My twins were in a production of Charlie Brown Christmas a few years ago. I stuffed tissues in my pocket, in case the scene where Linus recites Luke chapter 2 touched a nerve. Or when Schroeder plunked out Beethoven with Snoopy dancing on the piano. Both have a direct line to my childhood, and memories of sitting around the twelve inch black and white set eating buttered popcorn.
There was an interview on the radio about a manuscript of a Beethoven piece for a string quartet that was up for auction at Sotheby's. It was expected to fetch a handsome sum until its authenticity was questioned by another expert.
"The lines in this copy are much more curved and elegant than in any Beethoven manuscript," the man insisted.
"It's genuine, I tell you!"
"Not a chance! I have looked at enough of his work to recognize his hand!"
The voices of the two professors crescendoed sharply as they discussed the annotation of flats in the music.
In the background, the actual music was playing. Musicians, whose names were not mentioned, were performing exquisite melodies, following notes written on ordinary staff lines. Maybe even photocopied. They seemed oblivious to any debates about which version was or was not the original.
There are times when being right takes precedence over beauty, or kindness. I wondered how Beethoven himself would feel about such a kerfuffle over the sheet music. He was, as fate would have it, deaf, and would not have been bothered by the argument.
But even he could hear the music.
