My first piano lesson involved learning notes on the page and their location on the keyboard. Hand position. Posture. By the second or third lesson I was punching out the notes to “Merrily We Roll Along.” I stuck with piano long enough to move beyond quarter, half, and whole notes. I learned a couple of keys. Or at least I learned that there were keys and that this thing called a circle of fifths gave shape to the different key signatures.
I topped out at the first two pages of Für Elise. I committed them to memory and, impressed with myself, began to play only that much. I played it fast and happy, slow and sad, lower on the keyboard and then higher. My middle-school keyboard teacher was not impressed. She watched as I plucked out the left hand, then the right, then slowly combined them, and then stopped when the notes on the third page gave me no place to hide.
My little charade didn’t last long. Even I knew I was cheating, abusing the notes written with such care. But what if a community of people had gathered around my two-page version of Für Elise? What if, without knowing anything about the notes on those pages or on the ones that followed, they had been moved by it?
