My dad sold his piano a week or two ago.
It was a seven-foot Mason & Hamlin, made next door in East Rochester, N.Y. And when I was growing up, its voice was almost as familiar in my house as the voices of my family members.
My dad, a semi-pro musician, would keep his chops in shape and wash off some of the mental grunge of corporate life by sitting down at the piano just about every night and playing for 15 or 20 minutes. Often it was stride-style, like Fats Waller; from time to time, if he was preparing for a gig, it might be something more formal.
The piano joined the household either a couple months before I did or a couple months after.
One of my dad’s old college friends has told me a story of coming to visit when I was a toddler, and seeing my dad playing me notes on the piano to try to ascertain whether I had perfect pitch. (Unfortunately, I don’t. Sorry, Dad.)
Now my folks are retired, and shedding possessions, and lightening their load, and thinking about maybe moving to a different house.
Plus, today’s digital keyboards can capably simulate the sounds of everything from a baby grand to a clavinet to a softly plucked jazz guitar. My dad has a good digital keyboard, and it’s less imperative now to have a big piano in the living room than it seemed 40 years ago.
So off it went, a week or two ago, trucked off to a new owner in Buffalo.
I would guesstimate that my dad has lived 60 of his 70 years in a home with an acoustic piano of some sort, with the exceptions being college and his first five or six years of marriage. So this is a minor but interesting milestone in Blumenau family history, this transaction.
My disheveled dad at the piano with his bass-playing, pajama-wearing younger son. 1981.
My folks hosted Christmas parties for many years at which my dad’s musician friends would show up and blow a couple sets of jazz. This pic is also probably circa 1981, and early in the night — these parties drew a fair number of people.
I can’t think of a calendar entry from my grandfather’s calendars in which he surrenders anything of that level of significance. (Except possibly for his job, which would be an interesting post, but not here and now.)
So instead, I’ll link this to a calendar entry in which my great-grandma comes to the end of something musical that, I imagine, mattered a fair amount to her.
June 21, 1969.
I’ve mentioned before that my great-grandma was a piano teacher. She taught my dad how to play. And she held a recital for her students every year at the house on Hope Street, followed by some low-key refreshments.
(A few of her former students have even made their way here to the blog, which is a marvelous thing.)
Anyway, the calendar entry above is the last calendar entry I have a picture of that mentions my great-grandma’s annual recital.
She would have been 82 years old in June of 1969, and probably about ready to stop teaching the basics of piano to the youth of Stamford.
I’m also fairly sure that her piano teaching ended sometime around 1970, when she went through a period of suffering spells of disorientation. (I’ve written about that before too.)
So, while her last recital could have been in 1970 or ’71, I’m going to presume for the purposes of this blog entry that the June 21, 1969, calendar entry represents another Blumenau family goodbye to the world of the piano. Not to the instrument, per se — her upright piano remained in the living room at Hope Street after she stopped teaching — but to a certain connection to the instrument.
My grandparents’ upright piano made the move with them from Stamford to Rochester in the mid-’80s. It was not of the same quality as the Mason & Hamlin, though, and I don’t know what became of it. I suspect it was disposed of without great ceremony, which was in keeping with its age and condition.
The Mason & Hamlin may be the last piano in the family for a while, as my brother and I have broken the keyboard tradition. (He took lessons for a while; I was never coordinated enough to manage 88 keys.)
I do have a couple of guitars lying around the house, though. As I write this, I find myself thinking about some future time when my hands are too gnarled to play them and I finally sell them off, bringing another generational shift to the Blumenau family’s long relationship with music.
Hope Street 
Nice blog, clever way to tie it into Hope Street. I really don’t remember playing a little every night, but it would have been a good antidote to corporate life, for sure.
Some inconsequential nits:
– The 7’ Mason & Hamlin was made in Boston almost exactly 100 years ago (my tuner looked it up from the serial number – it’s either 1911 or 1914, I forget)
– It was totally refurbished in ER in 1965, and owned by the VP of Marketing for Mason & Hamlin here, who didn’t play a note! I bought it as it sat beautifully in his living room fall of 1973
– The mighty Behning, your great-grandmother’s piano which they brought to Connecticut from Springfield, MA, and then 44 years later brought to Rochester, NY, was given to Mt. Rise United Church of Christ at the time your grandparents moved from their Lynnwood home in Brighton to the Senior Living place in 1998. It still sits somewhat ingloriously in the basement of Mt. Rise with a few missing ivory keys (which is appropriate; it’s best days are long behind it!).
– I suspect your disheveled dad is hung over. It is clearly the morning after the party (notice the drums set up on the right); that’s the only time we’d have drums instead of the couch there!
Thanks!
I might remember the M&H’s predecessor, a little upright that we had. I do remember some guys coming to remove it from the music room. Does that count against the 5-6 years of piano-less early marriage?
Yes, Blumenau père did play nightly it seemed.
I did not know there was a piano before the M&H … though I should perhaps have known there had to be one. (I am sure I have family pix with it but I totally forgot it.)
That would eat into the 10 pianoless years posited in the text, yes.
There is a little photobook of my in a red&blue(?) striped long-sleeve shirt and bowler hat sitting at the upright and pretending to take requests. I think I dedicate my career to Mom on the last page.
Here is a Poolboy special from the fall of 1972 that I believe shows the piano in question. I scanned it in as a potential Mundane Moment, mainly b/c of what you placed on the piano:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/23214045@N03/6705436305/in/set-72157628986061957
Your father has not lived pianoless for more than 5 of his 70 years, less if you count the relative proximity of the Sigma Chi piano during most of my college years. Before Eric was born we first kept an upright piano that belonged to Gary and B’Ann Simundza in our family room in our first house, and when they reclaimed that one, I bought the one in Bits’ picture for $95 and moved it in a UHaul truck with Uncle TJ. So our married life always included a piano with the possible exception of the first few months.
I can’t believe they let go of that piano. They must be serious about moving.