A lifetime of musicianship
By ANDREA FURLONG
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Helenka Claypool has been playing the piano for over 70 years. She is also a member of many professional music organizations. |
For Helenka Claypool, music is life. Over the past 78 years, she has played it, studied it and taught it to anyone interested in learning.
Helenka was only three years old when she developed a musical itch in her fingers and started picking out tunes on the piano in her Cedar Rapids home.
“I guess I just liked the sound of it and I wanted to be able to make that sound,” she said.
She began taking piano lessons the year after, but only got in a few years, due to teachers moving out of town. At 12, Helenka secured a permanent piano teacher and began studying classical music under her. At 13, she performed in her first half-recital. By the time she was 15, Helenka was practicing two hours a day, accompanying her high school choir and playing at her church, while also tackling songs assigned by her teacher. Then, the pastor’s wife at her church, Olivet Presbyterian, took Helenka and a few other girls under her wing and started teaching them on the organ.
Transitioning from reading music with two staves to three was challenging, as was adjusting to playing notes with her feet (via 32 foot pedals), while playing on a keyboard with multiple levels of keys.
“It takes a lot of coordination,” Helenka said.
But, Helenka made it through, and soon the teenager was playing classical pieces on the church pipe organ before the 200-member congregation. Helenka admits she had some apprehension as a beginning organist playing before such a large audience.
“When you haven’t been doing something for very long, you feel a sense of being inadequate and you hope it doesn’t show up too much,” she said.
Throughout her high school years, Helenka continued to refine her skills at the piano, receiving high ratings at state contests for performing piano solos, as well as pieces with other instrumentalists. Then, the summer after her senior year, Helenka’s teacher put her skills to the test in the form of a full-length recital. Helenka was to perform an hour of pieces without sheet music at the Cedar Rapids YMCA.
“It was pressure, sure, but it was not anything I was afraid of,” she said.
Four years after her high school graduation, Helenka graduated from the University of Iowa with a bachelor’s degree in music performance. That same year, she married the late Jim Claypool and moved to Williamsburg. During the first eight years of marriage, Helenka settled into family life and raising children, while performing piano or organ strictly at home and church. And then one day, Helenka got a telephone call that would change her life.
“One of my friends called me one day in 1960 and she said, ‘If you give my daughter piano lessons, I’ll babysit while she takes her lesson. And if you want to give other people lessons, I can help out with some babysitting (there)’ — that’s how I got started,” she said.
The first few years, Helenka gave piano lessons to a handful of children, but by 10 years time that number quadrupled. She encouraged every student to play to the best of his ability and required everyone to perform in yearly recitals — including her three children.
“I told my kids I was going to teach them. Some of them took longer than others,” she laughed. “They liked their band instruments better. They had a lot of fun with those, (but) I feel like I gave them a start.”
Helenka’s three sons later performed in the University of Iowa’s Hawkeye marching band, while other students have gone on to become music teachers in schools, private piano instructors and piano performance majors.
Former student Kathy Middleton, now a elementary vocal music teacher at a Davenport school, said it was Helenka’s talent and high expectations of her students that drove many like herself to succeed in music.
“She was such an accomplished musician herself and she expected you to do your best. She was just kind of an inspiration and I knew I didn’t want to disappoint her,” Middleton said.
HIATUS FROM MUSIC
Though music has always been Helenka’s passion, she put family first. So, when her husband’s law firm needed some extra help in the early 70s, Helenka took the job, which turned out to be very demanding.
“It finally got so I couldn’t handle both jobs at the same time, so I had to cut the piano teaching out,” she said.
For 25 years, Helenka worked at the law firm, which meant far fewer church performances and resigning her skills to be used only for her personal entertainment. It was only after her husband’s death in the mid-90s, that Helenka would have the time to go back into teaching music, which she enjoyed thoroughly.
“I think it’s important as part of (childrens’) education. I just think it’s a good thing for everybody to have some musical background—that way they can appreciate what they hear,” she said.
Fearing she might have gotten “rusty” during that 25-year lull, Helenka decided to put her skills to a test through a musical exam that could qualify her to join the American Guild of Organists (AGO).
“I sort of wondered whether I was good enough . . . and I thought, well, if I do these things, it will make me good enough and it will also tell me if I’m good enough,” she said.
Helenka studied under a music teacher for the rigorous exam, which demanded a lot of preparation. The exam consisted of performing three solos from a list provided by the AGO, two choral accompaniments, one solo accompaniment, transposing a hymn on the spot, modulating from one key to another on the spot, making up an accompaniment to a melody on the spot and performing two hymns using different settings and arrangements.
“These are things you really have to study for and prepare. You do it over and over and try different approaches,” Helenka said of the parts of the exam that required on-the-spot decisions.
But, the work turned out to be worth is, as Helenka earned her service playing certification through the American Guild of Organists. Two years later, in 1998, she went on to earn a higher level of certification — the colleague certificate. Unfortunately for Helenka, she had to study for the colleague certification exam two years in a row, since her first exam tape was lost in the mail and never made it to the Guild’s judges.
“I made it. I don’t think as well the second time, but it was good enough,” she said.
These days, Helenka plays the organ regularly at the First Presbyterian Church, Williamsburg, and gives music lessons to six students. One of them is following in her footsteps, preparing for his first exam with the AGO.
“I wanted to be certified, just like her, and to be able to be called a 'professional' organist,” said student Nathan Wille, an incoming freshman at Williamsburg High School.
Wille said he has learned many things from Helenka in just the three and half years he’s studied under her.
PREFERENCES
In addition to being a private music teacher, Helenka is a true musician, as she loves almost any genre that can be performed on the piano or organ.
“I just like everything—all different periods and styles. Sometimes you feel like you want to play Bach, sometimes you feel like you want to play Rachmaninoff,” she said.
Although, her favorite composer is Mozart.
“His music is so perfect. . . perfectly put together. He was a master craftsman,” she said.
Some of her favorite songs to perform are Mozart sonatas, Gershwin pieces, Hoagy Carmichael pop tunes and “Papillon” by Grieg.
As for retiring her fingers from the ivories, Helenka hasn’t set a date.
“When I don’t enjoy it anymore, I will quit,” she said of when she plans to retire her fingers from the ivories.
But don’t count on her quitting anytime soon.
“I guess I couldn’t imagine doing anything else,” she said of her passion for plaing the piano and organ.
Helenka Claypool is a member of the professional Cedar Rapids musician group, the Beethoven Club; a nationally certified organ and piano instructor through the Music Teachers National Association; a member of the Iowa Music Teachers Association; and a member of the American Guild of Organists. In addition to giving lessons and performing at church, she also plays monthly at Highland Ridge.
UPDATED August 5, 2009 10:48 AM