the piano

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This week's prompt was utterly irresistible and you get me just about as authentic as you will get. 

It is - the piano

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88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Frail, tiny, elderly lady leaning with her arm for support, on the curve of the wing-shaped case of the grand piano. Gently waving her arthritic hands in time to my tentative playing of elementary pieces from the old primer. Her long necklaces gently swaying as she moved within confined space, teaching, imparting and carefully cultivating.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Stumbling self-consciously through ‘Solo per cembalo’ for the pivotal grade examination. Teenage hormones crushing confidence, fingers falter and hit right notes at the wrong time. The corner of the eye sees the examiner is disengaged, concurrently absorbed in picking his nose and writing, scratching deeply the scathing remarks into the paper.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Realising in mid-teens that I could use the piano to reproduce songs heard just a few times and without needing music. Guided by intuition and a sizeable aural memory bank, I was able to adopt a style allowing flexibility away from written music and enabling freedom to worship in song. It was a crucial juncture, this acknowledgement of a God-given gift and was the spur to re-engage with it fully and go back to piano study after a break of a couple of years.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Challenging Nanna to a chromatic scale race from the extremities to the middle of the piano playing all 88 keys in sequence, her ascending, me descending. She herself weakened and recuperating after a bout of pernicious anaemia having spent much time with her terminally sick younger sister. Her hands where the olive, Olay drenched skin had long given up its elasticity, still deceptively agile and we reached the 44^th note in the contest at roughly the same time. Motor skills unused in decades still resident in her dancing digits.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

University teacher whose often sherry-seasoned breath filled the small, sound-proofed box rooms, where we took lessons. His imagination that paced corridors and opened doors to previously unknown pieces. Favourites were aural impressionist paintings by Debussy and peculiarly, beautiful pieces published after composers’ deaths, where I learned to master the art of complex musical fractions, four against three. ‘Pedal with your ears my dear!’  he often cried, one of the most lucid lessons he left with me.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Now as the teacher watching over pupils who wanted to do-it-all. Listening to the Dying Swan, dead already within a few bars. Admiration for the boy whose fingers assuredly flitted with a feisty lightness through the De’il Among the Tailors, but who otherwise never uttered more than a few words. Adult airline pilot who wanted to play Concertos but vanished from the radar within a few lessons. Tentative pensioner, confidence scarred, Jesus her best friend later in life, duetting  together I know Him so well, art never more appropriately mirroring life. In all the learning, pedagogue always being educated by the apprentices.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Music is an essence that leaks out of my pores and has passed to the next generation. We encouraged each one of our children to pursue the study of at least one instrument and to learn to love music. As a mother at the piano I was able to help them over the years, sitting with them while they practised, to foster the discipline and for them coming through to nurture their own genetically inherited gifts. (This process was definitely not without tears, tantrums and much wallowing of the artistic temperament on all sides). The blessings have multiplied and each child is today involved with music at their own church. I was in floods of tears the first time I heard our eldest son lead worship (not least because he and I probably had the most arguments about practise but also knowing that his musical gifts have been clearly blessed by the Holy Spirit.)

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

To play the black and white keys for Your glory Father whether alone or with a team of fellow musicians. To play, to sing your praises so Your Holy Spirit enables every fibre of my being, heart and soul to give to others a small portion of what you have lavished upon me. Sometimes creating roadblocks by desiring affirmation from others to boost fragile esteem, for them to say that You have blessed them, so in turn I can feel warm, fuzzy goodness within. Other times feeling overlooked because others' personal preferences are different and another musician is exalted with plaudits. 

But exactly who am I to say how your love, grace and mercy are made known to others? Discordant and hollow piano with broken strings and rotting case is left when Your love is absent.

88 keys 52 white and 36 black

Recently I was playing Abide With Me on the piano to practise for a funeral, where I needed to lead the congregation in singing as well. The hymn has the effect of invoking tears easily, there’s just something about it that does that to me. Perhaps it is having heard it played by Yorkshire Brass Bands (the world's best) or Emilie Sande’s soulful performance at the Olympic opening ceremony. I figured the best thing was to keep playing and singing it out to execute the combination of notes, giving the right weight to rich harmonies and to make the words more habitual so as not to be taken over by emotion.

In the repetitions God suddenly whispered at a junction with only me in the audience, the significance of just these four words ‘ills have no weight’. It is something that I can't explain adequately in words yet, partly because it's one of those situations you need to have lived to understand. So for now I will say it was extremely deep and significant. God is right there in the detail and because he knows me thoroughly the whisper was only for me, in that moment.

And this is why He wanted me to keep playing on so I could hear Him speak.

At the Piano, oftentimes a place of Holy Ground

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After Nanna’s death it seemed appropriate to invest some of the money she bequeathed to us into a new piano. This is the instrument that has so far moved with us three times.

It is one of my most cherished possessions, the Piano.