i. Träumerei, "Kinderszenen" No. 7; Robert Schumann
I was four when I fell in love for the first time. With tender fingers, I traced every one of your lines, black and white smudged slightly with my fingerprints. Naive, my hands caressed your surface like a lover delicately exploring the depths of her beloved’s heart. The world was at my fingertips; you were my world. Your mind lay open before me, a sheet of paper studded with dots and lines and symbols, the genius of all the words and stories that your past lovers told you. Like Pygmalion did with Galatea, I whispered all my secrets to you, childish words of a girl whose mind dreamt freely, seeing the world in an array of brilliant colors. I wiped every bit of dust away that hid your beauty, catching a glimpse of my face—bright-eyed, euphoric, hopeful.
I pressed your keys tentatively, hesitantly, unsure of how to make sense of each note that rang out but knowing that each one meant something. Eighty-eight keys seemed like a lifetime, and I could comprehend but a few. Perhaps one octave in the key of C Major, the key of innocence, simplicity, children’s talk.
White keys only. Black keys only. Both.
A chromatic scale starting on C,
The juxtaposition of different textures and colors from each key, a blend of dissonance and harmony that captured my inner voice—
I fell in love for the first time, although I did not truly understand its significance. I believed in endless possibilities, in the way it felt like my fingers could speak what I could not put into words. It was an idea only found in fantasies, and I was dreaming—Träumerei, as Schumann put it. Memories and experiences like wisps of smoke formed and faded, but I did not know to care—I could always tell you more, couldn’t I?
ii. Sonata no. 8 “Pathétique,” Adagio cantabile; Ludwig van Beethoven
Spring came and like the soaring melody of the first four bars of the second movement in Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata, my love for you blossomed; my heart was full. I loved you as I loved my actual voice. You were my Broca’s area and larynx as I navigated the path of self-expression: shattering the glass of silence and voicelessness, you were my life’s song.
Adagio cantabile: that is to say, slowly, in a singing manner.
My fingers hovered over your keys, gracefully curved, memories of dull pencils held under my thumb like shadowed fingerprints in my mind. Once tentative, barely making a sound, now firm and resolute. Your voice—my inner voice—resonated throughout the room, a newborn’s first cry announcing its arrival to the world. Yet while a newborn’s cry cuts through silence shrilly, this was mellifluous.
I had always preferred to sit quietly and listen to the cacophony, content to bury my voice deep within me and never let it be heard. But now, a deep need to make myself threatened to burst free, but not because of desperation.
No, it was full of joy.
I was full of joy. I threw myself into frenzied practicing, eager to learn as much as I could. Right hand only at first, then left hand, then both. White keys only at first, then black keys, then both. My feet dangled above the golden, brassy pedals, not quite long enough, but if I inched forward as much as I could, they would skim the pedals, connecting my “words” into flowing phrases to satiate my craving for the singing melodies. And soon, my arms grew long enough to span much more of your surface and suddenly, one octave turned into two, three, four—I had gone from memorizing vowels and consonants and practicing phonetics to articulating full sentences.
You grew up with me, but you also stayed the same, a constant in my changing life.
Over and over I studied the music, repeating a single bar until my eyes blurred and my ears rang and weariness coursed through my arms, from my shoulder to my wrists to my fingertips. I fought to express myself as the notes remained stubbornly stuck within me. I craved to hear you sing.
But you would not.
Or rather, I could not make you, no matter how much I begged.
So time after time, your voice—my voice—fell flat, marred by jarring wrong notes and miscounted rhythms and a lackluster, stifled, dead sound that could not bring my thoughts alive.
Adagio cantabile, that is to say, slowly, in a singing manner. Pathétique, evoking pity, meaning heartbreaking.
iii. Nocturne op. 72 no. 1; Frédéric Chopin
Her piano did not sing. And soon, she no longer tried to make it sing. Filled with crippling doubt of her self-worth and her ability, she pried her hands from the keys and shut the piano lid, bidding farewell to a chapter of her life’s story.
So it sat forlorn in the corner, its gloss gradually fading as dust thickened over its surface. Perhaps it fought to shine, preserving bits where neglect and fading memories had not yet obscured. The days stretched into months, the cyclical course of suns setting and moons rising marking the inevitable change.
Not in her piano, but in her.
Chopin told his piano the things he used to tell man, but as for her, she no longer had a confidant. With no output for her thoughts and emotions, she reverted back to her old ways of burying her voice. She could not make her piano sing, could not piece together the fragments and jagged edges of her emotions into a whole. Bel canto, beautiful singing, lay at the heart of Chopin’s pieces so maybe it is ironic, because Chopin’s piano sang to process tragedy, but her tragedy was in that her piano did not sing.
She was twelve when her heart broke for the first time. Not because of a boy, but because of herself, because she had fallen out of love with her first love; she had lost her voice. Chopin mourned the death of his sister but as for her, she mourned the death of her self-expression.
Death by asphyxiation.
She was suffocated by both the need to express herself and the fear of doing it wrong—everything she wanted to say bubbled helplessly inside her because she feared failure. For inexplicable reasons, she could no longer find her voice. Her inner child, the four-year-old who just wanted to explore her new world, was lost in the maze of fear. She kept her fingers clenched by her side as she ignored her reflection in the mirror—
glassy-eyed, hollow, an empty shell from having kept silent for too long.
Memories and experiences faded like wisps of smoke as she turned her back against her piano every day, but she could not bear to care—how could she, with no one to tell them to?
iv. Liebesträume no. 3; Franz Liszt
Still you stayed.
You, who waited patiently as I turned away from you countless times until the day I finally gathered up the courage to face you again. Like the thick silence that came with encountering a friend whom one has not talked to for years, my fingers stayed frozen as they once again hovered over your keys. Unsure of what to do or say, because how do you face someone you’ve ignored for so long? My fingernails clicked against your surface, an unfamiliar, harsh sound. They were too long. I had let them grow out, neglecting to trim them into the short ones that were characteristic of pianists.
I had heard Liszt’s Liebesträume no. 3 many times, but for the first time, I understood its meaning. “Dream of Love,” a set of three lieder. The third one was for passionate, unconditional, mature love—love that extended beyond death.
One octave in the key of C Major, the key of innocence, simplicity, children’s talk.
A repeated theme modulated to the key of C Major,
for fiery passion,
for utter heartbreak,
for emotional and mental turmoil.
For desperate hope,
for bitter anguish,
for the emergence from a dream into reality.
Then a sudden return to a dreamlike state in A-flat Major and I was four years old again, rediscovering my voice, my means at self-expression.
I let it all go.
Because my mistakes, my wrong notes, flawed rhythms, dissonance, they did not matter. Beethoven said that to play a wrong note is insignificant; to play without passion is inexcusable. It was not about my mistakes, piano—music—is not about mistakes. It is about the discovery of voice and self-expression instead of the asphyxiating fear of failure, and to realize that is liberating.
Liberating. Freeing. I could breathe again.
Life flowed back into my fingertips, and for the first time in eons, we sang again, this time full of understanding beyond our years. Rich and warm, our voices resonated throughout the room unrestrained, and my fingers spoke as—
I fell in love once more.
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