Earlier this year, I attended the funeral of my high school piano teacher. Mrs. Gunning, as her students called her, was a masterful teacher, pianist and organist. In addition to running a private studio, she taught at the university level, served as a keyboardist for the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, was the accompanist for the New Mexico Symphony Chorus and was the organist for the church I attended through high school. Mrs. Gunning and I continued our friendship after high school until her death at age 79. As such, I was one of a handful of former students who had the pleasure of calling her Maribeth.

When I began studying piano under Maribeth, I was already a rather accomplished pianist for my age; at 14 years old, I probably had a big chip on my shoulder. At the time, Maribeth seemed overly fastidious and unyielding. She insisted on all students dedicating 30 minutes of each weekly lesson to studying music theory—practicing melody, rhythm, counterpoint, harmony, tonal systems, history, scales, tuning, consonance, dissonance—what one might refer to as musical book learning.