One thing I loved about my grandmother’s house was the undisputed star of the dining room: an old piano. It was made of the blackest wood, and inside its mouth lay ivory keys and black keys that produced trembling, crooked, weary sounds. If you pressed them too hard, the whole body shivered, and you risked knocking over all the ornaments.
I always felt a certain fondness for that ancient figure, who must have lived a life full of adventures, and it saddened me to think that no one in that house knew how to play it. So when I started middle school, I made up my mind: I would begin piano lessons.
A chord is a group of notes played at the same time. Chords made of three notes are called triads…
The truth is, I never really liked studying music theory, but I couldn’t wait to go back to that old friend and make him smile.
What I did love was giving meaning to all those clefs, quavers, semiquavers, tones and semitones directly with my fingers. I would move from one sound to another, from a note too high to one too low, until I found the right combination — and then the sound would flow, full and precise.
In a novel I once read that pianos go out of tune when they’re not played. Then I checked online and no, that’s not exactly how it works, but that idea struck me deeply — maybe it plucked some hidden string somewhere.
What a story, this thing about pianos and absence… I would think from time to time.
C minor.
Still at thirteen, I met a boy, and whenever I was with him I felt a melody in the air. It was as if the keys, the pedals, the chords were ringing clean and clear, as if there were no doubt, as if it could only be:
C major, A minor, D minor, G7
I had fallen in love. I was swept into a waltz I had never played before… a waltz that felt as though it came from a distant era.
But every song ends in its own way: some fade slowly, others bid you farewell with an insistent refrain, and others still with a firm, decisive chord. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always go that way. Sometimes things get messy, and it’s hard to understand why, but the music no longer fits. It starts to go out of tune.
After middle school, I fell in love again, yes. But each time it felt as though something were missing — I don’t know — an octave maybe, or as if the bass clef had sunk too low or the treble clef had gotten lost in some drawer. Or maybe the middle pedal had jammed and the sound had grown too muffled, or a string had tightened so much it was about to snap. Then one day I would see that face again and…
Do re mi fa…?
And so, over time, I came to understand that pianos can get sick too. Pianos fall out of tune.
What’s left is a muddled noise, and it becomes hard to dance to it.
I discovered that after every song that ends without music, the keyboard risks losing a piece of itself. And at that point you have to hold tight to the keys that remain, even if they keep playing more or less the same tune.
But above all, you have to keep your ears wide open, because music knows how to surprise — oh, it does.
Years later, when I met a friend, I immediately felt she played a minuet all her own, and I could hardly believe it. “Quick! Give me a hand!” I threw myself into her arms, excited. “I need an internal-music doctor, if you know what I mean.”
At my first meeting with the doctor in question, all I managed to pull out of my pockets was a tangle of knotted staves, nothing remarkable. But luckily I had kept my song with me — and she had plenty to tell.
“The strings, the black keys, the white keys, the pedals, the clefs…” she sang to him. And she went on: “Play softly, play loudly, play however you like, but bring all the music back to me.”
And he, who knew how to hear her, replied:
E minor, G major, B minor, D major
D major, F sharp, A major
E major, G sharp, B major
And tears streamed down my face… new notes.
Adriana Ferretti
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