BEETHOVEN IN THE PINES
In our cabin in the woods, a 100 year-old Steinway piano resides. My mother, the best teacher I knew, taught lessons on it for over a half-century. Now my wife, Kathy Ann, the best teacher I know, teaches lessons on it. From my book, ‘A Wild Path’, this is the story of that piano, of the people who love it, and of those who love them…
I took a break from the windfall I had been clearing for an hour. It was tiring, noisy, backbreaking work—lifting, carrying, and stacking heavy logs and running the chainsaw—and I still had many more limbs and trees to clear, the residue of a fierce summer storm.
Pulling off gloves and sound-proof earmuffs, I found a stump to sit on—an old mossy favorite I had met long ago and named Dr. Woodrow F. Stump. (The ‘F’ stands for Forrest). Dr. Stump, I had learned, was something of a woodland psychologist, blessed with a special knack for listening, for putting things into perspective, for calming a restless mind and making life seem a little more manageable—like any good mental health professional. But on this day I didn’t really need any counseling or advice. I just needed a stump to sit on. That, and a pause from wrestling fifty-pound logs and manhandling a whining, growling, smoking chainsaw.
Sitting there with Dr. Stump, my ears grew accustomed once more to the gentle music of the forest. A soft, autumn breeze played its tune high among the pines. A pileated woodpecker laughed uproariously at some private joke from somewhere deep in the woods. A jay shouted its name. A red squirrel scolded. In the interludes, all was quiet.
Almost. Gradually, so gradually I barely noticed it at first, I became aware of another tune, another sort of music. It lilted and drifted lyrically among the pines, almost disappearing at times, at others becoming clear enough that I could almost make out the notes, the rhythm, the harmonies. The music seemed familiar. Straining to hear, I finally recognized the tune—Beethoven’s “Fur Elise.”
Beethoven in the pines. Not a bad sound. In fact, a lovely sound—perhaps much the way old Uncle Ludvig, who loved pastoral settings, had meant Fur Elise to be heard, some 220 years earlier, when today’s big pines were small seedlings. In the gloom of the forest, among the boles of the old trees, the music seemed fitting and appropriate. It was not being played perfectly—there was a small stumble every now and then, a moment’s pause to find the right note, then the melody would continue. Clearly, the music was being played by a student—a student, I knew, who was playing a Steinway, in a log cabin, for a piano lesson.
Music has been a part of my family’s life for as long as I have been around, and long before that. The two are inseparable, in fact. Music. Life. The two so intertwined it was hard to imagine one without the other. I’m sure that some of the earliest sounds I heard—after I was born and maybe even before—were melodies and chords and harmonies.
With two musicians for parents—Dad was a composer, teacher, and choir director; Mother a pianist, accompanist, and piano instructor—music was in the air my brothers, Bruce and Tom and I breathed. Coming home from school in the afternoon, the wafting sound of Mozart or Bach on the piano was the greeting as we walked in the back door, grabbed a chocolate chip cookie, and headed out to play football. Or if the weather was bad, sat down to read a book or to watch afternoon cartoons. Piano lessons were being taught, and the cartoons had better not get too loud. Scuffling and rough-housing in the house? Not a chance.
In the evenings, we boys had our own piano practice to do, at least as important as homework—probably more so. And often later in the evening we heard from downstairs the rich tones of Dad’s baritone voice as he practiced for a concert or a recital, accompanied by Mother. The instrument yielding all of this practicing and teaching and accompanying was a classic, 1921 Steinway, my mother’s pride and joy. With a shimmering ebony sheen, punctuated by shining black and white keys, it was a presence as real and constant and as much a part of the family as brothers or pets, and certainly not a mere piece of furniture.
When I went off to college to study—music, of course—I fell in love with—who else—another music student. A talented pianist and singer named Kathy. The prettiest girl in the music department. Smart, too. Too smart to be interested in me. But I persisted for four years and eventually wore her down.
After marriage and purchasing a tiny house of our own, Kathy began teaching piano lessons on a small, upright Sohmer—a college graduation gift from her parents—building a large and enthusiastic studio of dozens of students in little Cherokee, Iowa. In a few years we moved to Minnesota—first to Morris, out on the western prairie, then to the St. Cloud area—where again she built up large classes of students. Eventually Kathy changed tracks to teach public school music and did so for about 35 years, while also singing and performing in countless community choirs and plays and musicals. And all this time my mother kept on teaching as well, ceaselessly, racking up what I still assume to be an uncontested world record of 73 consecutive years of piano lessons. If anyone keeps records of such things.
A few years ago, Mother—with an aching back and arthritic fingers—reluctantly accepted early retirement at age 89. She moved to a nearby senior home where she faithfully cheered on the Minnesota Twins. Kathy retired from her school teaching at roughly the same time. And as we took on the job of clearing Mother’s house and helping her to move, the old Steinway—refurbished and refinished and still a gorgeous old dame—called to Kathy. In truth it had been calling for many years. And it had always been Mother’s wish that Kathy would have it. So, after working out the financial arrangements, that is exactly what happened.
The upshot is that our small cabin in the woods is now made significantly smaller by the presence of a shimmering, black, grand piano in the cabin’s Great Room. There, it is the centerpiece of a going enterprise called the “Log Cabin Piano Studio”—modestly but appropriately designated by an artistic hand-lettered sign nailed onto a pine tree at the end of our long, winding lane. And by a swirling treble clef on the cabin door. The Studio is now the site of a lively class of students, all learning scales, triads, theory, Bach and Mozart. And Beethoven. Taught by Kathy, of course.
After decades of study, teaching, and performance, the teaching comes easily, from a vast well of knowledge. And “going to work” no longer involves donning coat and hat and boots and starting a cold car in the dead of winter and dealing with principals and superintendents; but simply greeting a bright young face at the door with a warm smile and saying, “How are you, and how was school today?” Followed by a few short steps to the piano bench. Sometimes, for a special “recital day,” or when the lane becomes a muddy mess or the stone sidewalk to the front door becomes a lake, the caretaker and forester of the estate (me) lends a hand as shuttle-driver or wetland-manager, so that footsteps to the door are not too much of an adventure.
The Steinway itself doesn’t seem to have lost any steps over the years. If anything, it sounds better than ever. A log cabin with aged wooden walls, a stone fireplace and a high ceiling is, evidently, an excellent acoustic environment. The kids love the big sound. Our cats, Simon and Koda, don’t seem to mind the activity—in fact, they appreciate all the extra attention. And despite the occasional cock of an ear, or the twitching of a tail, they are fairly easygoing music critics. Moms and dads often stay for the lessons—they, too, like listening to music in a log cabin, so they say. And in the warm months, parents and grandparents sometimes migrate outdoors onto the deck, to watch the Father of Waters (Mississippi River) flow by under the tall pines, to listen to cardinals and chickadees and the music of the woods. They often mention how peaceful it all feels, a small break from the daily rat race.
Mother has passed away now. But we feel her presence and influence every single day. I know Kathy hears it in every note and feels it as she sits with her students at the same keyboard where my mother taught for so many decades.
And I, the forester, in my office adjacent to the Studio, working on a new book perhaps, am sometimes transported in time to long ago days when the same old piano sang from a house on the Iowa prairie. It was a part of the family then. It still is. And the sounds of Bach and Mozart, or ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,’ are a fine and fitting accompaniment to the typing of words on a page.
Sometimes I take my life into my hands and risk a stern look from the Teacher by poking my head in the door and offering an unsolicited comment: “That sounds really good! What piece is that?” Sometimes I quietly mosey through the Log Cabin Studio on my way to the kitchen for a chocolate chip cookie. Just like 50 years ago. And sometimes I just slip outside and sit under an old pine with my friend, Dr. Stump, the two of us listening to the pleasant wafting of piano music from a cabin in the woods. Listening to the strains of Beethoven.
The echoes—from cabin walls, from pine trunks, from Iowa, from long ago—are beautiful.