The Literature of the Piano

Three Quarks Daily has an essay about pianos and books about pianos.

From the piece...

“I’d like piano lessons,” said my daughter, and, yes, of course, I said, that would be terrific. She was only six. How could she know that she was giving me permission to relapse into yet another time-wasting obsession, with the possibility of acquiring yet another library on a subject? Now, under cover of being a good parent, I could once again dive into a literature, slip off to internet chat rooms late at night, wander into stores that had been around forever but that I had never had an excuse to explore, and contemplate an expensive purchase. But mainly I like to read about that kind of thing.

“Of course,” I said, benevolently, the noble father. But I was thrilled; such interests had been largely off limits since donning the responsible hoodie of the parent. In earlier years, I had been there with photography, wooden boats, ice hockey, tube amplifiers, all pursuits offering a deep literature, and the chance to spend money. Right away, I knew full well where I was headed: Worst of all are the Internet forums, where I will undoubtedly cruise late at night, recklessly picking up useful-seeming advice from strangers hiding behind screen names. (Why does Dennis care quite so much about the grey market, one must wonder?)

Not all interests spawn literature of equal quality. The literature of the tube amplifier and the literature of hockey are as one in their paucity. Tube amplifiers are lacking an oeuvre, certainly, because, well, they just kind of sit there. The dearth of good hockey writing is a little more mysterious, but it may be a sport that knocks the lyricism out of people.

The piano, like wooden boats, seems to spin off more books than actual piano players, judging by the number of books that I have read on the two subjects and the number of wooden boat owners and accomplished piano players that I have met. For the amount of soaring prose generated, too, these two objects share the Empyrean. When I was obsessively reading about wooden boats, writers were always going on about how they were alive, had molded with the water, what have you. And so with the piano and its ethereal mellifluousness, et cetera.

As far as the number of literate admirers, I can think of no other musical instrument that compares to the piano.

And, for your piano fix, here's Lang Lang playing Chopin's "Nocturne Op. 27 No. 2":