The Teacher Makes - or Breaks - the Student

I started learning to play the violin when I was ten years old. My first teacher was Mr D. I don’t remember how old he was - or how old I thought he was - but I remember him having a kind face, a hooked nose, and eyes that stared intently into mine as though trying to find some trace of potential in this young wannabe.

Mr D’s first love, musically speaking, was, as I recall it, or as far as I ever knew, the saxophone. I don’t think he got to play it much, because it is basically a jazz instrument and he was teaching in what was essentially - then (and maybe now as well for all I know) - a school for western classical music. I suppose Mr D was a jazz musician at heart. At any rate, he was essentially a winds person. In addition to the sax, he played clarinet, oboe, flute, and piccolo - and those are only the ones I’m aware of. Violin must have been a bit of a step-daughter in his affections. I don’t know whether he was a good violinist or not, or even whether he was good at any of his wind instruments. All I knew about music back then, was from listening to David Oistrakh and some other luminaries on my mother’s old, scratchy, but greatly treasured LPs.

Mr D told me right away that he’d never taught a student from scratch before. The prospect seemed to worry him, but he took me on anyway and taught me how to hold the bow, how to tuck the violin under my chin, how to place my left hand under its neck. (I think I already knew how to read music by then, and also how a scale was constructed.) He soon had me scraping out some rudimentary tunes, probably giving my neighbours and parents headaches, stomach aches, and general indigestion. I don’t suppose I ever had much talent at music, but I brought to it all the determination, dedication, and commitment that my ten-year-old self could muster, and, under Mr D’s patient tutelage, I slowly improved.

After a couple of years - or was it more - I was moved around to other teachers. I used to see Mr D at the school off and on, but then I moved away and didn’t see him for many years. When I did, I didn’t recognize him. The years had not been kind to him and when he greeted me with a guttural “how’s the violin going” it took me a very long moment to map that empty, weathered face to Mr D. It made me feel very sad.

For a short while I had another teacher, Mr G, who was an elderly, white-haired gentleman. He was better known in the Indian music circle, where, I believe, he had achieved a small degree of greatness. In a few short months, he taught me some very valuable lessons in technique and corrected some errors that had crept in over the years. Some time later, I bought my second violin from him - an instrument that served me well, and which I still have and cherish.

Then, for a while, I had a Hungarian teacher. He was young and - I thought then - arrogant and he had no time and patience for the timid adolescent that I was then. He did not intimidate me, rather, he pretty much ignored me. I believe he was himself a pretty good violinist, and that there was much competition in that school for his tutelage, but I did not gain much from it.

Then, after that, I met my nemesis - AM. (Notice the lack of “Mr” with his name.)

AM was a short, stout, dark man, with an oily smile and a manner that I found even then to be best described as obsequious - but only with others. With me, his manner was quite different.

When I first started learning with AM, I thought he was a terribly good violinist. Perhaps I measured him by comparison with myself. By the time I parted with him, I had come to realize that he was a very middling violinist indeed, only a little better than me. I should, then, have credited him with helping me to cover the ground I did in changing my perception of him compared to myself. But AM taught me in a very, very tough way. He taught me by mocking and belittling me. I was terrified of his classes and had to steel myself for the weekly session. He reduced me to tears times without number - I remember struggling to see the notes through the tears that filled my eyes, struggling also not to let the drops form, struggling not to let him see what he was doing to me. I learnt, I improved, I would probably have to say that I became as good as I ever was (and perhaps ever will be) thanks to AM, but inside, my confidence and my joy in music withered and died.

It’s strange to think several years later, when I returned to the city and to the world of music, it was with a chamber group headed by AM that I was most closely associated. I enjoyed the music and the informality of that group, but, though we were more like peers then, AM’s manner of belittling me in public and of making me feel small and scared hadn’t changed. (I was still only in my early 20s.) At last it got so bad, that I told him I could not play with his group any more. To my utmost surprise, he apologised and practically begged me to continue. After that, things improved. I continued to play in that group until I got married and left the city for good.

If I think of which teacher contributed the maximum value to my musical education, it would have to be AM. If I think of which teacher made me feel good about my music and about myself, it would be primarily Mr D, with Mr G as a close second, though I had very few sessions with him. If I were to look for a teacher now, for music or anything else, I would look for one like Mr D - and I’d avoid the AM type of teacher like the plague. Technique can get you only so far - if the teacher can teach excellent technique but kills the joy, the confidence, the love of learning in the student, then he’s taken away far more than he has given… and what he’s taken away might never come back.

I think, almost two decades on, I’m still trying to get back what Mr D and Mr G fostered in me, and what AM so casually destroyed. A small part of me keeps longing to go back to playing the violin, but the voice of AM buried in the deepest, darkest recesses of my memory keeps telling me that I’m no good and that I’ll never be any good at it. What’s it going to take to silence that voice once and for all?