'Musical Moments 1. His Last Piano Lesson.' - Dannie Abse

'Musical Moments
1. His Last Piano Lesson.' - Dannie Abse.

Summary and first impressions.

From all the Abse poems I have studied and blogged about so far, this has to be the first one that I have struggled the most with in terms of finding the meanings behind words, phrases and the poem in general.

From what I managed to gather and understand from reading this Abse poem was that it is about his last piano lesson of course, but also about his experience with music coming to an end. I got the impression that Abse was not at all into music, unlike Larkin and it also seems that Abse did not enjoy his piano lessons, although his father wanted him to. I also get the feel that Abse is quite dismissive of the piano lesson because he seems to be more entertained by his surroundings than by the piano which is what he should have been focusing on, really. The fact that Abse seems easily distracted in this poem by his surroundings shows that Abse had no interest in playing the piano and that it was just something that his father wanted him to be able to do. 

Key themes and ideas.

Abse begins his poem by briefly introducing the audience to Miss Crouch, "the upright piano teacher". This first description of Miss Crouch portrays her as a well educated and formal lady like any teacher would be. In stanza one, Abse then goes onto writing about how his 'mates' knock at the back door to indicate him to go out and play with him, instead of sitting indoors in his boring piano lessons. Having said that, I can imagine Abse wanting to escape through the back door and from his piano lessons that he seems to have dread every time. 

One things I did notice on the first four stanzas of the poem, that some of you also may have picked up on as well is that the stanzas seem to describe some sort of noise going on in the background. For example, is stanza one the piano teacher "knocks" on the door and stanza two Abse describes how he heard "pointless cries of children". Stanza three Abse writes about the "backslangs and jabberwocks" and in all honesty I haven't got a clue what they mean, but I am just guessing that it has got something to do with noise which just adds to the background as well. We all something similar in stanza four as Abse depicts the park-keeper "stamping" the gravel path and "blowing" the whistle and the "shaking of umbrellas". Although the noises aren't very obvious when the poem is first read, we kind of get a hint at how loud or quiet the particular sound is. For example, we imagine the "pointless cries of children" to be rather loud and high pitched, whereas when the park-keeper is "blowing" his whistle would be a more gentle sound and the "shaking" of the umbrellas would be even more gentle and quick.  

One the final few stanzas we then see that the background noise fades just when Abse refers back to his home, downstairs where the piano lessons usually take place. Abse on stanza five, writes about how the piano lid is closed and so it looks like a "coffin of music". I think that this metaphor is powerful because it leads on to what happens next in the poem and in 'Musical Moments 2.Outside a Graveyard' where I will go into further detail on my next blog coming up. This metaphor also shows irony because music is seen as something that brings happiness, laughter and life into a room, but not in this case as we see that the music is not being played on the piano and so it is dead. It could also be seen as a metaphor for Abse's last piano lesson and so after his last lesson, the piano will no longer serve purpose in the house and Abse probably didn't intend on playing it ever again. We also see the sounds fade when Abse writes about how there were "no hectoring voices" pushing him to do something he didn't particularly enjoy doing.