Catching Pigeons

 

—Poetry by Tom Goff, Carmichael, CA

—Artwork Courtesy of Public Domain

 

PIGEON-CATCHING

[Chopin’s] own bearing at the keyboard…
was quiet, almost immobile.
           —Alan Walker, Fryderyk Chopin (2018)


Such “inexplicable dumb-shows and noise,”
Sledge-hammering block chords at the piano.
That gong-bash-and-decay, amid lianas
Of snarling passagework, spells death to poise,
Evokes the screech of spearpoint bronze through shield.
That image suits the iron-framed behemoth
Of our days; but cacophony of such vehemence
Rotates the shuddering torso with drug-swiveled
Instability. Air-flung hands, recoiled
As from a stove’s red coals, which mark the keyboard’s
Conquest by a freebooter—this to-leeward,
To-windward sway of deck, the whirlpool-roiled
Show of elated rage—is “Catching pigeons,”
Remarked Chopin, calm non-shooter of clay pigeons.
This feeling-sensing brother to Shakespeare
Entrusts all sonar transfer to the listener’s ear.

 

 

 

 

CHOPIN’S CELEBRATED PIANO METHOD*
(never completed)

The third finger is a great singer.
    —frequent remark of Chopin to his pupils


Let your hands be flexible; automaton steel
Would better suit Beethoven’s Panharmonicon,†
A mechanized “orchestra’s” blat and bleat, reveal
None of the suppleness daydreams blossom upon.
Czerny wants digit-“democracy,” indexes five
In one coerced finger-equality, musclebound, blatant,
Whereas I honor the differences which thrive
In third, fourth, fifth, and thumb, the colors latent
Which render each “piggy” aristocrat; each must own
Its intrinsic trait. Unite them, they’re zephyrs blown

In sync with sostenuto pedals that blend
Each separate touch’s hue of synesthesia
Into so nuanced a rainbow, each dye lends
Its own distinct stripe, yet mingles in the artesian
Trickle, purl, outflow or onrush of floodwater.
Practice restraint, don’t bang away with indignant
Fist-spraining, wrist-laming, militant finger-slaughter;
Keep limber, flex the hand, ligament by ligament;
Thus third and fourth finger, inseparable, now make
One sibling cooperative. That’s how the snake

Of yawning jaw, hand’s native width, may broaden
To octaves’, to ninths’, to tenths’ elastic span.
The martinet system, fingertips drilled till trodden
To numb insensibility, I ban:
Listen to what your pads, joints, knuckles, wrists
Whisper to your nerve-ends. Like forest birds’
Vocalises you slowly discern through mists,
You’ll heed your two hands and murmur them lyrical words:
The You in the piano awakes, the piano in You.
Let thunderers thunder. We harmonize for the Few.  


*See Alan Walker’s Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times (2018).
†Actually Johann Nepomuk Mälzel’s Panharmonicon, intended for the Beethoven composition, Wellington’s Victory.  

 

 

 

 

CHOPIN IN SCOTLAND, 1848

He had hardly been on Scottish soil for
twenty-four hours, and the first music he heard
was his.
         —Alan Walker, Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times.


Chopin’s crossed the Channel; friend Jane Stirling
And sister Katherine soon throw open Scotland
To his new tour. While kind, they keep him whirling;
With evening at-homes or all-out concerts dot lands
On maps with carriage rides the weakened man
Preserves in letters wry, at times sardonic.
He plays on Broadwoods with reduced élan;
They still yield stained-glass rainbows, polyphonic
Marvels. He stops at a shop in Edinburgh,
The keyboard-marketing premises of Muir Wood.
He’ll find here music knows no bounds of borough,
Town, principality, continent: What could
A novelist contrive to match one whim
Of chance? While Chopin and Muir Wood converse,
An oddly familiar composition brims
From one of the shop’s keyboards. Two hands rehearse
A Polish morceau: yes, a Chopin mazurka!
The sitter at the grand, entirely blind.
Who better than a sightless man to work a
Most resounding proof: that ears may find,
Augmented by the fingertips’ acute tact,
A whole key-itinerary, black and white
Distinguished sharply—because his eyes have lacked
Their birthright, luminous ordinary daylight?
This “Blind Tom” or Art Tatum of Scotland’s touch
Is Chopin’s approach personified—is that not much?

_____________________

Today’s SlightlyLongerNip:

EMERSON
(a paraphrase)

I here, R.W. Emerson, do in print
Come humbly to proclaim great Shakespeare’s praise.
It is for such great men indeed, by dint
Of their stupendous efforts, we must raise
Them statues. But in whose likeness do we lift
This upstood stone man? Who gave these plays, this gift?

The tale’s passed down to us from Stratford hamlet,
Cryptic as verdicts intoned by Egypt’s priests
—Amid aromatic smoke, swung scarab amulets?
Expulsion for believers who dare the least
Dispute? I come to praise him, not to bury.
His work to his life story, I cannot marry.

______________________

—Medusa, with thanks to Tom Goff for today’s charming visit to Chopin, and a fine ending wave to Ralph Waldo Emerson! Here’s a little something by William Blake to celebrate The Year of the Tiger:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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