Peter Schneider’s Music in His Eighties
Peter’s wife Pat and I stopped talking and moved to the living room where the music stand stood; it was time for Peter’s clarinet practice. As a young man, he’d been an accomplished clarinetist and in recent years decided to resume playing. For as many years as Peter has been a part of my life, I haven’t really known him, but this morning he reaffirmed an important value for me—self-belief. Listening, his notes entered me without my having any thought of what he was playing.
A retired former minister, he became the backbone for Pat’s writing groups that I had joined in 1981. The Amherst Writers & Artists* writing community grew from small to enormous with Peter handling the behind-the-scene details. Over ten years while I wrote in workshops in the book-lined living room, he was a figure in the background.
Impressed by Peter’s decision to return to playing the clarinet, I returned to India from America with three books for piano*, and within a month had a Yamaha keyboard in my bedroom. Pat wrote, “I have told Peter he sent you to the piano—He looked shocked, and said, ‘because of ME?’ then grinned and said, ‘Well I certainly think that music is more significant a way of communicating than human language.’” She added—“He is pleased that you have joined him.”
I had piano lessons as a girl, but now at my first attempts my fingers fumbled as aging is changing my brain. Finishing The First Grade Book able to play all the songs (at my speed), I’ve begun The Second Grade Book. My growing repertoire has not only given me enjoyment and challenge, but is also, I hope, building new neural pathways. While Peter studies with a recent chair of the Amherst College music department and is working on a Mozart Concerto for clarinet, I happily play Air from Mozart with single fingers.
My realization is, “A person from our past, who received little attention, may become a late bloomer for us—unexpectedly inspiring a change in our life.”
*John Thompson’s Modern Course For The Piano