Da capo al segno, from the beginning until the sign
By: Rosa Cap
Tags: Migration, Classical Music, Classical Piano, Feminism, Coming Of Age

‘Don’t get in bed with a boy just for a cup of coffee.’

Not the words you’d expect from your piano teacher. I was in my mid-teens and didn’t even know what this meant at the time. Now those words mean so much. She cared about me. She wanted me to make good choices in life.

Beethoven’s Für Elise was the reason I started learning classical piano. I’d heard it somewhere and wanted to play it. Now I know what a luxury that was for a migrant family in the 80s. Piano lessons and a piano to practise on — an indulgence afforded by my family.

My Dad worked two jobs to put himself through college. He was one of 11 children, only six of whom survived childhood. My mum worked to support her family from an early age. She was one of six children. After they had me, they moved from Hong Kong to Australia so I could have a good education. They worked hard and I absorbed that ethic.

I was seven years old when I started learning piano. I’d just turned 15 when I passed my Grade 8 exam, the highest of the grade-level exams in the Australian Music Examinations Board (AMEB) syllabus for piano. I considered myself good but not great.

Sitting at my first piano, seven years old.

My teacher was an older, white woman — Mrs W. In our first lesson, she taught me the order of sharps using the acronym ‘Fat Cows Grow Drowsy After Eating Barley’. She told me to hold my hands as if there was an orange underneath them. It’s more than 30 years since that lesson. I’ve guarded her teachings in my memory like little jewels.

I didn’t know it then, but Mrs W represented the Australian way of life to newly migrated families like mine. While we didn’t feel at ease everywhere, she showed us a welcome, relaxed home. She showed us how to communicate. She showed us that hard work pays off.

Mrs W had a square face and sharp nose. She wore thick glasses and comfortable clothes. She had short grey hair that she liked to perm. Her hands were thick and wrinkly. Mrs W looked huggable but I never tried to hug her. She spoke with a low voice but sang with a high one. She’d often sing how she would want a piece to be played, slurring legato notes together, for example. I used to wonder why she didn’t just play it for me; maybe those hands were a clue.

Once a week I’d walk to her house after school, have my lesson and walk home. Except in winter when it would be dark by the time I finished and I would run home.

Mrs W’s house was at the end of a long driveway. Her front door was usually open and you could walk straight in. You didn’t even have to take your shoes off. If the front door was closed and you had to knock, she never kept you waiting. I liked that about her.

Behind the front door there was a small, round table and two chairs. She taught music theory at this table. To the left was her piano studio, a cosy space that hugged her Yamaha baby grand piano. The wall facing the keys was lined with music books.

We didn’t say much during our lessons. I’m Chinese; I was used to this.

She instructed, I listened. I played, she listened. For many afternoons of my childhood, we showed up for each other. She watched me grow.

The local Chinese community flocked to her. Mrs W was reliable, strict and patient. She consciously helped us feel at home in our new country. She’d raid her music library to nurture our interests. She’d stand nearby during exams, as nervous as we were. She held concerts at her house. She baked. It was at one of her concerts where I discovered lamingtons, a cake that still bewilders me.

Mrs W’s piano studio was a safe place. Unlike the schoolyard, music didn’t see skin colour. Unlike home, music was a place to indulge your feelings. Music became my solace.

Mrs W was a missus, and she had children and grandchildren, but we never saw a husband figure. The Chinese don’t ask questions. Perhaps she felt safe with us too.

In music, it was clear to me how I would be judged. All I had to do was practise. If you played your exam pieces enough, you could memorise every minutia in them. If you played your scales enough, you’d be so familiar with the patterns in the major and minor keys they’d feel like friends when you saw them in a piece. It was a small world that I could control. A haven where I was good enough.

Piano wasn’t always easy. I’m not sure how other children spent their afternoons, but I spent mine at the piano. Sitting still and playing the same things over and over could be gruelling and boring. I once asked my Mum if I could stop learning the piano. She firmly said ‘No’ and that was that. I never asked again.

One day I came home and my piano was different. Mum had sold my piano and bought another second-hand one. It didn’t sound the same. It didn’t feel the same. I was sad but I didn’t ask questions. Good Chinese girls don’t.

Mrs W retired in 1997. I would still visit her and pop in for tea and a chat occasionally. In spite of — maybe because of — our differences in age, culture and life experience, we became friends. We wrote each other letters. She became franker in her advice as I reached adolescence. I needed that. I needed a different world view to that of my parents.

When Mrs W retired, she gave me her metronome. A wind-up mechanical Wittner, made in Germany. It’s one of a handful of items I’d salvage if my house ever burnt down. This metronome had sat on the music shelf of her piano and faced off with many a student over the years; tick-tocking judgementally, keeping us in time as we played.

We lost touch when she moved out of her house in the late 90s. Mobile phones were not common then, social media was in its infancy and the internet was not what it is today.

With piano exams behind me, I found more time to play sport. I focused on finishing high school well. I still played the piano for comfort and pleasure.

One day I came home and my piano was gone. Mum had sold my piano. There wasn’t another one. I was broken but I didn’t ask questions. Good Chinese girls don’t.

I filed that part of my life away. Tucked it away with my metronome and sheet music. Put it in a box.

Years passed. Twenty of them. University, work, travel, marriage, children.

I never stopped thinking about Mrs W. I searched for her over the years, perhaps not hard enough. I couldn’t find her, not a trace. She was in her 70s when I last saw her. I callously concluded that she had passed.

When my husband and I met, I mentioned that I used to play the piano. It was one detail among countless other things that we traded in getting to know each other. The kind of thing that’s forgotten as soon as it’s said.

For our fifth wedding anniversary, an occasion traditionally marked by a gift of wood, he bought me a Yamaha baby grand piano. I lifted the lid and fumbled with Puff the Magic Dragon while our kids sang and spun around me. It was humbling, how much I’d forgotten.

I dug out my metronome and the past that was stored with it. It still worked a dream. I used the bell to mark the first beat of each bar. It was a Sunday; I remember because my husband was home and he ran into the room, startled, thinking an alarm had gone off.

Two days later, Mrs W died.

In my culture, when you have ‘yuen’ with someone, it means your destinies converge. After my metronome chimed again, Mum ran into an old friend. That friend had a daughter who also learnt piano from Mrs W. That friend had kept in touch with Mrs W’s family and just heard about her passing.

Thanks to that friend and the yuen that I have with Mrs W, I was able to attend her funeral and say goodbye. As always, the metronome had chimed on time. It took me back to the beginning until I saw a sign — ‘da capo al segno’, as that move is called in music.

I didn’t have any photos of Mrs W. I only had her image in my memory. Seeing her face again, printed on the funeral program, so familiar and so comforting — it blew the lid off my emotions. All I could do was sob. I sobbed for everything she did for me. I sobbed for how much I’d missed her. I sobbed that I found her again.

Image of Mrs W from the funeral program, used with permission from her family.

Through the speeches I was reminded of and learnt new things about Mrs W’s life. She was a feminist — the first influential one in my life, a divorcee, a solo parent. She was an entrepreneur, reinventing herself in her 60s to run a thriving business teaching piano. It was rare for her to compliment anyone. Giving me that metronome was high praise indeed. Debussy’s Clair de Lune must have meant something to her, as it was played during the photo montage of her life.

Dad picked me up from the funeral. I sobbed in the car, inconsolable. We did not exchange a single word on this car trip.

One morning, in the twilight hours, Mrs W spoke to me. She reminded me about a repetitive A flat in Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words Op. 102, №4 that I was playing mechanically, unemotionally. When she taught me that piece, I was a child. I hadn’t fallen in love, had my heart broken or experienced the feelings that piece required. I rose out of bed and played it the way it deserved to be played. I told her that I understood now.

Mrs W may have left this world but she continues to teach me piano. I continue to play for her — pieces from exams long gone, new favourites and of course, Clair de Lune.

Occasionally I’ll hear her chiding me: ‘Your hands are flat. Hold them as if there was an orange underneath them’.