In my gentle procrastination (also known as rest!) of this vacation, I cuddled up in bed with a young adult novel this evening: Broken Chords by Barbara Snow Gilbert. Immediately, I was entranced by the voice and life experiences of the story's protagonist. This coming-of-age tale is about a musical prodigy who is preparing for the audition of her lifetime (one that would earn her a full scholarship to Juilliard) and who, in the process, wonders what she is sacrificing for her art, and wonders if having the talent is enough when the passion is missing. It is a book about self-definition and of not keeping on a path just because it's the one you've always walked. It's also about the complexity of parenting and teaching relationships. Needless to say, I gobbled it up...and loved it.
There was a point when I had the passion to be a music major. I yearned to be one. I begged to be one. I cried and whined and fought because I could not.
My parents reasons were...well, reasonable. I had just been struggling from tendinitis and was required to severely limit my viola playing. That alone was a reason. They also wanted me to have a more certain/stable career. I've never been great at being flexible, and any artist's lifestyle requires a certain tolerance for insecurity and uncertainty. My parents knew me...
My arguments were strong, too. It killed me that people with less musical know-how than I were being allowed to follow their musical dreams. As a composer or as a music teacher, I would not need to play viola for long hours, and my piano playing was barely affected by the pain. I was also learning to pace myself better and to listen to my body's signals before the pain was unbearable.
One maddening blow that I experienced was when I met with a music professor from Hofstra (Mom's school, and one in which I had played the viola for the college orchestra even as a ninth grader). This little man refused to hear me play to see if I could be considered as a transfer student or a post-graduate student (just attending for the music classes after I had my degree.) He said, and I quote loosely, that "Sure, there are thousands of students who tinkered with the piano who think they can be music majors." He contended that if I didn't want it badly enough as a senior in high school, I wouldn't want it enough later in life. I was enraged!
The end result was my graduating from college early--and then choosing to walk the path I had chosen (language teaching) to see how it suited me, before possibly making further career changes.
My grown-up life speaks for itself. I never majored in music. But music is forever. I play always. I learn and grow and create always. Not having a degree in it hasn't prevented me from taking college and graduate level courses in music or in music theory and composition. It hasn't stood in the way of my music directing or teaching piano, and I certainly have made lots of chamber music over the years. Just as my main music education as a child was in private homes, my grown up music apprenticeships have been outside of the academy.
I am not a perfect musician. (Does such a thing exist?) My technique is a weakness--and my shtumpig fingers are only partly an excuse. My sightreading is a strength, as is my musicality and overall interpretation. I am grateful that I can always follow my bliss in music rather than being held up to an external standard of how things should be.
Spoiler alert for the novel that prompted this post:
The novel I read today ends with the protagonist's decision to back away from her concert pianist dreams and potential...and in so doing, she (temporarily at least) backs away from music altogether. I hope that long after the scope of the story she feels music's magnetic pull and comes home to it in a non-competitive sense. I can't imagine my world without the home that music provides me.
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