I once had this silhouette image in my head of a man sitting on the stool of a grand piano in an empty auditorium that once was a concert hall, his head leaned back as if falling asleep to what he was playing. I imagined him to be someone who breathed music and someone who lived for music. I decided to name him the Music Man, and just like the movies, although unspoken, I knew he existed. I knew that somehow, without knowing how or when, I was bound to meet him and that I was going to be changed.
I first met my piano teacher when I was in fourth grade. I was nervous thinking that I was, yet again, getting another unforgiving teacher for my usual summer classes, but then he pulled out a Disney piano book, and I knew from then on that this time, it was going to be different. Still, every meeting, I would walk into the room terrified that I would mess my piano piece up. He, on the other hand, would crack jokes about how hard I must have practiced. He always made me laugh. You would think he was using reverse psychology. I think he was just being himself. It was his way of saying he was proud of me. He was just being teacher Denis.
Before my session, I would hear Teacher Denis play Beethoven from outside the piano room. If one would hear him play, one might expect to find someone who held his head too high with unimaginable hubris. However, every time Teacher Denis came out from that piano room, I was reminded of how much humility a person is capable of possessing. He stood about six feet tall, dressed in pants and a loose polo shirt. He stood a little stooped with his hands kept together in front of him. He lived simply.
I can still recall the first few years I went to his piano school. The whole school was just about half the size of a classroom. “I still remember the first day of operation of my school. My student never showed up. I prepared so much for that one and only student by cleaning the room and making sure that the furniture was arranged. I shed some tears that day,” Teacher Denis recalls. Now, he has built not only a larger piano school. He has built a music school.
Teacher Denis learned to play the piano on his own when he was only ten years old. He never had any formal training until he took an extension program in Siliman University while he was in college. When I asked him how he knew he loved music, he said with a blissful tone, “At night, my brother and I would play the guitar and sing until midnight. In our minds, we were in a big concert, only to be revived by our father telling us to go to sleep. At that time, playing music was already a necessity for me.” Upon hearing that, I realized I was talking to an extraordinary man, someone who looked at music not as a desire, but as a need.
Teacher Denis’ passion kept me going with my piano lessons. There was just a great deal to learn from a man who had so much love for what he was doing. I looked forward to Friday and Saturday afternoons from dreadfully long Sundays to Thursdays. I simply could not wait to move on from one piece to the next, to hear what Chopin would sound like from the old wooden piano in school or to know another hilarious story about Teacher Denis’ life back in the days. I remember the day he gave me my first Mozart sonata. I almost gave up in utter discouragement. At that point, I thought I had lost all the reason to believe in my ability, but when he saw my disappointment, he told me with sheer conviction that he dreams of hearing me play that piece one day. Just when I was about to give up, I found he believed in me more than I believed in myself.
Teacher Denis once told me with such bright eyes how contented he is with his life. “When I see my students grow up to be God fearing and responsible citizens in our community, it’s as if I have received a bonus from God,” he says. He insists that he did not choose music. Instead, music chose him. Music was the sum of all his ambitions, and he faced it with audacity. Only then did I learn how immense his courage was. Now I can say that at least once in my life, I have met a man who, beyond doubt, followed his dreams.
While I was playing Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, the last piece he taught me before I left home for Manila, it suddenly hit me how loved I felt. While he was there standing behind me, listening to me play, all he really wanted to discover was how long I was going to hold up. I did hold up until the very last chord just because he believed in me.
Teacher Denis has taught me more than how to play the piano. He has taught me that just like how notes truly sing only when it is played for others, life is worthwhile only when it is lived to make others believe in their dreams and in how much they can do. I know now that it does not only take fingers to play the piano. It takes a teacher. It takes a dreamer and a believer to know music. I know now that it takes music to know life.
I wonder how I have become worthy to be taught by someone so great. That, I’ll never know in this lifetime. All these years, I was busy learning the piano. Little did I know, I was taught by the man from my silhouette dream himself, the Music Man, and indeed, I have been changed.
by:
Madeline Mae A. Ong 092692
BS-HSc
