For a long time, our child had wanted to play an instrument. I had tinkered around with the guitar with her a bit, and she practiced diligently. Eventually, however, I had to admit that a full-sized guitar is simply too large and doesn’t really allow for much fun when you’re the size of our daughter.

So for quite some time now, the thought of having her own instrument had been bothering her. Every now and then the idea would resurface, and the wish kept growing. Proportionally, however, the instruments she began to consider grew as well. When she confronted us last week with the latest version of her vision of a music-making Luna, I suddenly found myself facing logistical challenges that, sooner or later, I would only have been able to solve by buying a van.

Luna wanted to play the harp.

While well-informed relatives responded with sounds of delight — “Oh, how wonderful, a harp sounds sooo beautiful!!” — we acquired even more gray hair. We started asking ourselves: where do you even learn something like that? What does the instrument cost, and what does the tuition cost? How do you get there? Do you have to drag that thing along every time?

So we decided to put a stop to the uncontrolled growth of instruments — although my wife sarcastically remarked that at this point only a grand piano or a church organ could possibly be next. I added the alphorn, and we both agreed it was time to act.

The music school in Landau was offering an open day. Students would perform a concert, and afterwards all sorts of instruments would be presented. After convincing ourselves of their portability and discovering that most of them would, in fact, fit into a car, we decided to take a trip to Landau on Saturday. Our child was thrilled.

After the concert — which was genuinely well prepared, with Mozart and Handel guiding the program — Luna had narrowed her choices down to four instruments: piano, guitar, violin, and cello.

We started with the piano. The responsible piano instructor rushed toward Luna, banged on the keys, and said: “This is high, and this is low.” That was it. He vanished as quickly as he had appeared. It was immediately clear that Luna wasn’t going to discover anything for herself there.

Next stop: the violins, in another corner of the hallway. Two women were very busy conveying their enthusiasm for music to the children. Luna watched for a while. Then she was ready to try a violin herself. But the sound she produced was apparently too high and too close to her ear. Even a viola didn’t make much of a difference.

The guitar suffered the same fate. She probably also associated it with unpleasant memories of sore fingertips from our earlier practice sessions.

Finally, we arrived at the cello.

Completely fascinated, Luna stood there for the first minute, listening to the children sawing away at the strings. Two cello teachers were present. One was highly engaged and already conveyed through her body language how much she loved the instrument. The other had revealed herself during the concert as the head of the music school.

Luna first got to “experience” the headmistress.

A creature with an incredibly unpleasant Merkel-style smile. She pointed at the floor with her bow and instructed our child: “Sit here.” She wedged a cello between Luna’s knees, shoved a bow into her hand without comment, and said: “…and now you do it like this!”

She demonstrated a few sawing motions. That was the entirety of her introduction to the cello.

Luna looked at us in shock and immediately began copying the sawing motions with the other children. On the other end of the room, I was on the verge of running amok. After all, I hadn’t planned for our child to be trained as a lumberjack. Certainly not at a music school.

Parents of other cello-interested children shook their heads and left with their offspring. Not a single child looked as though they had discovered a love for the sound of the cello. Nor did any parent appear willing to place their child in the hands of this obviously overwhelmed woman. No surprise. She simply has no talent for teaching. She may well be a wonderful cellist — I’ll assume that without demanding proof — but given her manner, I gladly forgo any future encounters.

Fortunately, our child sawed away long enough. The dragon nerves seemed overstretched, and the woman “flew” off. She was replaced by the second cello teacher, who approached Luna with genuine warmth. Her very first question was: “So, can you hear how the cello is speaking to you?”

She introduced herself, guided Luna’s hand once or twice, and showed her how to produce tones on the strings. She spent about fifteen minutes working intensively with Luna, who was deeply focused and absorbed everything. At one point, the teacher invited Luna to support her during a piece. The teacher played something beautiful, and Luna accompanied her on a single string.

Naturally, this was incredibly encouraging.

It was astonishing how differently the two women approached the act of teaching. The latter clearly had a visible talent: she loves her job, she loves making music, and she loves passing that knowledge on.

We agreed with Luna to book a few trial cello lessons. This certainly didn’t land us with the smallest instrument, but I could see in Luna’s eyes that she truly wanted to explore the cello for herself. So we decided to find out.

P.S. In the meantime, we’ve enrolled at the music school in Kandel, rented an instrument, and already had several jam sessions with guitar and cello. The wonderful teacher from Landau didn’t end up being the one after all — instead, we found a wonderful teacher, whom we and especially Luna are absolutely delighted with.