Thoroughly Modern Mozart

Day 70: I joke that I eschew modern music, defining "modern" as anything north of Mozart, but in fact I stretch the rule to include Haydn. However, it is Amadeus himself who has my attention at the moment, and for the first time in many long years, I am seriously practicing a sonata. Now you must understand that there is a real live harpsichord in one corner of my living room, but it is extremely cantankerous about holding its tuning and an absolute bear to bring to a state of being tuned due to the fact that each string services two different notes and it has two voices (in other words, each note has to be tuned twice). That said, my husband was gifted with perfect pitch and kept it tuned during the years we were together. For me, the process of tuning becomes a two-day struggle, and by Tuesday, I often find that the notes I brought into accord on Monday have gone a bit flat. Such being the case, it does get tuned perhaps once a year, and played until even my poor ear acknowledges pitch problems. All is not lost, though. I replaced my massive upright grand piano with a small electronic keyboard several years ago and although I haven't been able to make much sense of the instruction manual, I've at least figured out how to get different voices. Mozart is lovely played as dual English horns. In the last few months, I have spent more time fingering the keys than in the whole of the last five years. It's delightful to lose myself in music once again.

The Joy Of Music

Day 94: I am happy to report that after a couple of weeks of practice, my fingers have remembered their years of training rather better than I had expected. My sight-reading ability is certainly not as good as it once was, but I suspect that will also return as I play new music more often.

For those of you who don't know my history, I was trained as a keyboardist although I never performed publicly on piano or harpsichord. I studied for many years under a variety of instructors and more often than not, played for hours each day. At the keyboard, the passage of time went unnoticed. I would lose myself in Bach, Haydn or Mozart, emerging from their baroque enchantments only to find that it was dinnertime or bedtime and my chores had gone undone. My husband kept the harpsichord tuned, and often cooked his own meals because he loved to hear me play. With perfect pitch, he could complete the task in an hour or less, and then made daily adjustments. It was an all-day job for me, so when we separated, the harpsichord was tuned far less often, and my daily regimen of practice quickly fell by the wayside. At Christmastime, I'd plunk out carols on the piano, but seldom spent more than 15 minutes at the keys. I finally sold the piano to make space in my living room and tuned the harpsichord, but I felt I couldn't dedicate the time to bring my performance level up to standard when I'd have to re-tune it at least once a week.

As you may recall from an earlier post, I recently bought an electronic keyboard. It took me a while to figure out "voices" and the "dual" function, but now it is a simple matter to switch from a custom setting I devised to resemble the sound of the harpsichord to a clarinet solo. I can shift from the baroque brightness Bach to soulful boogie-woogie jazz with the punch of a couple of buttons. The versatility of the instrument has inspired me to play every day...yes, even sometimes past bedtime.