A Doubly Good Piece of Music

I occasionally have these moments when I’m driving along and I hear a piece on the radio and I say to myself, “I just have to play that.” It used to happen with Chopin piano pieces. But most recently it was the Schumann Piano Quintet in E Flat Major, Opus 44.

Inevitably I have no way to write down the name of the piece while I’m driving, so I commit it to memory. After I got to work on Friday I called Foxes Music to find out if they had the score for the piece. The salesperson came back with two choices. I asked about the difficulty of the piano part and he said, “Schumann is hard to play.” Wouldn’t you know...

At the end of my work day I braved rush hour traffic to head out to Foxes in Falls Church. I chose the Peters Edition of the Quintet, paid for it, and then for some reason asked, “If I get home and find out I already have this, can I return it?” The woman looked at me as if I were a little crazy and said, “Yes, for store credit.”

What would the chances be that I had once before thought this was the most beautiful piece I had ever heard and gone and bought it? I could remember only one other purchase of a 5-part piece of music.

After I got home, I happened to pull out the piece that had been hiding down there at the bottom of a big stack of music. And sure enough, it was the identical piece of music.

All I can say is that my taste is consistent and I will soon have a store credit at Foxes. I hope it’s not the same woman who sold it to me.

If we are really to play the piece, Deborah reminded me that we need three more musicians that we don’t currently have – two violins and a viola. (She will play the cello part.) But then she quickly added, “Bring it along the next time we get together to play. We’ll read through it and see just how hard it is. If we can play it, we’ll find the others.” This is why I like playing music with Deborah. She knows how to make things happen.