Für Elise

I was showing my keyboard to a young friend of my daughter's the other day, because he had mentioned that he wanted to learn to play the piano. I love to encourage people to take up an instrument, any instrument, and so I was in the process of giving him a basics-only overview of how to teach himself to play when he announced that the song he most wanted to learn to play he didn't know the name of but it went like ... and he hummed the opening notes for me. I recognized it, of course, as Beethoven's "Fur Elise".

One of the qustions that comes up in every "teach yourself music" course I've studied is "What Song Would Thrill You To Be Able To Play?" - the idea being, of course, that if you focus on learning to play one song that you love, you'll stick with it and you can learn a LOT from the process, and then song #2 is easier, and with each song you learn to play you build your skills. I was just about to ask him "the question" to see if I could help him get started, when he stunned me with his announcement. Fur Elise is not in my repertoire, and it was difficult not to show my disappointment that what he was wanting would take far more effort than what I would be able to help him with.

I had to tell him that he would probably need to take piano lessons and learn to read music in order to play classical pieces like Fur Elise. However, the more I thought about it, the more I wondered about the song. Noodling around online, I discovered that this piece of music has a life of its own, and thus this lens was born. Come with me on a journey of sound and search to find the very best of Fur Elise ... and perhaps a laugh or two along the way.