When working on my own, I knew that the best plan was to alternate my vision of the musical ideal with my ongoing attempt to find neural pathways. BP, piano playing had felt like one continuous flow: imagining the sound, feeling that musical impulse flow through my body, through my arms, through my fingertips, through the keyboard, through the instrument itself, and out into the room or the concert hall.
I would go back and forth between trying to recall that way of playing and calling on whatever work-around response I could find for a tiny part of a musical passage. I could only hope that this technique, on a microscopic level, would help to break through some part of the blockages in my neural pathways. Among the “nerve shudders” and the bumping up against brick walls, I found places I could almost break through—but then would be stopped short. Since the musical material itself is complex—as the combination of reflexes must also be—my task turned out to be a constant search for many needles in many haystacks.
If each piece of music, or section of a piece I tried to play, could be called a house, I needed to know every nook and cranny of every room in it. But I had to accept the fact that, post-polio, I no longer felt comfortable inside any house, or piece. I could trip so unexpectedly; I could get cornered so easily; an unforgiving demon could stop me on a whim; and any of these things could happen if I hesitated for an instant. As a result, I had to know the inside of each complex dwelling so well that I could turn on a dime, or a fraction of a dime; so that I could quickly hop over a place just meant for me to trip on; so that I could regain my balance—again in a split second, during a complex passage.
When practicing a piece of music, I had to think the movements from different places in each hand/arm/side of the body. Neither side worked properly, so neither could serve as a model. But because the right side was less handicapped than the left, I kept trying to let the right be the guide, where possible. I learned that I had to shift multiple times—instantaneously—during even a short, simple musical passage, to come even close to some kind of musical approximation. As soon as I made one mistake in which “technique” I was going to use for even a split second, the whole thing would fall apart.
The musical material I chose for my own practice and for our sessions was usually drawn from parts of complete works. Early on, within the Beethoven Sonata Opus 109, for instance—a work I loved, revered, and had studied mentally with Boulanger and Eibner—I found a few almost-accessible passages that I could explore, even in this painful mode. The gentle opening, the serene theme of the third movement, the lovely arcs of the third variation on that theme, for example, allowed me into their dwelling places. A few Bach preludes and fugues beckoned to me, as did a few Chopin and Debussy preludes. Later, parts of Schubert sonatas, passages from the Beethoven Sonata Opus 110, and even parts of the Beethoven Sonata Opus 111, along with a few of the Bach “Goldberg” Variations, let me come in to explore. Since each passage required heroic efforts, I needed to choose the music I most valued in the literature, and inhabit it as thoroughly as possible.
In Vienna, as I had learned and experienced other aspects of music, I believed there would be a magical time when my playing would all come back if I just “kept trying.” In Copenhagen, I could tell myself that once we were through with the treatment, I could start getting back to being me again. But now in Santa Fe, in the discouraging search for work-arounds and breakthroughs, I had to admit I was nowhere near being able to walk hand in hand with the piano again.
In between the two extended summers, the Aitkens went to New York for a few months and thought it would be better if I didn’t join them. Webster felt, probably rightly, that being in the center of American concert activity would be a discouraging contrast with my own condition, now that I was trying to address that condition realistically.
He suggested that, instead, we might continue our sessions in Los Angeles during the winter, since he had plans to visit there. If I went to LA, he explained, I could stay with his sister, Margaret, and her family. The Aitkens both felt that the warm Los Angeles climate could be soothing to the damaged muscles I was trying to encourage.
This plan gave me time to visit with my family for a couple of months. It was good to be home in Michigan for my mother’s birthday in December. I had some precious catch-up time with my brother, Gary, and a lot of discussion with Mom and Dad about future possibilities.
In Los Angeles, I received a warm welcome from Margaret and her family. It was a comfortable atmosphere in which I enjoyed friendly conversation with Margaret and her husband, Herman, a physician. I also enjoyed getting to know their children: Susie, an outgoing youngster who had had polio as a small child and knew its after-effects all too well; Janet, her accomplished older sister, who was close to graduating from high school and was focused on becoming a journalist; and Donald, the youngest, a handsome young boy, trying to find a way to assert himself in a household where his older sisters could already express themselves effectively.
In my LA sessions with Webster, it became clear that, since Santa Fe, my rate of progress had not increased. With the perspective of more time in between sessions, the picture seemed even more discouraging. We explained our frustrating efforts while visiting Webster’s beloved Aunt Agnes, who seemed most empathetic. As we were trying to describe our working process, she said that it sounded as if we were putting things together with pins. The metaphor struck me immediately, as images flashed through my mind of childhood sewing attempts. If I had failed to put in enough basting stitches, or enough pins, the material in between would sag, and you couldn’t tell what the shape was going to be. You also could never wear the item in that condition. Because my shaping of musical substance felt precarious and unwearable in a similar way, Webster and I started referring to my playing efforts during those years as “put together with pins.”
During Webster’s stay in Los Angeles, he introduced me to his longtime, close friend Dr. Carolyn Fisher, a retired UCLA psychology professor. Carolyn was a great music lover and a friend to performing artists and composers. Some of the first performances of Arnold Schoenberg’s string quartets had taken place at her home. Distinguished touring artists stayed with her and practiced in her living room when they were in Los Angeles to perform. One didn’t have to be in her presence very long to recognize that she lived and relished an intellectual life, and that music was woven all through it. Since she was in some ways “family” to Webster, we told her about my illness, but she also understood that we did not want it mentioned to most people I would meet. She invited me to come over and practice at her house any time I wished, and I met a few of her psychologist friends. She introduced me as one of her “house pianists,” which I found heartwarming. Though I instantly braced for awkward questions, none came up.
Back in Santa Fe for the second summer, as I worked more on my own in the mornings, I became increasingly aware of an emerging pattern. I would wake up saying to myself “Maybe today’s the day!”—the day for an important breakthrough or for finding some way to merge paths a little better in whatever piece or musical passage had my focus. Hope would surge in that early part of the day, before reality would gradually crowd it out. But I knew that recurring hope was still my best chance.
Then as the day wore on, and fatigue set in despite a siesta, despair would prevail. In the evenings, I relied on the Aitkens’ company and good conversation, along with Lilian’s “prescription,” to help mask that part of the syndrome.
One welcome diversion was looking through the treasure trove of piano scores in Webster’s studio. Especially fascinating to me were the scores with notes from pianist Artur Schnabel, who had been one of Webster’s major teachers. My favorite discovery was Schnabel’s notation at the end of the Beethoven Sonata Opus 111: “ins Himmelreich angekommen” (“arrival in heaven”)—the final perfect chord, the quiet “amen” after the turbulent first movement gives way to the second movement, which begins quietly, becomes joyous and ecstatic, and finally attains a transcendent serenit
y.
The Opus 111 had already become a kind of life reference for me, as I had clung to it in Paris with Boulanger and in Vienna with Eibner. It seemed to express my determination to keep great musical essences in my life. As I fought every day for my pianistic existence, I could see my tragedy reflected in Webster’s eyes, constantly reminding me how precarious that existence had become. The downward leap that began the Opus 111’s first movement—the leap into space—symbolized my own leap of faith, against all odds.
I wrote to Martha about the ongoing emotional seesaw: “Webster admitted that we were back to the same kind of work that had to be done last summer. Somehow I seem to get lost in the mess, and still cannot bring forth a coherent whole to stand in for reflex.”
The Aitkens and I celebrated August 9, to mark the fifth year since the polio pronouncement of August 9, 1955, the day that had changed my life forever. Our daily sessions were going to end in a few weeks, since Webster had accepted an offer to teach at the University of Illinois for the upcoming school year. I would go back to Michigan and visit him from there.
Toward the end of our second Santa Fe summer, Webster broached the subject of the Lassen deadline, reminding me that the one year Lassen had set for maximum neuromuscular return was now approaching two years. I had no need for the “dried-up flower” speech again; I was clearly nowhere near being able to play at a level that either of us found acceptable. I begged Webster not to write me off yet, to give me just one more year. But even the people who wanted most to help me were questioning the wisdom of doing so.
A nudge in a different direction appeared soon after I had moved back to Michigan in the early fall. Mom and I were on a walk with our friend Reta Simons, who wanted to know if I would be interested in taking on her daughter, Cheryl, as a piano student. Reta remembered that I had taught piano during my teenage years, and that my young students in the neighborhood had done well. When I brought up caveats about my own post-polio keyboard problems, she was undeterred. She had seen her eldest son, Jay, through his recovery from paralytic polio and figured that I could draw on my inner resources, just as he had.
Reta’s vote of confidence was all it took to reopen that door. In Cheryl’s and my first session, we tackled her habit of glancing at the teacher every few seconds for approval. Her delighted chuckle marked a moment of recognition that it was her playing, not someone else’s approval, that would be our focus. My overall approach would be to help Cheryl build her confidence and strengthen her connection with the piano. As we went along, we had a great time. Her playing improved at a good clip, and it felt to me as if I had never stopped teaching.
I had started giving piano lessons at age twelve, when a substitute teacher at my school asked if I would help her re-approach the piano. She hadn’t played for some twenty years, and evidently felt less embarrassed to ask questions of a student rather than an adult teacher. I sensed immediately that her main problem was fear, and I did my best to make our sessions natural and nonthreatening.
By the time I was thirteen, I was teaching several of the neighborhood children; some were beginners, and others had had unproductive experiences with adult teachers. I was closer to their ages and open to an individualized approach for each child, since each one clearly had a different set of needs and learning abilities. Once I had watched and listened to a young person’s approach to life, I could help find pathways into the music. Of course, I taught them all some good ways of using their hands and fingers and arms, along with exercises to strengthen their fingers. Sometimes my individualized approach for a student was focused mainly on a matter of pacing or on which element should come first.
Debbie, one of my first students, was hyperactive, and viewed by her classroom teachers as a problem. She was extremely bright but prone to compulsively interrupting people with some irrelevant comment or question. In one of our first lessons, she interrupted something I was saying with the comment, “You wore that same blouse last week!” When I asked if she remembered what we were discussing before she noticed my wardrobe repetition, she repeated almost word for word what I had explained to her about the music. After that incident, I just went with the flow. I found that we could make a lot of progress if I let her vent when she needed to. If she wanted to get up and run around the room in the middle of working on a musical passage, that was fine with me. When she settled down afterward, her concentration was usually better.
I’ll never forget the day I invited her mother, Jane, to listen to Debbie play a Clementi sonatina we had been working on. Debbie dug her fingers into the figuration with gusto, and when she came to the end of the piece, turned to her audience of two with the most excited expression I had ever seen on her face. Her mother was thrilled to tears.
Two other first students at that time, Bonnie and Philip, were both fearful at the beginning. Bonnie found it difficult to talk to anyone except her older sister; Philip was disheartened after working with one of the adult piano teachers and was afraid to try again. My job was to encourage them. Philip needed to discover that he could indeed play a musical passage successfully; Bonnie needed to find out that it was safe for her to come out of her shell expressively. For both, in different ways, I first put the focus on smaller sections, so that they could experience shaping a phrase or section and bringing it to a successful conclusion. Then they could build on and extend those experiences. It had been a joy for me to see them emerge and develop some self-confidence at the piano, even with relatively simple repertoire.
When I had talks with parents, I asked them not to order their children to practice, and not to insist on a set amount of practice time. “Let me do that,” I suggested. “They get enough of that kind of scheduling at school, and I’d like piano playing to be fun at this stage.” I described the value of “see if you can do this” challenges, rather than telling the kids they had to practice some prescribed amount of time. The parents I spoke with were willing to go along, and happy with the result.
One day when I was about fourteen, I had gone to the local sheet-music store looking for repertoire for my young students, when I came across something I knew instantly to be a treasure: a volume of children’s pieces by Dmitry Kabalevsky. I also found a volume of fascinating children’s pieces by Prokofiev. Neither of these wonderful creations for the young had been part of my own childhood experience, but I was determined to bring them to my students. The Kabalevsky pieces were perfect for beginners through intermediate, and I enjoyed playing each of them through as soon as I brought the volumes home. They introduced a beginner to musical patterns in a charming and imaginative way. The melodies were instantly appealing and playable by almost anyone.
I had continued teaching through high school and then acquired some students during my college years in Pittsburgh—a total of about nine years before leaving for Europe at age twenty-one. It seemed natural to Mom and Dad to trust a young teenager to be capable and responsible. They both grew up on family farms, where the children participated in the real work. My father had developed great body strength through pitching hay and handling hay bales as a kid. My cousins were given serious responsibilities as youngsters; the youngest, Jay, had been driving a tractor since the age of nine. To my parents it seemed normal that, at age fourteen, I had my Michigan driver’s license and an entire class of students.
Since I had been earning money as both a teacher and a babysitter, I could save some of it, splurge on candy bars and movie magazines, and buy myself sheet music or books, all at my own discretion. Allowance money was available from my parents, without the need to know what I might be spending it on, but often I told them I simply didn’t need it. I knew that they had skimped and saved, having made their way through the Depression, and was happy to be making some income on my own. Self-reliance, to me, seemed a most desirable quality.
But at twenty-six about to turn twenty-seven, I was far more dependent on others than I had ever been in my teens. Since the polio attack, I had felt the opposite of self-reliant. I usual
ly felt fearful and uneasy, and it was something of a miracle that I suddenly felt capable of teaching again.
Soon after Cheryl and I began our sessions, I had a message from Celia Merrill Turner, director of the Will-O-Way Theatre in Bloomfield Hills. Will-O-Way was both a summer stock company and a year-round community theater, founded and directed by a family with a long theatrical history. I first met Celia when I was fifteen and had enrolled in Will-O-Way’s Apprentice Theater Program for a fun summer. I had met some interesting students in the class and had a wonderful time, which included playing Juliet in the Apprentice Evening of theatrical scenes. From the time we first met, Celia and I had felt a special bond, since she was also an accomplished musician. As a violinist and conductor, she had graduated from Juilliard in both specialties, and was one of the most energetic and positive people I had ever known.
After my Apprentice Theater summer, I had brought a neighbor friend, “Georgie” Scott, to Will-O-Way to audition for Celia and her brother Bill, the stage director. Georgie, about seven years my senior, had been in the Marine Corps, after which he went back to school to study drama. I had a crush on Georgie and looked forward to those times he visited his father and stepmother, when he would talk with me at “eye level” about serious matters. Georgie had done some impromptu readings for my mother and me that had revealed his stunning dramatic talent, and I hoped that Will-O-Way would accept him for some of their regular productions. They accepted him enthusiastically, and George C. Scott, as he was called formally, had been an instant hit at Will-O-Way before New York, Hollywood, and the rest of the world discovered him.
When Celia and I got back together after so many years, we had a delightful reunion, catching up on major events that had happened to each of us. She also had an idea she wanted to discuss with me: a plan to add music study to Will-O-Way’s Apprentice Theater Program. When I had worked with her at Will-O-Way years before, her daughter Robin was barely a year old. Now Celia and her husband, Ken, had two more children, and twelve-year-old Robin was playing the piano. Would I teach Robin and work with Celia on the projected music study program?
To Play Again Page 15
