Who Will Buy?

The second act of Oliver opens with a wonderful scene of street vendors hawking their wares as the orphan Oliver looks on. The scene is joyous and raises the question “who can buy the wonder and joy of this bright morning?” Well, no one. The joy of that scene and that moment in Oliver’s life must be experienced. No amount of money can buy his feeling and I wonder if we sell ourselves and our art short and send a wrong message to our students when pull out our pocketbook or wallet instead of pulling out a pencil and paper?

The other day I met Monica, a student of mine, in front of our local music store. I was headed inside to buy a guitar strap and she had just come out with some piano music. As we chatted I asked her about the music she bought and found out that, in addition to studying the French horn, she also taught piano lessons. Monica showed me the Halloween pieces she was going to assign her student, Hazel. Since the composer’s name was also Hazel, Monica was excited to see the joy on the child’s face when she read her name on the music. As I recall, the composition looked similar to this:

Monica is bright, as are all my students. So I asked her

“Could you have written a short Halloween piece for Hazel that is similar to this?”
“Probably.”
"How long would it have taken you to compose it?"
"Not long."
“Well I wonder how she might feel if, instead of saying ‘Here, I bought this for you,’ you said ‘Hazel, here’s your Halloween piece; I wrote it just for you’?"

In today’s consumer driven economy, buying things can be the easy way out. Many times it’s the best we can do. However, those that have the skill set to notate melodies, harmonies, and rhythms can bypass the somewhat impersonal act of thumbing through several dozen pieces of sheet music, for example, buying one and handing it to a student.

I wonder: Do the children for whom we buy all this music receive it as casually as they do a 'kids meal toy?' Is it something to be discarded once they’ve moved on to something else? How much more personally meaningful and musically meaningful might it be for the student if her piano teacher or flute teacher or voice teacher wrote something “just for her” and no one else?

Music is a gift, our gift. We did not pay for it. We were blessed with it. Shouldn’t we give to others the best part of our musicianship, our creative mind? The music that will mean the most to Hazel, I beleive, is that which was created in a musical relationship with Monica. Long after Hazel’s Halloween song has faded from Monica’s memory, Hazel may still be heard playing it for her grand children.

Music should last a lifetime.