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Reclaiming the past
26 December 2006 11:09 amWhen I was born, my parents put $500 in a savings account for me, for expenses of the future.* It came out more quickly than expected: in second grade, most of it was used to buy a piano -- my piano. A plain, 40" upright Kohler & Campbell, about 10 years old. I used it for lessons for five years, and then thumping out my teenage years with Bach,** Mozart, Debussy, and Ravel.***
I left my piano behind when I went to college. When my parents retired, it went with them -- played by my mother and, occasionally, during visits, me. By which you might infer I'm rusty. But so, now, is my mother: because of arthritis, she rarely plays -- nor knit nor quilt, alas. Between that, a desire to remodel, and my being grown up enough to live in a place with space, it was time for them off-load it -- or from my point of view, retrieve it. This week, it traveled by trailer to our living room.
( See? It's mine )
It sounds a little brassy when the curtain's open, and is in desperate need of acclimation and tuning and two replacement strings, but still has a decent tone. Time to start over with the notebooks for Anna Magdalena and Wilhelm Friedemann.
* The accuracy of this part of this account has been disputed, but it's the only one that accounts for my memories.
** Okay, so the Well-Tempered Clavier may not be traditionally thumpy music, but a good, solid toccata did my adolescent soul good.
*** I rarely touched Chopin, and never Liszt -- despite having the hand-span for him. The Romantics had very little appeal. Still don't, though I like some Brahms.
---L.
I left my piano behind when I went to college. When my parents retired, it went with them -- played by my mother and, occasionally, during visits, me. By which you might infer I'm rusty. But so, now, is my mother: because of arthritis, she rarely plays -- nor knit nor quilt, alas. Between that, a desire to remodel, and my being grown up enough to live in a place with space, it was time for them off-load it -- or from my point of view, retrieve it. This week, it traveled by trailer to our living room.
( See? It's mine )
It sounds a little brassy when the curtain's open, and is in desperate need of acclimation and tuning and two replacement strings, but still has a decent tone. Time to start over with the notebooks for Anna Magdalena and Wilhelm Friedemann.
* The accuracy of this part of this account has been disputed, but it's the only one that accounts for my memories.
** Okay, so the Well-Tempered Clavier may not be traditionally thumpy music, but a good, solid toccata did my adolescent soul good.
*** I rarely touched Chopin, and never Liszt -- despite having the hand-span for him. The Romantics had very little appeal. Still don't, though I like some Brahms.
---L.