On a recent Sunday, I went with a friend to an audio consultant’s storefront for an informal concert.

With seating for about thirty, this type of intimate salon is a great way to experience music. In addition to fine musicians, often very talented music majors from DePaul and other nearby universities, the owner of Pro Musica is a sound engineer and the mix is impeccable.

Featured, were two violinists and a pianist playing classical works that were unfamiliar to me.  (Per my short post-concert conversation with them, I learned that there were not many pieces written for this combination of instruments.)

Even though the violinists were more visible during the concert, standing on separate wooden platforms around 8 feet apart, I was really taken by the pianist.

The thin young man on the bench had black hair and a very engaged, but not overly serious, demeanor.  Although he had sheets of music splayed out in front of him, he didn’t seem to get lost in the paper.  He was well-rehearsed and seemed at ease.

Besides, the piano sounded wonderful!

I observed Ken, the host for the occasion, talking to regular concert attendees during intermission.

I seem to recall him explaining that the piano was a 1928 Steinway, but – he bragged – he had all the ACTION replaced within the past year.

Certainly, I knew that Steinway was a higher end brand.  I’ve seen Steinway grands in concert halls and in movies, in bio-pics of important pianists.  Glenn Gould, famously eccentric and other worldly talented, supposedly insisted on only playing on a Steinway.

A Steinway grand can be up to 9 feet in length and, featuring an iron frame, can be significantly heavier than most other brands.  With shiny black mahogany finish, an open or closed lid, setting apart from a full orchestra or alone on a stage, it can look quite imposing.

People, myself included, can be very impressed with the silhouette of a grand piano.  For the most part, when I think of a piano, my mind conjures up the image of this sensual, this curved piece of dark wood.

Its black and white keys are so precious they have to be covered when not in use.  A grand piano is so majestic and worthy of respect that anyone who plays it has to sit down before it.  A person’s hands cannot command their complete range of 88 keys, nor work the pedals, while standing.

…But I had to take in Ken’s comments really deeply…Most people think of pianos as PIECES OF FURNITURE.  To really appreciate the instrument, you need to think about the action, the mechanism by which sound is created.

When a key is pressed, things are set in motion for a felt-covered hammer to hit a string.  In a Steinway piano, apparently, these hammers are mounted to the body of the instrument, not to the keys.  I guess this can make for a bigger sound.

As I left Pro Musica, after the Sunday afternoon concert, I felt compelled to look INTO the open lid of the grand, not to just see it as a piece of furniture.

There’s an old saying about beauty being in the eye of the beholder.  I suppose this is true of many things.  Beauty is subjective.

Different people find different things beautiful and have different preferences.  Some men like slim women.  Others like curvy women.  Some people enjoy the view of a city skyline at dusk and others swoon over a view of the ocean at sunrise.

But inner beauty is different. Inner beauty is less about the object of beauty and more about the one who sees the beauty in something.

A person who can see the inner beauty of a piano or a painting or another person has committed time and thought to understanding how that thing works or how a person ticks; what makes it special.

Inner beauty is about a person cultivating the capacity to appreciate what they experience. Once this ability is understood and nurtured in one area of life, perhaps the unique way a key activates a hammer that plucks a string within a piano’s body, seeking out the inner beauty, the distinctive nature of anything, can be applied to everything.

Looking under the lid of a piano and trying to understand how it makes sound is no small thing.