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Piano at Rest

Piano at Rest

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After half a century on its feet the piano needs a rest. And it’s getting one.

It all started when the instrument kept losing its tune. The tuner diagnosed loose pins and proposed a remedy. Turn the piano on its back, insert a wood-expander solution around the pins and wait a week.

Luckily there’s a largish space in the front half of the living room so the piano could rest there — well barricaded, of course, so Copper doesn’t interfere. Meanwhile, the room is topsy-turvy, and there’s a big wall space where the piano used to be.

Still, I think the vacation is well deserved. I imagine the piano on a beach, a gentle breeze tickling its ivories, its noble shoulders sunk into the sand. Soon it will sit up, shake itself awake and be ready to play again.

Summer Radio

Summer Radio

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I had forgotten what it was like —the splash of pool or surf, laughter in the distance and always, always the radio. In many ways it was the sound of summer, the low simmer of pop tunes from the transistor.

With the advent of the Walkman decades ago and for many years now the iPod, music is only in our  ears and not our neighbor’s. But this week I’ve lounged beside a pool and listened to tunes from the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Can’t remember the songs themselves; they weren’t important. It was the whole experience: the scent of sunscreen, the movement of breeze, the heat of the sun. The radio sounds just completed the circle.

It’s the sort of summer I always remember, and this year it’s summer still.

Oh Say, Can You Sing?

Oh Say, Can You Sing?

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In honor of the two hundredth anniversary of the national anthem, choristers are converging on the National Mall to stage the largest sing-along ever of “The Star Spangled Banner.” The National Museum of American History, which is sponsoring the event, is encouraging would-be warblers to join Anthem for America parties across the country. If there isn’t a party near you, just tune in and sing along with the huge chorus at 4 o’clock today.

What an anthem we have! One of the most difficult to sing of any, with a wide-ranging melody and a high note at the end. A strange sort of anthem for a democracy, when you think about it. “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” is easier, though undeniably British. Or even “America the Beautiful,” though it has its share of high notes, too.

Also interesting, I ponder today on Flag Day, is the fact that our anthem asks questions rather than makes statements. And it’s written in second person. “Oh say, can you see?” These features make it more conversational than most. It’s a song that wonders more than it pronounces, that marvels more than it prescribes. And in those ways, it is endearing.

(Manuscript of Francis Scott Key’s lyrics to the National Anthem courtesy National Museum of American History.)

The Playlist

The Playlist

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I remember when the girls made them. Or when their friends
did and gave them as gifts. I’d find them all over the house, compact discs of
indeterminate vintage, with titles like “Pump Up” or “Race Day” written in
marker ink.
 I came late to the playlist, the homemade CD; came late to
the careful choice of music, to plotting it out in my mind before putting it
together. To walking with it, seeing how it flows, then tinkering some more and
burning it to a disc.
But once I did, I began to see the value of it. The playlist
reveals both the giver and the recipient; it shares what can’t be touched or
seen but must be felt. It is the gift of music, of course, but more than that.
It is music personalized. 
You don’t give a playlist to just anyone — just as you don’t knit a sweater for a stranger. There is an implied intimacy there, an understanding of interest, an appreciation of taste.
I came late to the playlist, to seeing it as an act of love.
But that’s what it is.
The Touch

The Touch

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Reading on my Kindle (see previous post!) these recent weeks means I spend more time touching screens. There’s my smart phone screen and my iPod screen, each requiring a different sort of touch.

The phone, especially its keyboard, is best when I get a rhythm going. If I misspell the words, auto-complete makes up for it … unless it substitutes something completely nonsensical instead.

The iPod is the size of a large postage stamp and is best approached with a smooth but pinpointed movement. If not I may end up with a Broadway musical when I want medieval chant.

As I’ve become acquainted with the Kindle, I see that it’s the most sensitive, the most eager to please of all the screened instruments. Even if my index finger only hovers above the gadget, it thinks I’m ready to turn the page.

Virtuoso pianists are often said to have a  “good touch.” Something in the way they stroke each key creates a warmth of tone. The piano keys are not pounded, they are caressed.

I think we modern-device users are developing a skill we could use elsewhere, if we chose. I think we should all learn to play the piano.

Winter Musical

Winter Musical

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First, the dripping, a melodic plunking, a tune of winter’s making. Not the insect hum of summer, but slower and lower-pitched.

Inside, on the radio, the music of Mozart in honor of his birthday. Trilling clarinets, swelling strings — melodies that transcend the seasons but which take on a wintry tone today.

And finally, as noon approaches and the west wind roars into action, the sound of branches tapping against the house, of breezes sighing around corners and through branches that bend in their wake.

The sounds of late January. A winter musical.

High Fidelity

High Fidelity

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It’s been years since the turntable was hitched up to a stereo receiver. But it is again, and for the last few days I’ve been playing records I haven’t heard in years.

John Klemmer’s Touch. The Antiphonal Brass Music of Giovanni Gabrieli. Joni Mitchell’s Blue. Switched on Bach.

Time capsules, all of them. I remember who I was when I listened to these albums — and what I thought about when I played them.

And then there are those timeless movements I’d almost forgotten: slipping the records from their sleeves, holding them by the edges with flat palms, lowering the arm so the needle glides gently onto  vinyl. Slow, careful, mechanical motions.

The music that emanates (at least from my down-on-its-heels collection) is not an audiophile’s delight. It’s snap, crackle and pop. Scratchy. A sound that’s known better days.

High fidelity? Not really. Except this: It’s music the way I remember it best.

For Beethoven: One Day Late

For Beethoven: One Day Late

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His birthday was yesterday but I’m thinking about him today. Remembering the Beethoven extravaganza on the radio: the measured cadences of the Seventh Symphony’s second movement (the one popularized in the film “The King’s Speech”), the off-stage trumpet of the Leonore Overture No. 3, the slow movement of the Third Piano Concerto. 

Years ago, on a shoestring student trip to Europe, I drug my friend Nancy into at least a half-dozen decrepit Viennese apartment buildings, each one of them places the composer was believed to have  lived. They were not pretty or in a nice part of town. They were often up a flight or two of poorly lit stairs. They made clear that Beethoven’s personal life was unsettled and on the edge.

But yesterday these places were the furthest thing from my mind. What remains of Beethoven, of course, is the music — timeless, placeless, soaring above it all.

Bouncing with Britten

Bouncing with Britten

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Almost lost among the Kennedy anniversary hoopla was that yesterday was also the 100th anniversary of the birth of Benjamin Britten.

For some reason I’ve been on a “Britten kick” lately anyway, having taken one of the British composer’s CDs along with me (totally randomly) on my most recent drive to Kentucky. I’m no Britten aficionado — no “Peter Grimes” for me, thank you very much. But the more accessible stuff, like the “Simple Symphony” or “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” are highly hummable and provide hours of listening pleasure.

Last night, long after dark, I went outside and jumped up and down on the trampoline with Benjamin Britten’s music in my ears. I do some variation of this all the time — bounce while listening to the music of dead white guys. But for some reason last night the miraculousness of it all hit me with extra force.

Benjamin Britten was born 100 years ago. He wrote this piece in 1946. And here I am, 67 years later, his music piped into my ears with a device he could not have imagined, bouncing on a trampoline to its rhythms. Bouncing with goosebumps, I might add.

(Last night’s Benjamin Britten portal.)

Alive and Well

Alive and Well

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I heard the piano before I walked into the room. A dozen folks were already there, handing out music, warming up voices, renewing friendships. It was an anniversary gathering of the Georgetown Gilbert and Sullivan Society — and it was my reunion “duty.”

But for once it wasn’t a duty. To hang out for an hour or two with people who found time to practice songs from “HMS Pinafore” while also studying torts and contracts is not a hardship.

So I listened, took notes and photos. I thought about the plays I was in as a kid, how in love I once was with that world. I thought about theater people, how alive they are. Breathing all that music in and out.

The last number was “He Is an Englishman.“

I couldn’t stop myself. I had to sing.