The Piano Recital: A Near-death Experience

Five Choirs to the Rescue

There I was on the stage, sitting on a piano stool in front of a baby grand piano, wearing my new pink party dress and new black patent leather shoes which had caused painful blisters on both heels.

A gazillion people were staring at me with evil beady eyes.

“Dear God, Please let a trap door open up and swallow me into the darkest depths. Anything but sitting here in this ugly pink dress and black shoes that hurt while all those dreadful people are staring at me.”

If the trap door didn’t open, perhaps I’d just die right there, crashing forward on the baby grand. They’d call an ambulance. People would gather around, saying “poor dear, she died so young.” My parents would weep.

The Dreaded Recitals

God did not answer my prayer. Nor did I die crashing forward on the baby grand. After making 17 mistakes in Bach’s “Invention, № 8, BWV 7488” — a short piece I’d played perfectly at home on my beloved Baldwin Acrosonic — I was finally in the car. (You’ll find a snippet of Bach’s “Invention №8” in the picture above.)

My parents were taking me home. I knew my parents loved me when they didn’t chastise me for making such a mess of the Bach “F-Major Invention, №8.” They didn’t accuse me of embarrassing them.

Whew, safe until next year when I’d be forced to go through the piano recital ordeal a second time. This time in a new pink party dress and new black patent leather shoes because I’d grown too much for last year’s dress and shoes.

Certainly, I would die an agonizing death this time.

Three times I went through this horrifying ordeal. It didn’t matter that I loved my piano, didn’t hate practicing, liked Bach a lot, was fond of my piano teacher. Loved my music theory class taught through the Grubb School of Music and passed all the tests with A+.

Playing in front of people was the problem. I couldn’t even play in front of my aunts, uncles, and cousins. When my Father asked me to play simple Christmas carols for a family sing-a-long, I ran upstairs and hid in my room. Later my Father chastised me and “asked why he’d gotten me a piano in the first place.”

The suggestion that the only reason a girl took piano lessons was to play for the enjoyment of others hurt me deeply.

I Discover the Piano

Before we had a piano, I would visit our English next-door neighbors, three unmarried sisters whom I thought of as very old. We would talk, and Gertrude, the youngest of sisters, would serve tea in china cups. Oh, I was so grown up on those afternoons!

The sisters had an old upright piano and a battered Episcopal hymnal. Nell, the middle sister, taught me how to play “Onward Christian Soldiers” from the hymnal. My Father was embarrassed. His daughter was playing someone else’s piano.

My friend Sharra D’amico’s father owned the Baldwin Piano Company in Denver. So on my tenth birthday to put a stop to my playing the neighbor’s piano, my father bought a Baldwin Acrosonic piano from Mr. D’Amico. A couple weeks later, he found a mediocre piano teacher for me. Mrs. Wardwell charged $5 a lesson and came to our house.

I began practicing early every morning before school: from Thomson Piano Book 1, progressing to Book 2; from scales to Hanon’s The Virtuoso Pianist, which included 240 mind-numbing exercises; from the easiest Bach Inventions to the simplest Chopin Preludes.

Eventually I got a better teacher, Mrs. Creighton. Unfortunately, Mrs. Creighton was on the faculty of the Grubb School of Music that required recitals of its students.

Didn’t matter the quality of my piano teachers. Didn’t matter how much I wanted to be a fine pianist. Didn’t matter how much I practiced. In the end, I played the piano poorly.

I Discover Choir Singing

Although ADHD had yet to be invented, I realized later that ADHD and the piano don’t play well together. I simply couldn’t focus on the music and my fingers and my feet. Add people in the room . . . well, you already know what happened.

Even before the piano fiasco, I was singing in the children’s choir at First Plymouth Church. Somewhere there’s a picture of me in my blue choir robe that included an overly large red bow under my chin. I’m assuming we all wore these ridiculous bows.

My most vivid memory of music at First Plymouth was pretending to go to Sunday school. (The children’s choir performed once a month or less.) As soon as my parents went into the sanctuary, I’d sneak around in the back, open the little door and run up the stairs to a small storeroom above the organ loft.

There I could quietly read a book I’d hidden from my parents and listen to the organ. I certainly would have heard some Bach. As soon as I heard the congregation singing the last hymn, I’d tip toe down the stairs and stand demurely outside the Sunday school door waiting for my parents.

Many years later after my Father had died and my Mother was in assisted living, she reminisced about the “old days” at First Plymouth. How she’d met my Father at a young adult group at the Church.

She asked me if I remembered Martha Edwards. I didn’t. She was surprised. After all, Mrs. Edwards had been my Sunday school teacher. I told her the story: How I’d never gone to Sunday school. She laughed.

My parents went to church because that’s what middle-class Protestants were supposed to do. More like a civil duty than religious conviction. So finding that I didn’t go to Sunday school didn’t bother her.

Eventually I graduated to an adult choir after we became Methodists. Singing in the choir made church worth it. On to Colorado College and another choir. We sang the eleven movements of the Bach Motet, “Jesu, Priceless Treasure,” went on tour, and made a long-play record.

During graduate school, I sang in the Trinity Church Choir in Columbus, Ohio. After marriage, baby, divorce, more graduate school, and 2nd marriage, I returned to Denver and another church choir.

St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral boasted a nationally-known choir that sang at Carnegie Hall and made several CDs. I joined. Choir became my life with endless rehearsals and a grueling schedule during Holy Week, Easter, Advent, and Christmas.

Christmas music included two services of “Advent Lessons and Carols,” two services of “Nine Lessons and Carols,” two performances of the Christmas portion of Handel’s “Messiah,” four services from Christmas Eve through the Christmas morning service, ending with the Epiphany pageant on January 6. All this, in addition to the the regular Sunday morning services.

We started practicing Christmas music in September.

I Sing Bach’s Mass in B Minor

I was about to retire from this choir and get my life back when Don Pearson, the choir director, announced that the choir would sing Bach’s Mass in B Minor.

No quitting now. I get to sing my favorite piece of music! Rehearsals tripled. My car drove on auto-pilot from our house to the Cathedral parking lot.

Friends would call. When they finally reached me three days later at 7:30 in the morning, they’d comment “I’ve tried several times to get you. Guess you’ve been down at the Cathedral at choir rehearsal.”

I wasn’t much better at singing something this difficult than I had been at playing the piano; the Bach Mass in B Minor presented a much greater challenge than the “F Major Invention.” Not to mention a bigger challenge than anything I had sung in a previous choir.

But I discovered, well, actually Don discovered, that if buried in the middle of the 2nd altos and not far from a section leader, I’d do ok . . . most of the time. Just make sure I’m not next to a tenor. After all, it doesn’t take much for a 2nd alto to lose her place in the music and start singing the tenor line.

Our performance to a sell-out crowd complete with organ, harpsichord, chamber orchestra, and paid professional soloists did well. So well, that Don decided we’d do a repeat performance the next year.

That performance was even better than the year before. And again Bach lovers from as far north as Cheyenne, Wyoming and as far south as Colorado Springs filled the Cathedral which holds just under 1,000 people.

However, the second performance didn’t go well for me. In the middle of the “Sanctus,” my favorite part, I became faint from standing too long on the risers, having forgotten to eat before the performance. Surreptitiously I climbed down off the risers and retired to the choir rehearsal room for food and a chair.

So ended my career as a chorister.

I’m still addicted to Bach. Just not doing Bach on a piano or in a choir. Enough!

Despite my lack of musical ability, I didn’t give up on studying music. Here’s my story about writing a master’s thesis in musicology. (And no, it’s not about Bach.)