Tuning Up

I brushed the red stage curtain aside. Five hundred people--students, teachers, grandparents--chattered an overture to the main performance. For three May instrumental concerts, I had been among the same crowd, tapping my braced teeth as I wondered which of the eighth-grade musicians in orchestra had earned the right to play a trio or quartet for the whole school. My wrist trembled as I glanced at Sarah and Ghazal's violins. Now it was our turn.

"I wonder if we'll ever get to do this again," Ghazal said.

"Yeah," Sarah echoed. "The high schoolers will be so much better than us." Ghazal agreed as she massaged her horsehair bow with rosin. As a piano accompanist, I had no such preparations for my instrument. Through accompaniment, however, I had learned to detect the moods and feelings of other musicians--and to complement them. Our first and last major middle-school performance would be over in less than ten minutes. The stage lights brightened.

I asked where our conductor was. Ghazal hadn't seen him.

"But he'll be here soon. Mr. Bradley's never late." Her bow signaled to Sarah. The pitch pipe hummed a quiet A.

As I listened for Mr. Bradley's quick footsteps, it occurred to me that Sarah and Ghazal's work on "Polka" was an accomplishment, the culmination of years of notable progress. In my case, however, our conductor had surely thought any success would be a miracle, a fluke. I'd struggled all the way through his middle school orchestra, hadn't even learned to sight-read or play scales. Though I could play "Polka" with more certainty and confidence than the elementary favorite "Chopsticks," as a musician I still felt inept, almost unworthy of going on stage that afternoon. Had my partners and I been instruments, one might say I'd felt out of tune since fifth grade.

Like a piece of music, each story involves another. In music a long excursion after the opening gives the audience insight into the original theme before repeating and resolving the introductory ideas. Without this excursive middle section, the audience cannot fully appreciate the finale. An ending obtains meaning from the journey taken to reach it, and often the journey begins well before the apparent start. My story is no different.

When I remember backstage at the eighth-grade performance, I remember remembering the day I joined orchestra, the day my career as the out-of-tune piano player began. It was the third day of fifth grade--the beginning of junior high at Friends' Central School. After my homeroom teacher's lecture on middle school musical opportunities, I ran to Shallcross Hall in search of something worthwhile to do with my solo piano training. I slid down the hallway in fresh Keds and tripped through a door. Wall-to-wall chalkboard. A Steinway piano stood in front of reverent orange chairs. Above, posters of Beethoven and Mozart. Leaflets and booklets--"The Blue Danube," "Claire de Lune," "Chopin Favorites," to name a few--covered the floor around the conductor's stand. At the corner desk, a man scribbled, his hand behaving like the needle of a seismograph. I stepped forward.

"Um, hi."

The man looked up, his dark glasses reflecting the artificial light. Beneath the spectacles, large, profound eyes refused to welcome me, yet curiosity prevented outright dismissal. His skin was caramel frappuccino. "Yes?"

The ceiling fan hummed. I could faintly smell the trees through the open window. Grinding my molars, I told him I wanted to join the orchestra.

"Really." His lips formed a smile of irony. "What is your name." His soft queries were always statements. In the presence of authority, my truths became questions.

"Elizabeth Landau?" He had me spell it out, scrawling it on one notepad among 30 spread out on the desk. I repeated my grade and homeroom number for the record.

"Very good." He lifted himself gracefully, a full 5'10", and began to pace the carpet. "Tell me, Elizabeth, what do you play."

"Piano?"

"Piano. Piano players are very useful." He laughed at the floor. The cryptic statement haunted me for years.

I learned his name was Carl Bradley, that he'd grown up in Tennessee, that he'd studied at a music conservatory, that he was a real-life prodigy. In charge of all performing groups and instrumental lessons, he had the highest expectations for each of his students, regardless of ability or training. Upperclassmen praised him for his kindness, his genius, his capacity to mold the village idiot into the star of the show. But it took dedication, skill, determination. Work with him, and you too can be a musician. The older students' eyes glimmered with fondness as they spoke of their conductor, then peered at me as if to say Even you can improve, little girl. I listened, but didn't appreciate. I had my own piano teacher, thank you very much.

At the first full orchestra rehearsal, I understood that there were no auditions, no cuts, no trial periods. By giving Mr. Bradley my name and claiming the piano bench, I had signed an unconditional contract to play whatever piece of music greeted me. As my conductor passed out the scores, it struck me that each instrument's part was different; sometimes the flutes rested during the violins' pizzicato, sometimes the trumpets tooted the melody and other times the harmony. Only Mr. Bradley's score had every instrument's part on one page. How would everyone start and stop together? What did menno mozzo mean? I looked at my own four-page score. "Emperor's Waltz" by Johann Strauss. Each measure looked the same: left-hand chord, right-hand chord, right-hand chord, repeat with different notes. It looked so simple. After two minutes, though, my hand still couldn't find the correct positioning for the opening measure.

I hadn't realized before beginning orchestra that playing music with others is entirely different from playing alone. Ensembles have a language of their own. Rhythm, timbre, rest, repeat--misinterpret any of these and the conductor silences the entire room. Sometimes he'd simply ask to repeat a section for the trumpets' benefit or hear just the flutes to correct their intonation. In my case, however, I had no partners of the same instrument--any mistake I made would be my fault alone. A piano is the backbone of a piece of music, particularly with a waltz, in which perfectly syncopated chords keep the other musical ideas together. When the pianist goes wrong, it's the end of the world. After three catastrophic attempts to sight-read, I resorted to fingering the air as the music waltzed on without me.

When Mr. Bradley announced that "Simple Gifts" was our second piece for the fall repertoire, I exhaled relief. Everyone and her cat knew "Simple Gifts" from chorus or kids' sing-along tapes. I smiled eagerly as a tall eighth grader passed me my score. Bass Drum. The boy explained that, as the second piano player, I had to act as percussionist while he, Benjamin Fogel the Great, took a turn on my instrument. Ben stooped down to let me see that the notes on his score strayed miles from simplicity, but I still envied him for getting to play a familiar tune. I had no idea how my piano part in "Emperor's Waltz" was supposed to sound. I pictured powdered women in full skirts gliding across the music room, rose and jasmine delighting their wigged partners. What did enchantment sound like? I strained to memorize the orchestra's interpretation during the first few rehearsals, but nothing translated into the piano chords Strauss prescribed. Each note I played decapitated the flutes' undulations, the trumpets' calls, the violins' carousel melody. My hands drew back. I cringed and for three weeks waited to get caught.

As much as I dreaded the music room each Monday and Thursday, I always arrived before anyone else. I used orchestra as an excuse to get out of health class. My friend Ariana came with me when she could, but usually she was too involved with the question-and-answer session to notice my departure. I walked alone across the playground, down the ramp, up the stairs, down the long, long hallway. My feet dragged, but never slowly enough.

"Hello," Mr. Bradley murmured when I entered. I used my books as a chest compressor, sustaining some life force in anticipation of interrogation. The hard questions never came. "How are you doing?"

"Fine," I said. He pushed the violin stands in a semicircle formation in front of the piano. I didn't offer to help. He didn't ask.

"How are your studies coming along?" A test, always a test. I struggled with math tests and vocabulary lists, but verbal confrontation felt like a greater torture.

"Fine. They're fine." I added that I was a bit overloaded, though I tried my hardest. I did.

"That's good." The chairs rustled against the carpet. Eleven forteen. Everything in place. Except me. All ready to go. Except me.

Jenny always barged in at the right time. With arm muscles built to lug a French horn and mouth muscles to play it, she greeted Mr. Bradley as her best friend, telling him about the concert she went to, the audition she tried for, the classical CD she bought. I breathed relief and envy. How did she do it? How did she know the right chords to play, the right performances to attend, the right tapes to listen to? I bit my lip and waited for her to tune up.

The baby grand piano held 88 black and white keys, each with a certain stickiness or flimsiness from wear. The piano and I developed a friendship in the first five minutes. Each musician, whether brass or string, took a turn asking me to play an A. I liked their dependence upon me for tuning purposes. The success of each timbre measured itself against one note from my instrument. I smiled each time, loving my importance. The rapping of the conducting stick frightened my confidence away.

As I waited out the eight-beat rest in "Emperor's Waltz," I observed that every sneaker in the class seemed wired to tap along with the movement of our conductor's massive, leathery hand. My penny-loafer imitated. One two three, one--three--no, no. Try again. My fingers prepared to begin the middle section after Andrew's trumpet called once, twice, and then--

"Miss Landau!" Mr. Bradley's voice ripped through the music with the sound of my name. All instruments down. All eyes on me.

"Yes?"

"You are playing in your own world here! Please try to keep up!" Someone coughed. My blood fought to pump.

"I guess I haven't been practicing enough."

Plato once said that music is a moral law. Mr. Bradley seemed to take this as dogma, staring at me as though I'd violated an ethical code. Pacing, gesturing, he used my mistakes to preach about the importance of rehearsal, of practice, of music. The piano bench became a scaffold, displaying me as the deviant of Mr. Bradley's puritanical orchestra society. Behold, the one who cannot fulfill her role. She doesn't practice, doesn't listen. She plays selfishly, without regard for anyone else, as though she is the only one in the room making music. Look, and never emulate. "Do you understand?"

I nodded. I understood. The deviant needed exile.

I started cutting orchestra once a week to avoid confrontation. Ariana and Jenny told me which days our conductor worked on "Simple Gifts," and I arrived late each time. I stood in the back for this song, hitting the bass drum every once in a while. Black circles and lines meant nothing to me. A climax was a climax, an ending was an ending, a drum roll was a drum roll. When I spilled orange soda on the score, I didn't know that music belonged to the school. School property was school property. Mr. Bradley considered this a greater insult than my piano playing, but didn't take the time to make an example of me. No one else could be that stupid.

Taking pains to protect my tattered music from further damage, I rushed out of rehearsal and through the lunch line with Ariana. A burnt chickwich bounced on my tray as I told her about my fears of orchestra. My cellist friend confessed that she rarely ever played either. Her convenient location between the tuba and the double bass allowed for quiet mistakes.

"No one ever sees or hears me," she said. I told her I envied her. She wasn't expected to support "Emperor's Waltz" alone. She could sit in peace, enjoy the music.

"I feel sick the whole time," I said. "Even when I'm at the drum, when I can't mess anything up. I felt like fainting today. Maybe I'm just hungry."

"Or empty."

I asked her what she meant.

"Didn't you ever just feel empty? Like there was something missing in you?" I wasn't sure. I felt empty when my grandparents visited the week before, always eager to hear me play the piano, and for the first time I was too embarrassed to play anything. I felt like there was something missing when I heard recordings of Bach and Chopin, knowing I could spend the rest of my own life tripping over one waltz. I felt incomplete when I thought of the upcoming winter concert at which I would sit and bang the bass drum twice. I knew then that I couldn't stay in orchestra any longer.

I walked into Mr. Bradley's office with more confidence than any middle schooler dreams of possessing. I didn't have to be ashamed. I was a bad piano player. Perhaps I could now take up dance, acting, drawing, some other form of expression to attempt to capture the same emotional drive embodied in playing music. I had a future, and it was all my own.

"Hello," my conductor said. I didn't give in to small talk. I had a purpose.

"I can't really play this piece. I think I should quit." The last sentence left my mouth in a whisper. I waited for confirmation.

"Quit? You think you should quit? I don't want you to quit. Do you want to quit?"

Sometimes we decide things without really knowing why--pride, self-hatred, and a perverse sense of obligation were all possibilities when I said, "No." Perhaps, though, it was simply the Aaron Copland quotation Mr. Bradley had recently thrown at me that echoed in my head: "This whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer to that would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would be, 'No.'"

I, too, felt a meaning in orchestra music without a real explanation, and the unexplainable lure kept me practicing for hours. My whole problem was that I couldn't hear how my piano part fit with the other instruments. Once I mastered the notes, the challenge of working with a room full of musicians--slowing down with them, crescendoing with them, playing staccatos in between them--still eluded me. Many times I wanted to go back to Mr. Bradley's office and say, "Yes! Yes, I want to quit, because I do play in my own world and I'm not getting any better at whatever I'm supposed to do. Good-bye." Instead, I slapped my forehead and wallowed in lonely frustration until I worked up the nerve to ask for help.

Mr. Bradley worked with me without judgment or urgency, in an air of naturally prodding indifference. A concert always seemed to be coming up, and with his guidance I forgot my failures and started listening to the music. By attending closely to each tuba bellow and clarinet hum, I felt my piano filling harmonic gaps, complementing the melody to form something sublime. My part in "Emperor's Waltz" constituted the mmm bop bop, mmm bop bop that moved the waltzing couples' feet in perfect synchronization. Years later, I would look back on this piece and subsequent scores and laugh at their simplicity, wondering if the difficulty came with learning how to sight-read or to be part of something larger than myself.

March of eighth grade arrived. Spring break waited around the corner. My violinist friends Sarah and Ghazal effervesced with six-page scores and the news that they would get to play a real chamber piece, a trio for the upcoming concert in May. Did I want to accompany them on the piano?

The idea seemed ludicrous. By eighth grade, I was both the oldest and most incompetent piano player in the middle school orchestra. Though I hadn't struggled recently with snippets of "Carmen" and "Dance of the Slave Maidens," I knew Mr. Bradley chose my piano parts deliberately for their brevity and clarity. Nonetheless, Sarah and Ghazal approached me with the biggest chance of my pathetic career. The girls nagged while I weighed the endless practice hours against the possible proof of my musical ability. Maybe I wasn't really a failure as a piano player. Without voicing my thoughts, I accepted the part.

"Are you sure you want to play this?" Mr. Bradley asked me. He gave me a chance to look over the score for Shostakovich's "Polka" for a few nights, and asked me again. I nodded twice. Despite the array of notes and chords, there was a definite rhythm to this piece as there had been in "Emperor's Waltz" so long before. I could rehearse with Sarah and Ghazal as often as I needed--and I did, for hours. My hands learned to propel themselves from major to minor, slow to fast, soft to loud--always in conjunction with my partners. When I stumbled and strained, Sarah entertained us with gossip about boys we nicknamed Contacts and Old Shoe. Ah, F-sharp! Sarah's giggle replaced Mr. Bradley's conducting stick. We polkaed all through April.

Footsteps pulled me out of my memories. I was still backstage at the eighth grade concert, waiting to greet the school with the polka trio. Ghazal and Sarah squealed and huddled with me behind the curtain as our conductor wished us luck. I knew we would have made Shostakovich proud. Mr. Bradley was another matter.

"Good afternoon," our conductor's voice boomed across the auditorium. "We have a special performance for you this afternoon." He proceeded to praise Ghazal for her outstanding performance as the orchestra's concert mistress the week before, describing her progress that year. I grinned at her gleaming black hair. From attending previous concerts, I knew this was not the first time Ghazal's name had been announced so favorably; from working with her on the trio, I knew she deserved it once again.

Mr. Bradley paused, then switched the subject of his introduction to Sarah. I saw my friend's face illuminated beyond the fluorescent lights and felt as much admiration for her as for Ghazal. This was Sarah's first moment of glory. She would remember it for the rest of her life: the day she rose from just another violinist to a musician recognized by the one who holds the key to perfection. I turned my eyes back to Mr. Bradley. Let us play now, before it becomes obvious that the third member of the trio is unmentionable.

"But it takes great dedication to accompany someone." I shuffled my sheet music impatiently. My conductor was a fan of anecdotes from past years. He started describing some student of his who had grown up in orchestra, using phrases like "hard work" and "great sensitivity." I reached for every word. Here was the musician I would never be. "The person I am referring to is Elizabeth Landau."

I didn't understand. As Sarah and Ghazal pushed past me to take their positions on stage, I still didn't understand. When Mr. Bradley motioned me to come to the piano bench, I remained stationary, suffocating in a state of bewilderment. He didn't mean a word he said. He couldn't have. He hated me. He had to. Years later, I would call him my piano teacher. When my world seemed to operate like Escher's "Relativity"--a place of faceless beings trapped in sideways descent or earthwards ascent--I would call him my friend. Beyond piano skills, I have learned from his instrumental ensembles that working with others can produce something beautiful, beyond the capabilities of any individual, if the constituents of the group are willing to help and listen to each other. Perhaps some stubbornness, some resistance prevented me from appreciating this change in myself over four years of middle school. As I stood backstage clutching "Polka" in my left hand, this resistance evaporated suddenly. How could I suddenly accept that I had changed without understanding when, how, or why?

The applause folded. I stepped into the lights, where 88 black and white keys greeted a pianist at last.