MOTT MUSIC

500

     There is a red brick building with an unremarkable exterior in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx.  It sits beneath the Third Avenue Bridge, its hundreds of windows looking upon the pilings of the East River.  During the nineteenth century, trains would steam directly into the factory to pick up its cargo of cast iron bathtubs, which were forged there.  It is still a factory today.  Where clawed feet once scratched at the floor, supporting a great weight above them, polished legs now stand, sharing a similar burden.  It is the current home of Beethoven Pianos.  Its exterior still unremarkable, what happens within its walls is anything but that.  Mott Music slides the great horizontal warehouse door open, providing a 130-year-old keyhole through which one can witness the seldom-seen activities taking place within.  Beethoven Pianos is a labyrinthine space, its interior form and structure comprised almost entirely of a great variety of approximately 800 pianos.  One must “climb on top of pianos and walk over pianos to come to another piano,” never quite sure what is waiting around the corner, more pianos or a Minotaur taking a bath.  Beneath the original factory timbers, nestled among the many piano anatomies in different states of triage, are modest workspaces where true craftsmen and woman perform incredibly fine and specific tasks.  Pianos are made here, by hand.  The building is a protective time capsule, defending its artisans against extinction.   

     A voicer, a technician, and a piano dealer introduce the audience to this secluded micro-world.  The voicer unrolls his tool pouch on a spare piano bench and commences to sculpt the instrument’s sound manually, for there is no other true way.  He sees a piano as a mass of “imperfections” or variables that need to be coalesced and aligned.  Where a surgeon repairs with hemostat and suture, the voicer tunes with a steel point clamped between the jaws of compression pliers.  His work is no less delicate and close.  He is finding its soul.  The technician arrived in this country in 1963 and has had his fingers mingling with the works ever since.  He tells of his history and the place his craft occupies within it, as he gently taps with his small hammer.  His work is part of his very existence and he is content.  The dealer and owner of Beethoven Pianos is the wise father-philosopher.  Despite his awareness of the musical world that exists outside the building and its rapid digital evolution (or devolution), he is most definitely analog-man.  He sits beneath the exposed sprinkler plumbing and theorizes about the natural position of music in human life, but quietly and without pretense.  He not only sells pianos, he is music’s spiritual spokesman.  He is the modest protector and nurturer of sound made by humans.

     This red brick building is itself, analog.  Real hands flex and bend to manipulate the work in front of them, making music.  The MP3’s are kept on the other side of the bridge.

250

     There is a red brick building with an unremarkable exterior in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx.  A nineteenth century factory, it is currently the home of Beethoven Pianos, a labyrinth comprised of approximately 800 pianos.  Mott Music slides the great warehouse door open, providing a 130-year-old keyhole through which one can witness the seldom-seen activities taking place within.  Beneath the original timbers, nestled among the many piano anatomies in different states of triage, are modest workspaces where true craftsmen and woman perform incredibly fine and specific tasks.  Pianos are made here, by hand.  The building is a protective time capsule, defending its artisans against extinction.   

     A voicer, a technician, and a piano dealer introduce the audience to this secluded micro-world.  The voicer unrolls his tool pouch and commences to sculpt the instrument’s sound manually, for there is no other true way.  He sees a piano as a mass of “imperfections” that need to be coalesced and aligned.  The technician arrived in this country in 1963 and has had his fingers mingling with the works ever since.  He tells of his history and the place his craft occupies within it.  The dealer and owner of Beethoven Pianos is the wise father-philosopher.  Despite his awareness of the musical world that exists outside the building and its rapid digital evolution (or devolution), he is most definitely analog-man.  He sits beneath the exposed sprinkler plumbing and theorizes about the natural position of music in human life, but quietly and without pretense.