The Concert

The Equal Temperament

Chapter 19: The Concert

The last tuning of the Steinway Model D at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall was on a Thursday afternoon in early December, twelve days before Christmas, and the concert that evening was the Portland Symphony's holiday program — not the pops concert, not the seasonal medley that some orchestras offered, but a program of Brahms, the Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, with a soloist from Vienna, a woman named Elsa Bruckner whose recordings Clara had heard and whose playing Clara admired for its weight and its patience, the way Bruckner let the long Brahms phrases unfold without rushing, the way she trusted the music to arrive at its own pace, the way a tuner trusts the pitch to settle.

Clara and Yuki arrived at two o'clock. The hall was empty except for the stage crew, who were setting chairs and stands for the orchestra, and the Steinway sat at center stage, its lid open, its keyboard facing the empty auditorium, and Clara set her bag on a chair in the front row and climbed the steps to the stage.

She put her hand on the rim. The wood was cool, the finish smooth, and she felt the Steinway under her hand the way she had felt it hundreds of times, the familiar surface, the known curve, the wood that Leonard had touched and she had touched and that, after today, Yuki would touch, the rim of the piano that was the crown of the Portland Symphony, the instrument that had been the centerpiece of Clara's professional life.

She stood for a moment with her hand on the rim and did not move. Yuki stood behind her, waiting, and the wait was not impatient but respectful, the wait of a person who understood that this moment was not a delay but a necessary pause, a breath before the final phrase.

Clara struck the fork.

The A bloomed on the stage and traveled into the auditorium, and the hall's acoustics received the sound and expanded it, the reverb giving the fork's tone a spaciousness, a generosity, the sound filling the 2,776 seats that would be occupied tonight by an audience that would hear the Brahms, the piano concerto played on the piano Clara was about to tune for the last time, and Clara listened to the A decay through the hall and heard it clearly, purely, the fundamental and the first partials present and distinct, the sound undiminished in the range where it mattered, the range of the tuning fork, the range of the reference.

She set the A. She began the temperament.

The temperament was the last temperament she would set on this piano, and she set it with the care she had always brought to this instrument, the care that was not merely professional but personal, the care that was the expression of a relationship that had lasted nineteen years, and the temperament was clean, was smooth, was the grid of equal temperament laid down with the precision that the concert stage demanded, each interval checked and cross-checked, each beat rate confirmed, each fifth uniformly narrow, each third uniformly wide, the system consistent, balanced, correct.

She tuned the octaves downward. The bass. Leonard's bass. The sound of a room with no windows. She tuned A2 against A3, and the octave rang on the stage, and Clara heard the bass with the full capacity of her undiminished low-frequency hearing, heard the second partial of A2 aligning with the fundamental of A3, heard the beats slow and stop, heard the octave become clean, and the cleanness was — she let herself feel it — the cleanness was beautiful, was the sound of two notes in agreement, two frequencies in alignment, the mathematical relationship between them realized in the physical vibration of copper-wound steel, and the beauty was not diminished by Clara's hearing loss, was not affected by the audiogram, was fully present in the range where Clara's ear still functioned at its best.

She tuned downward through the bass, each octave set and confirmed, the stretch applied with the knowledge of nineteen years on this specific piano, the stretch that was not calculated but heard, the stretch that the piano itself dictated, the piano telling Clara how much to flatten, how far to reach, how deep to go, and Clara listened and the piano spoke and the bass came into tune.

She turned to Yuki. "The treble is yours."

Yuki took the lever and sat at the bench and began tuning upward from the temperament, through the mid-range — which Clara checked, listening behind Yuki, confirming each octave, each interval — and into the upper register, and as Yuki crossed C6 and entered the territory above, the territory where Clara's hearing was compromised, Clara stepped back, physically stepped back, moved to the edge of the stage, and listened from a distance.

From a distance the piano sounded like a piano. The individual notes were distinct, the octaves were clean — or sounded clean from where Clara stood — and the tuning was proceeding the way tunings proceeded, note by note, pin by pin, the piano coming into tune the way it always came into tune, gradually, methodically, the disorder of the out-of-tune giving way to the order of the tempered.

Yuki reached the top octave. Clara could not hear the details from where she stood — could not hear the beats between the highest intervals, could not assess the stretch, could not judge the quality of the octaves above C7 — but she could see Yuki working, could see the concentration, the slight tilt of the head, the pauses for listening, the adjustments, and she could see that Yuki was working with confidence, with the authority of a tuner who heard what she needed to hear and acted on what she heard, and Clara trusted this — trusted Yuki's ear, trusted the months of training and practice and the innate ability that had been present from the first day, the day Yuki had identified the fourth partial of A3 beating against the fundamental of E5 at 7.4 beats per second.

Yuki finished the top octave. She tuned the unisons, working back down the keyboard, and Clara tuned the unisons in the bass and mid-range, and they worked in sequence, the two tuners, the teacher and the student, the departing and the arriving, and the piano came into tune under their combined attention, the sound settling, clarifying, the Steinway becoming itself.

They finished at four-fifteen. Clara checked the temperament one final time, playing through the intervals, and the temperament was clean. She played a chord — B-flat major, the key of the Brahms concerto — and the chord rang on the stage and filled the hall, and the chord was correct, was properly tempered, the third wide and the fifth narrow and the root solid, and the chord sounded like the beginning of the Brahms, like the opening of the concerto, like the music that would be played tonight on this piano by Elsa Bruckner's hands.

Clara closed the lid. She covered the keyboard with the felt strip. She stood beside the piano and put her hand on the rim one more time.

"Thank you," she said, and the words were addressed to the piano, not to Yuki, not to the empty hall, not to anyone, and the words were not sentimental but factual, the thanks of a person who has been given something valuable and knows it and says so, and the piano did not respond, because pianos do not respond, do not hear, do not understand thanks, but Clara said it anyway because the saying was for her, was the word she needed to speak, the final note of the final tuning of the final visit to this piano.

She packed her tools. She gave Yuki the lever — not the permanent giving, not the inheritance, that would come later — gave her the lever to carry to the car while Clara carried the bag, and they walked off the stage and through the backstage corridors and out the stage door into the December afternoon, and the air was cold and the sky was dark at four-thirty, the December dark that settled on Portland like a lid, and they walked to the car and put the tools in the back and Clara said, "I'm going to the concert tonight."

"You are."

"I want to hear the piano. I want to hear what the Brahms sounds like on a piano I just tuned."

"You've never stayed for a concert."

"I've never tuned the piano for the last time."

Yuki was quiet. She looked at Clara in the parking lot, in the December dark, the streetlamp above them casting an orange light that made everything look warmer than it was.

"Can I come," Yuki said.

"Yes."

They drove home. Clara showered and changed — not into different clothes, into the same kind of clothes, jeans and a sweater, the clothes she wore to everything, but clean, fresh, the concession to the occasion that Clara was willing to make — and at seven-thirty she drove back to the Schnitzer and parked and walked to the front entrance, the public entrance, the entrance she had never used, had always entered through the stage door, the tuner's door, and the act of entering through the front was a change of perspective, a shift from backstage to audience, from the person who prepared the instrument to the person who listened to the instrument, and the shift was physical — the lobby was crowded, the audience arriving in coats and scarves, the smell of perfume and wool and the particular smell of a concert audience, the combination of anticipation and social performance — and Clara moved through the lobby to the hall doors and found her seat, which was in the center of the orchestra section, tenth row, the ticket bought that afternoon online, the seat chosen for its acoustic position, the position from which the piano's sound would arrive with the balance of direct and reflected sound that Clara's ear preferred.

Yuki was in the seat beside her. They sat without speaking, the hall filling around them, the audience settling, the musicians filing onto the stage, the tuning A sounding from the oboe — 440 hertz, the same A Clara had set on the Steinway that afternoon, the A that organized the orchestra as it organized the piano — and the orchestra tuned to the oboe's A, each instrument adjusting, the sound of the tuning a kind of chaos that Clara loved, the brief, productive disorder of an ensemble finding its common pitch, the moment before the music when the instruments were individuals and the moment after the tuning when they became a collective.

The conductor walked on stage. The audience applauded. The conductor bowed and turned to the orchestra and raised the baton.

The Brahms Second Piano Concerto began.

It began not with the piano but with the horn, a solo horn playing the main theme, a melody in B-flat major that was — Clara listened, and the horn's sound reached her from the stage, the frequency range of the horn entirely within her hearing, the warm brass tone present and full — the melody was broad and generous and patient, the way Brahms was always patient, the music unfolding in its own time, not rushed, not compressed, each phrase given its full duration, each note given its full weight.

The piano entered. Elsa Bruckner's hands on the keyboard, on the keys that Clara had covered with the felt strip two hours ago, the keys that were now uncovered, exposed, available, and the first notes of the piano's entrance were soft, exploratory, the piano introducing itself to the orchestra, and the sound that the Steinway produced was — Clara leaned forward slightly, not to hear better but to attend more fully, the body's instinct toward the source of the sound — the sound was the sound Clara had been tending for nineteen years, the sound Leonard had chosen in 1978, the Steinway's voice, and the voice was in tune, was correct, was the product of Clara's temperament and Clara's bass tuning and Yuki's treble tuning, the product of two ears and one piano, and the voice was good.

The first movement unfolded. The piano and the orchestra conversed, the Brahms dialogue between soloist and ensemble, the piano stating themes that the orchestra developed and the orchestra stating themes that the piano embroidered, and Clara listened to the piano's sound and heard in it the tuning — not the individual notes, not the specific frequencies, not the technical details of the temperament and the stretch, but the overall quality, the rightness, the sense that the piano was in agreement with itself and with the orchestra, that the intervals were where they should be, that the pitch was stable, that the sound was clear.

She heard the bass. The Steinway's bass, Leonard's bass, the sound of a room with no windows. The low octaves of the Brahms second movement — the adagio, the slow movement, the movement that was the heart of the concerto, the music at its most tender, its most inward — and the bass was dark and warm and deep, and Clara heard it with the full capacity of her hearing, heard every partial, every harmonic, heard the copper-wound strings vibrating in the lower register of the piano, the strings she had tuned that afternoon, the strings she had stretched to the positions her ear and her experience dictated, and the bass was right, was beautiful, was the sound she had maintained for nineteen years.

She heard the mid-range. The temperament octave. The twelve notes from which all other notes were derived. The C and the D and the E and the F and the G and the A and the B and the five sharps between them, the chromatic twelve, the grid of equal temperament, and the grid was the foundation of the Brahms, the system that allowed Brahms to modulate from B-flat major to D minor to F major to any key he wanted, and the grid held, the temperament held, the intervals were correct, and Clara heard this and was satisfied.

She heard the treble. The upper register, the territory above C6, Yuki's territory now, and the treble was bright and clear, the octaves clean, the stretch correct, and Clara heard the treble the way she heard the treble now — with the reduced resolution of her diminished high-frequency hearing, the fundamentals present but the upper partials softer, the sound less shimmering than it would have been to a younger ear, less bright, less detailed in the highest harmonics — but the treble was correct, she could hear that it was correct even with the reduced resolution, could hear the rightness of the intervals, the cleanliness of the octaves, the quality that Yuki's ear had achieved, and the quality was good.

The concerto continued. The second movement gave way to the third — the andante, the cello solo, the movement where the piano retreated and the orchestra, specifically the cello section, sang the melody, and Clara thought of Martin, who was in the cello section, who was sitting on the stage playing this movement for one of the last times before his retirement in June, and she looked at the cello section and found Martin — fourth chair, second row, his bow moving in coordination with the other bows, his sound blended with the other sounds, the section player playing his part, the individual voice subsumed in the collective — and she watched him play and heard the cellos and the sound was rich and warm and full of the harmonics that Clara's ear could still perceive, the frequencies of the cello's voice entirely within her hearing's functional range, and the cello section sang and Clara listened and somewhere in the listening she forgot about the audiogram and the Korg and the hearing loss and the last round and the retirement, forgot about all of it, because the music demanded the forgetting, demanded the full attention, demanded that the listener attend to the sound rather than to the listener's relationship to the sound, and Clara attended, gave the music her attention, her full attention, the same quality of attention she brought to a tuning, and the attention was — was — was enough. Was sufficient. Was the thing she had. Was the ear she had. Was the hearing she had. And it was enough to hear the Brahms, enough to hear the piano, enough to hear the orchestra, enough to hear the music, and the music was beautiful and the beauty was not diminished by the hearing loss, was not reduced, was not less than what a person with perfect hearing would have experienced, because the beauty of the Brahms was in the bass and the mid-range and the structure and the harmony and the melody and the rhythm, was in the frequencies where Clara's hearing was undiminished, was in the territory she still owned, and the territory was vast, was the vast middle of the audible world, and the vast middle was where the music lived.

The fourth movement began. The finale. The rondo. The movement that was — after the gravity of the first movement, the tenderness of the second, the inwardness of the third — was joyful, was ebullient, was Brahms at his most generous, the music dancing, the piano dancing, and Elsa Bruckner played the rondo with a lightness that Clara had not expected from her recordings, a lightness that was the product of live performance, of the presence of the audience, of the particular chemistry between pianist and orchestra and hall that occurred only in the moment, that could not be recorded or reproduced, and Clara heard the lightness and felt the corresponding lightness in herself, the lifting of the weight she had been carrying, the momentary suspension of the gravity of the last round.

The concerto ended. The last chord — B-flat major, the home key, the resolution — rang in the hall, and the Steinway held the chord, the sustain pedal down, the dampers lifted, all the strings free to vibrate sympathetically, the entire piano resonating with the final chord, and the chord decayed through the hall's reverb, the sound diminishing but not ending, fading but not disappearing, the chord becoming softer and softer until it was no longer sound but memory, no longer vibration but trace, and the hall was silent for a moment, the silence that follows great music, the silence that is not absence but presence, the room full of the chord's ghost.

Then the applause.

Clara did not applaud immediately. She sat in her seat and felt the silence, the post-chord silence, and the silence was beautiful, was the most beautiful sound in the concert, the sound of the music's absence, the sound of the piano having done its work, the work that Clara had made possible by tuning it, the work that the tuning had served, and the work was done and the silence was the evidence that the work had been done well, because the silence was not the silence of emptiness but the silence of completion, the silence that follows a sentence that has been fully said.

She applauded. She stood and applauded. Yuki stood and applauded. The hall stood and applauded. The pianist bowed. The conductor bowed. The orchestra stood and bowed. The applause continued, wave after wave, the audience expressing with their hands what the music had expressed with sound, and Clara stood in the tenth row and applauded and looked at the Steinway, which sat on the stage, its lid open, its strings still, its work done, and she looked at it and thought: that is the last time. That is the last time I will tune that piano and hear it played. That is the last Brahms on the last Steinway at the last concert.

The applause faded. The audience began to leave. Clara and Yuki walked up the aisle toward the lobby, and in the lobby Clara saw Martin, who had come from backstage still in his concert blacks, his bow in his hand, and Martin saw Clara and walked to her and said, "You stayed."

"I stayed."

"The piano sounded wonderful."

"The piano sounded like the piano."

"Which is wonderful."

"Which is the piano."

Martin looked at Clara. The look contained the knowledge that he had — the knowledge of the hearing loss, the knowledge of the retirement, the knowledge that this was the last Steinway tuning — and the look contained, in addition to the knowledge, the thing that the knowledge produced, which was the emotion that Martin, like Clara, did not name but felt, the emotion that lived in the gap between the old life and the new life, the gap between tuning and not-tuning, the gap between the ear that could and the ear that could not.

"Come for tea," Martin said.

"Not tonight. I need to go home."

"Clara."

"Thank you, Martin. For the concert. For — for everything."

Martin nodded. He did not ask what "everything" meant because he knew what "everything" meant. He went back through the lobby toward the stage door, toward the backstage, toward the life of the orchestra that he too was leaving, that he too was saying goodbye to, and Clara watched him go and then she and Yuki went out into the December night.

The night was cold and clear, the rain having paused, the stars visible above the city, and Clara stood on the sidewalk outside the Schnitzer and looked up at the stars and thought about frequencies, about the electromagnetic frequencies that the stars produced, frequencies far above the range of human hearing, frequencies that existed in a realm that no ear could access, and the thought was oddly comforting — the thought that there were frequencies beyond the reach of any ear, healthy or diminished, young or old, that the universe contained sounds that no human had ever heard or would ever hear, and the unhearing was universal, was shared, was not Clara's loss alone but everyone's loss, and the loss was not a tragedy but a condition, the condition of being human, the condition of having ears that heard only a fraction of what existed.

She drove home. She sat at the kitchen table. She took the fork from her pocket and struck it.

A440.

She held it to her ear and listened. The sound was there. The A was there. The reference was there.

She held the fork until the sound was gone and then she held it a moment longer, the silent fork, the fork at rest, the potential pitch stored in the steel, waiting to be struck again.

She put the fork on the table. She went to bed.

The Brahms was in her ears. The bass. The mid-range. The melody. The silence after the last chord. The silence that was not absence but completion.

She slept with the silence and the silence held her through the night.