Largo

I got a little lost today with addictive kindle bubble popping games and later decided I should practice piano in order to try to repair any damage I may have caused my soul. Hehe!

 

Growing up, I practiced on the very same ancient Baldwin that now sits in my home. From the time I was eight years old until graduation, I played it for hours almost every afternoon in my grandparent's dining room at the farm.

 

My grandparents had a range of attentiveness. They sometimes sat in the dining room with me and listened with closed eyes (my music-loving grandfather's favorite was Offenbach's "Barcarolle" and my grandmother loved Grieg or anything that "sounded like waterfalls"). Other times they cranked up the volume on Jeopardy or Days of Our Lives (usually when I was very emotionally connected to something and thought they were sharing a moment).

 

Today I remembered how frustrated I occasionally got when assigned a piece that I either found boring, that included a key that was dead on the old piano, or had some tricky embellishment that drove me insane. Handel's "Largo" from the opera Xerxes was one of the pieces that bored me to tears in my youth (listen to the symphonic version here).

 

Today however, it triggered tears for a different reason. The massive chords caused me to miss my beautiful grandparents with an abyssal depth, recall the pristine solemnity of the passing of time and rejoice in the restorative reflection that music can trigger.