Janet Banks reads Mavis Himes’s account of taking up the cello as a beginner in her late sixties
Cello Notes: Music and the Urgency of Time
Mavis Himes
234PP ISBN 9781998351046
KD Books $24.95
How does it feel, after decades of a successful career in another field, to start out as a complete beginner on the cello in your late sixties? Mavis Himes, a Canadian psychoanalyst approaching retirement, decides to do just that. ‘A late-life crisis? Perhaps,’ she says. But she also has passion and a strong sense of the urgency of time – the feeling of needing to make the most of this opportunity while it is still physically possible.
Himes takes us through the ups and downs, the pains and the sprains and her determination not to give up, which take her over the course of five years from utter novice to proficient intermediate-level cellist. We journey with her as she arranges to meet her first teacher in a crowded student café, as her body rebels for the first two years at the amount of stretching needed for a full-size instrument, and as she finally buys a French 7/8-size.
In her book, which will be of particular interest to adult learners and to teachers, Himes writes with a psychoanalyst’s insight of the healing power of music and observes her own emotional reactions to learning something new, including her seemingly childish need to impress her teacher.
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She suffers setbacks – injuries from over-practising and a serious bicycle accident that shatters her elbow. ‘Will I be able to play the cello again?’ she asks the paramedic as she is wheeled into the ambulance. This was obviously a challenging time, but I felt that all the medical appointments and physio this entailed for the next six months were covered in rather more detail than necessary.
But we also read of the happiness playing the cello brings to her, how her daily practice time becomes a sacred space, a ‘daily Sabbath break’. Her accounts of the two professional concerts she stages at her house, performing for just one item with her teacher and sharing her new delight in music with friends, are heartwarming. We leave her finally back on the cello and finding the transcendence she had sought in music, and maybe through this book inspiring others to make the journey.
JANET BANKS
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