I was listening to someone being interviewed on a program on NPR (yes: I am that “I-heard-it-on-NPR” person) when the interviewee played and identified a grace note. I heard it at night while driving my car, and though I was laboring to change a section of my life, it brightened a bit with the glow of the gift.
In music, a grace note is “an extra note added as an embellishment and not essential to the harmony or melody.” Its existence is the product — apparently: I am no musician — of caprice, a burst of whimsy from the performer’s or the composer’s heart.
One of my favorite authors writes of life in New Orleans, and I always imagine the rich lilt and cadence of the Cajun voice. One bit of life upturned in a novel was the statement by a character that “(He) would give . . . something for lagniappe.” I mused on that idea as the musical note winked out: perhaps a grace note is the lagniappe of music.
The tradition of “lagniappe,” or the giving of something as a bonus, has been co-opted by retail establishments who offer those “bonuses” as enticements to purchase other products. (It is not the intention of the sales and marketing departments to grace us with a gift. We exchange cash for the possibility of that “something extra.”) Of course, there are still outposts of spontaneous gift giving. A few years ago I wrote of one, when the owner of a diner placed before me an orange that he had crafted into beauty. I did not purchase it — I was startled to receive it — and I wrote that on that day, “I consumed a work of art with what I hope was a reverence appropriate to the gift…” I did not know then, and I do not know now, the reason I was granted that gift, but I decided not to pull it apart to divine its meaning. It added a grace note to my day, an embellishment not essential to the harmony or melody of that section of my life’s score.
I must confess that, when I wrote, “I am no musician,” I was dissembling. I cannot play an instrument, but I do sing. And when I learn a song, I will often sing it in ways that may not be entirely faithful to the notes as originally written. One reason may be that the song ranges over broader ground than my voice can cover, but another has to do with creative expression. (Some mean-spirited people were trying to legislate a specifically tuneful singing of the music to the English drinking song, “To Anacreon In Heaven,” which was adapted to frame Francis Scott Key’s poem, “The Defence Of Fort M’Henry,” and which is now more commonly known as “The Star Spangled Banner.” Few people have the vocal range to do it justice, so people should just remove hats and place hands on hearts and let the singers sing.) I add what I know now to be grace notes. These extra bits, lagniappe from the singer’s heart, do not impede the progress of the music and please me as gifts to the listener.
As a writer, I am always looking for connections in the things that I read, feel, see and hear, the sum of my experience and exposure to the world. When I heard that musician play and describe a grace note, I also heard and recognized the grace notes in the many gifts of strangers and friends. And I want to play my life’s music in a similar way, with lagniappe.