Opus 13 for Monk

 Beethoven was 27 years old when he wrote this sonata, also known as the “Grande Sonate Pathétique”. I was 27 once. I turn 57 tomorrow. My youngest child turns 26 in a week. Yesterday we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversary. I’ve been a physician for 28 years. My Mom died over 30 years ago. My mother-in-law died a few days ago. Monk turns 2 soon and my piano is about 63 years old. The Gutenberg bible was printed some 500 years ago. The Diamond Sutra is thought to be the oldest printed book. Physicists know why the hammers of my piano fall and cause the strings to be sounded, but they still don’t know exactly what time is.

I was on the prowl today for some new dogs to hear this, one of LVB’s greatest hits, but alas, little brother Monk was left alone to absorb it, with the added indignity of wearing one of my t-shirts. It’s my party and I can dress my dog if I want to. 

My Dad, dead now over 27 years, often played the opening of this sonata. He would arch one eyebrow with a Rabelaisian delight in the tragicomic. The slow movement I played at my Mom’s funeral service, don’t ask me how I got through that one. If she was here today, which she actually is because matter is neither created nor destroyed, she would’ve told me not to play it so fast, and she would be right. My mom-in-law who lived with us this past year, and whom I was cuddled up next to in bed when she passed peacefully to the next adventure, heard me practicing this one recently. Usually she would be on the couch with her beanie on, a book in hand and Monk stretched out snoring on top of her. 

The Pathetique was written 228 years ago. Sometimes when I consider the potential extinction of our species, the thing that really forms a lump of grief in my throat is the thought that Beethoven and so much other music, art, writing, will be gone. Homo sapiens has been around for something like 300,000 years. My mom-in-law lived 92 years. I would guess she has read at least 8200 books over her lifetime, assuming she started her prolific pace at around age 10. She was about 5 pages away from finishing A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when she died. Not her first reading of it, but I feel some frustration she did not finish. Seeing it generally took her about 10 minutes to pick her next book, my guess is there was always going to be one left unfinished. 

I cannot count the number of fortepianos and sforzandos Beethoven used in his lifetime, his 56 years on earth. When Mary Oliver went back in time to ask him what he planned to do with his “one wild and precious life” I’m pretty sure he said he planned to run around shouting the musical equivalent of “BOO!” to unsuspecting people just trying to go about their own wild and precious existence in peace. 

Verdi took that trick to use in the opening of his Requiem’s “Dies irae” which, even though I know it’s coming makes me jump every single time. 

Grief (like Beethoven) is timeless, sneaky, loud, soft, tender, annoying, profound. I sometimes think to call my Dad to tell him something (Oops dead—Boo!) or try to remember the exact sound of my mom’s voice  or my mom-in-law’s chuckle or the feel of a beloved long gone dog pressed up against me (boo! Boo! BOO!). Grief sneaks up and maybe that’s why crying is known as “boo hoo!’. The non duality of grief: no birth, no death, no way we can love each other fully and no way we cannot love each other fully. 

Dan was a friend from college who died of early-onset dementia. I actually blame him for the purchase of my new-old piano, which I rather impulsively picked out the same visit to the Bay Area when I went to tell him goodbye. No time like the present thought I. 

They Might be Giants, a band Dan loved, said “ I returned a bag of groceries accidentally taken off the shelf before the expiration date, I came back as a bag of groceries accidentally taken off the shelf before the date stamped on myself”. It is a tragicomic koan, perhaps signifying the meaning of life or the lack of meaning of life or …

Only 21 more sonatas until The Hammerklavier. One that should only be left to the experts, one avoided by most, so wild and probably overly-precious. I don’t really understand the passage of time (was I not playing whiffle ball in my Wisconsin yard, age 10, just yesterday?). But from a physics standpoint that piece won’t play itself. If I travel forward in time and practice it while working on the intervening 20 sonatas, will it go better than expected? If I expect anything at all, have I already squandered the time being? Do pianos even work in outer space? 

Dedicating this one to Nancy. Remembering closing Printer’s Inc Bookstore with her 35 years ago on weekend nights, before I even met her son, my husband, us counting the tills and gabbing after we chased out the last rowdy bookstore denizen. She was a great mom-in-law. I will miss her. I miss her. She is missed.

Opus 10, No 3 for Sammy, Monk & Flora

 Sight reading is an interesting phenomena. I am pretty fair at it, and though I love this sonata quite a lot and should’ve practiced it, I decided to just read it today as I had a three dog audience at hand. When I sight read I like to follow the advice of Martin Luther and “sin boldly”. Sight reading is like skiing or mountain biking or technical trail running. You need to look at where you want to go, not where you are afraid to fall.

Imperfection abounds, yet mostly Beethoven Op 10 no 3 will look good in any outfit. My husband of going on 35 years thinks I too look good in any outfit. He likes me when my chin hairs emerge and when I have nasty surgical scars on my neck. He likes me when I sit in my recliner which is where I’ve been for the majority of the last 4 months and when I ask for a coffee refill from my La-Z-Girl throne. It’s nice to be cared for in such an unconditional fashion. Perhaps I do the same for him, and maybe this is why we are in our third decade of marriage despite a child in prison and a life-eating profession like medicine.

I am now five weeks post my second major surgery in 3 months. I have found piano playing to be painful in the literal sense but a palliative balm in the figurative sense. At first I could manage 5-10 minutes. Now I can at least fumble my way through a sonata despite a slow movement that is bloated with gravitas. Serious as movement two is (largo and mesto which indicates slow and melancholic, though it just occurs to me it sounds like something you’d eat at a trattoria), the rest of the sonata is full of jokes. Dramatic pauses, ridiculous sforzando-pianos, and a rondo theme that opens with his favorite scheme of “the third time is the charm.” That is, LVB liked to start something twice then the third time take it to fruition. It must have driven his other band members nuts sometimes. Fun fact, Beethoven precisely counted his coffee beans every morning. 60 beans per cup. He was a beautiful brilliant batty barista with a knack for piano and an ear for composing, even when he was deaf.

I’m going to leave this edition of the Beethoven Dog Project as it is, warts and all. It’s just not every day you get three dogs clamoring for classical music. They like Beethoven best as they can really dig their teeth into his music. The bones of each sonata hold the seemingly simple tunes and fragments together, and the marrow of those bones signal a deep connection to sacred creativity. Fueled by 60 coffee beans and an ego that was never afraid of falling, rather always keeping focus on where he was headed, riding the black diamond musical moguls of this rugged, ragged life.

Op 10, No 2, for Maisie

 Sometimes you just play, no matter what else is going on. You do it because you can and someday maybe you won’t be able to. Or you do it because it is your first love, the thing you gave as an answer when adults asked you what you wanted to “be” when you grew up. Or you do it because Maisie is just laying there serenely and while away from her family seems calmed by the piano and in a few days you are getting surgery and you also had surgery not that long ago and post operatively no matter how much you want to play you will not, you cannot.

Maisie knows me mainly as a pianist. For years now I descend upon her home early mornings or weekends and play with one of her people. Or she comes over with her person and plays here. Maisie finds Monk fairly obnoxious. Which I don’t really get, but I don’t speak dog so who knows what he is saying to her. Mostly he’s a goofball whereas Maisie is more on the classy side.

Opus 10 number 2 is, if I remember correctly, the first Beethoven Sonata I ever played. I probably nailed it at age 8, and truthfully at 7 times that age now and with very little recent practicing (see above re surgery), it’s a bit rough, or should I say ruff? It’s OK though. This piece is a lark. A little piece that Ludwig could probably improvise with his 2 pinky fingers while holding a conversation regarding the importance of art and music in the true understanding of human nature. I love its lightness. It doesn’t seem too concerned with itself. But still it delights. Maisie might find it meh-sie but she also may be dreaming about the beach and the woods and bacon and everything good. 

Right at this very moment, despite an unstable spinal cord, I can play piano well enough. In fact my recent surgery fixed a fumbling right hand. The next surgery will get a nice protective moat around my spinal palace, so it may continue to reign over my body with stable decision making and jewel-like precision. If only certain other folks in power would do the same…

Sometimes you just have to play, even when the world is in chaos. I do love Beethoven but my main go-to recently has been Bach. The Well-Tempered Clavier with its 48 preludes and fugues provides endless challenge, while it is also comforting in its familiarity. It is ordered and perfect and stable. Stability is underrated and overlooked. Like breathing it is often forgotten until it disappears or is threatened. The breath of the holy spirit as well as the wind and fire is celebrated on this day of Pentecost, the 50th day after Easter. If Bach is the breath, Beethoven is the wind and fire. A Shining Star, giving strength to carry on, yeah.

Just Maisie it’ll all be OK.

Opus 10, No 1, for Monk

 This the fifth sonata was part of a group of three that the 1798 (or so) press reviewed as “three nice sonatas”. I am not sure anything by Beethoven can really be called “nice”, unless said in an edgy drawl, “noiicccccee”. Anyway this sonata is Mozartean in the way a single wrong note is like showing up to a work meeting naked. It doesn’t exactly ruin the meeting but no one really wanted to see that over morning coffee.

Playing Beethoven for dogs will not change the world, but it might bring joy (to me? to the dogs? to someone walking by?) and joy, they say, can be an act of resistance. Playing Beethoven for dogs does not express the grief of the execution of Renee Good just blocks away from the execution of George Floyd. Maybe it does send out some well-crafted sound waves into the atmosphere, serving as an antidote to the venom of hate.

When I lived in Minneapolis I enjoyed eating ice cream when it was 20 degrees below zero. I once left the music school at the U and was met by about 30 angry looking raccoons, eyes all fixed on me, glowing. I enjoyed soup and bread at St Martin’s Table. I snow shoed to the video store. I worked at a bookstore owned by Meredith Birney Baxter’s brother. I studied genetics and heard Beethoven’s 7th symphony live. I was a student in a lab studying malignant hyperthermia. I fell in love with organic chemistry.

Minnesota is not for the faint of heart. Though my father once received a heart transplant there, so..

what I’m trying to say is it does not surprise me to see the people there, not all of them but many of them, rise up together as a community to help their neighbors. Which, along with welcoming the stranger and loving your enemies is an actual thing that Jesus said was super important.

As for Opus 10, no 1 and my little brother Monk witnessing it, I rather enjoyed this piece and am glad to have explored it. Monk full on snored during the slow movement. I think he might need a CPAP machine, though in his case I suppose it would be a CPUP. And though Monk slept through most of the sonata he surely noticed at least subconsciously, the brief moments resembling the fifth symphony, another gem in c minor. Beethoven is a doggone genius!

I will keep on with the Beethoven Dog Project. It is this small grounding bit of joy and a challenge on many levels. What’s the point? The grounding allows me to keep perspective in this time of uncertainty. It reminds me that although some people have chosen to revel in the suffering of others, that most people like a good tune and a community of friends. The challenge keeps me learning. Can I play one phrase in the sonata in a way that cracks open a bit of the mystery? Can I find a deeper relationship with music? Can I slowly drive my husband and dog insane with nonstop Beethoven, piano lid up?

If Opus10, no 1 has me at a work meeting naked, God only knows what the Hammerklavier will bring. Hopefully something “nice”…

https://youtu.be/h8vZMXKXv7s?feature=shared

Opus 7, for Kiya, Garbo and Garbo’s daughter

 The “Grand Sonata”, Op 7, has been a struggle. It looks easy on the page. But I’ve had difficulty connecting to it. Usually this has nothing to do with the piece of music and everything to do with my own distraction. There has been plenty of that. I often find myself practicing a passage while thinking about something else entirely. I remember one of my piano teachers as a child telling me no matter how well you know a piece it’s best not to be thinking about what you are having for dinner when playing it. I remember my music school idol, Meg, telling me when she teaches piano that when practicing, like cleaning a window, if there is dirt there and you just keep rubbing it around, you get nowhere. I remember spending hours upon hours in the basement practice rooms in music school until I couldn’t not do it. I remember studying for anatomy class with such intensity and focus that I quite literally knew where absolutely everything in our bodies was located. Studying anatomy and music is not all that different. You take the parts and dissect them then see how it all fits together.

I was thinking recently about whether, if it was measurable, I have now held my phone in my hand for more hours than I have held the hands of my children, husband, parents, dying patients. It’s hard to pay attention when the next thing is just a scroll away. 

Still, I have had some great moments with Opus 7, the greatest of all being with the dogs and people who came to listen to it. For the last 10 years I have celebrated Beethoven’s birthday with “my patients”, with a performance of one of his sonatas. In the last 4 years this has included the violin-piano sonatas with my uber-talented violin pal, Jenny, graciously offering her time. This year we did sonata no 8 at one center on Tuesday, another big and somewhat uncharacteristically joyful piece by LVB. On Thursday I brought the grand opus 7 to another center (we have 3 centers, and I’m still scheming on getting a piano to the 3rd). 

Which brings me to the dogs. Therapy dogs who like to hang out with people and offer their healing presence. I’m not sure about how the other people present felt, but this doctor was over the moon with the chance to share music with an amazing group of people and dogs on a sunny day near the winter solstice in celebration of one of the greatest composers of all time. Right before I started, someone asked if I could play boogie-wooogie on the 100 year old piano, donated to us by Fred and Joan Tempas. Right after I played, Kiya’s person asked if I wanted a hug, and as I reached to hug him he said “actually I meant the dog”, and so I kneeled and Kiya laid her head on my shoulder and really what else matters?

For the record, I am a midwestern, Lutheran, Buddhist, classically-trained perfectionist who worries non-stop. No one wants to hear me playing boogie-woogie.

I am putting grand opus 7 to rest for awhile. I need to come back to it with fresh eyes and fingers, and better attention. And anyway the opus 10s are calling. It takes practice to practice piano properly. Just because the world seems to be unraveling around us is no reason to allow the mind to wander when playing Beethoven, or when reading, or talking with a beloved. Attention is needed when laying stethoscope on chest, first right then left sternal borders, then apex, then axilla, asking oneself if the sound is soft, medium, loud, systolic, diastolic, whooshing or clicking, galloping or straightforward, boogie-woogie or Bach? 

On Beethoven’s actual birthday (though debated, December 17 was his baptism day so probably he was born on December 16 based on traditions), my husband makes killer Mac and cheese. It was LVB’s favorite food. We revel in the rich, artery-threatening delight, imagining some Vienna eatery of the early 1800’s, and hoping at least sometimes Ludwig had a friend to share a meal with him.

Things are profoundly imperfect. Some days I can hardly breathe. I was chatting with a patient in a nursing home recently, someone who is an ambassador to other residents there, hearing their concerns and advocating for them. As I stood at the end of their bed,  with my awkward privilege of being able to walk out of there on healthy legs, they expressed their bewilderment at what has become of this country which is becoming unrecognizable. After several beats of silence, except for someone’s TV blaring in the background, I said I just keep trying to show up each day for the person in front of me, with kindness and in service. Which is what the person, stuck in that bed does every day. As does the canine masters of healing, the true experts of quiet comfort, given with a doggy smiles and cold, boopable noses, the Kiya’s of the world.

In the imperfection of beginners mind we practice. As the Zen master would say, fall down 8 times, get up 9. Then go to your piano bench and practice opus 10.

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