Dorothy Bearman

[j_menz]

I learnt today that my first piano teacher has died. She was a lady who I will always remember fondly, and with much gratitude.

I'd like to take the occasion to invite you all the think on your own first teachers, and be grateful for the role they have played in you lives; of inspiring (or at least not extinguishing) the love of music we share and the role our instrument of choice has in this. To be thankful for their patience and perseverance, and their help in enabling us to enrich our lives.

And for those of you who do teach, to reflect on the important place you have in the lives of your pupils, even if they don't always seem to acknowledge it.

It is true, as has been said, our teachers are always and forever with us.

[maczip]

This is a nice idea, j_menz.

When my first piano teacher passed away I remembered her pretty arbitrariously. I learned a lot of Bach and fugues, which I enjoyed very much and am very thankful for that. Unfortunately I never learned sightreading and fast playing. Sometimes she was impatient and hitting my fingers, when I played constantly wrong, which made me play even wronger. (It was in the late 60ies in Germany when it was still believed that you can achieve something with Prussian strictness). After 6 years studying with her, I took another teacher, who was very nice. He show me some modern music, and we did some car repair, when he was not in the mood for teaching. So I never knew whether I am untalented not having achieved some essential piano techniques and/or was it due to insufficient teaching...

so I became a doctor

[pianoplunker]

I learnt today that my first piano teacher has died. She was a lady who I will always remember fondly, and with much gratitude.

I'd like to take the occasion to invite you all the think on your own first teachers, and be grateful for the role they have played in you lives; of inspiring (or at least not extinguishing) the love of music we share and the role our instrument of choice has in this. To be thankful for their patience and perseverance, and their help in enabling us to enrich our lives.

And for those of you who do teach, to reflect on the important place you have in the lives of your pupils, even if they don't always seem to acknowledge it.

It is true, as has been said, our teachers are always and forever with us.

AMEN

[ted]

I learnt today that my first piano teacher has died.

 

I had not noticed this post, I do not read the forums as much as I used to. Sorry to hear that news, but I am sure her spirit lives on in your music.

In 1955, two years after starting school, one of the teachers, who taught piano privately, sent a note to my parents saying she thought I should take piano lessons from somebody and that she was available. Norma Jacobson was an extraordinary teacher of children and one of the few genuine music lovers I have ever known. I don't remember her teaching me anything conventionally; there were no scales, very little discipline, yet in a few months all her pupils were playing pretty difficult pieces. During the walks to her place from school we had amazing philosophical discussions, and on arrival she gave me a heap of marmite sandwiches and more talk about music, before finally doing some playing. She had no qualifications, and at one stage, faced with embarrassing public contrasts between the playing of her pupils and theirs, registered teachers enviously tried to legally stop her teaching piano.

I gave up piano altogether at ten, sick of performing, which I hated with a vengeance and still do. It wasn't until the first year of secondary school, after hearing Rhapsody In Blue and learning it for myself, that I sought another teacher. Coincidentally, I ran into Norma at the shops and it was she who introduced me to the composer, Llewelyn Jones, my only other music teacher.

Over twenty-five years later I traced Norma, and my wife, my son and I saw her regularly until her death in 1986. She always told me it was a waste of time my taking further lessons from anybody, and that I should ignore all convention and just develop my own musical language and keyboard technique. She was right, and how I wish I had heeded her and ignored more musicians than I did !

I owe Llewelyn Jones a great deal in the specific, technical sense, of course, but the underlying, intangible spirit, the insurmountable drive of creation as an end, the all conquering love of music, I think I absorbed in no small measure from that perceptive and persevering woman.