Scarlatti through the drywall




Scarlatti's Sonata in C came through the quite beige wall of a downtown condo this afternoon. I stood and listened and read the words on the fire alarm on the wall. (I have cranked the audio. There is too much humming from the hallway machinery, but you can kinda make it out.):



I knew it was Scarlatti's Sonata in C because the pianist alone in the room on the other side of the wall had played it for us up close minutes before. And explained how remarkable it was that isolated Scarlatti, court composer in Spain, had produced his brilliant music quite apart from the main currents and personalities of European classical music. 

The pianist's name is Lillian. We had met her as she was walking to the piano room in the condo building. Shelagh said her hair, longer on one side, looked great. We laughed that it was a hairstyle last fashionable in the 80s—and now again in Lillian's 80s. Lillian was on her way to practise and was carrying scores by Mozart, Chopin and Scarlatti. 

That sparked a memory. I told Lillian how as an undergrad I would listen on LP record to Scarlatti performed by Vladimir Horowitz. I loved saying the name Scarlatti. It brought the scent of a different world. Lillian talked about Horowitz. We arrived at the door to the piano room, which is actually a combination weight-ping pong-bingo room with a piano in the back corner waiting with piano posture to be brought to life. We asked if we could stay to listen. Lillian smiled, said yes, sat down, then reached for her sheet music. 

Sonata in C major, this afternoon
 The ceiling fan blades hung still. We smiled as the notes danced in the air. At points in our impromptu, private recital, Lillian would lift her left hand as it traced the rise and fall of a gentle wave. Pianists do that kind of thing. 

Lillian, live
When she finished, I asked her to play it again, which she did, apologizing once (to the composer more than to us, I believe) for a misplayed note. It was a thrill. We thanked Lillian and said goodbye, stopping briefly in the hallway as we walked away to listen to Scarlatti through the drywall.

I didn't expect my day would include Lillian or Scarlatti or memories of Horowitz. But these rare things happen every now and again when abundantly kind strangers say yes.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

:)

Image
One of the joys and dangers of studying in the MACT program is that you start to feel scared enough to feel confident enough to fool around and try simple new things with technology. The danger is that you're not good enough not to spend most of your time fiddling around doing those things. And, so, this morning I am proud to announce that, taken by the hand, I have managed to embed html vimeo code into my blog. Please, no applause. This is not much, I know. Your basic 8 year old can do more. Asleep. But it is a minor accomplishment for me, because of me. And how I get in the way with my pre-wired reaction that new things won't work. The effect of that kind of thinking (or that lack of thinking) is that I transform the machine in front of me into an antagonistic force working to undo me. But it does remind me of me when I attribute malevolence to the skies when they conspire to bring rain on a morning of golf! Either way, that's bad storytelling. On another leve...
Read more

Hello!

Image
The potential socialness of a bicycle is built right into its roofless and windshieldless and doorless frame. It is easy to say hello on a bicycle. Like this morning. These sidewalkers nodded to me in unison at the exact instant I nodded to them. I said hello to the jogger, and he waved back. Hi, I said, to the dog walkers and the dog, and they nodded a greeting back. Both joggers smiled and said hello as our lives passed. I said hello to the squirrel. I said hello to the woman walking with poles and she returned the hello. The jogger looked over and I said hello as she said hello. I said hello to this fellow egg picker upper and we talked for a couple of minutes. Her bicycle comes out April 1. She is excited. Hello, I said. Hi, she said. I said hello to the  man on the other end of this leash and he said he and his dog were enjoying the beautiful morning. I said hello to this woman and she said hello, and we laughe...
Read more

Some Late Thoughts Listening To Wheat Kings

Image
Wheat Kings in Edmonton, July , 2016 I asked a friend at work what The Tragically Hip song Wheat Kings was about, and he paused for a beat longer than he would have had he not considered the same question many times. And then said: "I don't know." I took this as a good sign both of his humility and the song's profundity. It was an honest question. I don't know much about The Hip. They were cool for the first time when I was watching my wife raise our children, and trying to help the mission where I could. Those were busy days. The 1990s are my mediated decade, preserved by photographs of my younger self. Among the art that didn't get in was The Tragically Hip's. And it was a dishonest question. I knew the song was about David Milgaard's wrongful conviction and wrongful jail time served for the murder of Saskatoon nurse Gail Miller. And it was an honest question, because song's visual shards—that weathervane, a killer's face lit ...
Read more