Adult Piano Study
Brenda Dillon, Editor
Florence Grossman wrote for a previous issue of Keyboard Companion (Spring 2002) on the topic of finding "happiness with a cigarette-smoking, nervous little piano teacher." It was a superb article on the challenges adults face in finding the right piano teacher. In addition to her humor, there were insights in her article that every teacher who teaches adults just had to ponder.
She has again captured a topic with humor and insights and she has made adult piano study into an endeavor that should be seriously considered by every adult. In addition to its physical benefits, piano study has the potential to enhance one's mental well-being. Congratulations to Florence who eloquently articulates what some of us think but just don't say it as well!
from Florence Grossman's article
At age 72, why am I taking piano lessons?
I think Ponce de Leon was looking for the Fountain of Youth
in the wrong place. I know, for a fact, that it's not in the Florida
Keys, but in the piano keys. How do I know that? Well,
picture this. I'm 72, grey-haired, and standing in line at the
supermarket checkout. I'm carrying some music because I've just
come from a piano lesson. I'm standing behind a boy of about eight.
He looks up at me and asks, "You a piano teacher?" "No,"
I say. "I'm taking piano lessons." He says, "Me,
too!" We begin to chat and I ask him what he's playing and
how long he's been taking lessons. I ask him whether he's enjoying
the piano. "Nah," he says. "My mother makes me
practice." He's silent for a moment and then with a puzzled
look, asks me, "Who makes you practice?" Aha!
Good question! In my case, it's not "who" but, "what"
and perhaps, "why." What keeps me practicing in spite
of several bad teachers, slow progress, arthritic fingers, and
no hope at my advanced age of ever becoming an advanced student?
What is it that has so captured me that I find a part-time job
after retiring from more than 50 years of work, so that I can
buy a $16,000 piano and pay for my lessons?
Like many people who have worked all their lives, I looked forward to retirement as a time to explore and do many things I never had time for. Piano study was not on my list. Museums, travel, painting, and reading were what I had in mind to fill my leisure time. I spent the first year or so of my retirement going to museums, lunching with friends, taking a painting class, reading, and reveling in not having a set routine. But then, I found myself getting lazy. I began to sleep late. I talked more on the phone. I fooled around with the computer. The day would disappear and I hadn't accomplished anything much. Then, one day when I was dusting my mother's old spinet piano, I began to think of her and how much she enjoyed playing the piano. I decided to take lessons, naively thinking that after taking some unnamed number of lessons, I would be able to play the piano. I also mistakenly thought that anyone who claimed to be a piano teacher, was. After several years of going to teachers who took phone calls during lessons, made coffee while I was playing, and told me their problems, I finally found a superb teacher.
What effects have I experienced from studying piano?
I began to notice that studying the piano was having some startling effects on me. It gave me a sense of accomplishment unlike any other I have experienced. It increased my self-esteem, made me grow as a person, reduced my stress and tension, improved my memory, concentration, and powers of observation. Best of all, it relieved my anxiety and depression, and helped my arthritis. In other words, it helped reduce the common complaints we have as we age: loss of memory and concentration, depression, loneliness, and arthritis pain. How does learning to play the piano help to improve these conditions, or help to modify them? . . .
Florence Grossman retired from John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York. She devotes her time to writing and learning to play the piano.
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