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The Happy Key

The Happy Key

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The wind chimes languished when they hung from the deck railing. They were close to home but blocked from the breeze that would make them sing. 

For a while now, though, they’ve dangled from a low limb of the witch hazel tree, far enough out in the yard that the wind catches them, moves their string and clapper. When I’m out in the yard weeding or picking up sticks I hear their song. 

The chimes have been restrung and refurbished several times, but I still remember unwrapping them, the little note that explained they were in the “happy key of D Major.”

Is D Major a happy key? I’ve never minded it. Only two sharps. Not as easy as G Major (one sharp) or C Major (all white keys) but easier than A (three sharps) and E (four). 

I did a bit of googling, learned that Franz Schubert called D Major the key of triumph and hallelujahs. That’s good enough for me. 

Moon Over Wolf Trap

Moon Over Wolf Trap

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A last gasp of summer, an outdoor concert at Wolf Trap, where cellist Yo-Yo Ma and clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera played together like … beans and rice, which they explained briefly before they played are their nicknames for each other. These names also showed up as titles for movements in the piece they performed, which D’Rivera composed. 

At Wolf Trap it’s never just about the music but the experience: picnicking on the lawn, waiting for the performance and the darkness. 

Last night a pale waxing moon appeared just as the hall was filling up, and as the players tuned (so different to see the National Symphony in its shirtsleeves), the moon rose and brightened. By the time we left, sated with the music and the evening, it was high in the sky, lighting us home.

This Old Resume

This Old Resume

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The musical “Chorus Line” contains a song with the lines, “Who am I anyway? Am I my resume?”  I thought of those lines recently when I came across one of my first professional CVs, a document listing jobs I’ve long since forgotten — writing scripts for a public television station — and interests — music and reading — I’ve continued to enjoy but have long since ceased to record. 

And then there were the personal details. I listed my birthday, marital status, even my height and weight. Were these  required? I wasn’t seeking a position as an airline flight attendant but a high school English teacher!

A key phrase in these old resumes was “agreeable to relocation.” And looking at a list of the places I sent them — Wyoming, California, New Mexico — that could be assumed. What a quaint concept in these days of remote work. 

And what a quaint document in general, this old resume, with the blotchy printing and the inclusion of my middle name “Leet,” which I’m proud to bear but haven’t used in decades. 

Am I my resume? Not this one.

Extraordinary

Extraordinary

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In the continual quest to match music to landscape, today’s choice might seem a bit odd. Who tramps through the suburbs listening to Brahms’ German Requiem?

Someone who loves the piece and believes it ennobles whatever they see while listening to it, I suppose.

And so the stilt grass, that long-legged invasive, looked more like slender bamboo fronds waving. And the Joe Pye weed was more elegant, more proudly purple, than its usual shaggy self. 

The shaded trails embraced me, the meadow views broadened my vision, and the pond gleamed golden in the morning light. 

It was an ordinary walk made extraordinary by the music in my ears. 

Ancient Airs

Ancient Airs

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How is is that a piece I’ve heard for years suddenly amazes me? Have I just grown into it? Have I never truly listened to it before?

Respighi’s “Ancient Airs and Dances” has reached up and grabbed me by the lapels. It’s seducing me with its melodies, calming me with its chords. It’s leaving me wanting more. 

There are three suites, I learn. Respighi, a musicologist, based the pieces on Renaissance lute songs. But what is old becomes new in the hands of this brilliant orchestrator. The sprightly opening of the first, the second with its expansive denouement, and the third, described as the most melancholic. Yes, I hear those minor keys. But I also hear grandeur and joy. The recording I find orders them 1, 3 and 2, a suitable reordering, I think.  

I read more. Respighi died in 1936 at age 56. His wife, Elsa, a former pupil 14 years younger, outlived him by 60 years. A friend said their marriage “functioned on an almost transcendent level of human and spiritual harmony.” Elsa made sure that her husband’s legacy was secure. She died in 1996  at age 102. 

The Concert

The Concert

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The crowd began to gather 30 minutes before the performance, a ragtag group of concert-goers, including students, friends of the musicians, and a few tourists thrown into the mix.  It was our last night in Portugal and we had been wondering how to spend it when I happened upon an announcement of a concert on the grounds of the Quinta da Regaleira, of spiral staircase fame. What fun it would be to return in the evening, just as the last light was slanting onto the twisted spires and tree trunks! 

That was before we arrived to find a black-clad musician (perhaps the cellist?) exclaiming to the guard on duty that, at least from what I could make out, something was missing at the venue. Forty-five minutes later, we were escorted through the grounds of the Quinta right up to the stage where the Damas de Sao Carlos, a 10-member all-female ensemble (plus a male harpsichordist) had taken the stage. The musicians came from Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and Portugal. They had decked out their concert black with scarves of scarlet, blue and green. 

We had barely taken our seats when they launched into “Spring” from Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.” How the music filled and animated that special space! How good it was to hear those familiar notes in that unfamiliar setting. And how strangely comforting: it reminded me that just as music transcends all languages, travel transcends all cultures. It draws us together. It makes us, however briefly, one. 

Music and Writing

Music and Writing

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There was a time in my life when writing and music were neck and neck. I loved to write and loved to play piano, and, for a brief and shining time, I loved being a member of a youth orchestra, even though it meant learning to harrumph my way through the string bass parts of Brahms’ First Symphony, the Leonore Overture and other pieces I can still remember even though I played them decades ago.

In the end it came down to this: I could make a living as a writer but not as a musician, and wanting a roof over my head and clothes on my back I made what I think was the wiser choice. But music was always out there, a grand passion, and lately, with the new piano, a more fully engaged one.

What has occurred to me recently is how well the two go together. How music takes over when words fail. How words crystallize the feelings that music engenders, how in my re-engineered life, music and writing can work together. They can and, I hope, they do.

 

Unplugged

Unplugged

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While I would like to say I always walk bare-eared, open to the sounds of wind in the pines and birds on the bough, in truth I am usually plugged in, listening to music or a recorded book. 

Yesterday, I started out with one of these in mind, but as I began to amble along a forest path, I realized that I couldn’t pollute my ears. The only sounds that should enter them on such a pristine spring morning should be the sounds the morning itself produced.

It was a calm, quiet, meditative experience. I’m doing it again today. 

Back to Practicing

Back to Practicing

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When I bought the new piano last year, I told myself I would play whatever I wanted. No agendas.  No “practicing.” I only wanted to hear the sound of the instrument, which makes any kind of playing pleasant to the ear, even the rusty renditions of pieces I once played with ease. 

But I’ve reached the point in this renaissance (can I call it that? I think so) where something more is required, some sort of foundation for the playing that is to follow. 

That something is Hannon. Yes, Hannon, much reviled in my youth but now revealed for what he/it actually is: the means to an end. The stronger and more nimble my fingers, the better I can master the Brahms’ intermezzos and  Chopin nocturnes and Bach fugues I’m trying to play. 

At this point I begin to understand the purpose of those dreaded assignments of my youth, the scales and the Hannon and the other exercises I avoided whenever possible, teacher notes scribbled on the yellowing pages, usually the words “slow down.” Can it be that I’m now inflicting these exercises on myself? 

As a matter of fact, I am. I know that practice won’t make perfect. But it will make better. 

CODA

CODA

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Before last week the word coda primarily had a musical meaning for me. It was the part of a piece I looked forward to most: the ending. And not just because I might want a piece of music to end—perish the thought!—but because I enjoy the big bombastic finish. 

But last Wednesday, I looked up the Oscar Best Picture nominees to see which ones I’d missed that I might still be able to see … and there was CODA. I read a review. I watched the trailer. I was hooked. I even signed up for Apple TV in order to watch it (and I have notes to myself all over the place reminding me to cancel Apple TV before my trial period runs out). 

It was worth the effort: I finally had a pony in this race. I was pulling for CODA to win last night, enough that I crept downstairs and turned the TV back on not once, not twice but three times after trying in vain to fall asleep before the winner was announced. 

There will be talk this morning about how this was Apple TV’s movie, how Apple beat Netflix to become the first streaming service to boast an Oscar Best Picture. There will be analyses of how business models are changing. All of this is worth talking about. But in the end, it’s all about the story, whether we’re listening to it around an ancient campfire, watching it in a modern multiplex or streaming it alone on our home computer. CODA has a story that lifts us up — and that’s what we need most right now.