Music and Me

Was at my former piano teacher's place for a mini-party after last week's concert. Things were rather awkward and quiet until B was asked to make the speech she was supposed to have made on the concert day. B is truly quite admirable. She's a few years older than I am, recently married, works in NAC, and still finds the time to practice and go for lessons every fortnight (a bit like you Bratsche, you are amazing too :)). She talked about what kept her going, how she juggled work and music, why she kept on at it, what music meant to her.

While listening to what B had to say, emotions welled up in me. I knew I had to tell my story too, to the group of music students, most of whom were still relatively young, and more importantly to my piano teacher, who I feel eternally indebted to, and that sometime in the past, I had really let her down by having to stop lessons.

So this is my story, in a more long winded, angsty fashion.

When I was 8, I started lessons with my teacher, after my first piano teacher decided that she didn't want to teach any more. I may have been precocious, but I certainly never thought so back in those days. But I guess I was diligent, practised hard and tried to learn what my teacher had to teach. Those were painful days of re-learning the piano technique, as my first teacher didn't really get the fundamentals right with me. But those were also the days where my teacher really opened my ears to music, we listened to music together, score in hand, ears glued to the music that filled the air. She lent me scores, books, CDs, and even gave me her entire (a few hundred!) cassette collection of recorded music from the library in the Royal College when she was there, because she claimed since she was going into CDs, the she didn't need the cassettes any more. I think it's this gesture of generousity, of how much she really cared for my musical education, of the potential she had seen in me, that made me feel the way I do for music today. And maybe subconsciously it's why I feel ever so strongly to share this passion with everyone I know.

Between the ages of 8 and 14, I had enjoyed remarkable success in exams and the competition circuit. I never thought the success was due to any particular gifts that I had, but rather through sheer grit and hard work. Indeed, I never had much of a mechanical facility. But on hindsight, perhaps I did have something special - a developed sense of musicality that is not that unusual for a person in his mid-twenties, but something quite rare for a child to possess.

When I was 14, I took part in this SMTA competition, where I had won the first prize. A couple of weeks after the competition, I did my Advanced Certificate exam, with basically the same repertoire, and my examiner was one of the judges that had given me the first prize. And so what happened? I flunked the exam. How is it possible? Is music that subjective? Was I really very off-form that day? But what the whole affair made me realize was that competitions and exams are entirely subjective creatures, that they should never ever be the point of music education.

The failure turned out to be a big turning point in my life. My parents, thinking that music was stressing me out, forced me to stop my piano lessons. Stressing me out they say. True, I spent uncountable hours in front of the piano, but I don't think my grades ever suffered because of that. What I believe is the real reason was one of money - how could they spend so much money on my music education but yet I couldn't even pass a simple piano exam? Sometimes I really wonder what was up in their minds - didn't I have all my previous successes to show for? Was I really at the limit of my musical ability? Yes, it was all about the money. I think my parents felt insulted when my teacher sent out a letter once about rescheduling lessons and how people should not be so uptight about ensuring that lessons were always rescheduled in a timely way. After all, no point quibbling right, since she frequently taught me past the hour. But no, my parents were offended. Three hundred bucks a month and they were being treated like that! No, we are the client, we are the boss, we are the ones giving the money here, we call the shots. And no, they refused to talk to her themselves, I always had to be the middle man, the poor hapless early teen negotiating for this and that. Three hundred bucks a month, one failure, let's pull the plug, what's the point of continuing. Which made me really want to cry when I saw of a friend who's family wasn't doing well financially but his parents still eked out the necessary resources for his piano lessons. Why did I repay her generousity with such narrow-minded, such selfishness of spirit?

Naturally these were one of the darkest days of my life. Why? I just kept asking myself why. Why did they have to do this to me? I gave my termination letter to my teacher just as I stepped out of the car after a friend of hers drove me back home after a concert. Oh what a horrible concert that was. I still remember it. The poor guy, obviously distracted or fatigued by jetlag played terribly. Split notes all over the place, memory lapses, repeating a section in the last movement of the Appassionata twice, making it almost 1.5 times as long as the original.... Interminable, painful music. The next day, she called, my parents were at the door, waiting for me to leave the house. Can you imagine the sheer mental torture of having to talk to her while the old folks are outside screaming for you to hurry up and get out of the house? I think I was lucky not to go delirious during those days.

And then they wanted me to do the Advanced Cert again, by myself, the following year. No problem what, just the same old pieces. You've come so far, must as well have something to show for it right? You cannot imagine how enraged I was. Screaming, shouting, going into mild seizure... But in the end I acquiesed. And weirdly, I passed.

What doesn't kill you truly makes you stronger. Music was truly an important part of my life, and I knew had to move on beyond all that anger and angst and all that wallowing in self pity. And so I did. Thankfully RJC had a wonderful music department, very encouraging, lovely teachers who let me play in concerts even when I wasn't even a MEP student. Really enjoyed my time there. Then moving to Cornell, I was lucky again to play actively in the chamber music groups, slowly changing my focus more away from the solo repertoire to become more of a chamber pianist. I'm truly glad to have stuck to my passion and refocused my energies constructively, rather than let my hands waste away. I sometimes surprise myself that I can still play after ten years without formal lessons.

Any problems I've faced? Certainly. Self-doubt used to be a big issue. Am I playing correctly? What if all I'm doing here is rubbish? It still is, but I just pray I'm not doing stupid things and hope for the best. The other is discipline - it is very very difficult to sit down and practice without external motivation. So that's where chamber music comes in - you've got friends who meet with you regularly to ensure that you're up to the mark, and so you practise.

I don't blame my parents for what happened quite as much these days. After all, people have different opinions on things, people make mistakes, and sometimes the mistakes don't turn out to be all that bad. Sometimes I wonder how I'd have turned out if all this didn't happen to me.

I guess in general, things have turned out pretty well for me. I still love music. I love it so I want to create it, to create the sounds that I have in my head. That's why I still play. I love it so I want to share it. That's why I go round like a crazed idiot at times insisting that people listen to this and that. I love it that in spite of all my obvious failings as a musician, of all my self-doubts, I try to ignore them to keep my passions alive. Music is beyond exams, beyond competition, beyond being a profession. Music is an art, and with it comes all the wonderful implications that art brings with it. It's about feeling, about thought, about passion, about reason, about life, about death, about rebirth. It's about being human. And if I had to discover it the painful way, I'm glad that at least I was lucky enough to do so.

And this has become a lot more personal than it should have. Ah well.