A Narrative Essay

Joanna Klazinga

Ms. Covington

English 102

September 14, 2015

A Tale of a Tired Musician

Beethoven’s Sonata number 9 in E major: the bane of my existence for more than nine months. I spent hours upon hours of practicing that piece, and yet the first and third movements still were not perfect. Around mid August 2013, my piano teacher asked me which level in the Guild I wanted to audition for the next spring. I picked the hardest one I could, I wanted the high school diploma, I wanted PD.

PD (Preparatory section, class D) is one of the more difficult of the many sections and levels in the Guild association. The levels are Beginner, Elementary, Intermediate, Preparatory, and Collegiate. Each section has four to six classes (A-D or A-F), and each section and class has requirements suited to the level of the student. The National Guild of Piano Teachers is a part of the American College of Musicians; it was founded in 1929 with only forty-six students, and now has reached as far as China with thousands of participating students worldwide. Students audition in front of a judge once a year for 20-90 minutes, depending on the length of the program. It is not an organization where students compete against each other, each student is judged individually, but it is a good way to motivate students to do better than they did the year before.

Auditioning for PD would mean I would have to complete five out of seven musicianship phases; it would mean memorizing 10 other pieces. So I set out to do just that. I spent hours learning every single scale and arpeggio on the piano, major, harmonic minor and melodic minor. I had to be ready to sight read any piece of music just two levels below my own (and it gets harder the higher the level). I had to transpose a piece from one key into two more keys and play it flawlessly. I had to be able to listen to a chord and tell the judge what position it was, and if it were major, minor, diminished, or augmented.

All of this work for a piece of paper.

So I worked. I played the same ten pieces over and over for months, Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Pinto, Grieg, Joplin, again and again. I played scales over and over until they were the correct metronome speed, and I could do them flawlessly in my sleep. Everything had to be from memory; there were no sheets of music to be seen by the last practice.

I remember quite well my feelings of animosity towards Beethoven. Why did his Sonata have to be so irritatingly difficult? Why did the third movement have to be so fast? All of my pieces had to be approved by a committee at the Guild Headquarters, so I had to know six months before my audition what my pieces were going to be, and they could not change after that. So for more than nine months I slaved away at the piano, for at least two hours each day. I grew weary of my pieces, but I still practiced them.

Why would I set myself on such a seemingly impossible task?
            I had performed in the National Guild of Piano Teachers auditions for nine years, one year at the District level, six years at the National level, and two years at the International level. This experience of memorizing ten or more pieces was not new to me. When I first started taking piano lessons from my teacher, Mrs. Barnaba, she introduced me to the NGPT, also known as Guild. She started me out at the District level, which meant that I had to memorize four easy pieces, learn the scales of each of the keys in which they were played, and perform them in front of a judge. The first year I made Top Talent. The highest score. After that first year, my teacher suggested that I take on the national level, which is ten memorized pieces. I did, and got Top Talent again. Each year the class and section got higher as I progressed in my studies of music. One year I decided that I liked playing Sonatinas so much that I was going to do a Sonatina program: learn five whole Sonatinas with three movements each, a total of 15 pieces (I found, after playing Sonatinas for six months straight, that I no longer desired to ever look at one ever again). That year I was in the international level, and I didn’t die like I thought would happen.

The next year I skipped three sections and went up to the next class, out of the Intermediate class and into the Preparatory class, section A. It was second to last class, the high school level class (the next class was collegiate). I was already in my sophomore year of high school at that point, and had a lot of things going on for school, but I wanted the challenge. And was it ever a challenge. I had to learn new music I had never thought about playing before (because really, who ever thinks that they are going to play Rachmaninoff’s famous prelude in C# minor?). I did it though, and I made the highest score.

The next year was going to be my senior year of high school; I was already working part-time at Chick-fil-a, and had choir and science lab commitments outside of my normal school work. I talked with my teacher before summer break about what I would do the next year for Guild. We looked at the options, and she briefly mentioned that if I completed the section level PD I could get a high school diploma from the Guild. When I came back for lessons in August I knew what I was going to do. I wanted to feel like I had accomplished something spectacular in my years of Guild auditions. It was the only chance I would get since I knew that I would not be continuing lessons with Mrs. Barnaba after I graduated, and I really wanted that diploma. So I suggested that I was up to the challenge of a high school diploma program. She was surprised, and told me that it would be an immense amount of work, but that she knew that if I practiced long and hard enough that I could do it.

So we set out on the journey of picking pieces that would fit the requirements for the program. Most of them I was excited about from the start (with exception of the Pinto piece, because it was just weird and I didn’t like the way it sounded), and couldn’t wait to start practicing. By the end of the nine months I was tired of hearing every single one of them, but I was so pleased that I could play them. My teacher helped me through every step, making sure I was reading the notes correctly, and assigning the pieces in workable chunks.

The week before my audition was a very stressful one. Not only did I have to practice double the amount I was doing before so that I would feel ready, I had to take the horrid ACT test, my brother broke his collar bone and had to have surgery, and I had to help plan and attend a historical Ball. I was quite stressed. I think I cried almost every night because I was just so tired of everything. But the day of Guild came without bringing my demise and I felt almost ready. I don’t think that I have ever been really ready for something as long-awaited as Guild, but almost ready was about as good as I was ever going to get. I drove there and had to wait my turn to audition, all the while stretching my fingers so that they would warm up and be ready to play. My time slot was an hour and a half long, because I had so much stuff to play for the judge.

Honestly the performance itself was a little bit of a blur. I know I was disappointed with my performance of the Beethoven Sonata, but I felt like I played my last piece, Grieg’s Wedding Day at Troldhaugen, better than I had ever done before.

The relief I felt after finishing was immense. Now it felt like I had not a care in the world, and that I had accomplished the most difficult and impressive thing that I have ever done. In fact, when my mother presented me with my Guild diploma at my graduation, I was more proud of it than my high school diploma.

So if anyone ever has the chance to participate in the Guild auditions, do it. If you have the chance to audition for any of the diplomas, do it. It is so worth the hard work that is put in it. You cannot get by with adequacy; you have to strive for perfection. It taught me perseverance and patience. For years I worked toward the goal of auditioning in front of a judge every May. Without such a goal, where would I be? Would I still be struggling to read music? Would I pause every time I ever made a mistake? Because I had such a high goal every year, I am now able to sight read proficiently, I can transpose a piece into a different key, and I can play by ear. I can accompany my Church on Sundays without fear of failure or calamity. Guild changed my life for the better, and I am so glad that I was able to do it for so many years.