Chapter Text
Con Anima, a Niente
Johann Sebastian Bach, Prelude and Fugue No. 2 in C Minor: I. Prelude.
Frustration spilled from her fingertips, meeting the black and white keys of the piano with force. The sound echoed angrily through Nevermore Academy's auditorium, letting any potential listeners know that the performance hall was to be avoided.
Her technique was impeccable—fingers moved like fluid, as was expected after twenty minutes of practicing scales, and didn't slip nor miss, yet she was doing it all wrong. Victoria's performance was soulless. Her heart thudded wildly and overheated with an influx of overwhelming emotions, but her hands refused to be used as a channel for release. The melody coming from the instrument didn't induce melancholy or nostalgia. It was methodical and mechanic, like a clock ticking in perfect, single-toned rhythm: reliable and predictable.
Victoria's emotions were caged within her. A prison of her own doing.
Bach's prelude in C minor was perhaps the simplest, least demanding prelude of his. The girl played it faster than most pianists interpreting Bach's work would—it was her comfort zone. Études and virtuosic compositions were what she considered fun: they asked for little interpretation and a lot of precision. If Victoria played the prelude any slower, she would bore herself to death. She wasn't used to waiting through the pauses, even if most musicians considered them their own sort of music, and her fingers demanded to be strained until they ached. Pain was perhaps the only way Victoria could release the whirlwind within her.
But that wasn't good enough. And by treating a prelude—a genre that in name and nature told of the first steps of a story—as if it was some sort of inevitable culmination and not the threads of a beginning, Victoria was not only offending musical purists, but also erasing the purpose of the piece and undermining her own decision to play it in the first place. Bach's prelude, and later fugue, was supposed to guide Victoria towards telling a story with her performances instead of commanding the melody. And yet the girl failed almost immediately, without even trying to succeed.
The sound echoing in the auditorium was a mockery of the real, raw prelude that Bach composed so many years ago.
Victoria ended it with a bang, frustrations growing impossible to ignore and subdue. And it was a bang, not a metaphor for a good ending—palms landing flat on as many keys as they could cover, creating a cacophony of sound. Not what Bach intended, of course. There was no point in playing, no point in trying when no matter how much Victoria loved the instrument, she could never be good. Even if it claimed a part of her heart.
She hunched over the keys and lifted her foot from the right pedal, remembering that Principal Dort didn't extend her permit, originally from late Principal Weems' days of rule, to access the auditorium past curfew just to wake him up in the middle of the night. Her body dulled some of the reverberating, sharp sounds by soaking them in and the frustrations she released came back anew. Perhaps even stronger.
Études were impressive—they were her drive. People awed at the speed she played pieces at. But most études didn't submerge listeners into the vast oceans of the melody, they didn't induce pain or happiness or peace. Victoria wished her brain didn't solve a hundred calculations every time she picked up a new piece, viewing it as a puzzle to be completed rather than played and appreciated. She wished to simply enjoy it—the contrasting, deeply felt dynamics, the story the melody told, no matter if it spoke of tragedy or love.
Maybe it was her childhood training and the stoic teacher she had before his untimely death. Victoria had been glad he was gone and yet his teachings still managed to root themselves inside her. The man taught her to calculate, measure, aim, and complete, and that was all she could ever do. Her talent was a weapon he used in competitions to win glory and fame—the very thing that killed him.
He ruined her. Or perhaps the fault was always hers to bear.
The first tears came unnoticed, dropped onto the keys and sank in through the cracks between them. Victoria covered her face to protect the piano from the assault of her sorrows, and prayed to one of the nine muses—maybe Euterpe would answer.
If anyone passed by the auditorium and heard her, they left her unbothered.