This is the first installment of a series I intend to write weekly introducing selected works of great music. As many of you know, my wife and I have been piano teachers for decades and we live and breathe music. Not all of you will agree with each of my choices of music but I hope everyone takes away a little something positive from the posts. While my music choices will be heavily weighted by classical music, other genres of music will also appear.
I have chosen to start this series with one of the most famous pieces of music ever written – Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. This single piece of music has had an astounding impact on my life. As a child I had weekly piano lessons from the time I was 7 until age 18. I was a terrible piano student – full of sass and disrespect with my piano teacher, Joan Elander. I thought piano was a girl thing and felt like I was the only boy in the entire state of Minnesota who HAD to take piano lessons.
One day when I was 14, I walked into Joan Elander’s music room for my lesson and she was at the piano playing the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. I almost fell to my knees, for I had never heard anything in my life that was that beautiful. I begged Joan for the music but she felt I was no where near ready to tackle it. I begged and begged and she finally relented and gave me the music. I took the music home and that week probably practiced it for 60-70 hours. At the next weekly lesson, I played it for Joan and we both ended up in tears over it’s beauty. From that day on, I changed into a dedicated piano student.
Fast forward a decade to the time I was working for Prudential in their Minneapolis Regional Home Office. I wanted a date with probably the most popular woman among the 1500 employees in the building. I did a little research and found out she was a recent music major graduate of the local university. Ah ha – that would be my “in” since I was a pianist. To that end, I wrote a piece of music for her called “Rhapsody on a Mood”. I told her about the music and she was intrigued enough to go down to the Prudential auditorium to her a piece of music about her.
As she sat nearby, I poured my heart into the music. It was full of passion and tenderness. When I was through she came over to the piano and proceeded to give me constructive criticism about changed this part of the piece and added a recapitulation of the main theme in this part etc. The advice was accurate but I was devastated since I did not want her advice, I wanted to impress her so she would go out with me.
As she turned to leave, I told her to sit down I had one more piece of music I wanted to play for her. I then played all three movements of the Moonlight Sonata which is about 23 minutes long. With the last chord, I turned to her and said lets go out for dinner after work. She said yes, and that was 50 years ago last month and we have been happily married for 49 years building a wonderful life together.
Without further ado, here is the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata, Beethoven’s love song to the woman he wanted to marry. Next week I will introduce you to all three movements of the Moonlight Sonata and explain how each fit’s into Beethoven’s love life.