Remembering a childhood piano teacher

Back in1995, a friend and mentor from my youth departed this orb. She was my piano teacher for some twelve years. I had previously had the opportunity to visit with her, three decades after leaving her tutelage, when we reminisced about old times and former relationships.

Upon her death, I penned these words, recently retrieved from an old storage box in the garage. Her family tells me the words played a role in her funeral celebration, for which I was and remain very grateful.

                                                   In Memoriam

                                              For Eleanor Beatty

Creator God, we giver you thanks for the

Life and spirit of Eleanor Beatty.

Her elegant mind and sensibility were both

Calming and inspiring;

Her steady, measured dependability would

Infrequently give way to her absolute

delight in the absurdity of human foolishness..

because although she kept the necessary

correctnesses,

she never lost sight of the more important

counterpoint of mystery.

To the uninitiated, she may have appeared

The epitome of order and balance..

But thot hose of us privileged to really

Know her,

From the hours of waiting for the

Adjudicator’s bell in the festivals,

Or the hours of travel in her old Buick,

Or the focussed but often whimsical

Conversations about forum, history or

Harmony…

We all knew that the form and order

Of the musical scores were, to her,

The songs of the souls crying for

Connection…

And that is the gift for which we give thanks…

That this unmarried daughter, sister, aunt,

Teacher and friend

Could always see beneath and behind the

Vagaries of the moment, the pains of the

Seasons and the days to the more distant,

Eternal and universal horizon of

Sunrise and sunset…

And accompany us beyond the keyboard;

She was and is for me the

Muse and magician behind the rehearsals,

Far from centrestage,

A spiritual guide to the composers,

Their lives and their work.

A friend who truly understood the

Unimportance of marks and grades

But the immeasureable significance of the

Beat of the metronome,

Connecting each second to the beginning

and end of time…

this is, was and alwuyas shall be my

eschatological soulmate..

whose recitals taught me the difference

between art and ego,

whose coaching taught me the difference

between life as performance and

the business of living,

whose surrogate parenting gave me

the daily and weekly measure of

tranquility and cosmic predictability

I needed

In what seemed the turbulent

‘big sound’ of my heart.

I thank God for every note, and every

Stroke of the metronome

We shared

And each infrequent but poignant

Disappointment…

Because she helped me to learn

That life, although often messy,

Is never without the melody of a

Shubert impromptu, of a Bach

Prelude, or a Beethoven cascade…

And she mastered the instrument of my

Heart and mind…opening them to the

Wonders of the creative genius of

The songs without words

That even Mendelssohn would thank her

For keeping alive..

And not mine alone…

         But the hearts and minds of

Hundreds of other young people whose

Tour through musical antiquity

Would not have been so colourful

Or memorable without

“Elfie’s” accompaniment.

                                                                                      December 10, 1995