waldstein, et al.

I can hardly hear myself think right now.  Beau has the TV on in the other room (basketball, ugh, the one sport I don’t like), which I can hear through the wall, and there’s a clicking sound in my left ear that’s been clicking away since yesterday.  Jade is sitting near me, studying time zones on her globe, telling me it’s 2:20 in Greenland.  Anyway, all of this and I’m trying to hear Beethoven’s Waldstein, which is proving very difficult.  After hearing  this particular sonata on the radio in the car – whose name I scribbled on a napkin using my steering wheel as a writing surface (I guess the no-texting-while-driving lawmakers didn’t factor in us napkin-scribblers) so that I could purchase it when I got home – I realized after listening from the beginning that it is played briefly by Jane Fairfax in 2009′s Emma.  (Have you seen that miniseries?  It is fantastic.)

I did a similar thing a few weeks ago, too.  I had found a really old Piano by Candlelight CD (don’t laugh) in a stack of old CDs and popped it on in the car.  I was listening while driving along, transfixed on the songs I remembered so well but hadn’t heard in so long, when Felix Mendelssohn’s Venetian Boat Song came on and I immediately recognized Tori Amos’ Nautical Twilight.  I looked it up when I got home, and sure enough, she had based her song on Mendelssohn’s.  It was a fun discovery.  (I am a nerd.)  (Also, I didn’t know her hands are insured!)

A few weeks ago, Jade and I were talking and she said one of her favorite things about learning the violin has been the way it’s changed the way she listens to and understands classical music.  She hears certain techniques now, on top of the melody and general sound structure, and the added technical layer has really piqued her interest.  I watch her get excited, as she learns about things like slurs and staccato, and it makes me smile.  I do think that intimately understanding an instrument – the way its mathematical nature and its visceral nature intertwine – greatly increases listening enjoyment, and I am so glad we can share this little gift.

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