rambles: The Search for Richard Clayderman

Back when I used to do the CM, every February and March became a sort of musical hell for me. I'd frantically try to memorize a year's worth of music theory, cram down the mixolydian and phrygian and locrian and dorian and whatever modes, and feverishly practice my pieces. The MTAC is really strict about what music we are allowed to play, and all scores we hand to our evaluators (the creepy person who sits in the room and hacks and coughs with every mistake you make) must be from legitimately published material, not illegally scanned sheet music (which is a huge hassle, if you think about it). In other words, books, not paper.

One, year, my brother played a piece by this guy called Richard Clayderman. Here he is (Richard Clayderman, not my brother).

Isn't he such a charming guy?

Unfortunately for my brother, however, the arrangement of the Richard Clayderman piece that he (my brother) was playing came from a really ultra-limited edition Richard Clayderman book that was not available in the U.S. Mostly because his piano teacher was Chinese and all her books were more or less in Chinese. When I started lessons under her, I learned Mozart in Chinese, for crying out loud.

Anyways, in the month before my brother's CM test, we realized that we would somehow have to find a way to get a hold of this ultra, super-limited-edition Chinese piano book of some French guy's arrangement of this one piece that he didn't even write.

I know that my Chinese-language reading skills are virtually nonexistent, but even I might suspect plagiarism if I find a note-for-note facsimile of the "Moonlight Sonata" within the pages of a book without the name "Beethoven" mentioned anywhere else. It probably does say Beethoven somewhere. But it's not like I could read it anyways. So what's the point in that?

Anyways, my mother got all panicky and realized that once again, her son didn't have a book for his CM test (this was most certainly not the first time this has happened). So she called her parents back in Taiwan and sent them on a mission of epic proportions.

Their goal: to find this book:

You see, my grandparents do not own a computer. They happily make do with an apartment my grandfather built when my mother was a toddler. They have several thousand minutes' worth of talking time saved up on their cell phones. They do not know their home phone number.

So they went and looked for this book by hand. Or foot. Something like that.

For the next few weeks, my grandparents literally went to every hole-in-the-wall bookshop, bookstore, teahouse, library, whatever looking for this plagiarized book by some French guy pretending to be Beethoven. Somehow, by the power of dedicated grandparents, they found it. And mailed it back to my brother, who promptly took it to his CM testing, used it once, and never touched it again.

Many years and an unhappy piano-teacher-switch later, it was my turn to take my Advanced Level CM test (the last level for normal people like me). And I was to play a Richard Clayderman piece. I think it might have been one that he actually wrote. Nearly everyday, I'd hurl the book into the living room sofa in frustration, my tiny hands utterly failing to reach the eighths in "Lyphard Melody" (in which Mr. Clayderman boldly cheated on his CD recording by having some strings do that godawful chromatic run in the beginning). By the time I went to take my test, the book looked like this:

I loved this book to pieces.

I passed by the skin of my teeth.

A few days ago, I plopped myself down on the piano bench for the first time in way too long and decided it would be a good idea to go through what I remembered from my days of classical training. Not much Beethoven or Mozart or (heaven forbid!) Chopin remained, but Richard Clayderman... His pieces are disgustingly catchy and simple, even now, three years removed as I am from anything resembling lessons. It's strange, that.

Can we say, then, that Mr. Clayderman has been more successful than Beethoven in inspiring music that lasts within us? Or has he created a sort of musical negative feedback loop in which music is only remembered for being so uniquely terrible?

I'll leave my insipid commentary at that.

(But here. Really. He cheats.)

The CD Version: