Our recent trip to Vancouver Island to visit my sister resulted in some reminiscing. The subject came around to the music lessons we both experienced as children. Her recollections were somewhat different than mine, probably because I would much rather have played hockey. Here is some light summer reading for those of you who have endured piano lessons and for those of you who were fortunate to evade them. There were only two things in my childhood that brought extreme stress into my life. One I could have done something about, and the other was out of my control. I speak of trips to the dentist and piano lessons.
Had I brushed my teeth faithfully, and stayed away from those bedtime snacks, the times at the dentist could have been less severe. Many nights I would go to sleep with sugary cornflakes tucked firmly in and between my teeth, much to the delight of the bacteria that left little brown craters in their destructive wake. I doubt any kid ever had as many cavities as I did, without losing their teeth completely. You would think that the pain of the drill, often with no freezing, would have been a great incentive to be more diligent in that regard. It could have been sheer laziness, a poor memory, or just a young boy seeing what he could get away with. The fact I have ever only lost one tooth, a wisdom tooth with no fillings, gives testament to the fact that I did change my ways as I matured. However, in the interim, my mouth has been completely redone several times and now has more crowns than the queen.
The piano lessons were a different matter. I remember grudgingly relenting as my mother tried to sweet talk me into expanding my horizons in the musical department. My older sister, Gaye, was taking lessons and "it was so much fun and she was progressing so wonderfully and her teacher was taking on more students, and it would be so nice to hear me play and I would really enjoy it", finally got to me and I thought I would get everyone off my case and take the darn lessons. It couldn't be that bad, could it?
I started in late summer and being very young and not thinking long term thoughts, I did not realize that the only day Miss Schoppe taught lessons was Saturday, which was fine in late summer. The foresight that was missing was that come winter, the Peewee hockey practices were also on Saturday. Had I thought this through to its logical conclusion, I would have dug my heels in and not consented at all. As I endured the years of practice, I always took comfort in the idea that I did actually have a choice at the beginning. Who was I kidding?
The first music lesson Saturday arrived much too quickly and I remember the new clothes I wore, my one set of clothes for the new school year, and the dire warning to keep them clean ‘or else’. I had been ear pulled into Miss Schoppe’s presence a few days earlier and was introduced and handed my ‘Grade One for Piano’ lesson book fresh from the Royal Conservatory of Toronto. I had not even glanced through it prior to my first lesson, proof that my mind was elsewhere.
I dawdled as I wended my way from our back door to the driveway of the hospital directly behind our house. There was a shortcut from there to the Schoppe residence, a very familiar route for two reasons. There was a town well in the alley behind the Schoppe’s and I made hundreds of trips there to get metal cans and pails of fresh drinking water, both summer and winter. Now in summer it was easy and fun if I went with a friend. I would carry two pails on my little red wagon and with one pushing and the other pulling, the trip home usually resulted in one pail of water, net, due to spillage.
And there, just a few yards away from the well, was the magical hideout belonging to Delano Davis. It was actually a rabbit hutch with a very small loft where the rabbit feed was stored and where there was a huge stash of comics, something that was strictly forbidden in our home. I was tempted to climb up there and hide for the next little while, until all this music lesson stuff blew over, but I had made a solemn promise to Delano that I would never go up there without him. He was two years older than me and he had an older brother who had been shot up in the war, so out of respect for the both of them, I dismissed the thought from my mind and continued down the path from the well to the torture chamber. Enough dawdling. Just one more thing. The path had a low lying section, and in the spring when there was water standing in the low spots of town, I would probably have to detour around this section somehow. I pondered on this for a while. When I looked up, only a few feet from the house of horrors, there she was, waiting at her back screen door. And she was just as I had remembered her.
She was a heavy woman, middle aged, living with her aging mother in the little ivy entwined bungalow. She ushered me through the kitchen and into the front room which was her studio. It was a tiny room with hardly enough space for the monstrous shiny black grand piano which every kid in town had sat down to at one time or another. There was the standard piano bench, also shiny black, and beside it, a kitchen chair, just within reach of the keyboard. She motioned me to the bench and as I squeezed past her, the smell of talcum powder mixed with perspiration gave the back of my throat an unpleasant tingle. Her hair was perfect, too perfect, but what did I know about wigs. I really did not know that I had ever seen one. She wore a tight blue (or was it black) dress that squeaked when she moved her arms. It was probably the snugly confined spare tires trying to get back on the road again. Her face was caked with powder, not quite the same colour as her neck, where it had balled up a little in one of the sweaty creases below her chin. Her eyes were as dark as her hair and just below the tiny pushed in nose was a pair of brilliant red lips. She had a no nonsense look to her, but at least on this occasion, she was friendly enough. I was, after all, a source of income for her and she was not about to jeopardize her good fortune.
That first lesson was an introduction to four years of hell. Not the actual lessons, not her, nor was it the music. It was the lying and cheating that I began to indulge in to preserve my good standing with her and my parents. There was a lined notebook where she would write comments during the lesson and give the assignment for the following week. In the back of the notebook, she showed me how to draw a chart where I would keep track of the pieces I had practiced, the scales I had worked on, and the amount of time per day I practiced. The goal, she said, as she stared intently into my eyes, was ½ hour per day, but not on Sundays, unless for some reason another day of the week was missed.
Being a God fearing boy and raised to always tell the truth, I did well for the first few months. I was progressing, learning the key of C and distinguishing between the bass and treble clef. The simple tunes I learned were easy and with ½ hour of practice a day, I was becoming a master. An A student all the way. Then the weather turned cold and there was ice in the town arena. Hockey season had started. There were road hockey games to play, table hockey games to play, arena hockey games to play, and NHL games to listen to on the radio. There simply was no time for piano practicing. But the lessons continued.
And so I devised a method whereby I could indulge in my favourite pastime, and also keep the adults in my life happy. When my mother was home, I would practice a little and tell her I would finish later. When she was out, I would miraculously be at the piano practicing just as she walked in the door and exclaim that I was so relieved that my ½ hour was up. I would pore over the time chart at the back of my piano book on Saturday morning, filling in the blanks, always managing to come up with an average of ½ hour per day. On a good week, it would actually only be ¼ of that. Apart from the guilty conscience, all was going well. I learned quickly and was able to talk my way out of any suspicions on the part of Mrs. Schoppe. Either she was on to me and did not like confrontation, or she thought I was a slow study. If the performance was totally inept at the Saturday morning lesson, I would give an excuse such as practicing the wrong piece that week. That worked a few times until she told me to play the piece I had actually been working on. That was extremely uncomfortable. My parents were thrilled. I was learning to play piano.
I endured the charade for four full years, with only summers off. I vowed I would change my ways, but would lose my resolve as soon as the ice returned in winter. I was incurable. As the lying increased, so did my ineptitude. It all came to a head at the end of my fourth year. I had made a compromising deal with my dad that if I stuck it out for four years, I could quit if I passed the final test. I was on the Royal Conservatory program and what I did not know was that the teacher/examiner would not be the pushover Miss Schoppe, but an examiner who would come out from Toronto and test students in Saskatoon. I panicked. Gaye had taken the test and she told me how difficult it was and how stern the examiner was, and how they made you play a piece you had never seen before. I went into the bathroom and threw up.
What happened next was a temporary abandonment of hockey and a tortuous month of playing the piano, nonstop day and night. I did not bother noting the practice times as Miss Schoppe would never have believed me anyway. She did, however, notice a remarkable improvement in my technique and knowledge. My Mother was beaming. Her son would become a piano player after all. She thought I was doing this because I had a new found love of music. But it was desperation, survival, redemption.
The fateful day in June arrived and we took a trip into the big city. This was rare and very special, and added to the seriousness of the mission we were on. I was as scared and as nervous as I had ever been in my entire life. The large Victorian house is forever etched into my memory. It was a warm sunny day and as the sun streamed through the windows, I thought it was a lovely day, for my last day, for I was dying of sheer terror. I panicked as I heard the tinkling of the piano keys in the adjoining room fall silent for an instant, and then a booming voice reprimanding some poor terrorized hockey player who just wanted to go home and count his hockey cards. The kid finally came out of the room and I saw tears in his eyes. I am so dead. I wonder if my friends will miss me?
The exam was pure torture, the most painful kind. I was asked to play the required scales, and went to automatic pilot as I always did when playing scales. It was the only way I could get them right as I thought they were a nuisance and total waste of time. Much to my surprise, I pulled it off. No major mistakes. Smooth and a nice light touch, were his comments, as he made a note in his book.
Then, he told me to play my memorized piece from the grade four book. It went well, considering the little time I had practiced in the last four years. He scowled at me as he noted that he thought it was the easiest piece in the book. When one crams four years of study into one month of practice, this makes sense. And then the most feared moment of my life to that time. He opened a book and placed it front of me and told me to play it. It was a piece that I was not supposed to have seen or practiced so my sight reading skills could be assessed. My life passed before my eyes. But just a minute. What is this? I had heard my sister play this piece one time and in a moment of weakness, thought I would do some extra curricular piano playing and spent a bit of time trying to play it, and all just a few days ago! This was my ace in the hole if I pulled it off. After managing to conceal my exuberance, I began to play the piece. I did not know it, I was bad, I had to start over several times, but it was not a total failure and I was certain that I would not have the lowest mark in all of Canada.
I came out of the room a basket case and the relief mingled with latent fear gave me a giddy feeling. My mom put her arm around me and we went home.
After waiting for several weeks for the results, the big brown envelope finally arrived in the mail. At this point I did not care. My music lesson days were over. I had given over four of my precious boyhood years to this exercise and I was done. The family was gathered at the table that evening as the envelope was opened. Out came a stiff piece of cardboard to keep the certificate from wrinkling. The certificate! Did they give those out to the failures too. My mom proudly held up the blue and white document and announced that I had passed my Grade Four Royal Conservatory examination. I was very surprised, to say the least, and suddenly became rather proud. Miss Schoppe would be proud of me too. She had told my parents on more that one occasion that their son had a natural ability. Actually, every kid did. It was the ability to keep her in groceries and rent money. What else would she say.
I lay in bed that night reviewing the route I had taken to get the certificate, and all the money my dad had spent on the lessons. But, a deal was a deal. It was a monumental relief to abandon the lying and cheating of the last few years. I never told anyone. Nor did I ever play the piano again.
