Last day of Thanksgiving vacation in Highland Park. Most of my friends returned to school sometime today. Having spent time with all the good friends I could (except for the two who didn't call back), I reverted to catching up on my reading and playing the piano. I was smart enough to have brought home sheet music of the Chopin Nocturnes, and I've been working on one. It's the first piece I've studied in over a year.

I haven't taken lessons in over two years. There is a story behind this. My freshman year at CWRU, I signed up for piano lessons at the Cleveland Institute of Music and was assigned a Mrs. Zimmer. At the first lesson, she requested that I play something for her. Not having played anything for a couple months (and having told her so), I finally thought of a Brahms piece I knew well enough to fake my way through.

She waited until I had finished, then chuckled to herself and asked whether I had played any Bach. I had not. She said “With me you will now learn some Bach.” I asked why. She said “Because I said so.”

I said “I am now leaving.” She asked why. I said “Because I said so.”

That was the first and last lesson I took at CIM. I asked for a reason and I got authority. Perhaps I am just spoiled. In high school, my teacher let me play whatever piece caught my fancy, occasionally suggesting something I hadn't heard of yet, and was content to sit back and correct wrong notes and suggest alternate phrasings. There was only a brief flirtation with scales and finger exercises; when I expressed a desire to stop, he understood and simply said, “Maybe we'll come back to it later.” It may not be that this is the only sort of piano instruction I can accept, but I know that I cannot learn from an authoritarian.