In Defence of the Neighbour’s Piano

At seven o’clock every evening, the neighbour on the other side of the wall begins to practise the piano. First scales, up and down, careful and a little uneven. Then the same sonata, the same passage, the same wrong note in the same bar, again and again, until either the note comes right or the neighbour gives up and moves on.

When I first moved in, it drove me mad. Now I would miss it if it stopped.

The wrong note

For months, there was a note in the second movement that never came right. I began to wait for it. I would be washing up and find myself pausing, tea towel in hand, as the passage approached. Would it be right tonight? It never was. Then, one Thursday in February, it was. I nearly knocked on the wall to say well done.

That is the thing about living next to someone who practises. It is the sound of someone getting slowly, stubbornly better at something. There is very little of that in most of our days. We hear finished things: recordings, performances, polished and perfect. Through the wall I hear the unfinished work, and it is oddly moving.

Walls

Of course, it depends on the wall, and the hour, and the instrument. A drum kit at midnight is a different matter. Cities are full of disputes about noise, and many of them are serious, about sleep and health and the right to rest. I do not want to dismiss them.

But I think we sometimes forget that the sounds of other people are also the sounds of company. The piano tells me that someone is home, that they are working at something, that the building is full of lives going on in parallel with mine.

A small concert

Last summer, the neighbour left a note in my letterbox apologising for the practice and inviting me to a small concert at the music school. I went. They played the sonata, the whole thing, with the note in the second movement perfectly placed. I clapped harder than anyone in the room.

Nobody else there knew how long that note had taken. I did. I had heard every attempt through the wall.