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:
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.
