Miss Calder

Miss Calder was my first piano teacher. I was taken to meet her for the first time: I recall it was before I started school, so I would have been four or five. I told her I liked making up my own pieces. She asked me to play one, so I proudly sat at the piano and, as was my wont, played notes at random: any pattern certainly wouldn't have been a musical one. She listened patiently, and at the end said, "That was lovely. Would you play it again please?"

I remember the sudden realisation that I was missing the point. And I don't think I ever tried to compose my own pieces again.