I wrote a few months ago that I started taking piano lessons again, after a hiatus of fifty years. I have continued the lessons through the pandemic, except for a few weeks during the early lock-down while the school of music figured out how to handle lessons remotely. That was a miserable experience. But since June, my lessons have been in person again.
I have enjoyed relearning songs I played many years ago—Clementi’s “Sonatina in C Major,” Beethoven’s “Fur Elise,” Durand’s “Pomponette,” Chopin’s “Prelude No. 4,” and several others.
I have enjoyed learning new pieces—Beethoven’s “Sonatina in G,” Mozart’s “Sonatina Facile in G” (though I didn’t find it so facile), Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s “La Caroline,” and Clementi’s “Rondo-Valse.”
And, of course, the first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” A desire to play this piece is what drove me to start lessons this year in the first place.
Returning to daily practice has brought back memories of my first early piano lessons. Then I plunked out “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” too juvenile even for an eight-year-old. I moved on to “Flow Gently Sweet Afton” and worked my way through the John W. Schaum Pre-A Green Book and the John Thompson First Grade Book.
Those days were full of both discovery and frustration. I learned to read music easily enough, but getting my fingers to do what they were supposed to was difficult. My teacher required weekly practice of scales and chords as I progressed, which I hated.
But that Christmas, after just three months of lessons, I participated in my first recital. It was really a Christmas party, with just the teachers other students, no parents or other family members. We didn’t have to have the pieces memorized. The beginning pupils played first, all the way up to the more advanced students. I was still nervous, but I made my way through “Away in a Manger” and ate my cookies.
The spring recital was more important. Every year, my piano teacher had a recital with an audience. My parents and siblings dressed in their finest to attend. Each student played two pieces from memory. Again she started with the beginning players. I don’t remember what I played that first year, but I was relieved when it was over.
That went on for five years. Through those years, I progressed through the Schaum’s Book F (and maybe the G book, though I’ve lost that one, if I ever had it) and through Thompson’s Third Grade Book. And I learned many recital pieces.
At the end of my fifth year of taking lessons, my piano teacher announced she and her family were moving out of town. She again held a recital that spring—this one in a church. And this time I was the last student to play. I found the program for that recital when I was cleaning out my papers before our move, but I can’t lay my hands on it now. I played “Pomponette” and “Sakura” (a song by a Japanese composer).
That was when I was thirteen. I took lessons for one more year from two other teachers, but we didn’t really click. Plus, one of them wanted me to participate in adjudications—formal competitions with other musicians. I had no interest in that. Playing the piano was for my own enjoyment, not because I wanted to win competitions. The informal recitals had been bad enough. And so, when I was fourteen, I quit. For fifty years. Until now.
I’ve realized as I’ve been playing for the last several months that I will never be as good as I was at age fourteen. That’s a humbling realization. It doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy playing, but my skill level is very unlikely to improve to where I was then.
Some of it is physical. Although I can read music more comfortably than I could a few months back, and the flexibility in my fingers is slowly increasing, it hurts to pound the keys. Probably the beginnings of arthritis. And I can’t see as well through my bifocals with prisms as I did when I was a kid (though I wore glasses then).
Some of it is mental. I am more easily distracted, I have more worries, than I had at age fourteen. I have to fit practicing in before I fix dinner. Then, I could use practicing to get out of chores.
I am already debating with myself when I should stop my piano lessons. I have succeeded in my goals—learning to play “Moonlight Sonata,” picking up some old pieces I used to play well, and being able to read music by sight (albeit still imperfectly). How long do I want to force myself to play every day? I did it for six years at one time in my life. Now I have other things I want to do. But if I stop lessons, will I stop playing entirely, as I did for so many years?
I haven’t resolved my debate yet, so for now I’ll keep taking lessons.
When have you returned to something you used to enjoy? Could you resume the activity as well as when you did it before?
