Biographical: How I Got Into Classical Music

Monday, October 4, 1999

Updated: February 5, 2001

The very first thing that I should tell you, if you cannot guess from looking at the picture of me on the first page of this website, is that I am an albino. My hair isn't gray or blond, it's white and always has been. If you didn't know, albinos are almost always nearly blind. I too am legally blind. It has come to my attention that a number of the most talented people involved in the piano business likewise have impaired vision. But maybe that will be the subject of a future article.

This is a picture of me when I was in my late twenties. I was playing a strange little acoustic piano at my sister's wedding. I think I was playing Debussy.

Anyway, bearing this limited sight thing in mind, the classical music bug bit me when I was around ten years old. I'd grown up with a piano in the house from the beginning. It wasn't a very good piano, but at least it was a grand. My parents still have it. I used to play it from before I could reach the pedals, improvising, picking out tunes. I used to hear the grown ups occasionally mention Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Brahms or others but thought they were talking about music as if these were various kinds of food or something. I didn't know what they were talking about. They really weren't all that deeply interested in classical music. They just knew something about it: they respected it. That's changed. My mother had been raised in a time and place where there were a lot of kids around who were all expected to take up some musical instrument. My how that's changed! She played the violin and still does.

My grandparents had given our family a record anthology of music by the great composers and before too long, I had played all twelve records and began to realize that each composer had a distinct personality and style that I could easily pick out when I heard any of their music on the two or three classical radio stations that were on the air at that time in my region of the country. That too has changed. It became a real passion for me. I was highly impressed by Leonard Bernstein's TV programs as well as any classical concert that I happened to see broadcast on television. It's amazing how much I managed to learn from going to the library over the next few years, checking out books and records to help increase my knowledge and appreciation. I became the only member of my family to gain this level of appreciation for classical music. I still am the only member of my family who really cares about it. It has only recently been borne in on me that classical music has in many ways become something of a religion to me, with the composers as saints, their birthdays as saint's days, their music as proof of transcendent creation, live concerts as religious events, etc. I'm interested in meeting people who share this passion. But that too is perhaps a better subject for another article.

I also went through a succession of piano teachers until I found one who really had it all together. He started me on J.S. Bach two part inventions, later The Well Tempered Klavier, Mozart and Beethoven piano sonatas and much else, mostly 18th century stuff. In high school I studied harmony and composition with a man who traced his pedagogical roots back to Beethoven through Liszt and Darius Mihaud but who was really a jazz composer, so I learned about jazz, which is really the only other kind of music that I have any real respect for.

I went away to college and for a while was taught by a fussy German piano professor who wasn't really as good as my old music teachers but was nevertheless an acceptable performer. This is remarkably common; sometimes one starts at the top and works to the bottom. I began composing in earnest from that time on too with significant breaks over the years as I got sidetracked away from music into a career in computers.

From college on I have largely been on my own as far as pianism goes. I bought my first serious piano, a Baldwin model L 6'3" grand. I went through a few phases, built up a nice repertoire including pieces by Schubert, Debussy, Ravel and others, played a few recitals mostly in the private homes of the affluent. I also extended my jazz playing a bit, played some rock n roll during my twenties, took part in various musical projects, musicals, etc. went through my various personal changes, settled into a career, moved across the country, got married and widowed within ten years.

While I lived in New York City, I took some lessons from a pianist who played Broadway standards as though they were classical music. He was a very good teacher and helped me over many hurdles as I was beginning to get rather uninspired. I also had my piano music read by a composer who liked what he saw and wanted more. Well there isn't much more. To date three piano sonatas, two string quartets and a few other pieces mostly in outlines. It's high time I got back to it, but I need perhaps a little more encouragement that it can and will lead somewhere; actually get played.

Losing my wife was an experience that would have been more shattering if it hadn't been unexpected. But there were other doors closing for me at the same time too. Being a mainframe computer programmer/systems analyst was getting to the burn out stage. There wasn't much farther I could or cared to go with it. The last five years have been a slow process of regrouping for me. Recently my client and friend gave me a piano, a Schubert upright which I frankly like quite a bit. I decided to forge out a new repertoire, get into the romantics and late romantics, maybe do a few more recitals, try to convince myself what others had so long been telling me, that I really was a fine pianist.

In all my years trotting around the country, visiting Europe, etc. I have had occasion to play a lot of pianos. When I discovered the Piano Forum I decided to put my thoughts down and see what happened. I have been encouraged by the responses.

It was only recently that I acquired a pair of glasses that allow me to read music from sitting behind the keyboard of a piano with relative ease. Before this time, I usually had to hold the music in one hand while learning the part for the other, then trading hands and doing the same for the other hand. I usually managed to learn by memory a lot of music and have pretty much the ability to play any tune that someone cares to try and sing for me.

I haven't really gotten into explaining what it's like to play the piano piece by piece as I'd have liked. Perhaps I will. I have gotten into the whole area of pianos as musical instruments instead. That's probably because sooner or later I will have to get a better piano. If I'm going to continue to build a strenuous concert repertoire, which it seems that I am doing, I simply must have an instrument that's up to the challenges. I guess you'll be following me through this pursuit as well over the next few months.