Piano is the shorter term used commonly for the pianoforte, which means “soft and loud (in Italian). Here are some novels/literature that has the keyboard instrument at the core of the theme.
Ashes to Light: A Holocaust Childhood to a Life in Music
International concert pianist Nelly Ben-Or released her autobiography ‘Ashes to Light,’ a story of self-sacrifice and dedication towards piano. Nelly Ben-Or is a big proponent of the Alexander technique and has adapted it for posture and movement improvement for musicians. Throughout the 180-page book, the piano makes repeated appearances.
Born into a Jewish family in Lvov, Poland, Nelly Ben-Or miraculosuly survived the holocaust. Miraculously, her musical talent also survived those Holocaust years. After the war, Nelly’s musical talent flourished. At first in Poland, where she was awarded a special Chopin Scholarship and given a piano by the Polish government.
When the Nazis were hunting and executing people on the streets just below her home, Ben-Or was playing music on a grand piano that brought her brief hope of normalcy.
Later, she moved to Israel to complete her musical studies as a scholarship student at the Music Academy in Jerusalem. She won first prize in a national Mozart competition, performed throughout Israel. Later she moved to England and embarked on a career as a concert pianist.
In England she also came into contact with the Alexander Technique for piano playing, which had a profound influence on her approach.
[easyazon_link identifier=”B079K424K2″ locale=”US” tag=”keytarhq04-20″ cart=”n”]Ashes to Light: A Holocaust Childhood to a Life in Music — on Amazon[/easyazon_link]
Today Nelly Ben-Or is internationally regarded as the leading exponent of the application of principles of the Alexander Technique to piano playing. She teaches in the keyboard department of London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama, runs Alexander Technique masterclasses and regularly gives talks about her Holocaust experience.
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“The Weight of a Piano” by Chris Cander
Katya falls in love with the Blüthner piano bequeathed to her family by a neighbor who lives in their Cold War-era apartment building in Zagorsk, Russia. That Katya’s piano will one day find its way to Clara’s shabby Bakersfield, Calif., apartment in the 21st century makes for an intriguing, serendipitous story. The tale is largely about the literal and metaphoric weight that certain objects can possess. Read more.
Emma by Jane Austen
It bruises Emma that Jane Fairfax is so very good at playing the piano (if only she had practised a little more). Jane’s prowess at the keyboard becomes central to the plot. Who could be the donor of the expensive instrument that is delivered to Miss Bates’s house, where Jane is staying? It must surely be a male admirer. Well, yes, but Emma’s deductions lead her very astray.
Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
Amelia and Becky – the good girl and the bad girl – both play the piano, but look at their different styles! After her husband’s death, Amelia “spends long evening hours, touching . . . melancholy harmonies on the keys, and weeping over them in silence”. Becky, meanwhile, entrances the wife of the man she is seducing with the bogus “tenderness” of her renditions of Mozart.
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë
Jane can play the piano, of course – but Blanche Ingram, her rival for the attentions of Mr Rochester, can really play. She sits proudly at the piano, “spreading out her snowy robes in queenly amplitude” and beginning “a brilliant prelude; talking meantime”. But this is showing off, and dooms her.
Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
The scary German piano maestro Herr Klesmer (based on Franz Liszt) has “an imperious magic in his fingers that seemed to send a nerve-thrill through ivory key and wooden hammer”. His romance with heiress Catherine Arrowpoint is conducted via the instrument, which he teaches her to play brilliantly.
The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James
Entering the huge drawing room at Gardencourt unseen, Isabel Archer finds an elegant woman at the piano. “She was playing something of Schubert’s . . . and she touched the piano with a discretion of her own. It showed skill, it showed feeling”. It is the mysterious Madame Merle, her gifts as a pianist a sign of her sexual powers.
The Awakening by Kate Chopin
The piano awakens Edna Pontellier’s dormant passions. “The very passions themselves were aroused within her soul, swaying it, lashing it, as the waves daily beat upon her splendid body. She trembled, she was choking, and the tears blinded her.” Adulterous love is only a step away.
“Piano” by DH Lawrence
A woman sings at the piano, and the poet is carried back to his childhood, when he sat “under the piano, in the boom of the tingling strings / And pressing the small, poised feet of a mother who smiles as she sings”. The music reduces him to tears for the past.
The Piano Players by Anthony Burgess
An accomplished musician himself, Burgess fills this novel with piano music. Ellen Henshaw, an elderly former prostitute, looks back on her own efforts to learn the instrument. Her father, a brilliant player, improvised accompaniments to silent films at the cinema. The disastrous climax of his career is a 30-day non-stop piano marathon.
The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek
Erika is a middle-aged piano teacher at a Vienna conservatory. She still lives with her mother, who wanted Erika to be a concert pianist and forced her to practise. The piano inevitably becomes the focus of Erika’s sadomasochistic affair with a teenage student, to whom she gives some very steamy lessons.
The Bradshaw Variations by Rachel Cusk
Thomas has become a househusband and, when his wife goes off to run some university department or other, he fulfils a long-held ambition: to become really good at the piano. Pausing from practice to do the odd school run, he escapes from the turmoil of mid-life dread into the harmonies of the keyboard. Except, of course, that it will prove to be no escape at all .
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens, one of the most famous Victorian authors, wrote several novels, including Oliver Twist, Great Expectations and A Christmas Carol (published in 1843). A Christmas Carol sold 6,000 copies in its first week in print and 15,000 in its first year.
A Christmas Carol is one of the more popular books by Charles Dickens, in fact its ‘A Christmas Carol to treasure for many more Christmases to come’. This classic book also makes for a great bonding time with children (Charles Dickens stories are best enjoyed when read aloud), and makes you anticipate Christmas even more.
A Christmas Carol is among the most popular books ever written and never went out of print, it has also been adapted many times to film, stage, opera, and other media.
One of the best-loved (and best-selling) tales in the history of English literature was, for its author, a grave financial disappointment. One of the reasons Dickens wrote the book was because he had a more immediate need: cash. But due to the book’s lavish bindings (he wanted the book to look like a gift) and the relatively low price he chose to sell it for, much of that money didn’t make it back to the author, who was hoping to make at least £1000 from the book.
Watch: A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens (Rare BBC version)
What’s the story about?
The book tells the story of a bitter old miser named Ebenezer Scrooge and his transformation into a gentler, kindlier man after visitations by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.
You will love this book, its a classic tale that never gets old, and reminds the reader of the importance of having compassion for our fellow-men.
Whether you read it aloud with your family and friends or open the pages on a chill winter evening to savor the story in solitude, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is indeed a very special holiday experience.
Source: theguardian.com
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