Submitted by Judith, age 15
The piece I performed at my very first piano recital was one I wrote myself when I was too small for my feet to reach the floor. Paula let me go first, as her newest student, and I soaked up the attention as the ham that I have always been. Since that first piece, I wrote countless others which were progressively worse. Paula, although a fabulous teacher with a piano education beginning in her early days in Lithuania, does not teach composition. Instead, she pointed out my largest mishaps and told me gently to try again some other time. For a while I was completely discouraged--up until last summer.
Being too stupid to stick to a comfortable interest like music, I’d developed fondnesses for acting, drawing, cinematography, dancing, linguistics, and writing. I began a practice novel about a young pianist, and conceived the wild idea of assigning an original piece of music to each chapter and printing each in an appendix in the back. This, of course, meant that I had to write the music. Without the advantage of instruction or even a library card, I listened to pieces obsessively, picking out the individual instruments’ tunes and noting patterns and key changes. I tried my hand at improvising arrangements, and got a gig at my synagogue on Friday nights. I took a sudden liking to five-four time after a bizarre encounter involving a musical and many mattresses, from which sprung a piece.
What a piece. It sang. My fingers swooned in lustful agony each time they were granted that highest honor of playing it. And after it, writing music was easy. Ignoring my sight-reading issues, I found great use for a hand-held tape recorder. I would kidnap my mother and model my newest ideas for her. In my head, they were gorgeous; on the tapes, they were ... well, less than gorgeous, so I elaborated, altered speed, octaves, a little something here and there. In the comfort of my piano corner, I watched them blossom.
The ultimate test, however, came when I found myself at a fellow piano junkie’s house, and she casually asked me to play something.
The invention in five-four came to mind. I tried to run through the latest edits in my head, found myself too nervous to remember them, and instead just began to play. In the stark quiet of Lea’s living room, the notes were so much more bare, dull, and repetitive than they were even on the static of my tape recorder. Halfway through, I considered stopping and apologizing for my insolence at claiming to be a composer of music, but it occurred to me that I might at least seem devoted if I went down trying. And so I continued, finished with a bold flourish, and looked up, ready to receive my very first criticism.
Lea was silent for several seconds... but when she finally opened her mouth: ‘Judith,’ she said, ‘you made me cry. That was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.’
Since then, I have sought and gained approval from my other friends. We’ve jammed in basements, written five-minute musicals, and talked about record labels; I’m still a bit too critical to consider making a demo CD, but that ever-nearing wonder, college (the prospect of theory lessons, a major in musical composition at Oberlin Conservatory) has inflamed my drive to write music. It comes once, twice a week now. I’ve filled tapes and even tackled sheet music. I get my own compositions stuck in my head now, hum them on the bus, put words to them and sing them in the shower. I write tunes for people I meet, objects I like, dogs that bite me. I ‘la’ in harmony with the vacuum cleaner and doodle staffs on my worksheets at school. I no longer write only for piano, either: my accordion has been attacked, my guitar, my cello, my friend’s banjo.
Music is still not my only obsession. In fact, my largest dream still remains to someday make a blockbuster film... with a score, of course, composed by me.
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