Everyone Looked Down on the Young Music Teacher — Until He Claimed Her as His Wife's Last Pupil

Everyone Looked Down on the Young Music Teacher — Until He Claimed Her as His Wife's Last Pupil On a wet Tuesday evening of the second Tuesday in November in the small school hall of St. Mary's Parish Primary in Holloway, north London, the twenty-four-year-old newly-engaged music mistress Miss Beatrice Holland — born in the small village of Lavering, Suffolk, diploma-trained at Ipswich, just two months into her first post — walked from the side door of the school hall to the bench of the school's old Broadwood upright. The PTA had voted seven to two that she should not give the autumn concert's solo item. Mrs. Hester Lambourn, the formidable PTA chair, had given her daughter — a Slade student who had not played seriously in fifteen years — the spot instead. Miss Holland was permitted, by the small private courtesy of the parish governors, a short closing piece at the end of the evening. She played, from memory, the second Intermezzo of Brahms's Klavierstücke Op. 118 — the late intimate Intermezzo in A major — in five minutes and forty-eight seconds. At the aisle seat of the front row, the parish organist of forty-two years and recently-bereaved widower Mr. Theodore Burnham — guest of honour, attending his first autumn concert in the eighteen months since his concert-pianist wife Mrs. Caroline Burnham died — pressed both his hands very quietly against his mouth by the middle section. He was weeping by the final return to the tonic A major. His late wife had taken exactly one private pupil in the small last seven years of her retirement at the small village of Lavering, Suffolk. She had not told her husband who it was. This is a first-person account by the Reverend Cuthbert Allerby, parish minister of St. Mary's, Holloway, for thirty-one years and chair of the school's governors for the same thirty-one years, of the small wet Tuesday evening of the second Tuesday in November when an old parish organist stood up at the aisle seat in his widower's mourning coat, walked the length of the aisle to the corner of the school's old Broadwood upright, and claimed the school's young music mistress — in the presence of the parish — as his late wife's single living pupil. A long-form piano story for the quiet listening hour. Spoken-word narration, slow tender build, music-revealed reveal at the corner of the small school Broadwood. Chapters: 0:00 — A wet Tuesday at St. Mary's 3:00 — The new music mistress at St. Mary's 6:30 — A small village in Suffolk 10:00 — The PTA tea meeting in October 13:30 — A widower at the aisle seat 17:00 — The Brahms Intermezzo in A major 22:00 — A hand pressed against a mouth 26:00 — A walk the length of the aisle 30:00 — Claimed in the presence of the parish #PianoStories #ClassicalMusicStory #BrahmsKlavierstuckeOp118 #BrahmsIntermezzo #TheOverlookedVirtuoso