GG: piano playing

[Arin Murphy <la_murph@alcor.concordia.ca>]

Hello Marla:

No, it's never too late to learn a new instrument - but then you're 
talking to someone who picked up cello at 23 just because she wanted to, 
despite all the odd looks and warnings that I was `too old'.

Too old! To make music? To learn something new, be it instrument or not? 
These are the kind of people who I'm sure don't have rich and fulfilling 
lives, people who will never know what their lives could be if they just 
tried something new.

My mother was an accomplished pianist when she was in her early twenties. 
She married my father, who wouldn't  allow her to have a piano. As a 
result she lost all musical interest. I desperately wanted to take paino 
lessons when I was a child, but I was told very quietly that my fatehr 
didn't like piano music and so I couldn't. I think it highly significant 
that when I told my mother I was taking out a loan to buy a cello and 
learn how to play it, only a few months later she picked up a beautiful 
classical guitar and has been taking lessons almost as long as I have, 
now. She's very proud of me for taking up the cello as an adult - says 
often that I'm giving myself the chance to make music, and that it's 
something she wishes I could have done as a child. I'm just as proud of 
her for taking up a new instrument at fifty-two.

Sadly, she's not as much of a Glenn Gould fan as I am. Sigh. In fact, 
when I go home for visits at Christmas and what-not, I produce my newest 
Gould CD with great enthusiasm, and she quickly requests something else. 
Ah, me.

All the best with the oboe! A beautiful instrument.

Update on the fiance front, everyone - after a Bach concert last night, he 
told me that if we didn't get a piano as a wedding present, then we were 
investing in one ourselves and he was going to take lessons again. Hurrah! 


Arin Murphy 
Concordia University, Montreal
	--------------

The absolute requirements of literary labour not unfrequently compel an 
irregular distribution of time, and with it irregular social and moral 
habits. (J.W. Kaye)