A sweet memory

Beautiful hands, meant for the piano! (Pianist unknown)

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Me, age 27, in New York (1973):

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I have been listening to CDs on my stereo. Primarily classical music. It’s a mellow way to pass the time. Listening to beautiful piano music yesterday triggered a sweet memory.

There was an attractive pianist I dated a few times in New York back in the early 1970s. He was a brown haired, brown eyed white dude, about 5’8″ tall, who made his living as a high school math teacher. We struck up a friendly conversation when I was walking on the campus of Columbia University, where I was a graduate student studying music. He invited me to an opera at the Met (Wagner’s “Parsifal”), and I gladly accepted.

After “Parsifal,” he drove me to his cottage in the suburbs. A Yamaha baby grand piano dominated his living room. We didn’t stay there for long. He grabbed some sheet music from his piano and gave it to me. “This is a violin sonata I composed,” he said. Then, he drove me home in the city.

The next day, I looked at his sonata. It was unplayable, as there were a lot of notes way up high on the “E” string. There weren’t any notes on the “G” string. This man just didn’t know the full range of the violin. I had my classmate at Columbia play the piano part. It sounded pretty good. He obviously knew how to compose for the piano.

I was very honored to receive his sonata, but didn’t quite know what to say to him. I think we dated a few more times, and then, he stopped calling, and I never saw him, again. Such a nice man, really.

Beautiful music does trigger sweet memories, doesn’t it?