Stories about people's Für Elise experiences
The power outage that created new inspiration
This story was submitted by Kathy Marshall and was added around April 2008.
One very cold Saturday winter afternoon in February, all my power went
out due to a bad storm. I had no electricity or heat. After reading a
book for awhile, the sun started to go down. To hard to read by
candlelight, I decided to pull out my electric keyboard which sat for a
few years underneath my living room table collecting dust. I never
learned how to play formally, just fooled around once in a while,
playing songs by ear, mostly older simple Beatles tune. It also runs on
batteries and lights up. I had just bought an abundance of batteries of
several sizes that were on sale, so I had plenty of "c" batteries for
it. My keyboard is a learning keyboard with a host of features, one
being learning songs already recorded into the keyboard. I never heard
Fur Elise before, not that I can remember anyway, but after going
through the already recorded tunes for self learning, I picked out Fur
Elise because it was a solo, I really liked it and it didn't seem to
hard. I did not know at that time it was by Beethovan. I played that
song over and over, piece by piece, in order to get the correct keys. I
practiced for hours on that cold night by candlelight, with blankets
wrapped around me, into the wee hours of the morning. My power still
did not return and by Sunday morning, I again pulled out the keyboard
and returned to learning Fur Elise. I was determined to get it right.
Again, I played over and over on that Sunday, replacing the batteries
again, getting frustrated when hitting the wrong keys, freezing in the
cold with no heat. By night fall on Sunday my power still had not
returned, so I was practicing again by candlelight and the light of the
keyboard. During the night, by the early wee hours of Monday morning,
I finally had it down pretty good and I went to sleep. My power finally
returned before I awoke to go to work Monday. Still, I did pull out the
keyboard once more before getting warmed up, cleaned up and ready to go
into work - late of course - and played Fur Elise flawlessly. I have
not forgotten it and play it for anyone who will listen, whenever I get
the chance to a keyboard or piano. When I visited my Mom who lives in
another state and has played the piano informally all her life, mostly
by self teaching, I was excited to play it on her keyboard for her.
If my power had not gone out that weekend, I would never have pulled
that keyboard out and learned that song, a "real" song, in two days by
candlelight - never!
........Funny thing happened a few months after that - I was researching
several banks in my Mom's area for low interest rates to get a home
mortgage in order to buy a home closer to my mother, and after being put
on hold with the last and final bank I was checking out, the song Fur
Elise came on as their "hold music". Right then and there, I put the
phone to my mother's ear and told her to listen to the song, recognizing
it as the one I was so proud to have just learned to play, and said to
her, "this is the bank that is going to give me the lowest rate and the
one that is going to give me my mortgage". It was April 1, 2008 -
April Fools Day.
As I write this it is April 10, 2008 and I am closing on my new home May
1, 2008 with that same bank!! They really did give me the best deal -
no lie!
Very true story!