Music Guilt

Do my old piano students hide when they see me coming down the street? I am convinced that they do. Why else would I live in a community of 30,000 and hardly ever see one of the thousands who have sat at my piano and said “I played it better at home”?

When I made my excuses for not practicing enough, my piano teacher would say “I’m so sorry” and then give me an unforgettable lesson on some aspect of my assignment which did not involve much playing on my part.

At some point in my 50-year teaching career, I got the idea of the graceful exit. I had already made myself the student’s ally in situations where clearly it was time for the lessons to end.

“Pleasing your parents is a legitimate reason to take some lessons, but I can see you aren’t enjoying it very much.”

“Would you like me to get you out of this?”

“We can still be friends. You can come to see me without having to play piano.”

“You have accomplished quite a lot during this time, so you should feel good about that rather than feeling bad that we’re stopping here.”

On one occasion, I presented a teen-ager who was quitting lessons with a certificate of accomplishment, a prize ribbon and pin, a list of her repertoire, and suggestions for pieces she might enjoy playing on her own. I never heard from her or saw her or her parents again, though they live in my neighborhood.

Piano teachers become attached to their students, and occasionally the attachment goes both ways. I am still in touch with a few of my former students. But for the most part, once they quit lessons, they are gone. I have only discontinued lessons a few times without being asked to do so by parents or students, once because of persistent rudeness and the other times because of persistent absenteeism. So I think I am dealing with music guilt most of the time.

Of course they should have practiced more, and so should I. I hate to think what my poor mother went through to get me to practice. The final incentive was the threat to end the lessons if I didn’t practice, and that one always got me to the piano. I am not a very good example when it comes to practice, but if I total up all the hours I have spent at the piano, it certainly would surpass the 10,000 hours the experts now say it takes to really learn a skill. (Notice that I do not say “master” a skill.)

I left my teacher only when he moved to a rest home which had no piano. At my last lesson, he couldn’t even remember my name, but he remembered that we were fond of each other, and he remembered all the page turns in the Chopin Scherzo I was studying. He got up from his chair across the room and turned the pages for me.

It is possible that my students’ lessons were not all that important to them, that they were just one more activity, that they were like a sixth grade English class or something, where you would go on your way and never feel the need to stay in touch. But piano lessons are one-to-one, not one-to-thirty. Piano teachers and their students know a lot about each other. They might still have something to say to each other even after the lessons are over.

(The Seal of Approval, above, appears on all my students' assignment sheets.)

Guilt, Resistance and the Graceful Exit

I have suspected for a long time that my former students who still live nearby hide when they see me coming. I have even been in the same room with a talented piano dropout, and I swear that she managed to be behind a post or a friend or in another room the whole time I was there. Not a word of greeting after four years of one-to-one lessons.

When I did a kind of survey for a piano teachers’ magazine some years ago, I figured that I had taught close to two thousand students, not including my college piano classes or students who dropped out before six months. The average length of study was about 3.5 years; the longest was 14 years; the average drop-out age (which will come as no surprise to other teachers) was 12.

Since many of these potential pianists still live in my small town, you would think I would encounter them on the street or in the stores once in a while, but I don’t. I think the answer is guilt. They think they should have practiced more; they think they should have kept on with their lessons.

“Why did you let me quit piano?” is a complaint parents seem to hear frequently from their children. "Why didn't you MAKE me practice?" I have heard this one from my own brother and mother. "You made Mikie practice piano; why didn't you make me practice?" (Of course, I have to add that Les grew up to be a trombone virtuoso who practices and performs all the time.)

Granted, piano lessons are not for everyone, and I have more than once discussed with a student getting him or her off the hook when the lessons were the parent’s idea and the student really didn’t care for anything about it.

So I have come up with the idea of the graceful exit, something a friend once advised me when I thought the way to stop using a computer program was to turn the computer off. If a student lets me know he or she will be terminating piano lessons, I update their Repertoire list, write down what level they have achieved, and note any special accomplishments or abilities they have shown. I list the beginning and ending dates of their lessons and tell them they are welcome back at any time, whether to study or just visit.

Occasionally, a student given this kind of exit will come back to lessons, but whether or not this happens, I hope it does something to reduce what seems to be piano guilt.

Guilt is not our friend. It is a vain regret. I am really against guilt. The pianist Gary Graffman wrote a book called “I Really Should Be Practicing”, and I have said this to myself more times than I care to admit. Of course, the answer is to get over to the piano and start to work, but many times a former student would rather feel guilty than to practice. In this case, I suppose I must be a reminder of a failure, a kind of Jiminy Cricket (Pinocchio's conscience).

Another dismaying phenomenon in music is Resistance. Pianists hit walls of resistance just the way long-distance runners do. They don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Doubt rears its ugly head. They get discouraged. Very often, this will happen after a big surge in musical achievement.

I think such a wall of resistance is a period where we are assimilating new information. It is a time to review old repertoire, to listen to recordings of our favorite players, to go to the Wiki Public Domain website and download some new sheet music. I have hit this wall more times than I can say. My teacher, Mr. Sheldon, once said to me “You’ll be a good piano teacher, because you will never encounter a problem in a student which you have not had yourself.”