Lord, What Have I Done?

Oh my. While I have been peacefully practicing, rehearsing, and tubing in the mountains of North Carolina, I have been blissfully unaware of the tempest brewing in my comments section, and, to judge from the last comment, a tempest brewing at Frank Music. I should have put a kibosh on this much earlier.

The intent of my last post was humor, not critique! I adore Frank Music. It is the only place that really has the music you need, and I would never want to go to any other place for my music if I could help it. I am a frequent customer. I walk in and want to buy everything, and often leave with much more than I needed. I always semi-pretend to be vexed by her, when I go in, and she usually plays along. There are always works by Ives and Kirchner in the bins, two of my favorite composers. Only there was I able to find, just laying around, some beautiful little Romantic miniatures by Ignaz Friedman, one of my favorite pianists. One must confess that Heidi's phone manner is unorthodox; it would never be taught at Customer Service Workshops; but, if I think about it closely, I would much rather have her New York City, idiosyncratic, manner than the saccharine non-helpful helpfulness of most companies when they deign to take your call. I must say, I often find myself frightened by her--a situation which can only grow worse now--and the point of the post was much more about my own timidity and state of mind than Heidi's behavior; I thought the phone call, in sum, was very funny, especially my total failure with all my stratagems. I didn't post it to be mean!

Finally: the ultimate mea culpa. It appears that piece is not really published. I could have checked with the people I know who have performed it, before wasting Heidi's time. So there, Heidi was right: it does not exist, in the sense that would be meaningful to our transaction. Heidi, will you ever forgive me? Everyone reading this post, right now: go out to Frank and buy some wonderful sheet music, take it home and enjoy it and savor it for the rest of your music-loving days. For God's sake, don't Xerox it at your music library.