Animals who live in a musical house will usually vote one way or the other. More than one cat has taken a liking to Mozart or has left the room when the atonal music began. Old dogs which are becoming hard of hearing sometimes like to sleep under a grand piano, where they can hear the sound, but not too loudly.
Once Charles and I were playing a Shostakovich cello sonata at a senior residence facility. The first movement was whimsical and playful, but the middle movement was as stark and cold as I imagine a Russian winter--or being old-- might sometimes be. As we played, the wind whistled around the edges of the building like a third musician. The audience clearly welcomed the return to cheerfulness in the last movement, and so did we.
Once while I was playing the organ at church, I became aware of a small sound which started up as soon as I began playing and stopped when I stopped. It took a while to realize that the sound was coming from a frog which had parked itself in the doorway near the organ. He sang along for quite a long time.
Today at the Coastside Community Orchestra concert, there seemed to be a strange piccolo part in Schubert's incidental music from Rosamunde. It was a kind of counterpoint, and, for goodness' sake, it was coming from outside the window. It was a songbird who apparently liked Schubert.
