Date:          December 2003
Title:         The Enforced Piano Player
Author:        Jeroen Verbeek, Copyright (C) 2003. All rights reserved.

Summary:       Forced to perform a sonata for the Countess, I desperately 
               try to play the piano.

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The Enforced Piano Player


"Damn!" I growled in frustration and almost banged my head against the 
keys. Tonight was my first performance and the sonata I was forced to play 
required genuine talent. Something I didn't have. Yes, I could play a 
simple tune and I could program a multi channel music composer using 
digital samples as instruments. Instead of a pen and a sheet of music, I 
was able to build my own symphonies and deliver it without hiring an 
expensive orchestra. But creating music on a computer was quite different 
from playing an instrument, I realized with a shudder.
     The shadows in the audience hall were already beginning to grow 
longer. It wouldn't take long before the sun would sink below the horizon. 
I was desperately running out of time. My mouth felt dry and my hands 
slowly curled into fists. Relax, I told myself and closed my eyes in 
meditation.
     "Once again," I sighed and straightened my shoulders. Then I stared at 
the sheet music in front of me. Maybe if I stared long enough my teacher's 
atrocious handwriting would burst into flames and disappear. But when I 
refocused my eyes the piece of music still existed, waiting to be brought 
alive. For about the hundredth time I placed my hands on the white ivory 
keys and played the first couple of measures.
     I had taken a couple of piano lessons when I was younger, during the 
music appreciation classes in collage. But I'd never managed to play a 
whole piece without a myriad of wrong notes. And this sonata, which I had 
to play for the Countess, surely wasn't based on my level of ability. 
     I sighed again, knowing that I couldn't afford a forgotten note or a 
finger slightly missing a key. And to be honest, I had to admit that I 
didn't always follow my master's suggested fingering. For example, I didn't 
see the point in alternating fingers in playing two-note trills. It seemed 
overly complicated to me. Does it really matter how you finger a piece? I 
wouldn't think it'd hurt to deviate somewhat, as long as the correct notes 
came out. But my teacher disagrees, always telling me, "Your technique will 
hit a wall as you want to play more and more challenging pieces."
     He might be right. After all he was deeply concerned with art, music 
and romance in any form, but most of the time his irascible behavior and 
his growing deafness made it impossible to work with him. 
     "Do you know what makes a great piano player?" he used to ask. "It's 
passion. You have to feel passionate about the music. It has to reach down 
into your soul, tearing you apart. You must feel the agony, the pain, the 
glory, and the ecstasy."
     Of course he'd be easy to talk. He was the one who had opened new 
realms of musical expression. His name was one of the stars in music, and 
he exhibited great promise. He represented the highest level of a musical 
genius. And when he was sixteen, it was him who performed a sonata for the 
Wonderboy!
     I resumed playing, this time running my fingertips lightly over the 
white keys of the piano. I had no idea what song it was. The sound of the 
piano itself seemed very far away, very distant. But now my fingers 
listened, being one with the heavens, so to speak. Like my inner ear had 
finally absorbed each and every event in the sequence of this classical 
masterpiece.
     The room around me vanished, I was somewhere else and saw wonderful 
things, with an odd tingling feeling. The most beautiful woman in the world 
watched my fingers flying and dancing over the ivory keys. I built the 
music toward it's climaxing crescendo, leading one movement directly into 
the next, without the traditional pause. The Countess smiled at me, her 
eyes twinkling as I played the whole piece without a mistake. And when my 
hands simultaneously came together to press down the last chord, she stood 
up and blew me a kiss.



The End




----- This work is copyright (C) Jeroen Verbeek, 2003, all rights reserved -----