music moments

In a desperate effort to clear out more space in my office, I have started going through my piles of sheet music to try purging pieces I know I'll likely never play again. I don't play piano very much anymore; when I practice music, I prefer playing on my harp or guitar or flute or penny whistles. Our piano sits in our living room, sadly abandoned and embarrassingly out of tune. I couldn't justify the cost of the tunings if I wasn't playing the piano, plus the piano is in need of major ($$$) soundboard repairs.

I put aside "early learner" sheet music I accumulated while teaching piano over 20 years to give to Sara's and Annie's piano teacher. Was horrified to discover that I had actually kept my old flute music from HIGH SCHOOL BAND PRACTICES. Augh. That's carrying packrat tendencies too far, even for me.

I couldn't bring myself to throw out any of the pieces I was learning for my ARCT (piano teaching degree, Royal Conservatory of Music). I'm not sure how familiar some of you are with piano lessons, but at the senior levels, you can spend hundreds of hours studying a single piece. I remember my piano teacher and I going over every phrasing intonation, every note, every pedal marking in agonizing detail. Just playing the notes correctly didn't cut it; interpretation was a major part of the practical aspect of ARCT studies. After spending so long on a piece of music, it becomes a part of you, really.

And then I came across sheet music that I had given my brother as well as music that he was studying himself. It's been nearly ten years since his death, but I still clearly remember him practising piano at home, how he used to hunch over a bit at the shoulders, his eyes fixed in fierce concentration on the music. As I sorted through his old sheet music, I could hear the echoes of his favourite pieces flow around me in the way he used to play them on our well-loved upright piano back home, like dear friends I haven't seen in a long time but whose voices immediately evoke familiarity: Manuel de Falla, Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy.

I struggled to pretend that I was just doing a simple organizational chore for a while longer but then gave up and had a really good crying jag while sitting there on our living room floor, my hands full of pages of sheet music covered with my brother's messy handwriting, trying not to get the paper wet.

Felt much better after.

I ended keeping much more sheet music than I expected, but I'd rather be a little cramped in my office than let go of some of these memories.





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