audition.

The following week, we presented our finds. First, someone showed her a John Cage duet. As she turned pages, Maestra’s face went blank .

“Why did you get this?”

A mumbled answer.

Maestra closed the score. “You got eet because eet looks easy. Didn't you? First of all, it’s a short duet. Three, maybe four minutes of music. Nothing to do on a real pro-GRAM. Not serious. Not serious at all.”

More mumbling.

“Get something else. Thank you.”

She jabbed the score into their hands, then addressed the class.

“Nothing about John Cage. John is extraordinary. When you choose music, don’t just take a name you theenk you know. Read the score. You are musicians …supposed to be….”

Next, one of the singers produced a folio. Its font, ornate and oversized. I winced. Maestra saw it was a Puccini aria with piano accompaniment and recoiled.

“After nineteen-sixty? Thees? You are kidding me!”

Again, she faced us.

“Thees is NOT opera work-SHOP. I know some of you did not make it there. I'm very sorry about that. Please find some other music to sing. There are so many good theengs. I hope you will find out. Music does not end with Verdi, Puccini.”

So it went. Gratefully, she anticipated our poor choices and suggested some pieces.

Meastra spoke Spanish to some students, aware of the terrain they navigated and supportive. Jorge, a Mexican pianist, was one of her projects. He was a skilled player, an enthusiastic and warm colleague. His giggle often broke up the class. In our third meeting, we rolled the piano front, Jorge sat on the bench. While he longed for mama's home cooking, he wasn’t missing any meals in Brooklyn. His midsection expanded well beyond his tight-waisted pants, straining shirt buttons. Maestra questioned him on preparation: “you’re playing the second movement, what about the third?”

Unaffected by the prodding, he began to play. A minute in, she said, “stop”.

He continued, eyes closed.

She shouted, “Stop! I’m telling you, STOP"

He looked over.

“JORGE….WHAT…ARE…YOU….DOING?”

It wasn’t meant as a question. Jorge smiled and gently shook his head.

“Why are you smiling? Look at you!”

Her voice leveled.

“This is not ready. It’s better, but it's not ready.”

She shifted.

“I am very worried about you. Look..at…your…STOMACH. You need to take better care of yourself. You know, pianists perform in pro-FILE. Theenk what you show to the audience.”

Jorge wasn't smiling. He put his hand on his belly.

“Everyone should con-see-der an exer-CISE pro-GRAM. I am forty years, Dio mio! Almost FEEFTY years older than some of you. Take care of yourselves.”

She dismissed him with a sweeping gesture.

“Ok, who is next? Anna, where is the list? Geeve it to me!”

Her assistant, a brilliant, tiny, Yankee grad student, always cleaned up.

Maestra partnered Jorge with another pianist for a Gyorgy Ligeti duo. Its ingenious architecture, a complex cycle revealed one beat at a time. In Yogi Berra's construction, half the score was ninety-nine percent rests. The players needed infallible inner time. While they played, Maestra leaned over the piano, right hand supporting her, left turning pages. She nodded her head slightly in tempo. The pianist's hits charged toward and away from each other like Pacman's gobbling goblins.

“You are late!” she slammed her left hand down. They went back. Another hammer blow. Back again. The piece never made it to the program.

At the end of the initial class, she approached me about Milhaud's “Le Creation du Monde", a chamber work for winds, including alto saxophone. We didn’t have the other winds, of course, but a young woodwind quintet, in residence for the year, would help out.

“Le Creation" story moves from brooding chorale to a raggy bolero where the winds pass around jumpy tunes, then strut them all, polyphonically, in a joyous finale.

At the first of four rehearsals, we were less than half personnel. Maestra had been enthusiastic about the quintet, encouraging us to meet, hear and study with them. But they were collaborating with major artists and appearing all over the world. Their residency, now in name only. No one in the group even bothered to return her emails. Our conductor was livid. (Later, the assistant assured us that Maestra never returned emails, either.) In rehearsal, the music just marked time. In long stretches with no tune and no landmarks, I fell into a hole and missed my entrance.

“What are you DOING! Counting! Count-ting! I can’t do everytheeng for you.”

Concert day was the first we all sat down to play. In the midst of my disciplined colleagues, I was a bellowing hippo. During the chorale, my slow descending notes were either out-of-tune, out-of-time, the wrong dynamic, or all three.

The baton came down hard “NO..NO..NO. WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

“How can you be late. It's jazz. Jazz! You play jazz? Right? You know who is John Col-TRANE? Play it like Col-TRANE! Why should I have to tell YOU this. Come on!”

I wore other hats that night: soprano, clarinet. Still, my mind remained fogged through the Milhaud finale.

The quintet players all demolished their solos. With a huge smile, Maestra gave each well-deserved bows. When they were done, she flashed her eyes at me, scowling. Then, jerked both her hands upwards, like she was flipping a pool toy. I stood up and stared straight down.

Next semester, a composition student brought a score. It was mostly squiggles and arrows, notation designed to move the music forward without defining functional harmony or conventional melody. She conducted a circle for each “bar”. We could gauge the length of each gesture and respond in time. Simultaneously, she sang the gestures using their pitched start/end points, conducted, turned pages and offered substantive commentary. If one of us was even a second late, her glance immolated them.

I became friends with some of her students. Waiting outside her office, they often heard shouting. When the door opened, students walked out in tears. Some planned to work closely with Maestra toward their Master's or DMA. Those plans would change...

An alumni couple created an endowed chair for Maestra, protecting her from political games. To celebrate, students accompanied her to the donors’ Connecticut home for a musicale. We loaded two vans with the usual music school suspects: waifish Asian virtuoso string players, an Eastern European sturm und drang pianist, a diffident “difficult” composer, and bit players like me.

Both donors were in their eighties and fabulously rich, earnest, lefty intellectuals. The wife wore a gas mask-like apparatus, its hoses attached to a whirring box on her back. I strained to understand her speech, but her eyes shone with love and curiosity. The couple warmly welcomed us to a large room packed with guests.

I was part of a quartet: oboe, flute, clarinet and piano, playing a student work. The composer, a young Dominican guy, rising star in the program. A Caribbean undergraduate writing skilled takes on contemporary European music. His piece used the difference-tone clusters of Gyorgy Ligeti: loud, high notes, staggered and longheld, producing acoustic anomalies: window-fan undertones and piercing oscillations. Bathing in timbral waves and madly counting beats, I couldn’t find the piano part, though we made it to the end without requiring oxygen or a conductor. The composer took a awkward bow and disappeared.

With Maestra as Maitre’d we served up a baroque cello sonata, Beethoven piano music and some Sondheim. Then, our little foursome loudly dropped a turd on the buffet table.

The donor husband was one of those ruddy-faced white guys who wear baggy corduroys and turtle necks over their barrel physiques. He sought me out, towering above me as I packed up my clarinet.

“What did he mean with that piece?"

“Sir, I…I wouldn’t want to represent the composer, he never said anything about..”

“Now, you must know something.”

He was an important man accustomed to getting answers, fast and in full.

“I know my part and how it fits with the others. The woodwinds are playing difference tones, Stravinsky used...”

“Why didn’t HE explain that to us? We go to concerts all the time. Conductors explain new music. They give examples, give context. You can’t just write something like that and expect people to automatically understand it.”

Gulp....“Of course.”

“It’s his responsibility to help the audience understand the music”

I looked over. By the buffet, the composer was holding a plate, one of the string players laughing next to him. Mrs Donor approached me, extending her hand. The box on her back hissed and clicked. Above the mask, searching eyes, below, a voice from a radio in another room. Was she talking about the quartet? It was too uncomfortable. I interrupted.

“Thank you so much for your hospitality and the opportunity to play for you. You and your husband are so generous.”

She squeezed my hand and leaned in, radio transmission drowning in static. Her husband came to her side.

“My wife is saying we've been to many, many concerts of new music. Starting way back, with Lenny Bernstein. He taught us there’s always something to learn. He introduced us to many extraordinary artists”

He put his hand lightly on her back. Over her shoulder, Maestra was listening to a guest, head level with their sternum, eyes searchlights in reverse. The radio faded and its whirring submerged in the din.

We got back very late. Our vans parked by the gatehouse and turnstile on the east side of campus. A few yellow lights glowed in the music building. Maestra thanked us. We said goodnight.

Drifting on an acoustic sea, our ancestors explored sound, harnessing the waves. Between foaming peaks and psychic undertow, they found power. From our African beginnings, to the stars, every lineage counted on those who navigated, who mastered instruments, who carried in them songs and stories. They became the music, while it lasted.

[robertemeryofficial]

How to choose a musical instrument

Most of you know me as a conductor. Someone who waves my arms around in unusual patterns and in return, I usually get paid in pounds; unless I'm working in the desert where they offer me a couple of camels instead. Conducting however has been a minor part of my life compared to what I always wanted to be; a pianist. But how did I choose a musical instrument?

Tinkling the ivories was supposed to be my career, so what happened? To get to that, I need to take you on a journey to 1990, when I was seven. This was when Top of the Pops was still on the box. My favourite hobby was to listen to the song that reached number one and then dash to the family heirloom that was an out of tune, ivory keyed piano, and figure out how to play the piece. This all happened long before I had lessons, and in fact, this was the catalyst for my Mother to contact the local teacher down the road.

Every Wednesday for a year I walked 5 minutes to the teacher's house. Every Wednesday I manipulated the teacher to play the piece for me that she wanted me to learn, and every Wednesday I'd then memorise what she performed and could pretty much play it straight away. People thought I was a wunderkind; I wasn't - it's just that I could copy and mimic well. As a child, I wasn't doing this deliberately to fool everyone into thinking I could read music - I just found copying a quicker and more direct way to learn the piano. It wasn't until my Mother placed some sheet music in front of me that I openly admitted I couldn't understand what all the squashed flies on the page were.

From that moment on I was sent to Margaret Toon, a teacher who was a 15 minutes drive away and was the equivalent of a hard-working, reliable, sturdy Volvo compared to the previous Lada. In two and a half years, Mrs Toon taught me to read music and took me from grade one to seven (out of eight). In the blink of an eye, I could play the piano. But did you know I was also playing the cello and clarinet?

No. Of course you didn't. Imagine a bat who has lost its voice and can't produce the sonar echolocation sound it needs to. Now imagine the result when heading towards that rather large brick wall; a cartoon-like 'SPLAT' and a speech bubble 'OUCH'. That is my cello playing. The clarinet was far worse. And here lies the most significant misconception amongst parents when it comes to music tuition. If little Jonny is so atrocious at the violin you banish his Psycho screeching to the attic, not only will he feel unenthused that his parents want him as far away as possible, but he will feel like the mouse in the trap; cheesed-off. Did it ever occur to Mr and Mrs Big Jonny that perhaps the violin was not the right instrument for him?

If your child doesn't like learning the instrument they are playing, there are only three possible reasons why:

1. They have a lousy, tedious, insipid teacher

2. They have an excellent teacher, but the instrument isn't right for them

3. See number one or two

That's it. No other options are available; so stop trying to complicate matters.

I genuinely believe that every child has the capacity to love playing an instrument. I suspect if you put that child in a room with all the instruments ever invented, and the most fantastic teacher for each instrument, they would pick one that they want to play, and they would lap it up like a cat drinking its lactose-free milk.

For four years I played my instrument every evening. I had one lesson a week. I played in the school assemblies. I played for the school concerts and theatrical productions (knowing what I know now, I'm not sure if you could call them 'theatrical' - but I'll let fond memories take precedence). I had a weekly general music lesson at school where I could bang a tambourine and call it music. I played for the school choir. I played background music for the school open days. If you didn't realise by now, I played all the time. And aside from my private music lessons, my music teacher at St Michael's primary school, Mrs June Davenhill, was the gift that keeps giving. She gave me an all-around musical education and the opportunity to play at all those events listed above, and more. I had the support and slight pushiness from my parents, from my private piano teacher, and the school. I had a twenty-four hour, fifteen tog duvet of music wrapped around me; to which there was no escape. Looking back, I would have had to try really hard not to become a musician.

All of this was due to my interest in the piano which the adults responded in kind. Almost everyone I've ever met thinks I was born to play music. But if I chose the clarinet as my first instrument, I think my blog would be called 'Robert Emery proves that Search Engine Optimisation can be fun' and I would have coding as a hobby. The fifteen tog duvet would be a summer four point five, and I would have had to try really hard to become a musician.

After my generous primary school experience, I moved to secondary school and at the same time was sent to the newly opened Birmingham Conservatoire Junior School (I was literally the first pupil to be signed up) and for six out of those eight years, I upgraded from the excellent Volvo to the inspiring Rolls-Royce that was Heather Slade-Lipkin. The BCJS operated every Saturday, and the inspirations of Mrs Toon and Mrs Davenhill combined to make the power-house that was Mrs Slade-Lipkin.

Believe it or not, for the first few months I continued to study cello and clarinet alongside the piano. Perhaps my most significant luck in life so far was figuring out I could enjoy and play the piano BEFORE I even thought about trying other instruments. So when my failure on the two C's was more prominent than the mess that is Brexit, it didn't matter. I just dropped them with no repercussions.

Under the leadership of Heather, the BCJS gave me lessons in aural, theory, general musicianship, piano, organ, composition, improvisation, choir, orchestra - and the method of teaching meant I never felt like I was learning. At this age, I was doing the most important thing; having fun with my friends and being a grotty teenager. But crucially, I was enveloped with music. It was everywhere, so much so it formed part of my DNA. This didn't happen by accident. My parents and teachers carefully curated it. By this time I had stopped experimenting with other instruments and settled on the piano. Yes, I played the organ, but I was told from a young age that one could earn a fast buck or two playing down the local church, so I figured it would be a sensible back-stop if my piano career didn't take off. The massive shortage of organists in the UK meant I had more work than I could cope with, and at thirteen, I was earning on average £30 a week - which for a teenager growing up on the outskirts of Birmingham in a little village meant I felt like 'Del-Boy'; this time next year...

After Heather thrust me into competitions such as the BBC Young Musician of the Year, she steered my playing so that I would become one of two pianists accepted from the UK at the Royal College of Music. It was finally time to flee the nest and move to London. And for me, this was where I became an adult. It was now my responsibility to wrap myself in that duvet of music, and for a couple of years, I failed dismally. I was interested in making money, and that came at the expense of my playing. Becoming 'a concert pianist' was harder work than I thought. I needed to use my skills as an organist to tie me over. The job notice board at the RCM clearly said 'DO NOT REMOVE THESE NOTICES', so when I found an organist ad for the perfect church in the perfect location, I immediately ripped it from its pin and put it in my pocket. I persuaded St Paul's in Chiswick to give me a job, and the duvet of music was slowly coming back to me. I had chosen the organ as an instrument when I was eleven, but it wasn't until eighteen that I started conducting. I thought it looked a lot of fun, but due to my studies at the RCM I was trying to become a serious pianist for serious people; this meant pausing anything that had the word 'fun' associated with it and replacing it with 'practice'.

You can imagine my reaction when after a Sunday morning service, a professional conductor offered me some work as his assistant. This meant I had to conduct, which to me was breaking the rules and having fun again, and so like a duck to water, I quacked. Waving my arms was exciting, and as the number of camels for payment seemed to be higher than playing the piano, I thought I'd stick with it; pardon the pun. The rest, as they say, is history.

If there is one thing to learn from this miniaturised path of my life, it should be that like everything else; music is a journey. It doesn't start or stop with the first pluck of that string. Inspire your child by getting them to practice in the room you are in, and if squawking on a saxophone doesn't empower them as Pelé with that ball, change the sport, and see if hitting a drum will make them feel like Björn Borg with a bat. So finally you ask 'How do you choose a musical instrument?' The answer: You don't; it'll choose you.

Book recommendations discussing Music Lessons

Music Lessons: The Collège de France Lectures - Boulez book publishing his extraordinary Collège de France lectures

THE Music Lesson - From Grammy-winning musical icon and legendary bassist Victor L. Wooten comes The Music Lesson, the story of a struggling young musician who wanted music to be his life, and who wanted his life to be great.

How to Play the Piano despite Years of Lessons: What Music is and How to Make it at Home - an adults guide to learning music

I Wish I Didn't Quit: Music Lessons - A great little book helping you to inspire your child with tips from world-class musicians

Help Your Kids With Music: A unique step-by-step visual guide - Are your children struggling with music theory? This book by Carol Vorderman might be just what the need. Newly released in 2019.

A Child's Introduction to the Orchestra (Revised): Listen While You Learn About the Instruments, the Music and the Composers Who Wrote the Music! - an interactive, bestselling introduction to the world of classical music.

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