Opus 2, Number 3~For Monk & Flora

 Mr Rogers reminds us when we witness catastrophe to “look for the helpers”. When the house shakes, the ice cream cone drops, the glacier melts, the hate speech spews, the ash of the volcano covers towns, the team loses, the long and complicated chart note you are almost done with randomly disappears, look for the helpers. When you find a spot on the X-ray, when the Supreme Court looks the other way, when you realize the days are getting shorter, when your heart cracks open wondering if your child will survive heroin, look for the helpers. 

Fred Rogers both soothed and irritated me as a child. I thought his sneakers were lame. He was really nice and calm. The make believe royals freaked me out. 

What I did not realize at the time was that he was a trained composer, who liked the story arcs to resemble the structure of sonata form (exposition, development, recapitulation, coda). His co-composer, jazz pianist Johnny Costa, based the opening theme on the Beethoven Sonata I played for Flora and Monk today. Specifically the start of the 4th movement. Mr Costa was practicing Op2, No 3 and thought it would be cool to do the LVB flourish in “Won’t you be my neighbor”. Of course he never played it exactly the same way twice, being a jazz cat. Actually I doubt Beethoven ever played anything the same way twice either, being a master improviser himself. 

Listen here:

https://youtu.be/Xx-ncTtaOJY

Listen here! What I am trying to say is the helpers are the ones who make beautiful things, and the ones who speak to a neighbor, the ones that bring food to someone who is shut in, the ones who put out the fires and walk into the room where someone is a hot, sick mess with COVID or tuberculosis or a festering wound that reeks of decay. The ones that change our bed pans and place our IVs, the ones who teach our children and the ones who make us laugh when times are hard.

When I learned this particular sonata as a teenager in music school, my tempo was a teenpo which is to say the athletics come easily at that age. I probably zoned out during the slow movement and really sforzandoed those sforzandos. I mean I still do that, because…Beethoven. As the athleticism fades and some bit of wisdom creeps in, I delight in the hilarious moments, the yearning, shirt-tearing despair, the precocious pushing the edges of decorum right on the heels of an age of powdered wigs and pianos that were barely able to live up to the name of pianoforte. What I am trying to say is there would be no metal without Beethoven and if you don’t believe me you can Kiss my AC/DC..

I doubt Beethoven went for runs, but he did like being in nature, and did a lot of composing when out on hikes. The very first notes of this sonata are a bird call. The slow movement moves between a gentle late summer day along a brook with a nice breeze, and a sudden covering of the sun by dark clouds with peals of thunder. The third movement is a dance but under the stars at a gathering after a day working in the fields. It has a trio section that sounds to me like the town preacher walking by and shaking his fists at all the cavorting. Ultimately he gets ignored and the dancing resumes until folk fall over tired and lay back to gaze up at the moon and listen to the last movement. Enter Mr Rogers about 180 years in the future, heartening back to this rondo of a scale in triads. Rondos rendezvous with the theme over and over, playing hide and seek with it, then calling Olly Olly in come free!

When i ran in from Ghost in the Graveyard, i rejoiced at my friends all gathered in a pile, the autumn leaves crackling under us, a bed of summer’s farewell. When I run in from the redwoods cloaked in mist, the trees leave me with their blessing. When I run out of hope for this broken world, and sink to my knees in some kind of prayerful stance, i remember my parents, the ones who gave me piano lessons for my 6th birthday, the ones who held my hands in theirs, the ones who welcomed the stranger as if they too were beloved. I remember their help for others as stitched into the very core of who they were. Probably whispering in an ear right now, words of love and kindness. And Dad might also include a limerick or two.

Listen to this, if you click on the link you can watch Monk sleep through Beethoven, and Flora Mae the Fierce take it all in through her spectacular bat-dog ears. In Monks defense, he’s heard this one. A lot.

Opus 2, Number 2, for Clarence

 Early Beethoven is surprisingly tricky and should be memorized. It should be perfect. And though I started out gifted, now I am just about average, words stolen from a song by my husband, the truly gifted yet under-appreciated by the world member of the household. Go read one (or all)of his books: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Atthys-J.-Gage/author/B00RYJWHGK?ref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Opus 2, No 2 is counterpointy, athletic, whimsical, with some moments of head-banging thrown in. Full on metal interrupts the graceful theme in the 4th movement. The first movement tries some counterpoint that is like jumping from rock to rock at full speed on the edge of a steep cliff. The third movement a lark, a dance, like a palate cleanser after the heady second movement which could be a string quartet with the cello doing this amazing pizzicato bass, and before the fourth which reintroduces the fact that Beethoven was one of the great improvisers of all time. He could just sit down and spin out a theme in a million different ways, each time more intricate or more funny or more serious or more outrageous than the last. Only to end the whole thing in a soft tip of the hat, a nod to his own genius and a laugh at the sucker who sat through it, weeping or laughing but definitely amazed.

I mean Beethoven was a bit of an arse, drinking too much, criticizing the friends who helped him most and  must’ve been the uncle from hell for his nephew. If Facebook or whatever people are using these days was around, Ludwig would’ve made cringy posts, though in the current world of meanness as a badge of honor, maybe his followers would be legion. I would like to think he would be on Strava, mapping his long country hikes where he did a lot of his thinking about music. How cool would it be to see the route where he composed Opus 2, all 3 dedicated to Haydn, and all 3 brimming with nature if you listen just right. 

Clarence, the dog, has a very recognizable bark. He is the neighborhood curmudgeon who doesn’t suffer fools, but is head over paws in love with his main person. Anyone else might want to watch for the shiv he keeps tucked in his adorable fur. Maybe Beethoven kept one tucked in his mane of hair too. I can relate to this-not the shiv part as I am a pacifist at heart, but the part about things being stored in my hair. After a romantic dinner with my gifted better half the other night, I realized I had 2 large redwood fronds in my hair the entire time. It may be he did not notice, but knowing him he just liked them being there. 

The Redwood Forest is hard not to take along with you. It is the fog and mist that fills a mind overawed, it is the seasonal dust or mud, the ferns unfurling like a heart cracking open and letting in light even if it might get burned. It is the creaking branches that could kill you in one fell swipe, reminding you each day is precious and asking you what your plans are regarding that fact. It is neon yellow slugs, wedding dress white trillium, unashamed iris purple like the old ladies who might wear it in defiance. It is the sense of a mountain lion nearby, which is a good way to describe the anxiety of parenthood, or the anxiety of playing all 32 Beethoven Sonatas in a world where Lang Lang also lives.

For about 25 minutes there is this escape into a world called opus 2, number 2, that is oddly a slightly different planet each time it is visited. Music is like that, a science fiction, science of tonality and reactions, of gravity and rate determining steps, with hypotheses and alien life forms popping in with their double sharps and crossed hands. The fictional aliens fit right into the world-building done by @LVBeethoven, which was his sci fi handle. And holy shit things just get weirder the deafer @LVB gets, until the science fiction in the late opuses is almost too mind-blowing to fathom. It is possible Opus 106 is a space opera. I’m gonna need some serious calisthenics to ride that particular flying saucer.

But I get ahead of myself. Next up is opus 2, number 3 which is one of my very favorites. While I try to get that one reasonably under my paws, please reach out if you know a canine music savant that wants to run around, snooze, chew a bone, fart or bark madly while I play it for them.

For today, thank you King Clarence, for giving 25 minutes of your one precious life, and for letting your person film the video. Incidentally, she was specifically instructed not to focus on my big ass, and if you make it to the end of the video, I am pretty sure she decided to defy me and do an actual close up of my derrière. For what it’s worth, I imagine Beethoven liked a good butt joke, though maybe not quite as much as Mozart did.

If you would like to listen, and meet Clarence, here you go: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvLFNY4WqMs

Opus 2, Number 1, for Monk

 My dogs, through the years, were often runners. My Reverend father named the childhood dog the Rabelaisianesque “Brandy”, make of that what you will. Brandy never needed a leash, always at one’s side. He equally enjoyed parental walks, cross-country running obsessed trots and sprints alongside my skateboarding brother. As he aged, sometimes I’d notice he wasn’t at my side and instead had joined an old jogger neighbor some ways behind me. I mean she was probably at least 45 years old. In our small home he laid near the piano when I played (probably used to my siblings loudly begging me to stop). Maybe he too was begging me to stop. 

But I think all dogs appreciate music. Zoe, a neurodivergent, stunted golden doodle, actively sought out music. I had impulsively picked her out from a breeder in Washington state who had their puppies listen to classical music. When I finished reading to the kids at bedtime she would trot click click click down the hall and sit at my feet gazing up while I sang „Müde bin Ich“ and “ You are my Sunshine”. She preferred music no later than Brahms. When anything in the 1900’s started up on the piano, and God forbid the 21st century, she click click clicked upstairs in a huff. But she also frantically did what one friend called the “breast stroke” on leash to try to dine on horse shit. So I am not sure she gets the last say on modern music.

Buster the border collie had no opinion about the piano but was completely devoted to me, he wore his black and white tux to every practice session. He had class.

Shasta really didn’t like me very much and the piano was just another confusing part of the universe she was thrown into when we brought her in after her owner had died, near the end of her life. Which turned out to be 4 years later. By the end she tolerated me and really that’s all I can ask of anyone.

Moving into the jazz era. Miles took over Buster’s fierce devotion immediately upon his Christmas Day death, a Christmas Day spent in a hospital shift after laying on the floor hugging old Buster all night. As I lay weeping later, Miles tucked right up next to me and sort of just stayed there for the next 10 years. When Our favorite violinist or a string quartet came to join me for music adventures, Miles would quietly stand in the middle of the group just being a witness, like someone quietly swaying in church during an especially fiery sermon. Though if the beach had not been visited before a long music session, he would head-butt my hands off the keyboard. When I met him as a puppy he seemed the most chill of the litter and I thought he was cool jazz. He went through several phases though, not unlike his namesake. He always knew how to use silence, and that it was at least as important as the woof woofing.

Monk has an old soul, a goofball presence, and never fears mistakes. At 9 months he already outweighs Miles (may he rest in peace). He is a lab so EVERYTHING IS AMAZING AND MIGHT ALSO BE GOOD TO CHEW ON. Somehow he knew chewing on the Steinway was the antithesis of joy. As he matures I believe he finds chewing on the tasty chords that fly through the air quite satisfying. He told me once that there are no wrong notes on the piano. Or maybe that was his namesake who said that but either way, I am in.

I wanted to be a concert pianist who wore tails. I decided that when listening in the dark to the LP of Horowitz playing the Moonlight Sonata when I was 5. We didn’t even have a piano, but THAT was my future.

When my cervical spinal cord was all messed up in 2023 I couldn’t quite walk in a straight line. Then I couldn’t pick up a jigsaw puzzle piece. Then I couldn’t play a scale. Which finally made me stop gaslighting myself and seek medical care. Thankfully it was mechanical and a neurosurgeon just fixed that thing. The dexterity hasn’t quite returned but since there are no wrong notes on the piano I don’t sweat it too hard.

I am so grateful to be able to play. And here is a secret: I love Beethoven. It’s beyond reason but probably there is some neurohormonal attachment from that 5 year old girl sitting under headphones with Horowitz at the helm of an 88 key mind-blower. Before my spine surgery, I played through all 32 Beethoven sonatas in a few days. It occurred to me that the very slight possibility that something could go wrong could leave me unable to play at all. Over the years, from music school days as a teenager to the years not playing much at all during medical training to a reengagement with grace to my diminished stature as a musician, I have always come back to LVB. 

I haven’t ever been a concert pianist who played in tails. But I like to make others wag their tails. And in however long I have left on this spinning rock, I am finally going to learn all 32 Beethoven piano sonatas reasonably well enough. In fact well enough to entertain the purest of all critics, the best boys and girls in the universe, the chewers of the bones of the repertoire and the inhabitants of a world where open hearts is just wagnificent.

Thus begins the Beethoven Project. If you know a dog needing some Beethoven, give me a holler. The first one though is for my best little brother, my current zen master and the loudest snorer in the universe.

If you’d like to watch Monk watching the first Beethoven Project performance, click below!

Let’s start at the start, little Monk. 

https://youtu.be/DndQqkktMl8?feature=shared