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Why I Am Not a Pianist
by Augusto Boal
I did have the shortest
career as a pianist in history - a single afternoon! It began
at four p.m. and was over by five thirty...
My sisters had a piano teacher - Dona Marieta,
who came to supervise their scales twice a week. They would sit
at the piano, playing and singing the same melodies: I'll never
forget "Pour Elise"! It was my first musical love. "The
Blue Danube", ah! I adore waltzes.
I have always liked music: I would position
myself outside in the garden, listening. One day, both my sisters
were ill at the same time but, having not been informed, the teacher
turned up anyway. My father did not hesitate:
- "Rather than waste your journey, you
can teach Augusto something..." My father was
progressive: - "He should study piano as well."
- "Wow, it's my turn!" I leapt in the air.
Dona Marieta poured cold water on my enthusiasm:
"Boys play football, jump over fences, and climb trees. I
have never seen a boy playing the piano. Just think of it, a boy
playing the flute: it would be indecent, unbecoming. A little
respect and amour proper never harmed anyone. Drums maybe - why
not? - cuica or berimbau or pandeiro or zabumba... fair enough.
But piano ... Lord preserve us.... Boys and harps do not go together,
they have nothing to do with each other! Boys and harpsichords...
absolutely ridiculous!" - she said, without an ounce of respect
for Mozart.
-
- "But I like..." I mumbled timidly, inaudibly.
"Do boys like playing with dolls, by any stretch of the imagination?
Do boys like sowing? Do boys like wee-ing sitting down? Of course
not! Piano is the same thing, it is like weeing sitting down.
I don't care, I am paid for this, let's get on with the scales,
do-re-mi-so-la-ti-do, solfeggio!"
-
Dona Marieta did her best to complicate things which were already
far from simple for a ten-year-old. She threatened:
"Look here, this dó is white and counts for two: dó-ó,
do you see? The fá is black, it counts for a fá:
fá. So! The mí is round, and counts for three: mi-i-i!
Then the quaver and semi quaver, demi-semi quaver and hemi-demi-semi-quaver,
the flats and the sharps. The syncopated notes have a dot above
them.... You don't understand anything and that's why none of
this is right.... Solfeggio!"
- "Could you repeat that?" - it took
all my courage and more to make such an audacious request. Since
she did not respond, her thoughts elsewhere, a distant look in
her eyes as she stared at the lampshade shaking her head, I tried
to encourage her.
- "Dó-ó-ó- óóó-
óóó- óóó- óóó..."
I opened my mouth as wide as it would go: the piano would have
needed two or three metres more keys to have reached the note
I reached! Neighbours came out of their houses to witness this
outrage of sound! Dona Marieta was cruel:
- "It is I who have compassion [dó]*
for you..... Compa-a-a-a-a-ssion..... You will never be a pianist,
trumpet player, harpist, saxophonist, choirboy, singer, tuner
or even mover of pianos - nothing that has anything even remotely
to do with music... But let's get on with it, I need this lesson,
this is my salary. Repeat after me: dó-dó-dó-dó..."
If I ever had any musical vocation, it was killed as dead as a
do-do in that music master class. Pitilessly, by the rays of the
setting sun, she berated me, far more than I deserved, so that
by teatime Dona Marieta had knocked all musical inclination out
of me. Dead as a do-do! Only the la was la-lacking…..
This has not stopped me directing musicals in
the theatre, some of which have made their mark: I cannot sing,
and my fingers get tangled in strings and stumble over keys. But
I can hear. And suggest.
It is not ideal, but has sufficed.
Translation: Adrian Jackson
*) dó is the Portuguese word for "compassion"
Under Pressure 4, October 2000
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