Tears that Tear

if i could talk a bit about the pianoforte i think i could go to sleep a happy camper.

there is an instrument called a harpischord. a musician presses on a series of keys that trigger a mechanisim that plucks a series of strings; one key for every string. this might sound familiar to some of you.

the instrument is the grandfather to what we know as a piano; a name that we take from the italian name for the same instrument: pianoforte. Piano e italiano e softly or slowly or take it easy; forte e italiano e strong, hard or forceful. It gets it's name because it's grandfather, the harpsichord, had only one way to play it. no matter what amount of pressure was applied to the key, the mechanism would always play the same strength of tone. The pianoforte allows for the musician to control the sound the string makes by the pressure applied to the key. Thus playing the instrument piano e forte, softly or with strength and many imbetween.

There was a pianist I went to see in Napoles. He was a friend of my host and was playing at a small bar one of the nights i was in town. It was small, very small. We arrived earily enough to get a seat, several people arrived early enough to get standing room and others arrived early enough to sit on the laps of some of those who had arrived earlier. i was not of the arrived earlier crowd, i was of the early enough.

Pianoforte took his seat on stage. He wore a dark shirt, a dark scarf, a dark beard and dark hair long enough to tuck behind his ear and complete the personication of musical tallent; and his stereotypical get up did not disapoint. He was flanked by a large black woman with the voice of two large black women who i realized shortly into the set was a petite, white, italian woman of about my age perched on a stool. They played and played and sang and sang.

Accompaning the duo was a violinist who played beautifully when she wasn't positioning her microphone and a guitarist who gave his guitar to a girl seated next to him exchange for her number. She didn't look like she wanted to be a part of either. This was all well and good because Pianoforte and large black white girl were tearing the roof off while i teared up in the front row.

They played until three am and then we went for caffe. This is what Napolian do, and who was I to argue with good music and caffinated beverages.