MADAME ALIAS

What the teacher is, is more important than what (s)he teaches

-Karl Mennenge (with a slight alteration)

One of the most influential people in my life was my elementary school music teacher, Mme. Elvire Alias.  I had obliquely shown musical ability early in my life (I made up a song about rigatoni when I was 2 or 3 that my grandmother probably still has on tape somewhere.  It wouldn’t be the only time I wrote a song about pasta), but she was the first person who truly recognized it.  I think it’s safe to say that without her, I may not be a musician today.

A striking bespectacled lady from France who favoured gypsy skirts (though I believe she was of Basque heritage, like Ravel), she loved music and teaching probably more than anyone I’ve ever met. I would watch her fingers move as she would play the piano, and marvel at how someone’s hands could make such beautiful sounds. She taught us a quirky adaptation of the Orff method, a system involving hand gestures for each note (which we never learned) and mini-xylophone and percussion orchestras, which was developed by Carl Orff (whose Carmina Burana I may or may not discuss at a later date. I have yet to decide whether it’s a masterpiece or just a tawdry, crowd-pleasing collection of repetitive ditties). She would arrange folk and popular songs for her classes to play at the twice-yearly concerts, but our class was so good that she chose Für Elise as our spring showpiece. I remember one afternoon early in the semester. We were practising in the music room of the stately and over-crowded Victoria School. It was early February, and the sun was streaming through the tiny window in the dusky attic loft.  I was sitting on the floor in the front row, playing melody with about nine other 8-year olds. (Truth be told, I always wanted to play the bass xylophones, because the sound was cool, and we could play them sitting on our knees. Even then, I got pins and needles when sitting cross-legged, or Indian-style, as we called it back in the day). We were practising the first half of the piece, but we hadn’t yet learned the second half. I looked up at the giant score pasted onto poster board that hung in front of us, and a light bulb went off.  It all made sense: All the notes and notations and dynamics and rhythm and harmony, it all came together in that one amazing moment. When she gestured for us all to stop, I decided to sight-read the rest of piece as the rest of class looked on in annoyance. When I was done, Mme. Alias looked at me with tears in her eyes and proceeded to rattle on for 5 minutes in French, a language of which my grasp was still quite tentative, so I didn’t understand much of what she said. I realize now, of course, that I was showboating a bit (I probably realized it then as well…), but it was the first time that the mystery of music had opened my eyes. I didn’t want it to stop.

It was probably soon after that that Mme. Alias urged my parents to start me in piano lessons. Urge, perhaps, is not the word; she forced, nay, threatened my parents to take me to a piano teacher, and quickly! They apparently ignored her pleas for a little while, what with the daunting prospect of the added expense of lessons and purchasing a piano. That summer (between grades 2 and 3) when I was at my grandparents’ church in Toronto with my dad and grandfather. I was banging away at the piano and realized for the first time that it was exactly like a xylophone; all the notes were in the same place.  So I started to plunk out Für Elise, left hand and all. That was probably the wake-up call for the ‘rents, and so that September, I started lessons with a young university student from North Carolina named Chris who lived 3 doors down. I progressed quickly, and within 3 months, I was learning Für Elise.  It was to Mme. Alias that I proudly showed my first attempt at composition - a 16-bar phrase in G major that I had painstakingly written out in my 8-year old’s scrawl. I can still vaguely remember the piece (and yet, I can’t for the life of me remember a note I wrote while studying composition in University. I did write a piece for viola and 10 blenders though. That’s what it was called too – Piece for Viola and Ten Blenders. I was always one for didactic titles. Never heard that masterpiece performed…). She never stopped encouraging me, and I started playing piano for her grade school choirs by the time I was in high school. When I graduated, she said that the pupil had surpassed the master. I still have trouble believing that. I continued to play for her concerts until she retired about five years later.  And though I would have gladly done it for free just for the joy of being in her presence and working with her again, she insisted on arranging for a small honorarium. Not only was she a wonderful musician, she instilled in me a love and passion for music, which to this day, remains lit and burning. Her most remarkable achievement, though, is that she instilled that same love and passion in countless other children, many of whom are musicians because of her, all of whom surely must remember her with the same gratefulness and love as I do.