In the corner of the parlor, the mahogany piano had long been silent. The lid was often closed, concealing dulled strings and moth-eaten felt. Should someone press a yellowed key, the sound was sour, almost haunted.
But with chairs still turned its way, it was easy to imagine the instrument in its prime, a fixture of William Faulkner’s home in Oxford, Miss. His wife, Estelle, would play it frequently, as she had since she was a teenager. And family lore has it that one night, after Faulkner had told a story about a jilted bride, he spooked his family by arranging for a few bars of a Chopin waltz to be played on the piano and evoke her ghost.
Almost a century later, the piano is at the heart of a plan to kindle new interest in the family and the home, which was named Rowan Oak by Faulkner and is now part of the University of Mississippi’s museum system. The instrument was refurbished this summer, and on Thursday evening its fuller, back-in-tune notes rang through the parlor once again during a concert marking Faulkner’s birthday. Rowan Oak’s curators hope it will be the first of many such evenings.
The piano, a quarter grand made in 1916 by Chickering & Sons in Boston, was a gift to Estelle Oldham from her parents when she was a teenager.
Estelle Oldham and young Billy Falkner (he added the “u” to his last name later in life) were childhood sweethearts, but her family saw him as an eccentric high school dropout with little potential. The Oldhams were pleased when she got a marriage proposal from Cornell Franklin, a University of Mississippi graduate working in what was then the territory of Hawaii.
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The post Restoring the Sound, if Not the Fury, of William Faulkner’s Piano appeared first on New York Times.
