Mr. Roberts was my one and only piano teacher. Instruction began when I was age 7 and continued weekly until I went off to college.
I’ve since come to understand why he had a waiting list and why so many considered him the architect of their pianistic careers. Belatedly I can appreciate how his passion for the classics inspired his students to bring a luminosity and sentience to performances already flawless technically.
But Mr. Roberts never grasped the ways my musical ability, such as it then was, differed and did so sharply from his and from that of his many conventionally-gifted students. Though only a several decade difference in our biological age, musically he and I were centuries apart. As a consequence, ten years ostensibly devoted to my development as a musician, if not entirely squandered, were largely misdirected.
Mr. Roberts’ fee was perhaps twice that of any neighborhood piano teacher, of whom back then there was an abundance, all eager to provide instruction on the living room Spinet to anyone content to, say, bang out “Heart and Soul” or “Happy Birthday”. Mr. Roberts would only take on those he thought showed real promise.
Presumably he sensed something of the sort when he agreed to add me to his roster. Likely he knew of my illustrious cousins, Naoum and Boris Blinder, then concertmaster and first cello respectively of San Francisco’s Symphony Orchestra, and perhaps hoped I might share in their genetic endowment.
I had of course never thought of myself as in any way “gifted”. Adults think in such terms, children rarely. I was simply a restless kid who had no idea what it meant to “sit still for a minute, will you”, who loved dogs and climbing trees and seeing how high I could pump the playground swing. Stuff like that.
As regards music, four prognostically ominous revelations emerged my very first week of Mr. Roberts’ instruction:
I didn’t much like piano lessons.
I didn’t much like practicing the piano.
I didn’t much like the music Mr. Roberts had me learn.
I didn’t much like Mr. Roberts.
He was a man who saw the classical composers touched by the gods if not themselves divine, their compositions immutable sacred texts. All tampering verboten!.
To my ear, however, traditional classical music was predictable, repetitious, and well, something of a bore. [My apologies, devotees of Mozart, et al. Understand I do not claim consecrated validity for my perceptions nor do I in any way intend the slightest denigration of the Great Composers’ individual or collective genius. I’m just being straight about one of my limitations.] The sad fact is that few classical compositions “speak to me” in the way they do for others, neither capturing my ear, touching my heart, engaging my brain, lifting my spirits, transporting me to a higher consciousness, nor compelling me to sing or dance or tap my foot. Of particular relevance was the failure of these iconic composers to inspire me to sit at the piano for hours on end and learn to play what they had written decades ago so that — in Mr. Roberts’ resonant words – “Beethoven might live again”.
Left to my tender mercies Beethoven and his compatriots would remain six feet under. Okay, admittedly scattered here and there was the odd classical piece I did enjoy – a Mendelssohn Scherzo, Tchaikovsky’s lyrical melodies, the harmonic adventures of Scriabin. See – I’m not a complete Philistine. And – did you know – once in a great while Chopin would slip in an honest-to-God authentic impressionist chord – say a major Ninth – for a brief moment several decades ahead of its time. But not until I was introduced to the 20th-century composers like Debussy and Ravel – most decidedly not to Mr. Roberts’ taste – that classical music became interesting. And only when in my late teens I stumbled onto jazz and jazz improvisation did music actually become compelling – and ultimately a career consideration.
But what may have most distinguished me from Mr. Roberts and his other students – and which somehow escaped his notice until it was too late – is that as far back as I can remember music was always bouncing around in my head, though far beyond anything I could express on a piano keyboard with my stubby little fingers. But thanks to Mr. Roberts and his then unwelcome ministrations, my digits gradually caught up with my ear. As a consequence, I can in my mind craft a piece of music and simultaneously my fingers provide “instant playback” on the piano. In much the same way I can replicate the compositions of others, usually after just a single hearing. Once a piece of music, however obscure, makes it into my head (either by way of my ears or because I composed something of my own), I can then lay it or a reasonable facsimile on the keys in real time.
For example, I might return home after seeing a film that had a distinctive soundtrack, say, The Magnificent Seven (dah – – te dah-dah duh – – duh – – duh) and immediately sit down and reproduce on the piano what I just heard in the theater – not necessarily note for note but a credible copy.
Or let me have your phone number (no zeros please) and after matching the numbers with the appropriate piano key (1 = A, 2 = B, and so on), I’ll present you with a mini-symphony based on a melodic theme initially laid out by your very own AT&T. But though my brain can readily deconstruct or “reverse engineer” almost any piece of music and reassemble it as I see fit, it must in the first place be fairly inventive if it is to hold a place in my short attention span.
I should note here that this capability would later prove profitable as it was instrumental in enabling me to play jazz at a professional level. But that was years in the future. For now let’s return to the bête noir of my otherwise idyllic childhood [right!] and how it enabled me to both deceive my parents and navigate (a cynic might say “circumvent”) Mr. Roberts’ well-intended but hugely uncongenial mentoring for ten musically dispiriting years.