Over the bridge : an essay in autobiography

urn:iso:std:iso:639:ed-3:eng

246–47

text excerpt

[The new piano-tuner’s] first act … was to suggest that the Broadwood-White took up house-room, and that he knew of a period-piece pipe organ, just removed from Park Walk Chapel, Chelsea, which would take little more floor space than the upright piano.

After some parental deliberation the change was made, and the organ arrived in a van…

When assembled, the organ just missed the ceiling of our little dining-room and stuck out three feet from the wall.  The rest of the furniture was dwarfed, but that did not worry Jack.  It is a miracle that he did not rupture himself, playing and pumping together, one leg and his body heaving up and down while those expressive hands rattled over the dry old ivories, unravelling the concertos of Vivaldi, transcribed by Bach for the organ, or thundering out (so far as the tiny organ could respond) the massive periods of Handel, that Rubens of music.  I was press-ganged into pumping whenever I showed signs of being unoccupied …

The tone of the organ was sweet and pure, an eighteenth-century voice that interpreted Bach, Haydn, Handel, Couperin, Rameau, Corelli, Mozart and Vivaldi as contemporary, taking the initiative out of the hands of the young twentieth-century amateur.  I should not have been surprised, as I stood beside him to work the ancient bellows, to find his head crowned by a Hanoverian wig, and lace ruffles impeding those lean fingers.

excerpt from 'Over the bridge : an essay in autobiography' pp. 246–47 (239 words)

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