Who's Writing This Site?

     My name is Matthew Harre. I'm a fossil myself. I think any of us over fifty are put into that category. There is an assumption that over fifty means the body and mind become stiff and inflexible and not malleable enough to learn anything new, especially anything as intricate as playing the piano. My irritation with this sentiment, not surprisingly, increases year by year.

Sometimes we choose this category. Several years ago years ago I developed lower back pain like so many people and fortunately the disability and the pain vastly exceeded the seriousness. I could have put myself into the fossil category. However, I saw it as a wake-up call and have spent the time since getting to know my body much better.

I've been rather relentless in this, exploring various modalities of physical self-knowledge. What I have found has given me a far greater understanding of mind-body integration. This understanding has been very useful in my playing and teaching.

I was musically talented as a kid growing up in a small town. There was certainly no pressure to excel and I quit piano lessons when I was in fifth grade. In high school I picked it up again in a half-hearted sort of way. In college I majored in international affairs, then philosophy and finally music. I received a BA and MA in music theory and composition from American University and studied piano there with Esther Ballou. About ten years later I studied privately with Alexander Lipsky and did so for about 12 years. Both these teachers were also composers. Fortunately for me, their view of the musical world was bigger than just the piano. From both I gained enormous insights on music, playing, teaching and living.

My piano study has hardly been conventional. The most important part of my piano education occurred after I was 18, fairly ancient in piano learning terms. Needless to say, this made me sympathetic to my many adult students. My own experience and models actually fit them better than it did my youngster students.

I started the Adult Music Student Forum (AMSF) in Washington, D.C. 16 years ago because I got tired of all the competitions and events for kids. AMSF addresses the needs of adults. I have given numerous presentations to both teachers and adult students.

After many years of supporting MusicalFossils.com using my own money, unfortunately it is now necessary to place Google Ads on many of the pages to try and offset some of the monthly operating costs (domain ownership, content upkeep, bandwidth, design, etc.) to keep this information available to the public. I apologize to my friends, regulars and first time visitors for any inconvenience this will cause. For those who are willing and able to make a donation to help defray the costs, making the Ads unnecessary, a PayPal fund has been created to accept donations of any size. I personally thank everyone who is able to make a donation of any size.

Acknowledgements

The growth and development of the ideas in this web site are the sum total of the many years of my life. I have spent much of it learning and teaching, the teaching also being learning.

Many ideas that once were others have become so incorporated in to my own thought that I scarcely know what, if anything, is original. Many ideas have come from others through reading and discussions with friends and acquaintances. I want to acknowledge some of the more important ones.

• Rodger Ellsworth and I spent hours and hours talking about the issues of teaching music and adults in particular.
• Paul Spencer and I walked, hiked, camped and talked hours and hours about the various workings of the mind and ways the body is the mind.
• Carol Iverson was an integral contributor to this same reasoning and the source of the quotes by Jacques Lussyran.
• Judy Rose Seibert and Gilbert Gallego have all been part of a growing knowledge of the body-mind integration.
• My two major piano teachers, Esther Ballou and Alexander Lipsky laid the very foundations of the issues discussed here, each in strikingly different ways.
• Watching my two children, Joseph and Rachel, become adults has given me insight into the problems, costs, and lingering residue of being children in our society.
• Finally, too numerous to mention, are all my students who paid me to teach while I began to learn how to actually do it.
• Lisbeth Francisco, Gail Loveland and Katherine Williams edited and proofread various chapters.
• My son, Joseph Harre, is the webmaster and made all this possible as a web presentation.