Finally, an update on the piano...
Some of you may remember that my parents have a quite-old (1930s vintage) Steinway baby grand. No one played it for years and my father offered to pay for refurbishing and moving the piano down to me if I wanted it.
Flush with dreams of sitting down at the piano at the end of the day to play Bach partitas or Brahms waltzes, I said yes, I wanted it.
So he got in touch with a local-to-them expert.
They finally got the options back today.
It's not quite as rosy as I had hoped. (But then, that seems to be the Theme of 2008, I say, with what even I recognize as bitterness).
The piano is not in great shape. To refurbish it would cost...well, it would cost what a pretty darn nice new car costs. (Not Ferrari "darn nice," but "darn nice" compared to the car I have now. And no, I'm not looking for a new car at the moment.)
(Knowing nothing at all about such things, I was expecting the cost to be about half of what a base-model, economy car would cost - at the most).
It would actually be cheaper to trade the piano in and purchase a new one. EVEN WITH the cost of the piano movers bringing it from the factory to my place.
Every fiber in my being (except for perhaps the more rational parts of my brain) resists that. I want THE piano. I want the one my granddad got in place of payment from Steinway because they had no cash, it being the Depression. I want the piano that sat in my grandparents' house for years. I want the piano that my brother and I first tried to learn on.
But yes...the more rational parts of my brain. The upsides to a newer piano are that it will have a better tone (per the piano expert), it will stay in tune better (a real consideration, I suspect, in my part of the world, where getting ANY kind of workman out is like pulling the teeth out of a hen).
I tend to imbue things with more significance than I should. I recognize that. And that's why I want THE piano, not A piano.
I don't know. I do have a while to contemplate it. My father says he's happy to do it - or even to give me part of the money that a new piano would cost, if I want to forget the idea of a piano at all.
And this isn't a good week to hit me with this. I'm already overwhelmed. And I ask myself: Can I actually devote myself to working with the piano enough to get good, I mean good enough to justify the cost of it? How can I find an hour a day to practice when some days I have barely an hour to myself? How can I find an hour a day to practice if I may be having, sometime soon, to up my workouts to an hour-and-a-half (if the rumored Wellness Plan comes into being and the main component of Wellness turns out to be "get your BMI below this level by any means possible"). When do I find an hour a day when I'm already trying to do more research, so I will actually maybe make Full Professor someday?
Like I said: kind of overwhelmed.
(Oh. I had a dream the other night where I had been promoted to Department Chair. I was aghast upon finding it out, but my only consolation was "Well, at least they can't deny me Full Professor now with all the extra stuff I'm doing." Sigh. Promotion stress starts early for me.)
So I don't know. I still cherish the dream of being able to sit down and play a Bach partita to soothe myself at the end of the day. (Or, heck, in the middle of the night when I can't sleep. If there's one good thing about living alone it's that you don't have to worry that what you're doing on your insomniacal hours is disturbing the other members of the household).
But realistically, I fear that I am (1) too busy with other things and (2) realistically, too old to get very good at playing - and again I balk at the cost, even though I'm not the one paying it.
I guess it is: I want it. I want it very deeply. Being able to play an instrument for my own enjoyment and perhaps the occasional enjoyment of friends is something I've wanted for a long time. But I'm not sure I should have it. Because I'm not sure I'm worthy of it, in terms of being able to devote the time to it.
I mean: those little wooden recorders like we all played in 5th grade music are really cheap, comparatively, and they make music that is arguably just as good.
I know one thing: I could not give up knitting in return for finding time to practice the piano. Or any of the other hand crafts. So I don't know.
What I really need is a Time Turner. Or to be able to survive on 4 hours of sleep a night on a regular basis.
4 comments:
Since you have the time, I'd put it off until other things calm down.
When other things have done that, think about why you want the piano. If it's for the connection and the sense of continuity, would you get that from the music alone, or is THE piano important? If you can't practice an hour a day, will you still get enough enjoyment from noodling around to make it worth your while, or will it change into something that you have to do and that makes you feel worse instead of better? Do those musical differences between THE piano and a hypothetical piano end up
being something that would make a difference to your enjoyment, or to a hypothetical concert tour?
(Also, I think a piano sounds a lot nicer than a recorder.)
I second Lydia's advice to put off the decision until things calm down. Regarding get good at the piano, you don't have a time table for that do you? If you're going to play mostly for your own enjoyment, you'll find time to practice as much as you're comfortable fitting into your life. There's nothing that says you have to do an hour a day every day. Ten minutes here and ten minutes there can add up to serious practice if those ten minutes for focused. Re you're being too old ... everytime I hear someone say that I'm reminded of my Aunt Alice who didn't start to learn to play the piano until she retired. She never got good enough to give a concert but she got good enough to play for her own enjoyment ... and she was very hard of hearing so couldn't hear the music she was making. It was a mystery to me how she knew when she made mistakes.
Lydia makes good points, and I agree with her, especially about waiting to make a decision until things are a bit calmer.
Decide what kind of sound YOU prefer from a piano. Some pianos have crisp sounds, others warm sounds. Warm is my preference, just as I prefer older tube-type stereos, records (not CDs) and such.
My parents shipped my piano (it was bought for me when I started taking lessons) to my sister, because she's a professional opera singer and she wanted it. I was crushed, and then she sold it!
Today, however, I took delivery on my 2nd piano - a spinet with warm sound - and I'm very happy. (The other piano is an antique player piano, which needs lots of work.) Do I play an hour a day? Nope.
Do I play an hour a week? Maybe.
Do I play whenever I want to? Yep.
Am I any good? Not nearly as good as 10 years of lessons would suggest.
Is it worth it to me to have a piano? As the ads say, PRICELESS.
Sometimes, the fact that a particular possession just makes you really happy is a good reason to own it, all by itself, regardless of whether you use it the way it is "supposed" to be used or not. My brother wants to own our grandfather's grandfather clock someday -- which also will have to be shipped halfway across the country, and it's currently not in working condition. But y'know? If he can afford it, it will make him really happy to have it.
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