nevertoolate

NEVER TOO LATE

JOHN HOLT

Introduction:

How and Why

Most people who play a musical instrument learned as children. I did not. Few adults who havenever played an instrument before take one up, least of all in middle age, and least of all a bowedstring instrument (supposed to be the hardest). I am one who did. Though I came from a largelynonmusical family and had almost no musical training or experience while growing up, I began to play the flute at thirty-four, and the cello at forty, which I put aside a couple of years later and thentook up again at fifty. Now, when home, I try to play three or four hours a day, more when I canmake time for it. To become a skillful musician has become perhaps the most important task omy life.This book is the story of how it all came about. Friends of mine to whom I have told some othis story have found it interesting; I write it in the hope that others may, as well. I hope, too, thatmy story may encourage or help other people, above all adults, who may have thought they weretoo old, to begin to sing or to play a musical instrument. Or, that it may help many adults who arenow amateur musicians to play better and enjoy it more. Perhaps teachers of adults may also findthese words useful. Beyond this, musicians talk a great deal about ways to interest more people inmusic; perhaps my own experience, as told here, may suggest some ways to do this.In a broader Sense, this is a book about exploration and discovery. I have long had two favorite proverbs: one is Shaw's "Be sure to get what you like, or else you will have to like what you get,"the other a translation from an old Spanish proverb, "'Take what you want,' says God, 'and pay for it.' " To find out what one really wants, and what it costs, and how to pay what it costs, is animportant part of everyone's life work. But it is not easy to find out what we like or want, when allour lives other people have been hard at work trying not just to make us do what they want, but tomake us think that we want to do it. How then do we find out what we want? What sort of clues,experiences, inner messages, may tell us? What do we do about such messages when we get them?This is in part a book about such messages.This is also a book about teaching, above all the teaching of music. Some music teachers have been enormously helpful to me- one of them, in ways I was not to realize for many years. But for the most part I am self-taught in music, and this book is also about that self-teaching. Part of theart of learning any difficult act, like music, is knowing both how to teach yourself and how best touse the teaching of others, how to grin from the greater experience and skid of other peoplewithout becoming dependent on them. For few people are likely to become good at music, or anything else, who do not learn how to teach themselves. What we can best learn from goodteachers is how to teach ourselves better. Other learners of music may find here some things tohelp them become better self-teachers, and teachers of music may find ways to help their students

do this.In my journey into music I have been much helped by good fortune. As a child I may have beenmusically underprivileged (though no more so than most children) but I was in all other ways privileged. My parents (like their parents) were well-off; we lived in suburbs, not musically verylively but in all other ways easy and comfortable. I went to a "good" boarding school and college.As an adult I have been even more fortunate. If by choice I have lived much of my life with verylittle money, so that I could do work I believed in, I have also lived without many worries aboutmoney. This was partly because, though not through choice, or at least not my choice, I never married. Also, like most people who grow up rich, I never really believed that economic disaster could strike me. I know the dangers of poverty, as I know the dangers of the atomic bomb, butthey have never been real to me in the way they are to people who have been poor, or to thesurvivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Which is not to say, either, that poor people cannot learn tolove music, or even to become musicians, even great musicians. Many have done so, and some arenow doing so. J.B. Priestley once wrote that the working-class people he grew up with inYorkshire knew more about music, and made more music, than the much richer working class otoday. But it is certainly easier to explore, enjoy, and make music, as it is to do anything else, ione is not constantly worrying about money, and can afford such things as concerts, records,instruments, practice space, and lessons. The lack of these is one of the reasons why, to name justone example, the Greater Boston Youth Symphony hardly ever has in it any children from Boston.What we need to do, of course, is to make musical resources more available to people with littlemoney.A few years ago I read in the British magazine

The Gramophone

a short article about the notedGerman conductor Eugen lochum. The article said that he had grown up in a town in Germanywith a population of about two thousand, and that in that town there had been a symphonyorchestra of 75 players and a mixed chorus of 150, who played and sang much of the great music.It may well be that this town was not typical, and that not every little German town had musicmalting on this level. Still, if we had only one tenth this much music making here in Boston (or any town or city), we would have an orchestra in every neighborhood, and many quartets andchamber groups in every block. What a city, what a country that would be to live in! I would liketo do all I can to bring that city and that country closer.Another reason I am writing this book is to question the widely held idea that what happens to usin the first few years of our lives determines everything that will happen later, what we can be,what we can do. Musical people am particularly prone to talk this way. The great Japanese stringteacher Suzulri, whose work I have long admired, writes in his books that if children do not hear,almost from birth, good music (by which he means classical music), if they hear, in short, the kindof popular music that was all I heard as a child, they will grow up tone deaf. Not so. Countlessother teachers say that if we don't learn to play musical instruments as children we will never beable to learn as adults. Again, not so. Of course it is nice, if we come freely to music, to come to ityoung, but if we don't come to it then, we can later, it is never too late. And while there may begood grounds for saying that some music is "better" than other music--I happen to think thatBeethoven is better than Hummel, Tchaikovsky better than Clazounov, Stravinsky better thanJohn Cage, and Duke Ellington better than Glenn Miller--these distinctions have nothing to dowith learning to love music. "Bad" music is not the enemy of "good" music. The world of music isvery large, and all one piece; there are a great many roads into it. As long as we have access to allof it, and the right to explore it freely, making our judgments as we go, each of us can find his or

her own way.Most of all, I want to combat the idea that any disciplined and demanding activity, above allmusic, can never grow out of love, joy, and free choice, but must be rooted in forced exposure,coercion, and threat. Most of what I have read about music education says this one way or another.The idea is not only mistaken, but dangerous; nothing is more certain to make most people ignoreor even hate great music than trying to ram more and more of it down the throats of more andmore children in compulsory classes and lessons. The idea is wrong in a larger sense; in the longrun, love and joy are more enduring sources of discipline and commitment than any amount o bribe and threat, and it is only what C. Wright Mills called the "crackpot realism" of our times thatkeeps us from seeing, or even being willing to see, that this is so.Any other reasons I have for writing this book may become clearer as you read it.

1. A Week of Music

MondayMonday is orchestra night. At about a quarter past six I put my cello and bow in their case, putmusic stand, music, glasses, gadget to hold the cello peg, and other miscellaneous stuff into asmall shoulder bag, sling it over one shoulder and the cello case over the other, and walk to theCharles Street subway station. At Harvard Square I climb the stairs to Massachusetts Avenue,walk through the Harvard Yard and then another half mile or so to the small public school inwhich we play. A few of the other players are already there, and have set up the chairs. I set up mymusic stand in front of the back two of the six chairs in the cello section, take out bow, cello,music, and other stuff, and start to tune up. If I don't get tuned up before the horn and trumpets gethere, I never will, in this small gym, they make such a racket that I can't hear my own cello wellenough to tune accurately.One at a time, the good cellists come in, and set up to play in the four seats in front of me. Wesay a few words, but not many; we have only two hours in this little gym, and everyone else, likeme, is in a hurry to tune up and warm up. Wind and brass players come in; soon the room is aconfusion and uproar of many instruments tuning, practicing scales and arpeggios, or bits of themusic. How in the world, I wonder, do the Boston Symphony cellists tune up with the trumpetsand trombones tuning right behind them? (One of the BSO cellists, I am told, wears earplugs whenhe plays.) Our young and very talented conductor, Paul Hess, arrives, taps his baton for relativequiet, tells us what we will play first. We get out the music, the oboe plays an A, we all tune oncemore. The conductor holds up his baton (a skinny little white stick), and we begin.It is a new piece, new for us, new certainly to me. I have a faint hope that since we are reading itthrough for the first time the conductor will take it at a slightly slower tempo, which will give mea chance to catch a few more of the notes. No such luck. We take it at full speed, faster, even, thanmany professional orchestras. Most of the players are considerably better than I am, and certainly better music readers; even if the music sounds ? bit ragged, they are catching most of the notes.Ahead of me I can see the fingers and bow of our number three cellist Eying over the instrument.