Discordant notes on a life

Piano tuner makes peace with being out of tune

Lessons in Temperament

Cast: James Smith Director: Mitchell Cushman

Duration: 1 h 41 m

Lessons in Temperament opens Nov. 13 with a screening at the Meridian Arts Centre in Toronto, with additional in-person and virtual screenings to follow.

More information at outsidethemarch.ca

Lessons in Temperament opens with musician and sometimes piano tuner James Smith playing Beethoven’s Sonata No. 8, also known as the Pathétique. It’s a perfect melody, he tells us, to demonstrate just how out of tune a piano is.

Over the next hour and forty minutes, Smith will explain some of the finer points of tuning, starting with the startling fact (to me, who knows nothing of any keyboard that doesn’t start with QWERTY), that most notes involve a hammer hitting three separate strings, each of which must be tuned individually.

The perfectly tuned piano is a platonic ideal, unattainable in the real world. And so the piano tuner’s job, says Smith, is “to create this even spread of dissatisfaction going up and down the keyboard.” Even temperament, it’s called.

Now, you may have already guessed that there’s more going on here than a music lesson. Smith is the youngest of four brothers who have lived — and, in one tragic case, died — with a variety of mental health issues, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, autism, bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Their own temperaments are anything but even, but the stories Smith tells about them are enlightening, even enthralling.

Lessons in Temperament began several years back as a play. But with theatres shuttered by the pandemic, Smith decided to instead perform for the camera, all while tuning dormant pianos in empty venues, including Harbourfront Centre, Soulpepper and Mirvish theatres. The pianos create a simple soundtrack to the spoken words, and director Mitchell Cushman captures it all with an unfussy style that emphasizes the intimate nature of the stories. You feel like Smith is talking directly to you.

“In this world of tension, things slip out of balance all on their own, whether the piano is played or not,” Smith says at one point. It’s a lovely-sad notion, an elegant and melancholy metaphor for time. Just sitting alone on a stage, an unused piano is, moment by moment, sliding out of tune and into chaos.

It’s also a great way to describe a life. Smith’s family members — and, he freely admits, he himself — are slightly out of tune. But not only is slightly out of tune the best for which we can hope, it’s where the most beautiful music can be found. ★★★★