Childhood Music Revisited

I had arranged for 4 of us to get together tonight to play the Telemann Sonata that I so enjoyed playing at Chautauqua. At the last minute Liz declared she was not feeling up to it, as she had Lyme Disease and suffers from chronic fatigue as a result. Deborah and I decided not to bother for just 3 parts.

Nancy, who was planning to ride with me to Deborah’s house, came over anyway. We played through all 4 movements of the Telemann. She was remarkably good, given that she had never played it before. (Nancy is 75 years old. She majored in music at Skidmore and taught violin for a while after graduation.) Then we moved on the Scribner Library of Music for Young Children, Book VIII, which has piano-violin duets, It is a veritable smorgasbord of music: Spring Song and Traumerei and Minuet in G, you name it! Some of them were actually quite nice arrangements. It was a true test of my sight-reading ability. I don’t know if my skill is actually getting better, but my confidence and ability to fake it and just keep going have improved considerably. What a fun evening!

Nancy’s life is filled with so much stimulation. She plays golf every week. She plays in an orchestra in McLean. She takes poetry classes at AU. She attends services at Temple Micah regularly. And she drives everywhere in her new car. She hardly seems 75! She says she forgets where she puts things from time to time, but that’s true of most of us who are over 50...