Of Scary Decisions and Love for Music

By: Judith Uttendorfer
@judith_utd

When my mum took me to the music shop on my sixth birthday to have me choose an instrument to learn, she probably didn’t expect the journey that was about to begin.

If you have never heard someone just starting to learn to play a string instrument you probably won’t be able to imagine the terrible sounds coming from the wooden shell. Despite that, my mum sat next to me whenever I practiced and joined me in my classes because I was too shy to talk to the teacher on my own. 

Add to that I really never was the most disciplined musician—I practiced every other day, rather than the supposed minimum one hour daily, and my teacher was a strict one—and you could believe that this relationship would not turn out very well. 

But years later, the opposite proved true: I would say today that my first teacher from back in the day did not only shape me as a musician, but is also one of the people that had the most influence on my character-building, making me more self-confident and determined.

My love for music was rarely an easy one. Once out of the honeymoon phase, we had a kind of on-and-off relationship, but I never managed to completely let go of my viola. So when I first voiced my thoughts about majoring in Music Performance right after high school graduation, many faces stared back at me in disbelief. 

Despite my passion, my new-found discipline for practicing and the motivation from my new teacher, I came to listen to those critical voices. Political Science would anyway offer me more secure job opportunities, I argued with myself.

I did find love for this major and enjoy many courses a lot. But that’s the thing about passion isn’t it? No matter what you decide or what people are telling you, it will always be there to follow you around. 

A Music minor sounded like a good compromise. But now surrounded by other musicians, playing in an orchestra and working in detail on beautiful pieces, thoughts about how my life could look like, making music my profession, returned.

I was once again facing an opportunity that I was before too scared to make. Once again, I faced the decision to increase my practicing to a minimum of two to four hours a day and, once again, I had the chance to make music my life.

This time I listened to myself, instead of critical voices, and I started to believe in my abilities.

With the help of my amazing professor, who will now officially be by my side for the next three years I passed my audition for becoming a Music major student and the journey that started at my sixth birthday can continue.