stories that are unbelievable but true

[pianonut]

ok.  here it goes.  bleep bleep.  my heart is still beating.

about four years ago now, i met someone who was divinely encouraging of my musical aspirations and so kept on telling him the dreams that i aspired to in piano.  well, come to find out...his mother was a concert pianist.  in fact, his mother was so good that she accompanied a singer who was well known at the time (can't remember the name just now) and toured around england. well, this wasn't the beginning of a tall tale.  just the start.

come to find out, he plays the piano like liszt himself with long handsome fingers.  regularly going to the community college (first playing rag-time and then a routine of chopin).  yes, ragtime and chopin.  i tried a little of the rag-time and thought, this IS hard, even though no one plays it much.

so- i move here to pa and what happens?  well, i never thought i'd hear from this tall-tailer again.  come to find out, his son lives here.  well, he called the other day to ask me how my studies are going (he encouraged me to start in grad school) and then i ask him how he is recovering from a second nearly fatal car accident.  once it is deemed that he is alive not in as much pain, just mentally trying to sort things out- he tells me about studying balzak.  i hesitate, and then start telling him (as i have for the last four years) to read the Bible.  he goes on about dante.  i tell him about God.  i say fair is fair.  he's encouraging me to go to school, i am encouraging him to find his spiritual side (other that reading goethe and dante).

you really can't win, but can't help loving them anyway.  it's a case in point of two different points of view.  i just don't see his points about balzak, and he doesn't see why people need 'religion.'  my prayers are always for his recovery, though, and his best mental imagery is my playing a piano concerto for a whooping audience.

[ted]

My old teacher had a seemingly inexhaustible fund of unbelievable anecdotes. I used to think he was romancing but I later found out they were all true. Here are a couple.

He had to attend a reception for the Duke of Edinburgh here during a tour, I think it was in the fifties. He had imbibed several whiskies while waiting for the royal visitors and commenced playing Liszt's second Hungarian Rhapsody on the grand in the dining room. Half way through he was informed that the Duke had arrived.

"I don't interrupt Liszt for anybody !", he replied and carried on playing. This caused acute embarrassment all round and it was only with the help of a young family member of whom he was particularly fond that he was persuaded to stop.

---------------

He was visited once by Noel Coward and Sefton Daly (Australian composer of swing pieces). Daly had written one strain, in E flat, of what would later be his "Brief Candles" but said he was stuck for ideas. My teacher replied, "When in doubt change the key," and spontaneously improvised a swing section in G. "That's it !" exclaimed Daly, and in fact the second G strain of "Brief Candles" is my teacher's improvisation. Coward, meanwhile, stood because he thought my teacher's couch had not been dusted properly.

[pianonut]

liked the stories, Ted! it's interesting how some teachers have experienced so much.  was studying about letters and how they factualize history sometimes and other times do not.  here's one about liszt:

when liszt wrote in his memoirs;  he said that he was introduced to beethoven (around age 11) by czerny and that after playing a bach fugue and supposedly being asked to transpose it into another key (which he supposedly did with aplumb, therefore being told 'watch out for that young Turk') that Beethoven was completely deaf and probably didn't know what key it was in in the first  place.  oh well.  it's a good story!

who knows!  it's probably true, because of the quality of beethoven's continual output of composition, he might have watched liszt's hands and just knew what key he was in.  although, as the tale is told he was listening on the other side of the room. 

my old teacher jean-paul billaud probably has some stories about cortot.  i know he had a picture of him on the wall of his studio along with a painting of a bull by picasso.  he also would post various sayings of goethe and dante, and was religious about the textbook he used for 'romantic music' class by alfred einstein.  i still look back and can't figure out how we memorized all the dates of birth and death of all the composers.  and, i remember a lot from the class about various eccentricities of each composer.  jp was one teacher whom everyone really learned from because he was from a generation of graduates of the paris conservatoire when really great pianists of the past were generated.

i couldn't convince him to read the bible either, but, he was probably one of the most influential people in my life.  he was very organized, read widely, and was very encouraging to young  people but set very high standards for his students.  i once remember being told (before the first lesson) "if you don't practice, you're out."  everyone practiced really hard for him.  his masterclasses were wonderful because of all the good music we got to hear and play.  and the stories he would tell of composers etc. made it much more interesting.

[lostinidlewonder]

Pianonut you will be forever depressed if you think you can make people take up the Bible who never initially think of doing it themselves first. I think the point about using the Bible is that first comes the reverence for wisdom and God, if there is no concept or repsect for it (two different things) then that is where we must start. The bible even teaches that and it is also a tool to refine your relationship with god, you cant refine what has not really had a chance to develop. Christians may throw up their hands and feel that I am reducing the power of the Bible, but it is not the case, the power of the Bible is extremely powerful to those with a very little faith. But to those who have no meaning to what God means to them, the bible is as useless as reading a self help book read without a desire for change.

And we are not here to convince one another, but share ideas. I am happy to talk with someone who doesn't think like me, it is refreshing, it challenges my own ideas and my own comfort zone. Nothing that someone can say to me will make me any stupider, everything that is said to me can only add to wisdom and understanding of this world. So to not agree is not the point, the point is to share and learn from each other. It is funny because my best friend is atheist yet I am very spiritual. But there strikes a good balance between the two, he  after many many years now has that doubt that maybe humans dont know everything and perhaps there is an ultimate creator, and I have leant to measure what I say to those who don't believe.

[pianonut]

you're right!

although, tonight, in my usual manner, i added a few things to my final essay.  it was on 'haydn's oratorio the creation and beethoven's symphony in e flat major (eroica) and how they fit into the world of the classic style of the late eighteenth century...with reference to aesthetic, musical, and emotional elements that seem to be at odds with the traditions generally associated with this era'

so i talk about the enlightenment and then add that haydn really shocked his listeners with a new vision of the enlightenment (light - sforzand0) as if he understood that God created the light for men to see (science as it was created - and discovered) at the beginning of time.  beethoven was quite spiritual too, in that he said 'for God, time simply does not exist.'

i guess what i'm trying to say, is if you cast your bread upon many waters, you never know who might pick it up.  i used to think that meant money (ira, savings, etc)  now, i just think, where can i drop a little?  i told my theory to two  people tonight, and yes, you're right, am probably going a bit overboard.  what really bugs me is that my son is becoming somewhat atheistic in his beliefs, but i know when the time is right, he'll come around.  some of my better friends are also atheistic or agnostic!  sometimes they are the most accurate for details (scientific thinking) but not so much for the faith aspect whereas i tend to misdiagnose details, but have that 'mustard seed.'

that wasn't all i said about the topic above.  it took me 45 minutes (all from memory i might add) to write this paper.  fairly exhausted right now.  could post it if anyone wants to read it.  perhaps this is the thread?