14 July 2011

Challenge:

A phrase on the radio drifted into my consciousness… Hugo sat quietly on the piano stool in the music room. The keyboard lid was locked and covered with a thin film of dust.A small, noisy motorbike roared past the open window and the rest was lost forever … unless you can tell me.

The Piano Teacher

“Hugo. Practice your chord progressions – with your left hand only! You’re bass notes are not keeping up with your right hand melody and it is dragging it all down. Now, for 5 minutes.”

The chords droned up and down the base end of the carved oak, upright piano in Madame La Garde’s large front room. Her mind wandered as it always did when the latest young “prodigy” (or so their parents thought), mashed their way through another hour of this week’s lesson, only to practice so little afterward that they were constantly reviewing and practicing the same things during their next hour with her. But she tried to keep her energy for the bright ones, the ones who had that spark, and the discipline, to pursue music above all else. And Hugo was one of those. At 8 he had performed solo in the community new year’s pageant and now, at 11, he was on the cusp of being a remarkable talent.

Recently however, he had begun to seem ill prepared and his technique had suffered, indicating that he was no longer putting in the practice required to build his skills and coordination. It really was his hands that were so special. Even as a small child, he had long fingers and quickly learned magic and juggling tricks which he would practice until perfect. It was that same drive that had gone into the piano when he had first been taken to Madame LaGuarde by his mother, Viviene Martel.

Hugo’s father, Jules, had been one of the many young men of the small town killed in the fields of Flanders. Vivienne thus raised Hugo on her own, focusing her entire life on protecting him and developing him as best she could. Vivienne was bright and attractive and all the town’s old bachelors and widowers made their passes at her. But she managed to keep her energy and self focused on ensuring that Hugo would become a good and successful man. At the first sign of Hugo’s musical talent, Viviene found Madame La Guarde to be the best teacher she could barely afford. And that was only after a reduction in fee from Madame who had immediately seen the potential in the boy of 7.

Marguerite La Guarde was another of the widows of the great war who were left alone in Pontilivon after the armistice. They remained trapped in a location and culture that gave them few options for independence. Marguerite had been favored with a musical education at the local convent before the education reform laws in France nationalized the school systems. She had married Monsieur LaGuarde, the young notaire, and led a quiet, childless life in the town, playing music, and singing in Saint Simone’s choir every Sunday. Her front room became her music room and the darkly stained and waxed oak upright piano, her constant companion as she and Monsieur LaGuard aged. And then, he was gone at Ypres, and she had begun giving music lessons from her house to supplement the little he had left her. It was something she enjoyed, she was able to find talent where it existed, and, her prices were reasonable.

Over the years, Madame LaGuarde became a mandatory experience for all the young ladies of the bourgois. Especially if she could not sing, a young woman of class or money, was expected to, at the very least, master the piano. Madame La Guarde was the gateway to many a night’s experience throughout the town, of having to listen to the child of a friend, or relative, mangle a piano while the adults attempted to enjoy the coq au vin.

But there were also the exceptions, those with the rare talent to challenge Madame LaGuard’s skills, and excite her interest in them as an individual, and as a potential virtuoso. And Hugo had been one of those. Along with his genetically predisposed digits designed for the piano, he also had an impeccable ear. He could hear all the notes in a chord simultaneously, and had the ability to mimic and recreate the music he heard after a single performance. She knew that once he became able to read sheet music, his natural talent could carry him to greatness. That is why his recent lack of progress had troubled her.

Hugo continued fingering his left hand up and down the keyboard. Marguerite was sitting in her habitual straight backed chair to the left of Hugo on the piano stool. She gently laid her hands across his arm, stopping him.

“That’s enough for now Hugo. The time for you to do this sort of work is when you are practicing at home. Have you not had time for that lately?”

“I try Madame La Guarde, but I get distracted it seems. Maman does not like for me to practice when she has visitor’s. She just wants me to play songs I already know.”

Viviene had trained as a seamstress and had taken in private tailoring to earn money for Hugo’s lessons, and their food. The grey stone cottage at the edge of the main part of town where it became countryside, had been left them after the death of Jules. Vivienne’s sewing room was in an alcove off her bedroom.

“Do they enjoy your playing?” Marguerite asked.

“I guess so. They go into my mother’s sewing room to see about my mother doing some tailoring…and they close the door. Whenever I stop for a bit, my mother always yells out for me to keep playing.

And the gentlemen always give me a little money as they go out and thank me for my music.”

Marguerite sat quietly, looking intently at Hugo for any sign of lack of sincerity. He beamed of transparent innocence. How long would it be before Hugo understood how his music lessons were being paid for, and it that it wasn’t by needle and thread? What could she do to protect him from that day? Was it even her responsibility? Oh, but such a talent.

At least, she thought, she could have Hugo come to her house directly after school and do his practice with her. She told Vivienne that it was imperative for Hugo to be playing seriously every day at this stage in his development. And she said she would instruct him for free. Hugo began spending increasing amounts of time at Madame LaGuard’s house, playing the old oak piano in the front room, day after day. Vivienne, granted some freedom of time and from paying for Hugo’s lessons, took in more tailoring – of the needle and thread kind- becoming the most in-demand dress maker to ladies of quality in Pontilivon.

Hugo blossomed under Madame LaGuard’s training and attention. She showered on him all the stored up affection she had carried through her quiet life, reveling in his successes as he grew into manhood and fame. Vivienne succumbed to her tuberculosis only a month after Hugo won the Silver Medal at the Vienna Quadrennial piano competition. It had been Marguerite at his side during the presentation ceremony, as Vivienne had been too ill to travel.

It was to be thus throughout his career. The old house in Pontilivon became “home” to him and he returned regularly to rejuvenate himself and to entertain Marguerite with stories of his travels and concert life and always made her laugh. And then after, she would cry at the glory of the music that filled the house from his long fingers on the old oak piano ivories. Hugo had offered many times to replace it with a suitably grand piano. She always demurred saying her old brown wooden straight back chair just would not look right next to something like that. The truth was, she sat in that old chair, next to the piano as always, whenever Hugo’s performance was broadcast over the national radio station. She would sit, listening to him play as she had through most of the years of his life, and see him in her memory, sitting on the stool opposite her knees.

And now, Marguerite had died at 82. Hugo received the telegram just as he was to walk onto the stage of the Teatro La Fenice in Venice for his solo concert. That evening, he had played just to her, as if she were sitting in her chair, listening on the large upright radio in her music room, next to the carved, polished, dark honey colored oak piano.

There was a lovely ceremony at Saint Simone, with many of her former students and choir members playing, and singing, in tribute. Hugo had taken the grand old church organ through a Bach repertoire…all of Marguerite’s favorites.

After her “enterrement”, he returned to her lonely house, now willed to him. It had been left in the moment of her leaving to hospital. He wandered the rooms, looking at the remains of Marguerite’s life. Every room was a memory. Only last did he walk down the long paneled hall to the door into the music room. He stayed on the threshold for a minute, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness in the room, the piano reflecting dimly from the opposite wall

Hugo went over to the window, pulling back the heavy velvet drapes that helped keep the cold winter drafts to barely tolerable levels. Pulling open the double glass panels of the large window, he unhooked the latch and folded back the wooden shutters on the outside to the fall afternoon sun, leaving the window open to the small street beyond. The sun shot at an angle through the room across to the oak piano, the light reflecting the sparkle of dust particles in the air, disturbed in ruffling of curtains.

Walking tentatively across the room, he stood in front of the piano as a motorbike whined past into oblivion on the street outside. Hugo lowered himself slowly onto the piano stool. The old waxed sheen of the wood was muted by the accumulation of dust left during Marguerite’s last year of illness. He turned the key that was always left in the keyboard lock, lifting and sliding the cover backwards into the oak sounding board case. He gazed over at the straight backed chair, sitting in its usual place at 90 degree angle to the keys, ever at the ready, Slowly, without consciousness, the long, muscular fingers of his left hand reached across to the keyboard, and began to play bass chord progressions.