In the months after my first trip to Illinois, everything had progressed, more or less, as planned. I passed the candidacy and had registered for classes in Perugia. I went to see Mr. Wustman again the week before flying out to Europe. This time, I brought some arias with me.
It was almost a decade before the birth of Google. Yet, I did my homework on what and how to prepare for a lesson with Mr. Wustman. Several people familiar with his work told me that he asked his students to use orchestra scores when studying operatic works. I chose to play Mimì’s aria “Donde lieta” from the third act of La bohème: a beautiful slow piece with manageable orchestration—overall a safe choice.
Even in my undergraduate years, I was always curious about score reading. As a piano student in graduate school, I did a little more work on the subject, playing string quartets. I love doing it because it is a game of calculation: moving staff lines in my head to organize melodies and harmonies. At the same time, I can hear the colors of various instruments coming through moment by moment. With that said, it is not always possible to play everything with ten fingers on a piano keyboard. So, the real challenge is to try to understand the composer’s intention and to make educated choices. The other challenge is to play smoothly and musically while sorting out the information.
My playing must have been acceptable. . .. Mr. Wustman didn’t stop me. However, he almost jumped when we arrived at the phrase “se vuoi sebarla. . .,” where the orchestration built up and the range widened. I followed the melodic doubling in the higher register and let go of the bass underneath the syllable “-bar.” He asked me what I just did. I explained my choices. He said, “One would never cut off the bass.” This advice has stayed with me all these years. No matter how complicated the score is, I know where the foundation of the structure is. The harmony and the sonority must all be built upon the bass.
At the end of the lesson, with a few minutes left, we discussed my next steps. I expressed my desire to move to Illinois, since I could work on my dissertation wherever I chose. I talked about my trip to Italy in the following week. I told him that I knew how important it would be for an accompanist to know Italian and how it would also benefit my research. Mr. Wustman asked me a question that I wasn’t prepared to answer: “How are you going to study?” I knew that he wasn’t asking about which classes I would take. So, I asked for explanation.
He took me back to the piece that I just played. In the verse “Le poche robe aduna che lasciai sparse” (Gather the few little things that I left spreading around), he asked me about the word “aduna.” I knew it meant “to gather.” His next question stunned me: “What does the word really mean?”
I never thought about how words came about. Aduna was a combined word of “a” (to) and “una” (one). So, it actually meant “to make one.” The little one syllable word “a” works magic in Italian language. The word “accompagnare” which has become my daily life means “to company”—to be friends with my fellow music maker.
I took Mr. Wustman’s advice and made my best effort to understand the words in any language and any materials that I had been studying. It really made my world much richer and interesting. I would never forget those first moments of our meetings.