The Piano

(investment returns 25 years after his death)

We had an old piano. My father would sit and play anything, a long medley, all by ear. His parents hadn’t had the money for him to learn to read scored music. He determined that we should have that opportunity, and in due course we two girls got to have piano lessons. We enjoyed it, and had a taste and touch for it, but just jostled along, steady, but no particular flair, and (for me anyway) frustration and impatience at the slowness of the progress affected the enthusiasm and frequency of the practice sessions, getting away with minimal. There was no sign of reaching that ability to sit and play with ease as my father did, neither by reading music nor by ear.

One memory of that old piano was of some sounds once emerging from it with no-one sitting at the keys, and as we had also discovered some chewed music, the tale became of the musical mouse who could play what he’d ingested!

With great pleasure (and penny counting) Dad managed to buy a good piano. Not young, and not a grand, but of quality, and what is called an upright grand. I expect he hoped it would spur us on more. At least he appreciated its better quality as he played on, and we enjoyed listening to him. It proved an exceptionally heavy piano when we had our frequent moves, astonishing experienced removal men. On one occasion, they had to resort to help from passing ‘rag and bone’ men I think, and on another had to phone a local removal firm to come to help. It also has an unusually soft tone.

He died very young (51 years old) and so didn’t meet his grandchildren, or great-grandchildren.

When I was first married, I did miss having a piano around, especially when needing to know the pitch of tunes. The first solution was my mother-in-law passing on a big hand bell. ‘Well that is A flat’ I think she said, and that actually did help! Then my husband’s work colleague asked if he knew anyone who wanted a piano. ‘My wife does!’ ‘Well you can have it if you can get it moved from our house!’ And so, in due time we got it moved, and when our children got interested, my years of learning to play moderately, helped me to help them as they got started.

Later, when my mother died, my sister suggested we have Dad’s piano, as her family had a better one than ours. And we all enjoyed it (and struggled with it each time we moved, too.)

But then our fourth child was born. He grasped many things very quickly, but struggled with many others, especially with social comprehension. He didn’t like colouring, nor team activities, but loved trains, lego, and music – singing in tune early on, and ‘playing church’ so that he could sing away, or hum. A local teacher took children for piano lessons from four and a half years old, so he went along, and loved it. Some of her children had perfect pitch (being able to pitch a note when given its name, or say the name on hearing it, like remembering colours) and she reckoned he had, and was soon able to check it out. Early on, having learnt to play a simple tune (maybe ‘Baa, baa, black sheep), he came out to the kitchen thrilled to tell me that he’d tried playing it starting on different notes, and one such had necessitated using the black notes!

How my Dad would have delighted to realise the explosion of use that piano eventually had. Picture a five year old returning from school full of frustrations at the noise and confusion, and his inability to listen properly and understand the social conventions and conversations of playtime. He rushes to that piano and sits and plays for quite some time a concert of known tunes and his own improvised/composed music full of loud chords – trying to sound like a whole orchestra. His father, attempting to work behind the piano, which was dividing the room, had to hurriedly go elsewhere!

So, Dad’s grandson, unknown to him, did grasp a facility with scored music, and also had his grandfather’s ability to play by ear and entertain, and really appreciated us owning that instrument. One day he and his family may have a home big enough to accommodate it, but at present the piano remains here, with us, and he has been able to purchase a second hand electronic piano/keyboard for his teaching and composition. When he comes to visit, it is so reminiscent of my own childhood’s memories when he sits down at that piano almost as soon as he arrives, and the house is filled with its music once again.

[IP: Prose or poetry, please, about a member of your family whose absence or presence particularly affected you or whom you just remember well.]