“When I don’t feel like doing housework and I don’t feel like reading or writing, I love to make music.” This was the answer given me last week by Violet Myvaagnes to my question about why she plays the recorder. Ms. Myvaagnes, who lives in Mt. Vernon House in Winchester was obviously enjoying that activity on the evening when we met.
At age 91, she enjoys coming together with others to play regularly. She took up the recorder when her boys were little and now, many decades later, she continues to find pleasure playing this instrument.
She is in good company as a member of the Boston Recorder Society that meets monthly at the New School of Music in Cambridge to make music together. Invited by Laura Conrad, Adminstrator of the Society and a regular reader of this column, I visited the group last week and enjoyed talking with several of the players among the 15 or so gathered for music and fellowship.
Incidentally, when I identified the title of this column, Violet Myvaagnes saw its point and related to it immediately: “Growing Older, . . . OK, we’re all doing it!” said this elder, a woman full of vitality.
Judy Demarrais, a resident of Needham, boasts, “I’ve been a member forever.” Forever turns out to be since 1972 when she was 40. “My husband said to me I was too old to learn music,” but she went ahead anyway. Though he has a very fine ear, she says that he cheerfully puts up with her playing despite its deficiencies.
Judy is one of several members who play instruments other than the recorder. “I read early music to keep my brain active,” she says. She performs with the group on the dulcian, az reed instrument like the early bassoon. “I think this group is the sort of thing that can really contribute to community spirit.” “This is so participatory,” she adds.
Duncan MacDonald, a retired space engineer who now lives on Beacon Hill, plays the flute. He also belongs to a nation-wide association of flutists whose members once played the national anthem at an Arizona Diamondbacks baseball game. “Seven hundred flutists lined the field from first base to third base in the outfield, with the conductor at second base,” he recalled. When I called this unique performance much preferable to hearing some pop singer murder the national anthem, Duncan readily agreed.
Talking with him was Marleigh Ryan, who took up the recorder on the last day of 1998. That was the day on which she retired from her position as a professor of Japanese literature in New York. A Cambridge resident, she has enough enthusiasm to have moved her to join another group of recorder players, this one in Framingham.
Tobi Hoffman, a middle-aged computer programmer, finds playing all-absorbing. “Even if I come to a session with a headache, while I’m playing, I will not notice that headache.” I ask how she likes playing with people older than herself. “Music is community,” she replies; “It’s part of something bigger than yourself.”
Ann Murphy of Brookline has been playing for more than twenty years. Before her retirement, she was a social worker at Children’s Hospital and a part-time teacher at Salem State College. When she was younger, she wanted to play an instrument, but regrets that she never found the time. About the recorder, she says, “You can do something with it a little sooner.” The sessions of the Society she sees as “a nice opportunity to get together with other players.”
This sampling of amateur musicians, younger and older, indicates the potential the playing of music has to enliven personal life. For older people in particular, this activity seems to have a rejuvenating effect, especially because it throws them into meaningful contact with those younger than they.
Though the players at this session took their music seriously, the atmosphere was relaxed and no one needed to feel on the spot. In this non-ageist, not competitive environment, people were free to do their best without anxiety about the outcome. The relish they felt in the music itself was obviously a powerful force making them feel good about themselves.
The members of the Boston Recorder Society consider the recorder a good instrument to start in later life. It can give some satisfaction much faster than a more complicated instrument such as the violin. And the learning experience differs sharply from the music lessons of children, in the bad old days, when they were subjected to tiresome drills.
I recall my own piano lessons when my teachers, though not unkind, did not provide me with much gratification. They made me respect the instrument but not love it. Only the prospect of a Red Sox or Bees game, promised as a reward to follow the lessons, gave me the motivation to persevere. The love that the Recorder Society members feel for their instruments makes for a joyful contrast.
Richard Griffin