Lessons in Temperament review: One-man show features some fine tuning
James Smith's piano tuning lessons are a crafty cover for some moving stories about mental illness
Over the next hour and forty minutes, Smith will explain some of the finer points of tuning, starting with the startling fact (to me, who knows nothing of any keyboard that doesn’t start with QWERTY) that most notes involve a hammer hitting three separate strings, each of which must be tuned individually.
The perfectly tuned piano is a platonic ideal, unattainable in the real world. And so the piano tuner’s job, says Smith, is “to create this even spread of dissatisfaction going up and down the keyboard.” Even temperament, it’s called.
Now, you may have already guessed that there’s more going on here than a music lesson. Smith is the youngest of four brothers who have lived – and, in one tragic case, died – with a variety of mental health issues, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Their own temperaments are anything but even, but the stories Smith tells about them are enlightening, even enthralling.
“In this world of tension, things slip out of balance all on their own, whether the piano is played or not,” Smith says at one point. It’s a lovely-sad notion, an elegant and melancholy metaphor for time. Just sitting alone on a stage, an unused piano is, moment by moment, sliding out of tune and into chaos.
It’s also a great way to describe a life. Smith’s family members – and, he freely admits, he himself – are slightly out of tune. But not only is slightly out of tune the best for which we can hope, it’s where the most beautiful music can be found.