The Piece Her Grandmother Loved: What One Student Taught Me About Starting Again

A few years ago, a new student came to me with a single request. She didn't want to start with scales, or a beginner's method book, or "whatever's traditional first." She wanted to learn one piece: Pachelbel's Canon in D.

It had been her grandmother's favourite.

I've taught a lot of adult beginners over the years, and almost all of them arrive with some kind of reason underneath the reason. "I always wanted to" is rarely the whole story. For Sue, the real story came out slowly, over the first few lessons her grandmother used to play that recording often, and somewhere along the way, it had become the sound of home. Learning to play it herself wasn't really about the violin at all, not at first. It was about being able to hold onto something that was starting to feel further away.

I won't pretend the first few weeks were easy. Pachelbel's Canon sounds simple and that is part of its trap. The famous melody is deceptively exposed; there's nowhere for a wobbly bow arm to hide, no fast runs to mask an unsteady note. For a true beginner, it's actually a demanding piece to start on, and I said as much early on. We talked about starting somewhere gentler and working up to it.

Sue asked if we could try anyway.

So we did. We broke it right down. Not just technically, bar by bar, but into what it actually needed emotionally too. Long, sustained notes. A bow arm that has to stay calm and even, not rushed. In a strange way, the piece asked for exactly the kind of patience grief asks for as well, you can't hurry either one.

There was a lesson, a few months in, where something shifted. She played through the opening phrase, not perfectly, but steadily, the melody finally sitting where it should and she stopped afterward. She just sat with it for a second. She didn't say much. She didn't need to.

That's the moment I think about when people ask me why I still love teaching adults specifically. Children often come to lessons because a parent enrolled them. Adults come because something pulled them there — and more often than you'd think, that something is love, or memory, or a version of themselves they're trying to reconnect with. Sue wasn't just learning to play a violin. She was learning to hold onto her grandmother in a way that words don't quite manage.

I share this not because every student has a story this personal; plenty of people simply want to learn violin because they enjoy music, and that's a perfectly good reason on its own. But if you're an adult who's been putting off lessons because you're not sure your reason is "serious enough," or because you're worried you're starting too late, or because the thing pulling you toward the violin feels a bit too personal to say out loud. I'd gently say: that's exactly the kind of reason that tends to carry people through the hard, unglamorous early weeks. It certainly carried Sue.

She still plays that piece today. It's not the polished, professional recording her grandmother used to listen to and it never will be. But that was never really the point. What matters is that she gets real joy every time she picks up her violin and plays it. That's what it was always about.

If there's a piece of music that means something to you — a memory, a person, a moment — I'd love to help you learn to play it. Get in touch to talk about lessons, online or in person.