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Musical Madness

Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 9:42 am
by racker
The following (more or less true) story came back to me when answering QO in the earthquake thread.

Halfway last century, my parents and their (then) 3 young children lived on a first floor apartment in Amsterdam. Our downstairs neigbour, who played the organ in a church, decided to have a pipe- organ installed in his livingroom one day. The largest pipes ended only inches from the ceiling, right under our cots. Now.. you can imagine what happened when, following his purchase, the good man opened all registres of his newly aquired instrument around ten in the evening, to practize a tune of praise. Upon the first tones of our neighbours bassoonpipe our father (after spilling quite a large amount of his eveningcoffee) went down to kindly ask the would-be musician if maybe he could turn down the volume somwwhat, while our mother tried to comfort her three pale wide eyed coffsprings who had panicked into the livingroom.

Our fathers request met a blunt "I'm not playing all that loud" and it took at least another hour -if my memory serves me well- before the cuttlery stopped rattling and all was quit enough for us to get some sleep again. Next day our parents took us to Grandma's for the day. While our mother and us children waited outside, my father went back into the appartment to fetch something. We had a lovely afternoon at granny's, and returned around suppertime. Whe hadn't even entered our appartment yet, when our neighbour opened his door and asked my father in a high tone, why he had left his music playing that loud. "Have I??", my father answered, while he opened our frontdoor. O dear.. but it really is not all that loud.. just hear! And indeed, only a distant muffled sound was audible from the hall.

"Well..." our good neighbour spoke, in an angry voice; "then these houses really ARE noisy!!".. My father only looked.. :devil And the neighbour retreated with a blush. When we came into the livingroom, we found our radio on the floor. Covered with pillows and clothing.... ;)

The good organist did play some afterward. But never again with all registres opened and never late at night.. :devil

Re: Musical Madness

Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 10:06 am
by nick.bolton
A pipe organ in an apartment. What was he thinking?!

Re: Musical Madness

Posted: Sun Feb 27, 2011 9:36 pm
by racker
I doubt if it ever came to his mind that he might just trouble the neighbours with that (not unlike some folk that install 100watts+ stereo's in their apartments nowadays)... :crazy I'm sure, our moving to a nice house in Zaandam (5 Kms from Amsterdam) only a few months after the incident had something to do with his musical aspirations. So maybe I should thank the man for giving the last push that brought us a real garden instead of a small balcony.. 8)