Nocturne in E-Flat Fuckover
When I was a nipper, my parents forced me via tooth and claw and a very large cane to learn a few musical instruments to concert level. Perhaps that sounds like a great thing. It wasn't for me. Being squeezed to perform solos before a thousand-plus people every month for every year of adolescence doesn’t let you learn music – it makes you learn to learn music. Furthermore, being told you’re “gifted”, repeatedly, turns you into an underachiever, through really giving up on things if you cannot pick them up quickly - for fear of disappointing people – whether or not you’re actually gifted, which I don’t believe I was anyway. Between these effects, I actually hated playing music. Especially the piano. It did nothing for me except scare me. Ghastly thing - full of ebony, ivory, wood and wire, harbinger of more nervous shock, adrenaline rushes and wretched competitive streaks in me than any other object I’ve encountered to date. I stopped playing as soon as I was able and scampered away to university to never see or hear from the fucking thing again.
A few years later, apart from playing at the behest of giggling students (all I could really play by this point was (*cringe*)… the Für Elise – though the shame of playing such a sub-rated piece was such that my renditions seemed emotional and touching), I had more or less managed to not touch a piano. Instead, by strange turns of fate, I managed to end up in a full-on and melodramatic relationship with a pianist. Studying a degree in music, she was brilliant at it, and though to her I would sometimes play the first ten bars of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C (a work I had learnt in its entirety for my untaken grade 8, but had subsequently flushed from memory using cheap vodka), I was far more content to listen to her play and convalesce in the fact that physically playing music did little to nothing for me.
My relationship with her is another post entirely – one which I will never write because it was too special and personal for me to illustrate in a way you would understand. But suffice to say that I was entirely innocent at this point, and when she finally sunk a thousand poisoned daggers into my heart, I learnt more about pain in the short time afterwards than I ever had done or ever will do. My life had changed from one of treating romance as a happy and trustworthy friend, to one where I feared and despised it; brooding behind the shield that I’d hastily constructed just moments too late, forever spitting the venom she filled me with.
Now, I don’t want to come across as obvious and soppy here, but it was at this point of my existence where all words dismally failed to encompass what I was feeling. I won’t iterate through all the reasons and intentions that cross my mind when I now sit down to the piano, of my own accord, with no structured agenda, every day. But certainly it took a catastrophe in my life, before the 1000 or so notes of the Für Elise, multiplied by an infinite range of volumes, tempos and dynamics, could actually fulfil some purpose in my life that nothing else could. That of release which doesn’t need to be understood or discussed, just… Felt.
Of course, after time, Beethoven’s simple piece became stretched by my yearning to express, and now my repertoire extends far beyond what it was at any point in my life prior. Yet, I don’t play it for other people. It’s only ever for myself. If I’m pressed to play for other people, I simply don’t open up the emotional registers that I might try and exercise and amplify through another composer’s genius. When I’m by myself, I might easily play – over and over - a 2-bar phrase a hundred times without noticing, just to get the intonation precisely aligned with something I’m trying to say to nobody in particular. The nobody in particular that I can open up to at any time and never fear the resounding backlash that I’ve sadly grown accustomed to.
So perhaps, thanks to that girl, I can finally thank my parents for making me study something that they said I’d eventually thank them for. Or perhaps I’d have always come back to it and loved the fact I could play. But without that girl, or at least without the heights and depths of emotion I experienced with and through and by her, perhaps I’d have never really become good at it.
Not that anybody will ever hear.
Some Pieces for Heartbroken Pianists:
Bach, JS – Goldberg Aria
Beethoven – Sonata Op.27 No.2 (Moonlight) (the superior, charged third movement - not the famous, boring first one)
Chopin – every Nocturne, Prelude and Etude (but esp. the C# minor, op. post., and not the Eb as it’s a bit silly and best saved for happy times)
Handel – Sarabande (have to bash out a made-up piano arrangement of this, but still brilliant for massive emotional release if one imagines conducting a good orchestra)
Haydn – Many of his sonatas’ adagios, esp. from No. 50 in D / No. 13 in G
Mozart – Sonata in A Minor / Adagio for Glass Harmonica in C
Rachmaninoff – Everything he Ever Wrote, Ever
A few years later, apart from playing at the behest of giggling students (all I could really play by this point was (*cringe*)… the Für Elise – though the shame of playing such a sub-rated piece was such that my renditions seemed emotional and touching), I had more or less managed to not touch a piano. Instead, by strange turns of fate, I managed to end up in a full-on and melodramatic relationship with a pianist. Studying a degree in music, she was brilliant at it, and though to her I would sometimes play the first ten bars of Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C (a work I had learnt in its entirety for my untaken grade 8, but had subsequently flushed from memory using cheap vodka), I was far more content to listen to her play and convalesce in the fact that physically playing music did little to nothing for me.
My relationship with her is another post entirely – one which I will never write because it was too special and personal for me to illustrate in a way you would understand. But suffice to say that I was entirely innocent at this point, and when she finally sunk a thousand poisoned daggers into my heart, I learnt more about pain in the short time afterwards than I ever had done or ever will do. My life had changed from one of treating romance as a happy and trustworthy friend, to one where I feared and despised it; brooding behind the shield that I’d hastily constructed just moments too late, forever spitting the venom she filled me with.
Now, I don’t want to come across as obvious and soppy here, but it was at this point of my existence where all words dismally failed to encompass what I was feeling. I won’t iterate through all the reasons and intentions that cross my mind when I now sit down to the piano, of my own accord, with no structured agenda, every day. But certainly it took a catastrophe in my life, before the 1000 or so notes of the Für Elise, multiplied by an infinite range of volumes, tempos and dynamics, could actually fulfil some purpose in my life that nothing else could. That of release which doesn’t need to be understood or discussed, just… Felt.
Of course, after time, Beethoven’s simple piece became stretched by my yearning to express, and now my repertoire extends far beyond what it was at any point in my life prior. Yet, I don’t play it for other people. It’s only ever for myself. If I’m pressed to play for other people, I simply don’t open up the emotional registers that I might try and exercise and amplify through another composer’s genius. When I’m by myself, I might easily play – over and over - a 2-bar phrase a hundred times without noticing, just to get the intonation precisely aligned with something I’m trying to say to nobody in particular. The nobody in particular that I can open up to at any time and never fear the resounding backlash that I’ve sadly grown accustomed to.
So perhaps, thanks to that girl, I can finally thank my parents for making me study something that they said I’d eventually thank them for. Or perhaps I’d have always come back to it and loved the fact I could play. But without that girl, or at least without the heights and depths of emotion I experienced with and through and by her, perhaps I’d have never really become good at it.
Not that anybody will ever hear.
Some Pieces for Heartbroken Pianists:
Bach, JS – Goldberg Aria
Beethoven – Sonata Op.27 No.2 (Moonlight) (the superior, charged third movement - not the famous, boring first one)
Chopin – every Nocturne, Prelude and Etude (but esp. the C# minor, op. post., and not the Eb as it’s a bit silly and best saved for happy times)
Handel – Sarabande (have to bash out a made-up piano arrangement of this, but still brilliant for massive emotional release if one imagines conducting a good orchestra)
Haydn – Many of his sonatas’ adagios, esp. from No. 50 in D / No. 13 in G
Mozart – Sonata in A Minor / Adagio for Glass Harmonica in C
Rachmaninoff – Everything he Ever Wrote, Ever
posted by Juliet is Bleeding... | 10:32 am
Concert pianist? *swoon*
... and that was beautiful.
Aha, hold your swoons, I'm not a concert pianist. Not anymore. To be honest, I've never felt like one (when I was younger, I just felt like a novelty, being paraded about by total bastards).
In any case, at this point in time, I prefer keeping it to myself.
Thank you, though.
oh, jibs. i'm beginning to fear that i will understand this post on a very intense level very soon.
personally, i feel like a goddamn piano is suspended over my head by a swiftly unraveling length of rope...
PS: i concur with christmas myth. great post.
The Paganini Rhapsody.
Or opera music without the opera, on piano: try Puccini Album, John Bayless...particularly a mia babino caro from Gianni Schichi.
Mmm, Paginini Rhapsody. Spot on. But then again, like I say, I think anything by Rach is perfectly moving to play or hear.
I've never particularly enjoyed opera (for some reason I hate solo voices), and didn't realise any would reduce effectively to piano. I will give your suggestions a look-see, though. Ta!
Beautiful post JIB.
And good to see that you DO get some emotional release from playing, and acknowledge your parents played part in that.
Your writing is often very musical too.(seriously)
Did you REALLY play Fur (sorry can't do umlouts) Elise for years????
Deeply regret not keeping up my (crap) piano playing (Grade 6), now HAVE childhood piano in my home here and use it to feed cats on top of so the dog doesn't eat their food and do salmon farts all night.
How depressing.
Da-Da, Da-da, da-Da. Da. Da! DA.
Thank you. And yes, I really didn't know how to play any entire piece except the Für Elise. That was another problem with being so ruthlessly trained - I ended up learning everything like you'd learn stuff for an exam - concentrated bursts of study and practice then do the concert and immediately forget them whilst learning the next lot. It was awful.
Why don't you try playing again? It stays in your fingers past a certain level - I think grade 6 (if ABRSM) would be sufficient?
Not sure what tune you were da-ing at the end there..!
Ah, yes. I can see where I went wrong with that - it's actually a Mozart piece that I USED to play. I meant to 'do' Fur Elise....
I DO sometimes sit down and do some scales...but then I try and play a favorite piece (once I've scrape the cat food out of the keys...) and my hands are a bunch of sosages.
S'funny you don't remember your pieces - I remember every note. Just can't play 'em anymore.
Do YOU still play? You should.
Umm - I do play now. That was kinda the point of the post ;)
"It’s only ever for myself. If I’m pressed to play for other people, I simply don’t open up the emotional registers that I might try and exercise and amplify through another composer’s genius. When I’m by myself, I might easily play – over and over - a 2-bar phrase a hundred times without noticing, just to get the intonation precisely aligned with something I’m trying to say to nobody in particular."
This helps give definition to Trance music... but on a deeper and more meaningful level.
~S.O.S.