Every four years since 1962 and the First Quadrennial Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, appreciation of my musical heritage is heightened. Attending the 10th competition this past May reminded me of how much a part of my life music has been, and sitting in the Landreth auditorium with its all-but-perfect acoustics, I think of another time in another place where music was taught and played – the old Administration Building at TCU, now Dave Reed Hall. The Ad Building early, and until 1949 when the Landreth Fine Arts Building was built, housed nearly all the curriculum taught at TCU, including the arts. The only auditorium on the campus, and thus the only “performance hall,” was also in the Ad Building. Its small stage was graced by no less musical presence than Ignace Paderewski, among others. And it was in the old Ad Building that I first learned to play the piano.
In my mind’s eye, I can see the little red-headed, pig-tailed child I was, climbing the central steps in the Ad Building to the second floor where heavy doors absorbed most of the sound coming from the interior. I recall that Miss Katharine Bailey was beyond one door instructing in piano, Miss Jeanette Tillett behind another, and my teacher, the young Eleanor Morse was beyond yet another. Small and shy as I was, that building with all its grown-up activity was not in the least foreign or forbidding, for being a member of the TCU family from birth, I included it in my home base.
I cannot remember when music was not a part of my life. My parents were determined that their two girls would be “exposed” to all things “cultural,” and the piano was the first vehicle chosen for our personal progress in this regard. They bought the six-foot Steinway grand when I was four. My sister, Beth, started lessons at five and I, a year later, also at five. Beth soon dropped out, finding the discipline too much for her livelier spirit, I think. I – a different cut from the same piece of cloth – stayed it out for eleven years, probably, at first, from a meek sense of knowing my mother wanted me to, but soon from a pleasure in learning and playing new pieces – for myself.
Recitals scared the beejeezus out of me to the point that I refused to memorize, thinking I could, somehow, get out of playing in public. I wasn’t allowed off that hook so easily, however, my teacher let me play with the scores in front of me. Although I have almost entirely blotted out the memory of recitals, I do recall one quite well. I had nervously played, as one of my “numbers,” the J.S. Bach Sheep May Safely Graze (with the music, of course!). At the reception following the performance, a man approached me and said, “I so much enjoyed your playing.” I responded, diffidently, that I had hit so many wrong notes. “Perhaps,” said he, “but the ones you hit right were very beautiful.”
As I listened to the very beautiful notes of the young contestants in this year’s competition in the Ed Landreth Auditorium, I was conscious, too, of all of the ghosts that linger in and around that performance arena – those who were artists, speakers, presiders, and those who stood in the wings – Loren Eiseley, Robert Penn Warren, Charles Laughton, Jorge Bolet, and closer to home, TCU ballet master David Preston, TCU President M. E. Sadler, TCU Artist-in-Residence Madame Lili Kraus.
Among all those luminaries, however, there is one other whose memory is always evoked when I enter that hall – that of TCU master pianist/teacher, Keith Mixson. I can see and feel him standing unobstrusively near the rear of the auditorium, his long, spare frame leaning against the north wall, his head tilted slightly, the graying hair swept back like a lion’s mane, his leonine features serene, listening. It is the memory of that same pose, although seated, that always comes when I think of Keith. Keith was my teacher for only one year, walking the half-block to my house on Rogers Road from his office in Landreth. He sat in a chair, not next to me, but behind and to my right, his legs crossed, his head with that slight tilt, his features giving no hint of displeasure, although surely he was inwardly wincing. He was probably wise enough to know that I didn’t have serious talent nor serious intent, and that enjoyment was the order of the day. He and I probably exchanged less than a page of dialogue our entire lives, yet it was he who influenced my appreciation of classical music the most. I can’t say why exactly; perhaps it was the withholding of extreme disapproval, or maybe it was the confidence he place in me when he gave me Debussy’s Claire de Lune to learn. I believe it was the first real “classic” that I had been entrusted with; I still have the score, residing on that old Steinway, marked with Keith’s notations.
The day we buried my daddy, Keith, a longtime friend of the family, and his wife, Linda, caught us at the funeral car and, introducing Linda to me he said, “She was one of my best students.” Maybe he was just being nice, but maybe, just maybe, he had heard some sweet sounds among the sour. I never told him how I felt, and now, of course, I can’t. He died the last day of 1992.
The influences of my mother, Eleanor Morse Hall, the recital man, and Keith Mixson are like milestones ticking off my maturing toward an appreciation of not only music, but also life. The recital man’s words I translated into a lifetime motto; my mother’s, Eleanor’s and Keith’s gifts I carry with me to concerts, museums, exhibits, and yes, recitals.
©1997 Joan Hewatt Swaim