Why is this book on the shelf? ‘The Basis of Harmony’ & Music
Book reviews III: A limited series
“…for the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”1
To increase room on my shelves, I need compact reference books. Dictionaries or nurse’s manuals are essential, so I look for ones that compress the maximum amount of information into the smallest amount of space. But one of my smallest and slimmest reference books is kept in memory of the person who gave it to me.
The Basis of Harmony
I grew up in a low-income household. On paper, we were among the rural poor. My parents, who were both from low-income backgrounds, used all their acquired skill and knowledge to give us opportunities that they did not have. One of these opportunities was to study music.2
We were homeschooled, so any music lessons had to be private. My parents found a little money by economizing. My father bought used vehicles and fixed them himself, and my mother kept chickens and goats, grew vegetables, bought used clothing, and cut our hair. Still, it was not easy to fund lessons.
My eldest sibling was the first to begin lessons. By word of mouth, my parents found an elderly piano teacher, Mrs. M, in the nearest hamlet. Mrs. M charged just 5 dollars per half hour. To encourage my eldest sibling, my father took lessons himself but gave it up when he found no time to practice. When it was time for my second sibling to start, a woman at our church offered a group class using a program called Music for Young Children (MYC). My second sibling, I, and my youngest sibling all went to MYC, but the church woman’s private lessons were too expensive. After finishing MYC, we went to Mrs. M.
I remember Mrs. M as a tall, thin woman, neatly dressed, her iron gray hair cut short and curled, and her glasses on a string holder. Her face was lined and her fingers had arthritic nodes. Looking back, I realize her facial bones showed great beauty and her hands were long and slender. She was gentle and kind in manner. Mrs. M was a chain smoker all her life. Her husband had developed a heart condition and had stopped smoking, but Mrs. M could not quit, although she tried.
When we walked into Mrs. M’s kitchen for our lessons, we entered a heavy atmosphere of tobacco smoke. Taking off our footwear, and, in winter, our coats, we went into the living room to wait while one of us went upstairs with Mrs. M to the music room. The living room was high and dim. There was a box television in one corner and Mr. M’s hunting trophies on the wall, with two of his guns above the door. We studied as we waited, but the TV guide and the country music on the kitchen radio were distractions. Sometimes, Mr. M came into the kitchen. A stocky man with a face and manner that really was bluff and hearty, he would greet us and then sit down in his kitchen recliner to read the paper.
From the living room, I could look into the dining room, with its china cabinet and antique table filled with crafts. Mrs. M’s hobby was to sew, knit, crochet, and paint ceramics for craft sale fundraisers. Her spare room upstairs was also filled with her handiwork. When it was my turn, I would go up the long, narrow, straight staircase, and along the corridor, past the bathroom door and Mr. M’s gun rack with a trigger lock bar running through about eight guns and an ammunition belt draped over top3, to the music room. On one side of the room was an apartment sized piano, on the other, an antique rolltop desk. Opposite the door, on either side of the window, were a cupboard and shelf filled with music books of every size and genre.
Mrs. M taught us from the Royal Conservatory syllabus. The Canadian Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) offers a classical music program using a series of graded exams. There are ten grades and a final ARCT4 level roughly equivalent to a bachelor’s in music – a grade 8 RCM certificate gains entry to university music programs. The practical exams are given across the country in local venues with pianos. A music teacher uses the RCM syllabus to know what music pieces, scales, and ear training are required for each grade. Not every grade has to be examined – only grade 8 and on need exams – but Mrs. M had us take a couple of lower grade exams for practice. Also required to earn RCM certificates for grades 8 through ARCT are written music theory and history exams. From grade 9 to ARCT, the music theory exams include Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced Harmony.
About a year after I began lessons with Mrs. M, we entered a legalistic homeschool Program.5 The Program showcased classical musicians, so we felt free to continue with Mrs. M. We changed in our dress and outlook, but Mrs. M did not change. She accepted us as we were. Before the Program, we had gone with a secular homeschool group on field trips and to extra-curricular activities. All that faded away. For a time, Mrs. M was almost our only link to the outer world. We left our church, in the wake of a split over worship music, to attend a fundamentalist-linked church using traditional hymns. When the church needed another pianist, Mrs. M, who was pianist and organist for the hamlet’s United Church, taught us the art of hymn playing.
The Program’s costs strained my parents’ finances. At one crisis, my second sibling voluntarily gave up music lessons.6 Mrs. M accepted her decision, having seen she was struggling, but quietly emphasized that the rest of us had too much potential to quit. Although music teachers need to raise fees in response to inflation, Mrs. M never raised her fee for us above 7 dollars per half hour.
Being homeschooled, we had lessons on a weekday. My father needed a vehicle for his job as an office equipment serviceman, but car troubles meant we did not always have another vehicle while he worked. We often walked to the hamlet. In good weather, the 20 minute walk was pleasant, past farm fields and quiet houses, although the manure smelt strong while going through the divided farmyard owned by Mr. M’s cousin and occasionally we fended off a gander who saw us as a threat. We didn’t mind a snowfall or light rain, but heavy rain, sleet, or a bitter wind was unpleasant. On bad days, Mr. M sometimes stopped to offer a ride – I later realized Mrs. M would send him.
Mrs. M had many other students whom we only met at the yearly recital, held in the hamlet’s heritage United Church. The recitals were in June and it always seemed to be on the hottest day. The antique varnish on the pews was sticky in the humidity. We would shift uneasily, hoping a layer of varnish didn’t come away with us when we finally got up to play. Mrs. M’s handwritten, photocopied programs started with the beginner students and progressed to the most advanced. Each year, our names appeared closer to the end of the program. At the end of each recital, Mrs. M would play for us on the organ.
In the higher RCM grades, it is necessary to pass with honours in order to proceed to the next level. When my eldest sibling took her grade 10 RCM exam, she passed but not with honours. Mrs. M, who only had her grade 10 certificate, blamed herself, but we did not.7 As I approached grade 10, Mrs. M recommended that I find a more qualified teacher. By that time, I was taking violin lessons with a teacher in the nearest town, who also taught piano. I studied grade 10 piano with my violin teacher, but I still took music theory with Mrs. M. It was around this time that she lent me The Basis of Harmony.
Music theory, especially Harmony, can be confusing and frustrating to master. Mrs. M was an excellent teacher, calmly taking each complicated concept step by step. I generally got higher marks in theory exams than in practical exams. I studied music history by myself, using a textbook and set of recordings Mrs. M provided. She was delighted when I passed my first history exam with ‘First Class Honours with Distinction’. I went on to complete all RCM exam levels of music theory and history.
Mrs. M was supportive of me, and later my younger sibling, studying violin. She even asked us to play the violin for her recitals. We had only one violin between the two of us.8 Mrs. M inherited a violin, which she lent to us free of charge – eventually, she sold it to my younger sibling for less than what it was valued. She often lent us sheet music, both for exams and just for fun. After I finished my music theory exams, I tried to return The Basis of Harmony. She said to keep it. She told me when she died, she wanted me to have all her music books, as she knew I would use them.
I failed my grade 10 piano exam. It was disappointing, but I also felt that Mrs. M had been vindicated. My violin teacher was good – I owe my solid violin technique to her – but she never quite understood my personality. I took grade 10 violin with yet another teacher and passed, but not with honours. My youngest sibling still took piano with Mrs. M and when our church was given an organ, Mrs. M gave me organ lessons. One day, as we chatted after the lessons, my mother repeated something my second violin teacher had said about me, “Holly is the calmest person I know.”
Mrs. M replied, “Holly is like me. You don’t show it at the time, but it takes it out of you afterward.”
She told us about a family tragedy that had occurred years ago, where she was the one to take responsibility for attending to necessary details in the aftermath. “My sister said I was heartless,” she said. “But at night I couldn’t sleep.”
I remembered her words when I started to study nursing and began to do clinical placements in the hospital. Sometimes at night, I would lie awake for hours, reviewing the day, quivering over the human suffering that I had witnessed. I saw Mrs. M less often. She was a widow now and had been diagnosed with COPD.9 Gradually, her health declined. In the last few years she taught, she had an oxygen tank next to her. At her final student recital, I played both piano and violin for her.
When my youngest sibling was getting married, she wanted me to play old popular classics from the 1920s to the 1950s for the service. Mrs. M had a collection of vintage Reader’s Digest songbooks, which she was delighted to lend to us, although she was too frail to attend the wedding. After the wedding, I went to return the books. I was preparing to leave to serve for a year in West Africa. When I saw Mrs. M, she was emaciated and her skin had a bluish tinge from the advanced COPD. Both her daughters were with her. She insisted on writing me a cheque to help pay for my travel expenses. Then she repeated what she had told me before, “I have told my daughters my music books are to go to you.”
I was never very good at speaking my feelings. I could not say all I wanted to Mrs. M, but I think she understood. I thanked her and said goodbye, knowing I would never see her again. While I was in West Africa, my family informed me that Mrs. M had died. She had been a part of our lives for three decades.
I returned in broken health from West Africa, my own breathing dangerously compromised. It was a while before I was well enough to notice the set of classical records in my room [see header photo]. When I asked where they came from, my family told me they had been delivered by Mrs. M’s family, who had emptied out her house. But, I asked, where are Mrs. M’s music books? They were never delivered or mentioned, my family replied.
I am currently teaching piano to my own nieces and nephews. My siblings pay me the compliment of saying I am a good teacher. I have taught a number of other people over the years in various places. In West Africa, I taught two of my teammates’ children, one piano and one violin. I don’t know if my piano student still plays, but the last I heard, my Brazilian student still plays violin. Even without all her music books, I am trying to carry on Mrs. M’s wonderful legacy.
And now, music…
Over the years, I have built up my own smaller collection of sheet music, both to play and to teach. The collection started when, while she was still teaching me, Mrs. M gave me most of her organ music and a couple of volumes of piano music. The following are three from my collection:
The piano exam I got the highest marks in – First Class Honours – was grade 8. The examiner wrote that I was “A talented student with good potential”. Among the pieces Mrs. M taught me in preparation was the 2nd movement, Andante, from Mozart’s Sonata in C Major, K. 545. She lent me her copy for the exam. It was one of the music books that never came to me, and I eventually bought another copy. I do not have the equipment to record myself, so here is the Andante performed by pianist Elisabeth Leonskaja:
In our atypical youth, my siblings and I collected classical music CDs. My favourite track on a compilation by American guitarist Christopher Parkening was an arrangement of Gordon Young’s Prelude in Classic Style, subtitled ‘A Hymn of Christian Joy’. When I learned from the liner notes that the Prelude was originally written for organ, I got a copy of the sheet music. While in university, the inner city church I attended had an organ and the two elderly organists were happy to have assistance. When I had time in the week, I took the bus downtown to the church. The church secretary let me in so I could practice. The century church had a double barrel vaulted ceiling and the speakers of the vintage electric organ were strategically placed to imitate the effect of a pipe organ. As I finished my practice, I often played Young’s Prelude just to enjoy the joyful sound. The organ had fewer manuals than this one played by Luciano Zecca, but the sound is similar:
When I was five, my MYC instructor took my class to a violin concert. When the concert was over, I wanted to be a violinist. My instructor advised I study piano a few years for a good musical foundation. My mother promised when I finished grade 5 piano, I could start violin. In the meantime, I dreamt of being a famous concert violinist whenever I heard a violin play on the radio. MYC introduced us to the Classical Kids radio dramas about famous composers. I loved Vivaldi’s Ring of Mystery. At the height of the story, a violin solo played that was the most beautiful piece I had ever heard.
I started violin when I finished grade 5 piano. I tried different Vivaldi selections but couldn’t relocate the solo I remembered. Finally, while finding Classical Kids dramas for my nieces and nephews, I discovered the Vivaldi solo was the 2nd movement, Adagio, from his Concerto in A Major, RV 585. I immediately got the sheet music. In Greece, I sometimes gathered with international colleagues in the evenings. One evening I played the Adagio for them. Later, they asked for it again. I have not become an internationally famous violinist, but I have played my violin for an international audience. Here is Vivaldi’s Adagio, recorded by Concerto Köln:
George Eliot. Middlemarch.
The piano my parents bought was an antique, and pianos, unlike violins, lose value with age. So it was greatly reduced in price, but still quite expensive for them.
Rural Canadian hunting culture highly values guns as tools, not as weapons of self defense. Canada’s now defunct Long Gun Registry did not come into effect until the mid-1990s. When it did, Mr. M stored his guns in a locked safe as per the new regulations.
ARCT - Associate of the Royal Conservatory of Toronto. There is now a second designation. The RCM also has a prestigious school in Toronto, the Juilliard of Canada as it were.
My second sibling instead took crocheting and knitting from two other elderly women in our community, and could make intricate lace and doll’s clothing without patterns. Mrs. M, herself a knitter and crocheter, was as proud of her as she was of the rest of us.
We were increasingly aware that the classical music world was riddled with nepotism.
That one violin we had was given to us, but that is another story…
COPD - Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, a combination of emphysema and chronic bronchitis, caused by severe and/or recurrent damage to the lungs.
This is great, Holly.