Our third floor bedroom balcony door is wide open. The air outside is foggy and seemingly motionless. Occasionally a vehicle squishes by. The dullness inspires tranquillity and indolence. And the operatic aria of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro sung by Kiri te Kanawa.
The Marriage of Figaro is a commedia per musica (opera buffa) in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. The opera’s libretto is based on the 1784 stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (“The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro”). It tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity. Considered one of the greatest operas ever written, it is a cornerstone of the repertoire and appears consistently among the top ten in the Operabase list of most frequently performed operas.
There is no point disguising our collective inertia this morning, a Monday morning in early August. Nor can we pretend we’re not increasingly consumed by the prospect of moving from here to our new apartment on the other side of town on the other side of the river. The property manager for the new building is yet unable to confirm the date for completion currently projected to be November 1st. We have already resigned ourselves possibly having to store our furnishings after we leave here at the end of October to head south.
Living as cave dwellers, we have learned to regard everything with a reductive glance. Already we have diminished certain large furniture to more manageable size. Downsizing like technology is a continuous process. We have for example contemplated abandoning a large screen television, instead using our computers for so-called “streaming” rather than relying on traditional cable connection. Inevitably percolates the matter of getting rid of certain unused clothing (which in my case sadly includes a mountain of textile which no longer fits). Since our return to Canada last April we have also attacked a moderate cull of documents especially those relating to the administration of the estates of my late parents, including certain documents which survived the termination of my law practice. Perhaps the most discomforting alteration is the recent manipulated collapse of the electronic piano, stuffing it into its large black carrying bag (perhaps the final step before its ejection to the local thrift store). Since I began playing the piano at age 10 I have assiduously pursued the evolution of my hobby, first from a Mason & Risch upright (a Canadian manufacture that now qualifies as a “rare antique instrument”) to a Heintzman grand then a Steinway salon grand and finally the Korg electronic piano.
Thomas G. Mason, Vincent Risch and Octavius Newcombe entered into partnership in 1871 to form the firm of “Mason, Risch & Newcombe” in Toronto. The firm started out as retailers of pianos, organs and musical merchandise, initially importing their instruments from the United States.
Mason, Risch & Newcombe begin building their own instruments in Toronto in about 1877, and these instruments were met with great success. In 1878 the firm was reorganized as “Mason & Risch” when Newcombe left the partnership to open his own firm. Mason & Risch quickly became one of the largest music store chains in Canada. Mason & Risch built high quality pianos for decades, and enjoyed a very good reputation.
In 1900 Mason & Risch entered into a contact with Eaton’s Department Stores, Canada’s largest department store chain, to build pianos under the brand name of “T. Eaton”. Instruments labeled as “T. Eaton” were sold in Eaton’s Department Stores for decades, giving Mason & Risch the revenue needed to survive the economic downturns of the 20th Century.
Others whom I have known who played the piano have with age descended to the same inactivity as I, even so far as repeating a similar history of instruments. Listening as I now do on a daily basis to my vast array of Apple Music on my Bose headphones presents an unbeatable competition for anything I produce on the piano. It is a trite but spiriting coincidence that the first time I enviably touched a Steinway grand piano was at the T. Eaton & Co. store at the corner of College and Yonge Streets in Toronto. As I enamoured myself of the piano, I jokingly said to the clerk (who approached no doubt to ask me to remove my hands from the instrument), “One day I’ll call to ask you to put a red ribbon on it and deliver it to this address!” The reality of the purchase – many years later in the autumn on a rainy Thursday night in Ottawa – was strictly commercial, involving intense negotiation with Kenny Lauzon (then, and perhaps even now, the exclusive Steinway dealer in eastern Canada including Toronto and Montreal). At the time I paid about $35,000 for the Steinway salon grand (6′ 2″ harp, slightly larger than the standard grand). It now retails for about $115,000.
The T. Eaton Company Limited, later known as Eaton’s, was a Canadian department store chain that was once the largest in the country. It was founded in 1869 in Toronto by Timothy Eaton, an immigrant from what is now Northern Ireland. Eaton’s grew to become a retail and social institution in Canada, with stores across the country, buying-offices around the globe, and a mail-order catalog that was found in the homes of most Canadians. A changing economic and retail environment in the late twentieth century, along with mismanagement, culminated in the chain’s bankruptcy in 1999.
In the course of our reductive progress I have also addressed the lingering trail of cosmetic accessories. Jewellery and the piano represent the two metaphors of the most active ingredients of my being. Certainly there is the indisputable attraction of art which has also formed part of our evolution and subsequent declension involving such artists as Henri Masson and Frederick Coburn.
Henri Masson was born 10 January 1907 in Spy, a small village near Namur in Belgium. He started his studies at the Athénée Royale of Brussels when he was 13 and from then on all his spare time was devoted to drawing and painting. After his father died in 1921, he and his mother immigrated to Canada, settling in Ottawa. He started working in an engraving studio in Ottawa in 1923. He also took courses at the Ottawa Art Association and the Ottawa Art Club.
In 1944, with H.O. McCurry, A.Y. Jackson and Arthur Lismer, Masson adjudicated an exhibition of war art held at the National Gallery of Canada. He also exhibited his paintings at the Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven and the Fine Arts Museum of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Still in 1944, The National Film Board discussed Henri Masson and his art in a documentary film. He was elected president of the Ottawa branch of the Federation of Canadian Artists in 1945. Masson taught at Queen’s University Summer School in Kingston from 1948 to 1952. He returned to Europe in 1952 for the first time, visiting his hometown in Belgium.
The atmosphere of aging and diminution reflects the inevitability of life itself. It is both natural and inescapable. Accordingly I intend to “go along for the ride” wherever the course of the transitioning Moldau River shall lead. The current, depth, speed and languor are but part of the imperative alteration as one projects outwards to the open sea and beyond.