Writing Through a Pandemic: My Piano Professor

"If you're writing or editing or working on a book right now, it may be incredibly difficult because the future is so uncertain. But every word you put on paper is an affirmation of the fact that there will be a future. It's a profound act of faith." - Talia Lavin

At the very start of the pandemic I taught a few online generative classes in April, May and June to give my fellow writers deadlines and inspiration during what was an incredibly uncertain and destabilizing time. Everyone was so ready to write and the work we created together was joyful and complex and human. With permission, I’ll be sharing some of this writing over the next few weeks. Please help us celebrate what we created in the midst of so much destruction. 

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My Piano Professor 

I sat in the audience transfixed! I was watching an angel performing piano—a young woman performing a Beethoven sonata, engaging her whole being in the music. Totally enchanted, I was witnessing a total cohesion of spirit and action. After the concert, in the Mozarteum’s Main Hall, I asked one of my friends how she learned to play like that. And the reply was, “Oh, she’s a Neumuller student—all of his students play that way!”  I knew then that I had to switch teachers.

            In spite of the many years I studied piano at home in New York City, I was dissatisfied with my piano technique. I knew something was wrong but didn’t know how to fix it. Having loved classical music from childhood, since my dad played it while I was going to sleep or waking up, I could still hear the music I loved in my head, but felt very clumsy in trying to play what I heard. No one ever taught me how to recreate it on piano. 

            After several summers studying music at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria during my college years, I decided to give up my teaching job in the states and live in Salzburg for a whole year, devoting myself to piano study. However, after my audition,  I was assigned to a teacher who was just as disinterested as the ones I had in America. 

            With a thumping heart, the next day I gathered my courage and went to speak with Prof. Neumuller about taking lessons from him. Knocking on his studio door in the Mozarteum and hearing a soft “herein,” (come in), I entered the room. Inside, sat a very small, elderly man, almost dwarfed by his massive grand piano. This was the famous Neumuller? In my halting German, I told him about hearing his student in concert and wishing to play piano like her. 

            At first, he was reluctant to take on a new student, especially at my ‘advanced age’ of 24 years! He explained that he usually started teaching young children so that they would grow up with the correct technique. He continued, “It often demands too much self-discipline to unlearn a lifetime of incorrect technique.” He probably thought I was beyond redemption. Nevertheless, in tears, I pleaded, “I will do whatever is required to learn this piano technique.” Seeing my desperation and being a kind man, he finally agreed to teach me, but I would have to take private lessons. Experience had taught him that changing teachers during the academic year caused too much resentment among his colleagues. Nevertheless, he would accept me as his student.

            I couldn’t believe my good luck! I happily agreed to drop out of the Mozarteum and start lessons with him in early November. I would do anything, certainly giving up my cappuccinos and other small luxuries in order to fund my private lessons.

            For my first lesson in his apartment building, I trudged up five flights of stairs to reach his door, taking a few minutes to catch my breath before knocking. I wondered, how does he do this every day without an elevator?

            Neumuller’s wife, a young American woman, greeted me in English with their three-year-old daughter who regaled me with her dolls while I waited for Neumuller to appear. I was enchanted with this child, asking her in German the names of her dolls. After a few minutes of conversation, her father appeared. 

            As the mother took her daughter into another room, he asked me to sit at the piano while he took a wing chair about ten feet away. He spoke in a soft Austrian German, and I responded in English, for ease of communicating.  His instructions were understated and simple. First, relax the body, then the arm. With the weight of that arm and hand, play just one key, then another. And so it began.

            After that first lesson, I followed his instructions step-by-step, transferring my weight into the key as I played each note. It took a great deal of effort to relax the entire body. In those early days, I was rarely successful. Finally, one day in late November, as the Christmas advent season was approaching and would be celebrated each week with carols and the lighting of candles, I briefly felt the weighted touch! It didn’t last long, though, and was soon gone. Disappointed, I struggled to relax again and restart the whole process.

            During my lessons, Neumuller gave me other instruction— to envision the action before I played and to hear the notes beforehand, memorizing all the parts individually. It became a meditation through music. I practiced this method for five to six hours per day, taking short walks along the now snowy, tree-lined Helbrunner Alleé outside the student house practice rooms. I only had five more months in Austria, and I was determined to internalize this method before returning to the States. 

            Walking down the Alleé helped me gather courage to keep practicing. Sometimes, a muffled cyclist would pass me or a mother with her baby bundled against the glistening cold would greet me with the familiar “Grüss Gott.” (God greet you). In the distance towered the Untersberg mountain above our quaint village, its snowy peaks sparkling in the wintry air.

            Finally, in December, after four weeks of just doing the exercises Neumuller gave me, I began to feel the weight in the keys more of the time. He was right; with patience and persistence, I started applying the weighted technique, first to Bach's preludes and fugues, then to Mozart, Beethoven and Chopin. By the time I returned home to New York City in June, the touch became natural, and I could ride the waves of the music in joyous abandonment. Like the student I observed months ago, I could now become one in spirit and touch—a musical dance between myself and the piano. 

            After a year of graduate school in the US, majoring in English literature, and another year of college teaching, I returned again to Salzburg, this time to enroll in Orff Institute for teaching music and movement to children. The program offered a diploma that was the equivalent of a master’s in music education for young children, helping them feel the music in their bodies before even reading notes, similar to the approach that Neumuller taught me.

            At the entrance exam for this program, I chose to play the Beethoven Op.110 sonata, which I had taught myself using Neumuller’s teachings. Amazingly, after the exam, the director came up to me and said, “You must be a Neumuller student.” Tears of gratitude welled up in my eyes; it was the highest honor I could ever receive and an homage to my kind, gentle teacher.

            Now, more than fifty years later, I look back on the young girl I once was, amazed at her determination to overcome obstacles, to forge ahead and make her dreams a reality.  Thankfully, the piano technique never left me.

            I am forever grateful for what Neumuller taught me, developing a discipline I have used in other aspects of my life. I can still hear his voice, “Be patient, try again, apply the weight.” And, I would like to add,—do it with great Love. 

 Joanne Napoli, Durham NC

Joanne has had many careers since her music days in Austria. After earning her Ph.D. in English, she taught college English as well as reading/writing to children with learning disabilities. She was also a piano teacher and is currently a leader of international groups. Her hobbies include painting, meditating and playing harp. Joanne included many of her European experiences in her YA book: Psychic Detective Kim Stride in the Mozart Mystery. She is now working on the sequel.