> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.musicallynovel.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # 20. Beethoven in the Basement - URL: https://www.musicallynovel.com/20-beethoven-in-the-basement/ - Published: 2026-09-14T17:35:11.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-14T17:35:11.000Z - Author: Peter Saltzman - Tags: Blues, Preludes & Feuds > *This is an ongoing story, meant to be read in order. If you’re just arriving here for the first time, please start at the beginning by following the* I’m sitting at the piano in our basement somewhere in the mid-1970s, struggling through the opening movement of Beethoven’s *Appassionata* sonata, imagining that I’m playing it well. A persistent smell of dog urine envelops the music. I’m imagining that I’m playing the Beethoven well because I’m not actually doing it—playing it well. I will never really play it all that well. It’s my moral duty not to, though I don’t know this in the mid-1970s. The dark-brown Steinway in front of me is showing signs of wear. Franklin, our new golden retriever puppy, when he’s not peeing and shitting all over the basement floor, has been gnawing at the piano’s left leg, along with all four legs of the piano bench. If he keeps this up, the thing may collapse like a house on stilts. I’m falling in love with Beethoven and his wildly repetitive, ever-shifting, maniacal vitality. He dwells on the same chord for ninety measures, but the music keeps moving. The cross-rhythms between the hands, the syncopations and polyrhythms, remind me of our own music, but from another time and on an almost impossible-to-attain level. I’m transfixed, in love, transformed. But too impatient to learn to play it at a high level. So I imagine it. I hit a wrong note—a jarring D natural where Beethoven clearly wrote D flat—and stop abruptly. Maybe it’s because I’m thinking about how the descending and ascending arpeggio that opens the movement reminds me of the *Star-Spangled Banner*, which was, let’s not forget, originally an old British drinking song. Maybe Beethoven heard it in a Vienna bar. The piano’s exile to this basement has become my exile too—and I’m discovering that I prefer it this way. Back on Wellington Avenue, the piano sat in the living room, part of the family’s daily rhythm. Here, it’s exiled below ground, and I’m exiled with it. And I’m glad. This is my first taste of the loneliness (and loner-ness) required to create. This is the beginning of something, I think. And the end, I worry. I attempt the *Appassionata*’s opening again. My fingers cramp on the rapid diminished-7th arpeggiated figures. I haven’t learned—haven’t been taught—the proper use of the wrists, arms, and shoulders, where all true piano playing happens. Haven’t learned—been taught—that the entire upper body has to be fluid, without tension. The only point of tension is the fingertips that touch the keys. Those must be like hammers. Rigid. So the notes scatter under my hands. I’m trying too hard, thinking that trying harder will solve the problem, when it’s the opposite. I pull out the Stevie Wonder songbook hiding under the Bach preludes and fugues. I read through “Living for the City.” Too stiff. Haven’t developed the feel because I have no idea what I’m doing. Frustrated and hungry, I temporarily give up, depressed, and head upstairs. My dad hands Amy a twenty. “Go get dinner at Monday’s,” he says. “Where are you guys going?” I ask. My mother adjusts her earring. “Out.” No doubt for another night of dancing and partying with friends at Faces on Rush Street, the hub of Chicago’s preeminent adult playground. --- The four of us—me, Amy, David, and Jane—walk the block and a half to our local diner, Mondays, on the corner of Division and State. I order my usual: a cheeseburger, fries, and Coke, followed by rice pudding. Our parents stroll by the window on their way to Rush Street, wave, and laugh. After dinner, while my siblings walk home, I head to Rose Records, kitty-corner from Mondays on State. As I turn left on State, I see the Cabrini-Green towers in the distance, dark silhouettes against the sky. Forbidden territory six blocks away. The bass player working behind the counter at Rose Records greets me as a regular. Every time I come in, he introduces me to musical worlds never alluded to by Mr. Metzler or in my music classes at school: Weather Report, Return to Forever, Cecil Taylor. He hands me a McCoy Tyner album and says, “You need to hear this. This dude? Coltrane’s pianist.” I don’t know who Coltrane is yet. I take it home and play it in my room upstairs, not in the living room. This is my private exploration. Nobody in my family knows about these worlds, and I’m afraid they’ll just shut them down. At school? This might as well be music from another planet. Back at the piano, I try to play something with the rhythmic complexity I’ve been hearing. No clue what I’m doing. By now I’m pretty solid on the 12-bar blues, but almost everything here is a mystery to me. I wonder if it’s because I’m white, upper-middle-class—as if that privilege closes off some hidden doors, the ones with access to the music I want to play. McCoy Tyner is black. Most of the music I’m connecting to now derives from the black experience, if not always made by black musicians. The music that moves me most comes from experiences I’ve never had, from a world I can see but can’t enter. Do I need to enter that world? Is that even possible? ![](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!qnBk!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F280dfd6a-5174-4f19-aca3-6155fc921cd6_1672x941.png) --- *Fifty years later, I still have no inclination to master these sonatas or anything from the classical tradition. I’ve studied this music intensely and teach it all the time, but I have other creative concerns, e.g., my own music, stories, video, etc. On the other hand, I don’t have a problem with messing with it…* *Here’s an improvisation on the 2nd movement of Beethoven’s Appassionata sonata from this morning:* *And a somewhat longer improvisation on the main themes of the first movement from four years ago:* ## Sign up for Musically Novel Musical Stories Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.