Always an Amateur

In a story recently told by a recorder teacher, she described one time when she took intensive lessons with a world famous recorder player. Within minutes of starting the first lesson, the famous one announced, “Well, it is clear you will always be an amateur.” How that must have sunk in deeply and hurt. Yet, it is also the reality of what I encounter in my own recorder practice and music making.

I have just finished working on two measures of a Handel sonata, running through it over and over again to get my fingers to know where to go next and my tongue to know exactly where it needs to be and how to open and close off notes. I spent maybe fifteen minutes on the recalcitrant notes, breaking them down, noticing each movement, trying to get them smooth, graceful and reliable. It was frustrating, hard work, and now I have knots in my shoulders and a bit of a headache.

The difficulty I have reminds me that I will never be more than an amateur, and never will play as well as that “amateur” teacher. So why is it so hard to admit I will never be more than an amateur? Why do I keep pushing up against those barriers of learning as an adult, at a time of life when my mind and my fingers are in decline, and will never reach the heights of technique to which I aspire?

Maybe it is the sense that I am still making progress, that I can get better, and the music will be able to find expression in my efforts? Even though the sonata is not considered among the most challenging or artistic of pieces, it still provides a challenge to my skills. It demands my attention, my practice and my commitment to turn it into something of beauty.

Maybe it is because my audience is so impressed with even the amateur level of playing that I can do? Let’s face it, when the only recorder you have heard is your child in third grade squawking through “All through the night” in a way that is anything but soothing, then my playing is virtuosic. Having an audience with no or little basis of comparison gives me a decided advantage.

Maybe it is because I appear to be having fun with the music, and the pieces are fun to hear? The audience doesn’t need to know how furiously my brain is working, noticing how many glitches there are along the way. If I am lucky, they will not where I lost my place and have to find my way back. They just know that it captured their attention, drew them out of their own distracted thoughts into a new sounding world.

Maybe I can find a way to let go of feeling that being an amateur is a failure? While I will never be paid for making music, I have paid to hear many famous musicians and wondered with some why I wasted my money. I might not be able to make the commitment that being a professional requires, but I can still commit my time and continually learn to be better. I can still be an expert with those who know so much less.

Maybe I can see join with the “amateur” athletes who train for the Olympics. Although they are able to dedicate mcuh more time, I can make the commitment as they have to become as excellent in their chosen sport as they can be. I can maintain a regular discipline of practice and working with coaches to continually refine my technique and build my own style.

There is one etymological perspective on the word amateur that I find appealing. In “What’s an Amateur” the Latin word “amator” which literally means “lover of” is the root of our current work. There is no better way to say it, since I am a lover of the recorder, of its many forms of expressiveness and the music written for it over the centuries.

So, being the lover of the recorder, I can bring my love into other peoples lives, and maybe I can inspire them to try it for themselves.