ESSAY: The Piano Tuner

In his first novel, The Piano Tuner, Daniel Mason expounds subtly and eloquently on music's power to connect cultures. In 1886, at the height of the British Empire, the military offers an extraordinary commission to a London piano tuner. An eccentric but invaluable military commander in Burma has requisitioned an 1840 Erard concert grand piano. The humidity of the jungle has rendered it hopelessly out of tune, and now the commander demands that a piano tuner come from London to repair it, or else he will abandon his post.

Our eponymous hero appears unsuited to this commission. Edgar Drake is mild-mannered, reserved, and happy in his bourgeois existence with his beloved wife, Katherine. The intersection of such a man with the military culture might be fodder for a comedy, yet from this premise, Mason weaves an entrancing tale set in the last era in which some mystery still remained in the world.

Our first inkling that Carroll is anything more than a rogue soldier (or that Mason's novel is more than an adventure yarn) comes early, when Col. Killian, Director of Operations for the Burma Division of the British Army, briefs Drake on Carroll's history.

The colonel recounts that Carroll often shirked guard duties to read poetry, a practice that was "tolerated, albeit grudgingly, after Carroll apparently recited a poem by Shelley—Ozymandias, I believe—to a local chieftain who was being treated at the hospital." This unconventional diplomacy earned the British army the allegiance of the previously intransigent chieftain, and over time, Carroll proves to be the only officer capable of remaining at peace with the Shan, the ethnic group in Burma that gave the strongest resistance to British rule.

Is art or war the best way to deal with perceived adversaries from other cultures? This question dominates many of the glimpses of Carroll we get before we actually meet the man halfway through the book. As Drake travels up the Irrawaddy river in Burma, he listens as soldiers recount legends about Carroll, such as the time when rebels attacked an expedition he was leading through the jungle. "The soldiers, they take cover in the trees and ready their riles, but Carroll just stands in the clearing, not moving, mad as a hatter I tell you." Carroll proceeds to take out a small flute and play the melody that Shan men play when they court a woman. "Carroll later told the soldier who told me the story that no man could kill one who played a song that reminded him of the first time he had fallen in love."

With this story, Mason critiques the blithe disregard for cultural complexity that often characterizes U.S. diplomacy today. The distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims is of paramount importance in making sense out of the Middle East, yet as Jeff Stein wrote in an eye-opening New York Times piece on October 17, 2006, many of our elected officials do not know the difference. The legend about Anthony Carroll playing the Shan love ditty represents the enormous benefit to be reaped from a comprehensive understanding of other cultures.

Carroll contrasts to the soldiers Edgar encounters in his travels. They don't know quite what to make of the timid Edgar, so they jovially invite him to go hunting near Rangoon. A tiger is terrorizing a village, so they sell him on the idea by disguising the thrill of the hunt as helping out the village.

When the soldiers believe they have cornered the tiger, a bush shakes. A group of women run screaming in Burmese to the soldiers, but without waiting for a translation, one Captain Witherspoon fires. As it turns out, a young boy was playing in the bush and was killed instantly. The difference in approach between Captain Witherspoon and Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll is tragic, and the hastiness of the British officers recalls another Western power that, over a century later, would also adhere to the macho mandate: shoot first and ask questions later.

Especially in light of this incident, Edgar Drake's lengthy journey reminds one of another fictitious trip into a jungle, written about by Joseph Conrad and filmed by Francis Ford Coppola. Is there a heart of darkness waiting at the end of Edgar's travels? At first, it seems quite the opposite. Carroll remains as much of an enigma when Edgar meets him as before, but he is undoubtedly a cultivated, compassionate man with catholic tastes, an expert in the languages, medicines, birds, plants, literature, and music of both Burma and Western Europe.

The local Burmese people revere Carroll and come to him for medical treatment. After performing surgery in a crowded room with Edgar watching, Carroll observes, "It is good that everyone can see that an English face can do more than look down a rifle." Though he is referring to his efforts in bringing Western medicine to the area, he might as well be referring to his musical endeavors. In fact, I can think of no more succinct defense of cultural diplomacy than Carroll's remark.

Carroll has an important project in mind that will use music for the purpose of cultural diplomacy, though he does not use that term. First, Edgar must fulfill his commission. Carroll shows him the piano, beautifully situated with a view of the river. Edgar exclaims, "I can't think of any place more exciting and worthier of its music." Edgar, who had admired the Surgeon-Major before, now fully agrees with his views on the centrality of music to waging peace.

Carroll soon reveals that his project involves Edgar playing the piano, not merely tuning it. Though performing in public is antithetical to the reticent tuner, he agrees, under duress. And so, an introverted middle-aged British man finds himself performing the first book of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier for the Shan prince of Mongnai, as part of Carroll's campaign to get the prince to sign a treaty. Carroll instructs Drake to pick "a piece that will move the Prince with emotions of friendship, to convince him of the good intentions of our proposals."

As he plays, he reflects on his reasons for beginning with the Prelude and Fugue in C-Sharp Minor: "It is a piece bound by strict rules of counterpoint, as all fugues are. … To me this means beauty is found in order, in rules-[Carroll] may make what he wishes from this in lessons of law and treaty-signing. … It is a piece without a commanding melody…in England many people dismiss it as too mathematical… I chose something mathematical, for this is universal, all can appreciate complexity, the trance found in patterns of sound. There are other things [Edgar] could say, of why he began with the fourth Prelude and not the first, for the fourth is a song of ambiguity, and the first a melody of accomplishment, and it is best to begin courtships with modesty."

After a meeting of the Shan princes (including the one from Mongnai) to which Carroll brings Edgar, Carroll gets his treaty.

At this point, the book is nearly over, and yet the reader retains an uneasy sense that the narrative has been too calm. In fact, were it not for the languid beauty of Mason's descriptive writing, together with his ability to respectfully limn an exotic culture, one could be forgiven for terming his book dull. After all, the plot has consisted basically of transporting a Victorian piano tuner to Burma, of taking a fish out of water. Only the occasional hint of dread, creeping into the corners of Mason's elaborate tableaux, convinces the reader that excitement waits around the corner.

Sure enough, Mason manages to bring off the rare twist ending that is difficult to predict. I dare not reveal it to you, but suffice it to say that the military brass and Edgar Drake have drastically different interpretations of Carroll's eccentric behavior.

Mason avoids the cliché of ascribing all sins and errors to the military. Indeed, the army's skepticism about Carroll mirrors the questions any astute reader will ask throughout the novel: Does Carroll really need a piano tuner? Or did he accurately surmise that a piano tuner would be the only British civilian he could coerce the military into sending him?

Which interpretation is correct? Plenty of evidence supports the military's conclusion. If the military is correct, then even the most idealistic of cultural diplomats should remember that music cannot solve everything, and that there comes a time when war or negotiations work better than Bach and smiles.

But if Edgar is correct in admiring Carroll, then the book offers some more disturbing conclusions. In this case, the cultural diplomat becomes a misunderstood figure, whose actions merit contempt or suspicion. If Edgar is correct, then he is alone in defense of Carroll, and by extension, in defense of cultural diplomacy. Western society becomes a monolithic philistine monster, crushing individuals who defy its bellicose desires and indifferent to the concerns of other cultures.

Regardless of one's interpretation, The Piano Tuner affirms the positive impact that music can have on international relations. Khin Myo, a beautiful Burmese character who emerges as much more than the "Madame Butterfly" stereotype, remarks: "I think perhaps it is a mistake of the ruling to think that you can change the ruled."

Let us as a society resolve to avoid that mistake, and bring to other cultures not the framework of ruler and ruled, but of performer and audience, each taking turns listening and making harmony.