Mr. R opens the door half an hour after my lesson was supposed to begin. He looks us over, my polite parents, and me, shaking in place with my oboe case in my sweaty hand. We have been standing patiently and respectfully for forty minutes. He does not apologize for being late. His previous student is bustling about, stuffing music and oboe supplies into a canvas bag. I’ve been listening to her play all this time. She is a talented goddess and I will never be as good as her. Ever. I stare at the frayed carpet but I can see his expression from the corner of my eye.
Mr. R’s eyes stop at my oboe case. “What is THAT?!” He doesn’t say hello or anything else. This lesson is going to cost my parents $50, which is about $250 in today’s dollars.
I offer the case to him. He is a stocky, ruddy, red-nosed man. He would look appropriate in a Santa suit. I am almost as tall as him and I am thirteen. His fingers are like those little cocktail franks that come in a jar, and he has a fat gold ring on one of them. His hair is greased back. He wears a tie and a vest, not a jacket. I am instantly scared to death of him. Many years later, I see Tony Soprano on HBO and I am catapulted back to Mr. R’s studio.
“This is not an oboe! This is a rubber hose! If you are going to study the hautbois with me, you MUST have a better instrument! Do you hear me?” He is speaking to all three of us, and yes, we can hear him very well in the cluttered little studio.
The oboe is not even out of its case yet. Lying there innocently in the familiar blue fur, it looks just fine to me. A rubber hose? I don’t know what to do. Sit, stand, get the oboe out? He sends my parents back out to the waiting room. I am alone with him and his beady little eyes. He points to a folding chair in front of a music stand, upon which is a two-inch thick book. Barrett Oboe Method, it says starkly on the yellowish cover. Mr. R sits in a padded armchair, opens the book and points to a study that contains at least 17 million notes. “Play,” he says.
I peep a few notes out of my sad little rubber hose.
“STOP!” he yells. So loud.
I wonder if my parents will break down the door and rescue me. I want them to.
“Where is your CONfidence? You sound like a tiny mouse. Play once again with CONficdence!”
I look at the door. Still closed. What do I have to be confident about? I can’t play this thing. That’s why I’m here with a scary Philadelphia teacher who looks like he’s in the mafia. Who is apparently going to start my lessons late and yell at me after every two notes.
“Well? What are you waiting for? Play with CONfidence!”
I peep again. I play with trepidation, the absolute opposite of confidence. I have no confidence whatsoever.
“My God, young lady. Playing this instrument requires a certain level of brazenness and balls! How old are you?”
Balls? I am so confused. “Twelve.”
“TWELVE?! Well, we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
He makes me play the Barrett etude note-by-note, a million times slower than written. I am to listen carefully and examine each note for the jewel that it can be. Right now, my notes are muddy little rocks. Mr. R fidgets and grunts and criticizes. He finally picks up a shiny, complicated-looking oboe from his desk and plays the first four bars for me. Loud! What a sound! I have no idea that an oboe can sound like this, and I like it. When he plays it’s like a train screaming through the room, the sound bangs around in the center of my chest. When I play, it’s more like a little birdie cheeping. At least that’s what he tells me. He blats out orchestral excerpts one after the other, demonstrating to me that This Is How You Play These Important Works.
I want to give up and I want to keep going but I don’t know how. I am supposed to make music from this hollow stick of wood? Or, as Mr. R refers to it, a rubber hose?
“Peep-peep, honk, squeak,” I plaintively play the Barrett Etude on the stand in front of me. It sits there haughtily like a Spanish Inquisitor, daring me to even try. No matter what, I will never get it right and I have no choice but to await my fate. Which is, invariably, a tongue-lashing by Mr. R at every lesson. “You will NEVER amount to anything if you don’t develop some chops and confidence! Particularly CONfidence. You play like a scared little kitten.”
I’m starting to cover the entire baby animal kingdom. What adult animal am I supposed to sound like? He plays for me. Etude #4.
“There! That is what Mr. Barrett wants. You must play with CONfidence. You must play every note so that it matches every other note and they must, of course, be the correct notes. That is all there is to playing the hautbois. Anything less, you might as well play the flute.” He looks me over, probably thinking that I might be better suited to the flute.
What is “owe-bwah?” I have to figure this out.
I don’t know what keeps me going. I’m a long way away from my elementary school lessons with Mr. S when I was the weirdest musician in my elementary school. Now I’m a nobody and can’t figure out how to get “that” sound that makes one a real oboe player. But something happens inside me. I don’t care that I look like a nerd and act like one (even though I try not to). I stop trying to emulate the cool grace of the cool glam girls because I’m not like them, I sit in my room and practice. I’d rather do that than pretty much anything else, even though I apparently play like a scared little kitten and/or a little birdie. Mouse. Whatever.
Mr. R finds me a beautiful new instrument and my grandparents pay $750 for it (over $5000 in today’s dollars). “Now THIS,” he says, waving his hand over the case like Vanna White, “is an hautbois!” I guard it with my life, the owe-bwah, which I now understand is French for oboe. It takes my hand weeks to adjust to the weight. But slowly, the notes that emerge are fuller. Sometimes pretty. Sometimes borderline soulful.
“Blow that thing, BLOW!” Mr. R yells, and pounds on the desk where reed knives and bits of cane bounce into the air with each slam of his fist. He yells despite my new hautbois. “You sound like a scared goose! You need more CONfidence! As usual!”
At least the animals I resemble with my sound are getting a little bigger.
The confidence and chops speech gradually gets replaced by a long soliloquy about Mr. R’s studies in the south of France with the great and powerful Marcel Tabuteau, the Wizard of the hautbois, the likes of who will never grace this planet again. Tabuteau is the father of modern oboe playing. I don’t know what pre-modern oboe playing is and I’m too scared to ask him. But I start to become hooked on, as Mr. R says, singing my heart out through my instrument. “The hautbois is the emotional voice of the orchestra. The most dramatic, the most beautiful, the most soulful.” He sings various oboe solos and I don’t recognize a single one. But I want to play them ALL. Maybe one day I will.
I hear ya, sister. Signed, Also-From-Working-Class-Family-of-Non-Musicians-And-a-"Late"-Starter-By-Conservatory-Standards
Hearing your experiences gives me new appreciation for the oboe, and now I listen for it. It also gives me new appreciation for everything a musical child must overcome in order to persist and become a musician. Good grief!