Hylie Pappenheimer, 86, violin teacher in Cambridge

"When my mother was playing, you lost contact with her," said her son Will of Brooklyn. "She really felt the music she was playing and was very deeply involved emotionally."

A performer when younger, she became a violin teacher in Cambridge for many years, drawing students from kindergarten to Harvard. Mrs. Pappenheimer died May 6 in Sawtelle Family Hospice House in Reading of complications of a pulmonary ailment. She was 86 and lived in Cambridge.

Along with teaching at home, she performed there informally with her husband, John R. Pappenheimer, a renowned scientist who taught at Harvard and Harvard Medical School and played cello.

"My parents played quartets once a week, so once a month they would play at our house," their other son, Rick Plant, wrote in an e-mail.

Plant, a musician in Melbourne, wrote that he can "certainly remember hearing her as first violinist, soaring above the quartet."

"Listening to her practice her scales was downright scary to me," he said. "She had beautiful tone and accuracy."

Less intimidating was Mrs. Pappenheimer's presence as she hosted guests at her house, whether they were other musicians or her students.

"She was just so warm, you felt so comfortable with her," said Valerie Graham of Charlotte, Vt., a former student of Mrs. Pappenheimer's. "And she had a wonderful sense of humor, so you were always laughing. There was always something that was fun."

"You could get her laughing in a circle of friends, and she would continue to laugh," Will said. "It was possible to give my mother the giggles."

Helena Francesca Palmer, always known as Hylie, was born in New York City and grew up in a family deeply versed in creativity of all sorts.

Her mother's parents were Richard Watson Gilder and Helena de Kay Gilder. He was editor of The Century, a magazine that published works by Mark Twain, and she helped found The Art Students League of New York school. Mrs. Pappenheimer's grandparents and uncle were immortalized in a sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

"It was a very well-educated family, poetic and into the arts," Will said. "And music was a very big part of it."

Mrs. Pappenheimer, the oldest of three children, was 6 when she took up the violin, the instrument her mother played, and she quickly excelled.

"From day one, my mother was involved in music and quartets," her son said.

"My understanding is that she was always asked to bring the violin out and play whenever anyone was coming over," said her daughter, Rosamond Zimmermann of Lexington.

Mrs. Pappenheimer attended Brearley, a private school in New York City, then graduated from Bennington College in Vermont before pursuing graduate studies at the Juilliard School of music in New York.

In the late 1940s, one of her teachers from Bennington arranged for her to meet John Pappenheimer, when the two were in Western Massachusetts, attending Greenwood Music Camp in Cummington.

"I think it was a very strong, instant attraction for him," their daughter said. "She was a little more guarded."

He proposed within a couple of weeks, but she decided to study in France first, marrying him the next year, in 1949, after returning. The Pappenheimers moved to Cambridge, where he taught at Harvard and she began teaching violin students.

"She was very gentle, but also firm," her daughter said. "She always liked to let people come to their own understanding of music."

With a generosity of spirit, Mrs. Pappenheimer had as good an ear for what was happening in her students' lives as she did for the music they learned.

"She was a very sensitive player and a very good listener, both to people who were coming to her with problems and with music," her daughter said. "As a musician, she would listen to others and adjust, and also add. Her personality came through and sort of permeated her musical expression. They fed each other."

Mrs. Pappenheimer's tastes ran to chamber music, and she counted among her favorites the quartet compositions of Franz Josef Haydn.

"But she was willing to listen to anything, even though she was a classical musician," her daughter said. "When I was a kid, she gave me Pete Seeger and Joan Baez, even though she also wanted me to listen to Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms."

Plant, the only of her three children to become a professional musician, went to Berklee College of Music and studied jazz theory, a genre distant from the classical music his parents embraced.

Nonetheless, "it was a bond and if she listened to music that I had recorded, I could see that she could really hear me," he wrote. "She would give me a knowing smile at the right times, as if to say, 'I know that was you, and I hear what you were doing.' "

When Mrs. Pappenheimer was a child, her family kept a summer place in Western Massachusetts, in the tiny town of Tyringham, and the Pappenheimers did, too. There, she indulged her passion for gardening, cultivating flowers and vegetables that filled freezers in Cambridge and Tyringham.

"When you had dinner, that was always part of it," her son said of the vegetables his parents grew. "And she was a really good cook."

The meals Mrs. Pappenheimer prepared were part of the social progression in her household, often performed as smoothly as the first violin parts she played each week in quartets.

"You went into her house, and you were home," Graham said. "There was always a golden retriever in her life, and there was always afternoon tea and sherry before dinner."

"The cocktails and the lively discussion flowed into dinner," her son said. "And after dinner, everyone would go and sit by the fire. That was the evening ritual, and she pulled it off."

In addition to her daughter and two sons, Mrs. Pappenheimer leaves five grandchildren.

A memorial service will be held at 2 p.m. July 9 in Union Church in Tyringham.