At the age of 80, Amherst author Kitty Burns Florey set herself an unusual and demanding challenge: learning to play the viola da gamba. Now, two years along, she has written a wonderful new book, “The Music of Eighty: Learning in Old Age,” about her experience of learning to play the stringed instrument, which dates back to the 15th century.
Music has always been a part of Florey’s life. In a recent interview, she described her requisite childhood attempts at ukulele and guitar —”I got as far as ‘Michael Row the Boat Ashore’ and ‘Kumbaya’”—and her more satisfying move to the piano, which she has continued to played intermittently over the years. She said she always wanted to play the cello but felt she was too old to start a new instrument, particularly one as difficult as the cello. As she recalls in the book, several years ago, she told a good friend who happened to be a gamba and cello player, that she regretted not having taken cello lessons. “Instead of telling me to quit whining, he replied, ‘You should learn to play the gamba.’” He assured her that the gamba was easier than the cello. “Not easy, just easier,” he added. For one thing, the gamba has frets, like the guitar.
Florey said that she tends to over-think things, but this time she managed to hush her naysaying inner voice and decided to “just do it.” Before she had time to change her mind, she arranged to take lessons from a local teacher, Alice Robbins, an accomplished viol and cello player and early-music enthusiast. She rented an instrument from Robbins and the arduous journey began.
Florey has no illusions about her limitations. Her brain isn’t as sharp as it used to be, her fingers not as dexterous, her body not as robust.
“After nearly two years, I am still a terrible gamba player,” she said, laughing, and admitted that the process has been daunting. “I knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but it was even more difficult than I had imagined.”
She observed that compared to the gamba, the piano is relatively simple to play: you strike a key and a note sounds.
“You have to hold the instrument at a certain angle, you have to hold your left arm correctly while you’re also thinking about fingering,” she said. “It took forever just to learn to hold the bow properly. That was incredibly frustrating.”
She plays in front of a full-length mirror so she can make sure she’s holding the bow horizontally. She takes lessons every three weeks and practices at least five days a week.
“It’s tiring to play,” she said. “I take off layers of clothes when I practice.” She added, “Now I understand why those female musicians in concert halls always wear such skimpy dresses. That was a revelation!”
The book includes hilarious descriptions of her early efforts. “The F scale sounded like a cat in heat; the task of stretching my fingers along the strings was a farce: pinky and ring finger were faithful friends who would not be separated,” she said.
Her attempts to bow a string sounded “like a carpentry project” rather than a musical note. But there’s also the satisfaction of gradual, if halting, improvement. She writes, “every once in a while the collaboration of horsehair and sheep gut produces a sound that’s — well, nice. I can’t keep it up … But it gives me hope.”
Daily practice has become central to her life. “Though I may not be much of a gambist, I do like to practice,” she writes. “I like the tiny calculations that accompany each move, the fierce concentration that playing strings calls for. It’s a way of not gaining time but deepening it: every moment counts, every note.”
She has always considered herself an optimist, an attitude that has helped her overcome frequent bouts of discouragement. She told me, “I always think that today I’m going to play better and then it turns out to be horrible. But I always feel good after I’ve practiced. I believe in doing things even when you can’t do them well. Anything that’s worth doing well is worth doing badly too.”
As she’s gotten older, Florey said it’s easier for her to let go of expectations: “I find I just don’t care.” This has greatly enhanced her enjoyment of playing the gamba. “It doesn’t matter to me that I’m a lousy gamba player,” she said. “I can’t possibly live long enough to be a good gamba player, but that doesn’t mean I should give up.”
Florey has always enjoyed playing piano with her daughter, a violin player, and other musical friends. She is thrilled to have gotten to the point where she can play simple gamba pieces with other musicians. “I’d forgotten how much fun it is to play with someone,” she said.
Florey lived in Boston, Brooklyn and New Haven before moving to Amherst in 2012. In the course of her writing career, she has produced 15 novels, including “Amity Street,” a historical work set in Amherst in 1892, many essays and short stories, and three works of non-fiction. Several years before taking up the gamba, she began to write an essay that she called “How to be Old.” The essay, in which she muses on many aspects of aging and death, eventually became the seed for “The Music of Eighty.” The book is entertaining and informative, filled with quirky side notes on topics such as waltzing in Jane Austen novels and the word “taphophile,” meaning a fancier of cemeteries. It’s also thought-provoking and sobering.
In what Florey admits are her final years, she reckons often with the inevitability of death. She quotes poet Philip Larkin: “Most things may never happen — this one will.” She has long contemplated her collection of precious belongings, fretting over what will become of them when she dies. I find great comfort in her resolution of this dilemma, which I suspect plagues a lot of people in old age. She imagines herself an actor in a play. “When we’re gone, the play closes, and the sets and props may as well go too. A few of them might survive, going on to have new lives as part of someone else’s world. Some might persist for a generation or two. And that’s it. But it doesn’t matter. They can exit. They’ve served their purpose.”
In her prologue, Florey describes “The Music of Eighty” as “a book about learning to play the viola da gamba — also about getting old. Or, maybe it’s a book about getting old — also about learning to play the viola da gamba.” However you look at it, Florey’s book is a fascinating account of her efforts to resist the “mental downsizing that comes with the years.” At this point in her journey with the gamba, she writes, “If I ever learn to play well, that would be lovely. For now, I take pleasure in the days when, miraculously, as I play, the hopelessness and the doubt diminish, and something resembling music takes over.”