Mozart's Concerto for Bassoon

Me with my bassoon, 14 years old

When I was about 12 years old, Mr. H made a cassette recording of a very old record he owned. It was an incredible bassoonist playing Mozart's Concerto for Bassoon in b flat. He gave me the sheet music and had me memorize the first few stanzas so I could use them as warm up and impress anyone who knew bassoon and how difficult that song is by tricking them into thinking I could play such a beautiful song at any time. I never managed to play it and impress anyone, but Mr. H made me believe that one day I would.


I loved that recording, but in my 30s, long after Mr. H's hand written label had worn away and the original case had been lost, the tape breathed it's last note. No matter how many versions of the song I find, they are never the same. That cadenza haunts me. I no longer remember it, but the empty place where someone else's song shines through hits me every time.

No matter how beautiful the other artists are, they are different. Different is wonderful, but in this song, different isn't comfort food, even when it is breathtaking. And sometimes I really just want to be 12 years old, curled up in bed imagining the future, listening to Mozart, and knowing how successful and accomplished I would be as an adult and how if I practiced enough, I could be the best at everything I tried.

I never expected to be a high caliber bassoonist, but it was fun to imagine how I would learn this song and practice it in my large house in a distant country where I lived as a famous author. I imagined a stranger walking past and being so impressed that a simple writer could play such a haunting piece, and it was always that cadenza I imagined myself learning after I had learned how to to reverse engineer the notes.

The stranger would be different every time. Sometimes a conductor with a famous orchestra would beg me to play as a guest soloist, and then she would invite me to dinner,  and we would become very close and special friends who adored each other and lived together and grew old like spinster in books. Other times it was a huggy grandparent-type who would invite me to their cottage to make beautiful music with them while their spouse listened. Then they would tell me fascinating stories of their lifemployees together that I would write down and amaze the world with their story and my sharing of it. Once it was a postal carrier who secretly recorded me and taught his poodle to dance to my playing and then brought the dog over and begged me to play for them. The dog danced, and we laughed and laughed until we couldn't breath then lay in front the fireplace curled up with the fluffy puppy and slept until it was time for wine and chocolate and fancy French bread (I am pretty sure that was during my phase where I believed my house would be isolatedifferent in the Swiss Alps where Heidi lived).

This looks like the cover of my book from when I was 10. Turns out it was published in 1955.

The stories were different. I wasn't always a writer. Sometimes I am college professor in literature living on all the money rich college English professors must make after all those years of school. Looking back, though, all those jobs that made me rich and famous were in composition or literature fields. Journalist never fit, and since I didn't write fiction, I still have no idea how I expected to have books that spent months on the NYT best sellers list.

Ah well. I am no longer a teenager, but that song still helps me dream of something unknown and amazing. Who knows what happens next?