chapter 11
Rowoon exchanged greetings with the choir members and roughly grasped the atmosphere. Besides him, there was one older violinist named Kate, and the number of members in the choir was 15. Still, for such a small church, the assortment was quite manageable.
“Let’s start with the sum first, shall we?”
“Are you going to be okay right away?”
“I tend to finish my homework quickly.”
Rowoon smiled and sat down at the piano. The choir members looked at him with strangely expectant eyes. The students of Hidden Valley High School had a pretty good reputation in the town. Right away, Mila also raised the singing level of their choir several places.
What will this young pianist show?
“I’d appreciate it if you could follow the command.”
“Sure.”
“Okay, then let’s go with ‘Be Thou My Vision’.”
At Kim’s words, Rowoon looked at Kate. It was to get in sync before starting the prelude. Raising the bow on the strings of her violin, she nodded, and,
The sound came crashing down.
‘Ohh······!’
Looking at the calmly overlapping notes, Kim was deeply impressed. Even though it was the first time trying to match the sum, they were fitting each other’s melodies without missing each other’s beat.
It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be to not create a dissonant harmony while matching the first harmony. Are they compatible with each other?
‘No, Ron is leading it.’
Still, Kim majored in conducting when she was young. Her ears sensed that Ron’s voice was subtly leading or trailing behind Kate’s playing.
It was more amazing than I thought. I don’t know if you’re only good at playing your own, but it was more difficult than I thought to breathe in the performance of others. Especially if you are a student who has no choice but to lack experience.
But it wasn’t just Kim who was surprised. Even Rowoon himself was surprised by his skillful tempo control.
‘······Was I originally this good at ensemble?’
It wasn’t that I couldn’t do it, but even so, it wasn’t to the point where I could naturally play in concert with someone who was trying to match for the first time.
‘Maybe because of Chopin’s blessing.’
His specialty, Mirage Rubato. Although rubato was just a performance technique that controlled the beat according to the player’s discretion, the saying also became a story that in a way, this blessing boosted his sense of beat itself.
‘It’s only the second level, but at this level…’
If you get a medium or high prize, how much will it be? The corner of Rowoon’s mouth was pulled. Even though he is playing the music of a completely different musician, Chopin is with him now.
A giant stands behind his back. what to be afraid of
And at that moment, Mila’s voice penetrated their concerto.
Be Thou my Vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
It’s a beautiful voice no matter how many times you hear it. Sounds mix with each other, playing on the precarious boundary where dissonance seems to arise, and fleeting beauty ceaselessly forms and disappears.
The hymns of the choir, which should be ordinary, are not envious of those of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel Choir at this moment.
The performance ended in an instant. No, it felt like it was over in an instant. Everyone looked at each other with excited eyes.
However, Rowoon was not.
Rowoon quietly opened his mouth. On the subject of the magically neat accompaniment, he had a somewhat regretful expression.
“Should we guess again?”
maybe they didn’t know That their new pianist is a sneaky perfectionist and a terrible practice bug.
They didn’t even have a proper conversation, but they mixed up our voices like that many times.
‘Bach, I understand why you gave me this homework assignment.’
Because it is a church, there are performances that can only be performed in a church.
In the first place, the direction of religious music is inevitably different from that of modern musicians. If expressing oneself is the trend in music these days, religious music makes sounds to glorify God, not self.
In a way, it can be said to be thoroughly altruistic music. Like Bach’s music, which had to be composed for aristocrats all his life.
Rowoon was unfamiliar with that altruism.
It had to be. He has been doing music to express himself. He made every effort to show his small self to the world. But when he sat down at the piano as an accompanist, he had to focus only on the music and not on himself. He had to do everything in his power to arrange the scattered melodies.
unfamiliar play. strange feeling. unfamiliar······.
for a moment,
Are you really unfamiliar?
‘······It’s not unfamiliar.’
somehow got used to it It was strange. Rowoon hadn’t played the accompaniment very often. But why does this feeling feel so familiar right now?
After a while, Rowoon got the answer. It’s just that God is not the opponent, in fact he has played quite a few times putting himself down. In front of Chopin, in front of Bach, Rowoon acknowledged his smallness and accepted their every word.
In a way, he was always singing hymns to these great saints of music.
It’s a small realization. weak to call for progress. However, the change of mind at least made Rowoon laugh.
‘······Laughing?’
Even as she raised her voice, Mila couldn’t help but be surprised inside. Rowoon’s accompaniment was more than she expected.
The decorative sounds that do not harm the harmony seemed to have received guidance from the original composer as to where the proper line was, and the accompaniment that exquisitely follows and falls out as if reading everyone’s breath is difficult to distinguish whether they are being led by the accompaniment or they are leading the accompaniment. It was hard.
But in the meantime, he is smiling. It’s not about using energy and trying to match their performance, it’s just a story of enjoying it.
‘Was Ron like this?’
I knew I wasn’t incompetent. But it didn’t feel great. Just a hard working kid. poisonous kid. Because that was the impression she had on Rowoon.
However, the more the sum was matched, the more Rowoon gave them the perfect accompaniment instead of revealing his bottom line.
On that day, the applause of the saints who came to give the mass to the choir was louder than usual.
Performances, hymns, and Mass were over.
The sun that had risen in the middle of the sky was leaving in the direction of sunset. The sun was hot, but the wind was blowing and the day was not hot. The sound of children’s laughter drifted across the lawn, and Mila’s eyes pierced Rowoon like an arrow.
she asked.
“What are you?”
#
[You have obtained the first chapter of Bach’s Journal. ]
[ Due to steady growth, the overall evaluation level of the performance has risen! ]
[ Congratulations. Lee Roun’s playing level has reached 6! ]
[ The basic conditions for the lesson function, ‘play log’ have been met. If you meet the additional conditions, you can unlock the ‘Performance Log’! ]
< Only one performance (1) > End
< Only one performance (2) >
1741. Leipzig.
— Lately I’ve been so upset that I can’t sleep. Your disciple, Goldberg’s performance, at least soothes this dizzy mind, but compared to his playing, his songs are always disappointing. I couldn’t be more grateful if you could write me a song to control this state of mind and give me the gift of sleep again.
“Hmm…”
The man with a virtuous appearance groaned. In his hand was a letter the size of the palm of his hand.
“honey. What does the Count say?”
“They ask me to write a song to help me deal with insomnia.”
“······It is a well-known story that Count Kaiserlink has trouble sleeping. Are you going to write it?”
“Ha, if you want to refuse his request, you will have to be prepared to leave Saxony (the principality to which Leipzig belongs, now a state), not to the level of Leipzig.”
Kaiserlink was an ambassador from Russia to the Holy Roman Empire. Rather, it was a relationship that should be appreciated and liked for sending a letter like this, never a relationship that would be pushed away pretending to be expensive.
“Since it’s a sleep song… I guess I should write a calm and boring song?”
Bach’s wife, Anna, glanced at him. Even at church, he liked to direct unsimplified performances, and this was the husband who often caused friction. There was no way I was trying to compose a boring song.
And as expected, Bach looked at Anna with a strange smile.
“ma’am. If there is a wave, what do you think we need to do to calm it down?”
“······well?”
“In the opposite direction of the wave, we can summon another wave.”
Bach said that and immediately sat down in front of the harpsichord (a keyboard instrument prior to the piano. When the keys are pressed, the strings pluck and sound). Without thinking for a moment, I put my hands on the keyboard,
That’s how it created negative waves.
Anna closed her eyes involuntarily. It wasn’t a harsh melody to call out waves, but this cool and restless melody, reminiscent of the sound of foam bursting on the beach, certainly resembled waves.
‘amazing.’
It wasn’t just Anna who was appreciating Bach’s music like that. Rowoon was also trembling inside Bach, listening to the melody that was born and disappeared whenever Bach’s hands struck the keyboard.
‘It’s different from the original song. It’s different…’
As it is an improvisational performance, Bach corrects the melody by returning his fingers several times in the middle. However, beyond that imperfect performance, what Rowoon saw was the image of a musician who had reached the realm of perfection.
The performance, no, the composition was interrupted several times in the middle. And each time, Bach’s hand drew notes toward the music paper.
It was a faraway landscape just to look at. But right now Rowoon wasn’t just looking at it. The huge ocean of music that filled Bach’s heart was in Rowoon’s heart. It was a sea that would disappear in an instant when this journal was over, but even so, just by feeling its enormousness…
“······ah.”
Rowoon opened his eyes while clutching his Walkman. The diary is already over. The song, which had been biting its lips with an expression of regret, looked back at the piano again with determined eyes.
You have nothing to regret.
The Goldberg Variations are long,
There is still a lot of homework left.
#
[Come to hear the Goldberg Variations performed by ten different musicians. ]
[ Water the flower beds. ]