Euterpe and the Toad

It's late or early enough that the birds are twittering in great concentration and the sky has turned a bluer shade of midnight, and I guess that the volume of street traffic will swell soon.

This afternoon Uncle Pu came to visit, and to the accompaniment of chocolate and ice cream (I poured a little cognac over mine as an experiment and liked it) we all talked about matters political and otherwise for hours as usual.

Then Pudel and Papa and I had a chamber music session for the first time in months. First there were Haydn's trios in C, D and G major, and then a movement or so each of two Beethoven trios. Haydn went swimmingly and as far as I could tell we were easily and wholly absorbed in the congenial music. The portions where the piano has the melody didn't inspire as much terror because of the pressure to be note-perfect as they once did.

But the first Beethoven trio we tried was confusing. I don't know it well and didn't have the melody of the opening movement in my ear. Besides I found the theme of that movement a trifle meandering and boring. Whereas Papa and Pudel clearly like it. I guess that when playing chamber music it is harder to indulge one's enjoyable prejudices without trampling on the joy of other people. Zut alors!

Fortunately the Archduke trio is familiar. But in the Andante there are broken arpeggios in triplets or whatever they're called, which I had to painstakingly play through and couldn't fudge because the violin and cello were depending on me to keep the time (why are you asking me of all people to do that? was my unspoken question) and deliver the right cues.

In one of the Victorian/Edwardian-era books on music at gutenberg.org, I (mis)remember reading something to the effect that everyone has a scale or two which he plays unusually well. I like this positive outlook on the music pupil's capacities, meant to describe the humble beginner as much as the great performer, but it must be confessed that the reverse side of the coin is hopeless mediocrity in certain other scales. I am terrible at playing arpeggios, so they straggle along in ungainly manner and rarely if ever attain the dignity of melody. There is a Scarlatti sonata whose second half I often cravenly avoid playing just because the left hand is full of arpeggios and so it is usually twice as slow and half as delightful to hear as the rest of the piece.

Playing an instrument is a cycle of thinking and feeling the music, hearing the music as it is played, and the fingers carrying it out; one confirms the other, and problems that appear trivial can throw a decisive spanner in the works. As far as I can tell it doesn't matter if you are animated by the purest wellspring of inspiration which ever swelled the song of Euterpe, if your fingers are having a clumsy day; you feel the clumsiness, hear the clumsiness whereby it interferes with your guiding idea of the music and erodes your confidence, and so the clumsiness infects and muddies even your inspiration until everything is middling. Or, the other way around, if your fingers are nimble and ready, they can ignite an inspired mood even if you sat down at the piano with the soul of a disgruntled toad.

E.T.A.: The titles of these blog posts appear to be becoming very pretentious. My apologies.