Hauntingly Beautiful Music

Nothing says, "Happy Halloween", like a headless lady in a cemetery.  I walked past her on a cold, dreary day last October, and felt a real chill down my spine.  She's the blind sentry, keeping vigil at the top of a small hill, within Toronto's Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

There's an eerie sadness about this gravesite statue.  She marks the grave of a baby boy, and other family members who were later buried with him.  Part of the inscription reads, "In loving memory of Peter Hall infant son of Howard C and Margaret Heintzman.  Died Feby (the old abbreviation for February) 9th 1928".  He was ten months old.  

It is unusual to have such an elaborate headstone (now headless headstone) for an infant.  I wondered, walking back through the park a year later, on a bright, sunny October morning, if her head had been vandalized, or damaged by time and weather.  I also wondered if her head had ever been replaced.  It hadn't.  Which got me asking questions about the headless statue, and the Heintzman family...cue the hauntingly beautiful sounds of piano music... 

Peter Hall was the infant Great Grandson of Theodore August Heintzman, founder of the world famous piano manufacturing company which bears his name to this day.

Theodore was born in Berlin, Germany in 1817.  He went to work in a piano factory, and married his employer's daughter, Mathilde Emilie Louise Grunow.  In 1850, when some of her family moved to America, the couple set sail.

Another piano maker was on the same ship, and by the time they landed in New York City, Heintzman and Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg went into business together.  They soon parted, with Heintzman taking his family to Buffalo, New York, and Steinweg changing his name to Steinway.  For Heintzman, the piano business in the months leading to the American Civil War, was a failure.  With war coming, no one was buying pianos.  So, he moved his family across the border to Canada.

He built his first pianos in his married daughter's Toronto kitchen, working with his son-in-law.  By 1866, he had founded Heintzman and Company, building good solid pianos for Toronto's growing families.  Heintzman pianos gained an international reputation for quality, when Queen Victoria heard a performance at Royal Albert Hall, and was heard to say, "I didn't realize that such beautiful instruments could be made in the colonies!" 

Within two years of Queen Victoria's endorsement, Heintzman was employing 200 craftsmen, and building one thousand pianos a year.  They were one of the biggest manufacturers in Canada. Heintzman pianos were winning awards at international exhibitions in Britain and North America.

Theodore August Heintzman died in Toronto in 1899, leaving two of his sons to take over the business.  Within three years, they were making rare transposing pianos, also called composer pianos, where the entire keyboard could slide to the left or right, and change keys!  By 1904, they began making grand pianos - nine foot grand pianos!  In the 1920s, tall Heintzman upright grand pianos, and player foot-pumped pianos were also popular.

 For more than one hundred years - from 1866 to 1978 - the Heintzman company made its home in Toronto.  Then, in 1978, the company moved its factory to Hanover, Ontario, where it stayed until 1986.  That was the year they moved to Beijing, China!

The Heintzman Crystal Piano, built in Beijing, is known as the world's most expensive piano.  It recently sold at auction for 3.22 million dollars US!  Kinda blows your mind...

I imagine that baby Peter Hall Heintzman's few short months on earth, were filled with the sounds of piano music.  It seems appropriate to select piano music, and turn up the volume on your iphone, when walking past his gravesite.  Not because you're scared - just keeping the spirit of music alive!

I still do not know how the statue lost her head, and why it has not been repaired...For now, it remains a mystery...and doesn't everyone love a Halloween mystery?

A postscript to this story:  The baby and his Great Grandfather, piano company Patriarch, Theodore August Heintzman appear to have been buried together.  I found a photograph that I had missed in writing this blogpost, and discovered that the right side of the statue, has an inscription for T. A. Heintzman and his wife, her name altered slightly to Mathilde Amelia Louisa.

It is odd, that having passed long before the baby, their names are found on the side of the headless statue, not on the front.  It is possible that their names were added afterwards, or included in baby's headstone.

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.



Did you notice the Oscar Peterson Roses, and the musical note vase for the white hydrangeas?

Angelic Hydrangeas

Perhaps it's their billowing, feathery layers of petals, soaring towards the heavens.  Or, perhaps it's the sense of peace that comes over me whenever I am around them.  There's a grove of Paniculata Hydrangeas in the park next door, that always remind me of angels.  Boughs of white flowers wrap around the back of an old park bench, like angel wings.  It's a peaceful, meditative place.

The idea of angels watching over us, is not confined to Christianity or Judaism.  Buddhists believe that angelic beings listen to our prayers, and watch over us.  According to both Islam and Sikhism, we each have two guardian angels for life, who record everything we do, both good and bad. 

Those who've lost a loved one, are often comforted with the words that they now have a guardian angel watching over them.  It is said that guardian angels communicate in whispers and coincidences, so, listen to your intuition, and observe coincidences.

It is also said that there are signs when a loved one in angel form is nearby.  You'll see butterflies, or vibrant red Cardinals, or find a fallen feather...   

Photographs Copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.

Piano Recital

It's that time of year... Across the country, in small school auditoriums, community centres and family homes, palms are sweating over the dreaded piano recital.  It's a traumatic, humiliating time for those of us who are musically challenged.

All those black dots on black lines.  When I played them, it sounded like this:  I am glad.  I am glad. I can play, and I am glad.  What's the Italian word for expressionless monotone?  I Am Glad was the very first piece of music I was taught to play, using notes to the right of Middle C. The following week, I learned (wait for it...) I Am Sad, played with notes to the left of Middle C.  Sad doesn't begin to describe it!

As the years went by, the sheet music became more tangled with black dots, and squiggles.  Yet, the music, was embarrassingly dull.  I had Soul in my heart!  Even as a little girl, I would listen to Nat King Cole on the radio, and a few years later, dance in the living room to the latest music out of Motown.  I detested piano practice, and to this day, have an aversion to metronomes.  

Something happened during what was probably my last stomach churning piano recital.  I don't remember the unremarkable piece which I was to play.  I only remember standing alone in front of the piano, that hot Spring evening, wearing the white dress which my Mum had hand sewn for me (with matching white knee socks, because I wasn't old enough to wear panti-hose).  I knew I was blushing a deep red, because I could feel the heat blazing across my cheeks.

I took a deep breath, and in my most sombre voice, announced the name of the piece, and the composer.  Everything else is a blur.  There was muffled, polite applause...not unlike these clapping Hydrangea petals...

As we were leaving, my best friend's Mom told me that, when I announced the name of the piano piece, a woman seated nearby said, "that girl has a lovely voice".

So, I became a broadcaster!  Some of my happiest memories are of the days spent at Vancouver's CKWX and CJAZ.  The AM station upstairs played country music, and the FM station downstairs played jazz.  I wrote and read newscasts for both, running up and down stairs between the two very different demographics.  Never a music DJ, I had the good sense to stay on the News side of the glass divide.  There's a saying in radio news, that "you're only as good as your last newscast", which is just another way of saying, that every newscast is your own version of the piano recital.

Wish I knew who to give credit to, for the Cause and Effect cartoon, which makes me laugh every time I see it.

The stunning white Hydrangea blossom is from Florigens Design, here in Toronto.

Photographs copyright of:  Ruth Adams, Widow's Endorphins Photographic Images Incorporated.