My Piano

 

My Piano

Throughout the years I have retained a close association with the piano. As I mentioned earlier, I realized early on that I would never be a performer, but I continued to play for the sheer fun of it. This fun gradually grew into a dependence, both psychologically and physically. After practicing the exercises faithfully several days in a row, if a day came when I couldn't spend some time at the keyboard, my fingers would (figuratively) itch to play. They would twitch or make little motions in the air as if trying to find some keys to press. An initial requirement for a pianist is to develop fingers that are both strong and extremely agile, and then learn to coordinate their motions with the complex notation of musical scores. So, in that sense, he could be accurately called an athlete.

The psychological fulfillment that comes from playing also is almost beyond description. No matter what mood I found myself in, there was always some music that expressed that mood, and there was a way of playing that music that allowed me to release the accompanying emotions. I have talked with people who think that if two people play the same piano composition on the same piano the performances will be identical. But that is far from the truth. There are always tiny variations in performance that are basically within the composer's directions, but that produce significant differences in the resulting musical sound.

It is a truly amazing, and surprising, instrument. It is a purely mechanical device, and yet in the right hands it can express an infinity of emotions – sadness, joy, rage, tenderness, loneliness, longing, humor, frustration, and all the rest. At times, I would dig out a work by Beethoven or Chopin that would capture my mood, and work or play with it. At other times I would sit with my fingers automatically finding the notes that my eyes were seeing on the printed score, while my mind was in another world - trying to deal with a difficult situation, or perhaps looking forward to some future joyful event. And more recently, having developed a better feel for the way that different harmonic sequences and rhythmic patterns can express subtle shifts in emotion, I sometimes just improvise, seeking and finding a melody, together with those sequences and patterns that satisfy my current mood.

Perhaps because of my dependence on it, I grew almost neurotically protective of it. When children came to visit, it became for them a giant toy to play with, or on. Every metal toy seemed to gravitate toward it. I almost felt sorry for it, as if it were a helpless infant or a vulnerable pet.