Thursday June 9, 2022

Piano recitals are back. 

            My church has a wonderful grand piano. Piano teachers love to bring their children to play on it, to the applause of their admiring parents and adoring grandparents.

            Until Covid-19 came along, we used to have up to a dozen piano recitals a year. During the pandemic, some teachers abandoned recitals altogether. Others did virtual recitals.

            But as the pandemic restrictions eased, the recitals have come back. 

            I’m the sound man. I get to attend, without having to play anything.

            The younger piano students are seven or eight years old. When they’re sitting among the audience, waiting for their turn to play, their heads barely show above the seat backs. When they sit on the piano bench, they can’t reach the pedals; their hands on the keyboard are almost at eye level. 

            It takes a lot of courage to come up to the front and put your skills – or lack of skills --on display. Because this is not a child skill you’re demonstrating – this is an adult skill. 

            I remember doing a recital when I was about their age. I played the violin, sort of. I practiced and practiced my piece – I vaguely recall it was called “The Little Prince” – until I thought I couldn’t possibly make a mistake.

            Then I did.

            And I wanted to crawl off the stage like a punished puppy.

More than just music

            Seventy-plus years since then, I’ve learned to be more comfortable in front of an audience. But for these kids, it’s a new frontier. Indeed, it may be the most important lesson they learn, more important m than coordinating finger movements into Fur Elise or Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. 

            Perhaps, above all, they’re learning how to recover from a mistake. To keep the flow going. Even to turn the mistake into an improvisation. To recognize that even Mozart gets interpreted by the performer.

            After all, if you’re just going to do precisely what someone else has done before, why bother doing it. And why do it live? You could just play a recording…

            I want to digress for a few sentences. That’s why I don’t like proof-texting. Usually from the Bible, but also from Shakespeare or Wordsworth. You’re in crisis mode. You’re grieving. You’re angry. You’re depressed. And someone spouts a quotation.

            t’s intended to be helpful. Or consoling. But it’s not what the person facing you thinks or feels. It’s what someone else felt, some other time, for some other occasion. 

            Simply getting that quotation correct doesn’t help. Making it your own does. 

            Back to my main theme. One piano teacher does an interesting exercise with her students. Especially the beginners. She sits with them, and plays an accompaniment while they improvise a melody. 

            As long as they’re both in the same key, they can’t play a wrong note. They only need to match their pacing, their rhythm, to hers. 

            I don’t consider myself a musician. But I can apply that lesson to my life. Life is not about duplicating Winston Churchill or Mahatma Gandhi. Or Jesus, for that matter. It’s about playing a duet with them, in their key, their tempo. So that the two of us can make music together. 

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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                  To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

On saying “Goodbye” to someone you may never see again, John Shaffer wrote, “When my mother shared that she only had a few weeks to live (by the time she consulted her doctor, her pancreas was gone), she ordered me not to return to see her and to say my goodbyes immediately.  (Alaska to Illinois)  I obeyed.  I waited three days.

            “Our goodbye was simple:  ‘I love you’.”

Libby (Elizabeth) Sheather: “I like your thoughts on goodbyes. It does get complicated and a simple handshake or hug ‘just in case’ says a lot. I think from now on I’ll end letters with ‘Hugs’ as [friends] Janie and Peggy have often done. 

            “In our society many seem uncomfortable acknowledging aging or end of life.  Young people call me “Young Lady” or say I’m “87 years young”.  At first I felt patronized. Then I realized they meant well so I came up with a response which makes me feel better and gets everyone laughing. I tell them that I am old enough to brag about my age now. I may go on and say I’ve earned every grey hair on my head. This seems to put people at ease. 

            “Of course the hard part is the physical discomfort which goes with aging.”

David Gilchrist looked up “Goodbye” on the web, and found this: 

            “’Goodbye’ comes from the term ‘Godbwye’ a contraction of the phrase “God be with ye”. Depending on the source, the contraction seems to have first popped up somewhere between 1565 and 1575. The first documented use of the ‘Godbwye’ appeared in a letter English writer and scholar Gabriel Harvey wrote in 1573.

            “So every time we say ‘Goodbye’, we are saying: ‘May God be with you till we meet again’ (here or in the here-after).  That is the way I think of ‘Goodbye’.”

Tom Watson cut to the chase: “Well, Jim...just in case!”

On the subject of earworms, Rob Dummermuth recalled,  “Our youth group took great pleasure in finding ‘popular’ secular music to the hymns we sang. One of Wesley's great contributions to music was making singable hymns to pub tunes, popular in worship services in the 'fields' (and halls) where instruments were not available to lead the 'correct' tune.
            “A secular metrical index would be a lot easier than writing new words. But with copyright laws these days, even Wesley would be in trouble.”

Beth Richardson also had some thought about that column: “I have always loved how interchangeable hymn tunes are -- some tunes are more familiar or easier to sing...Someday I might have to try singing some of them to other tunes I haven't tried before.  Thanks for a great column.”

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Psalm paraphrase

Psalm 8 is such a masterpiece in itself that it almost seems like sacrilege to attempt a paraphrase. I offer this version in the light of Scottish philosopher and theologian John Macmurray, who suggested that what Jesus called “the kingdom of God” which was both here now, and could appear at any time, resembled friendship. 

1          Above all wonders of nature rises the miracle of friendship;

2          A mother and her baby bond for life; 
friends risk their lives for each other; 
even among thieves there is honor. 

3          Stars and nebulas are far away, 
but friends are near at hand. 

4          Friendship flowers unpredictably; 
the desert blossoms, the ice melts, the distance disappears.

5          Friendship has no parallel anywhere else in the world. 
Envy and jealousy dissolve; fear and suspicion evaporate. 

            This is how God meant the world to be. 

6          Nothing else compares with the wonder of friendship.
It is not possible with a pet,

7,8       Nor with the beasts of the field, the creatures of the forests, 
with the fish of the sea, or the birds of the air. 

9          Oh, Lord, our Lord, what a glorious gift you have given! 

You can find paraphrases of most of the psalms in the Revised Common Lectionary in my book Everyday Psalmsavailable from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

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PROMOTION STUFF

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have blocked my posts because they’re suspicious of some of the web links.

                  Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca He’s also relatively inexpensive!

                  I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also has lots of beautiful photos. Especially of birds.

                  Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)

ALVA WOOD’S ARCHIVE

                  I have acquired (don’t ask how) the complete archive of the late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures. I’ve put them on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. You’re welcome to browse. No charge. (Although maybe if I charged a fee, more people would find the archive worth visiting.)