Scales - Tweak That Metronome

 No amount of practising simplified Mozart pieces or running up and down major and minor scales would impress the piano teacher. I stopped trying.

In the pubs I grew up in, there was always a piano, sometimes more than one, and before the juke-box ruled the roost, there was always someone to play it. As a young child it was a skill I longed to learn. I listened to my mother’s Russ Conway records and loved him. I plonked about, wishing a proper tune would come out. It never did. I was enthralled by Sparky’s Magic Piano which we had as a set of 78 rpm records, so badly scratched that they hissed and crackled.  I was about seven and a half when my hands could just about stretch an octave, the required size for piano lessons. A teacher was found.

At first, it was okay. I suppose it was the novelty of actually learning to play the piano properly and it wasn’t all nursery rhyme tunes. It was harder than I had imagined but I soon moved on to simplified versions of the classic composers works which I enjoyed. As I got a bit older, my problem was the teacher and I would dread Saturday mornings so much I would keep a low profile, hoping my dad might forget to take me. He never did. The lessons took place in a small upstairs room at the teacher’s house. The house is close to where I live now and still makes me shudder, though he is long dead and I’m sure his house is a lovely home to someone else. I used to wait in a dim sitting room full of dark furniture with the deep tick-tock of a huge grandfather clock and the piano sounds of the person finishing off their lesson. Then it would be my turn. A whole hour in the little room, foggy and stinking with his cigar smoke that gave me a headache and I would feel tense if he left his desk by the window to stand behind me, always too close. The lesson would begin with a run through the scales and broken chords to warm up then he’d find me a piece of sight-reading that he would complain about. Nothing was good enough. I didn’t play to the correct speed, so he fiddled with the metronome and made me keep time with it over and over until I had it to his satisfaction or I’d given up, fighting tears.

My pleas to stop the lessons fell on deaf ears at home. I was at secondary school with homework and all manner of other things. I’d passed some grades, it must be time for a break. I tried to explain what made me feel uncomfortable and wary of the teacher, a hand on my shoulder, a hand on my thigh, just standing too close to me. I couldn’t say it.  Eventually, the teacher sent my father a letter to say that he was discontinuing my lessons in favour of more promising pupils. Good. I hope they push his podgy hands away.

I’m glad I learnt to play the piano. I’m glad of the enjoyment I get from having the occasional blast, satisfied that I can still do it.  I’m not in any way a talented musician – in the family that title belongs to my son and one of my nephews.

My Haiku poem, inspired by the scales:

“Play me C Major
Now with both hands together
No! No! Start again.

“Just play the right hand
Keep up with the metronome!
No! No! Start again!

“What are you doing?
Did I say play G Major?
No! Don’t touch F sharp!”

On my own piano,
Happy and loving music
Without him shouting.

Running through the scales,
Smooth and shiny piano keys
And my eyes closed, tight.

He made me wary,
He was a scary monster.
He made me silent.

When I found my voice,
There was no one to listen.

PMW 2022

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Clocks - Piano Lessons

I longed to be able to play the piano like Russ Conway, or like my father’s friend, Joe who often played the old upright at the far end of the vault in the pub we had at the time. I pestered long and hard, until at around age seven I could just about stretch my hand to nearly an octave which meant that I was ready to have lessons. Learning didn’t come easy. I disliked the teacher, for one thing, and the smells in what I eventually called that house of horrors. Escape came in the form of a house move, well, pub move, to a tiny place near Glossop, Derbyshire. My piano lessons continued with a local teacher. He made it fun, we got along and I did well. Then came another move. Back to Blackpool, different pub, on the promenade this time and it was wonderful. Dad thought I’d be pleased that he’d arranged my piano lessons with my first teacher.

I began to dread Saturday mornings. My lesson was at twelve o’clock. I never mentioned it in the hope that my parents would forget and it would be too late to go, but that didn’t happen. I was at secondary school by now. I had tried to suggest that I gave it up, but I was never able to fully explain why I wanted to and my pleas landed on deaf ears.

I don’t know whether my father took me to my lessons too early, or if the teacher was running late with the pupil before me, but I spent a lot of time waiting in the horrible sitting room with the hideous grandfather clock. The room was dingy, crammed with dark furniture and smelled of polish mixed with whatever was cooking for dinner wafting through from the kitchen. The clock had a deep, hollow tick-tock and mechanical whirring sound just before a loud chime every quarter of an hour. It was huge and took up the whole corner of the room, like it had been squashed in next to the ancient bookcase. There were some strange books in there. Sometimes I’d look at the fascinating drawings of the human reproductive organs I’d found in a medical dictionary. I would rush to stuff it back in the right place when the silence of the upstairs piano signified the end of the lesson before mine.

It would leave the noisy rhythm of the grandfather clock and climb the creaky staircase to the small room at the front of the house. There was a desk in the window where the teacher would sit, barking out orders and sending out puffs of stinking cigar smoke that filled the air and sometimes made me feel dizzy. I would place myself on the piano stool in front of the upright piano, set my music out, sit up straight and wait to be told to start. I hoped he would stay at his desk but he didn’t. He would lean over me to scribble a direction on my music and I would hold my breath. I didn’t want to breathe in his horrid cigar smoke and I was bracing myself for his fat hand on my shoulder.

Every tick and tock in that old-fashioned sitting room filled me with immense dread of going upstairs. I was never able to share my worries. I thought my parents would think I was imagining things or exaggerating.

In Haworth Parsonage there is a beautiful grandfather clock on the half-landing.  I can’t bring myself to take much notice of it, except to wonder if it is the same one that Rev. Patrick Bronte used to wind up every day.

I found this Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem,

The Old Clock on the Stairs

 

Somewhat back from the village street

Stands the old-fashioned country-seat.

Across its antique portico

Tall poplar-trees their shadows throw;

And from its station in the hall

An ancient timepiece says to all, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

Half-way up the stairs it stands,

And points and beckons with its hands

From its case of massive oak,

Like a monk, who, under his cloak,

Crosses himself, and sighs, alas!

With sorrowful voice to all who pass, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

By day its voice is low and light;

But in the silent dead of night,

Distinct as a passing footstep's fall,

It echoes along the vacant hall,

Along the ceiling, along the floor,

And seems to say, at each chamber-door, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

Through days of sorrow and of mirth,

Through days of death and days of birth,

Through every swift vicissitude

Of changeful time, unchanged it has stood,

And as if, like God, it all things saw,

It calmly repeats those words of awe, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

In that mansion used to be

Free-hearted Hospitality;

His great fires up the chimney roared;

The stranger feasted at his board;

But, like the skeleton at the feast,

That warning timepiece never ceased, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

There groups of merry children played,

There youths and maidens dreaming strayed;

O precious hours! O golden prime,

And affluence of love and time!

Even as a miser counts his gold,

Those hours the ancient timepiece told, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

From that chamber, clothed in white,

The bride came forth on her wedding night;

There, in that silent room below,

The dead lay in his shroud of snow;

And in the hush that followed the prayer,

Was heard the old clock on the stair, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

All are scattered now and fled,

Some are married, some are dead;

And when I ask, with throbs of pain,

"Ah! when shall they all meet again?"

As in the days long since gone by,

The ancient timepiece makes reply, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

Never here, forever there,

Where all parting, pain, and care,

And death, and time shall disappear, —

Forever there, but never here!

The horologe of Eternity

Sayeth this incessantly, —

      "Forever — never!

      Never — forever!"

 

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow  1807-1882

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

 

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