The desire to check all of them right away was like a chimney, but Rowoon’s steps headed straight for his room. I had to sleep first. The desire to go to bed and sleep was like a chimney. Unlike Count Kaiserlink, he didn’t have insomnia to conquer with waves.
He slept for 13 hours. And even after I came to my senses, I roamed on the bed for a long time.
Uncharacteristically, he was quite lazy, but he couldn’t help it. The sleep I had asked for in a long time was so sweet.
“…”
Lying on the bed, Rowoon thought. Bach’s performance log was something that could be done by slowly getting used to the sensation by playing it over and over again. However, it is not yet clear what kind of blessing Bach’s blessing is.
‘Eyes of music…’
What sound do you want to see? He raised his voice at that thought, but all he could see was the cheap painted ceiling.
Even if I could see it, I wondered if it would be of great help. Rather, it would be nice if it didn’t interfere with my daily life.
First of all, it was the journal. Rowoon headed to the shower room. I washed off the remaining strong sleep energy with warm water that was not hot, and wiped off the blood along with the water with a towel.
I took a sip of coffee. The burnt and bitter taste covered and fell on my tongue, and my mind, which had not yet fully awakened, slowly became sharper.
I sat down in a chair and leaned my back against the backrest.
I put earphones in my ears.
I grabbed the Walkman and adjusted the frequency.
notification rang,
And Rowoon became Bach.
#
Gregor was an extraordinary child.
When his thumb and little finger grew to a mere 8 degrees (from degrees to degrees above an octave), there was no song he could not play, except for those that required long fingers, such as Rachmaninoff’s.
From a young age, playing was really easy for him. Even if his friends poured hours or days into it, he could play parts that he couldn’t easily play.
Watching a young kid who hasn’t even fully developed his secondary s*xual characteristics cleanly cut Beethoven’s moonlight, people said in unison. He should be a pianist. He said he was born to play the piano.
Gregor took their words without filter. Playing the piano was fun, and receiving compliments and cheers from people made me happy.
Of course, the glory days did not last long. The older he got, the closer he was to the age when he could not be called a prodigy, the more the emotion in the eyes of those who looked at him faded.
Gregor found out a little later that the reason for their admiration was not so much his performance as his age.
The days when I was just happy when I sat in front of the piano were already a story of the distant past. Gregor choked when he touched the keys. Resentment, discouragement, and greed dominated him. The more he did music, the more he felt like he was drifting away from it.
You can become a prodigy by reading sheet music well and playing difficult passages well, but you cannot become a good pianist.
Of course, even so, Gregor was still the best rated ace in the piano department at Hidden Valley High School. But Gregor still couldn’t shake the feeling that something most important was missing. When time passes like this, will he really become the pianist he hoped for?
‘······theory.’
practice room. Gregor stopped playing and thought for a moment. These days, Rowoon has been a good stimulus to Gregor in many ways. Because his change was so dramatic.
It wasn’t that I had a bad look at Rowoon, but to be honest, I never thought of him as a competitor. If Gregor’s performance lacked the last 2%, Rowoon’s performance lacked even more. It was absurd, but the innate talent itself was different.
However, that changed dramatically after playing ‘Dog Waltz’ in Ye’s studio class. In terms of hand movements, Gregor still thought I was better than Rowoon, but I couldn’t say that his playing was better than Rowoon’s.
Rowoon had the 2% that Gregor did not have.
why? how?
Gregor asked Rowoon a question, but Rowoon didn’t know the answer either. But Gregor was not disappointed. Even if Rowoon didn’t know the answer exactly, he thought that his change itself could be his answer.
That’s why I chose to play the Goldberg Variations. I thought that if I filled in the gaps between Rowoon and his performance one by one, one day I would be able to pick up what he was missing.
‘Did I think of it right?’
— Don’t get hung up on Rowoon.
Gregor remembered Baum’s words. Baum didn’t know that he was very surprised by Rowoon’s change, and that’s why he was obsessed with it.
— Rowoon’s path can’t be yours. The roads we’ve walked so far are different, but don’t think that you can open the same door just because you walk in the same direction.
From noble mtl dot com
— Then what should I do?
— ······I must be at a loss.
Baum said so.
— until you can stop wandering around.
It was a vague word, a vague word. But that was the reality. Baum did not want to see his apprentice toil in vain to give him a flimsy hope.
Gregor remembered Rowoon’s Goldberg. The most recent one I’ve heard of him is, to be honest, much better than his. The unique melodies pulled and dragged each other’s beats and interlocked exquisitely, and the keys with minimal pedaling seemed to chew through each note.
There were times when I tried to imitate his performance for a while. Of course, it wasn’t long before I stopped. It wasn’t something that could be imitated just because it was imitated, and it wouldn’t be possible to surpass the original work with an imitation.
Even though he was still an amateur, Gregor still had his pride. I wanted to show my interpretation. He wanted to prove that he understood Bach, that he could somehow make these Goldberg Variations his own.
And that was after Gregor repeated the practice several times. When his hands rested from fatigue and headaches, his ears caught the melody passing through the poor soundproof walls of the practice room.
‘Goldberg Variations······.’
The only person who can play this at this time is Rowoon.
How much better could it have been in the meantime? Gregor slowly listened to the faint sound. And soon, compared to the last time I heard it, Rowoon’s performance seemed to be a little simpler. I felt it, and soon I judged that the performance was more complete than before, and then I realized that no thoughts came to me in the midst of such a myriad waves of emotion, and I immediately felt goosebumps running through my whole body.
Something was strange.
#
Bach’s music is mathematical.
Of course, all music is inherently mathematical, but Bach was a sensible musician who handled the golden ratio more skillfully than anyone else in music.
And as he played back Bach’s performance log, accepting the feeling of his fingers going back and forth from key to key, Rowoon felt as if he would slowly understand how Bach received music.
Every time he felt the sensation of sound blooming at the tips of Bach’s fingers, every time he felt him control the flow and weight of the melody, Rowoon felt like he knew what it felt like to feel sound in form.
It’s not something you see in your eyes. But, for example, I instinctively felt how the thickness and length of the melody played by the right hand should be intertwined with the melody of the left hand to draw the most beautiful line.
Perhaps that is the gift of Bach’s blessing, the ‘eye of music’. But Rowoon didn’t care about that. What mattered was not how it could have felt, but how to use it.
Rowoon replayed his performance log whenever he had a chance. And he tried to fully accept the journal experience as his own.
It wasn’t easy. It was a feeling I had never felt before. It can’t be his thing overnight.
But Rowoon was not discouraged. He had no reason and no reason to be discouraged. I received such a great gift from Bach. The right to peek into his world has been recognized. Even though I was nervous, I couldn’t stay still. I couldn’t even hesitate.
Rowoon moved forward. I bumped into Bach, accepted him, and played waves.
And, as always, Walkman praised him in a calm voice.
[ Your attitude towards sound is now out of bounds. ]
[ congratulations. The pitch level has risen! ]
[ Roun Lee’s pitch level is 6. ]
The world of Bach welcomed Rowoon.
＜ Bach’s World (1) ＞ End
＜ Bach’s World (2) ＞
Any instrument, it’s really simple to play him. All you have to do is press the right key at the right time. Then the instrument will play me by itself. — Bach
#
If you are interested in classical music, there are stages you must inevitably go through. It is to understand how the musical characteristics change according to the times.
There are three major eras that cannot be left out when discussing Western music. Baroque, Classicism, and Romantic eras.
Among them, the Baroque era led to a difficult era in many ways for listeners and performers. Baroque was difficult. Understanding, finding the value, and expressing the value found.
It has no choice but to be, the Baroque era was an era in which musical challenges were disregarded.
At the time, music existed to glorify a god or monarch. Even in the midst of that, the composers squeezed our musical greed into the song somehow, but the social pressure broke their wings and made them unable to fly properly.
And Bach was a man who somehow spread his crumpled wings and soared in such circumstances.
And such a man gave him a blessing directly.
‘······Eye of music.’
Putting earphones in his ears, Rowoon faced the sound waves that quietly flowed into his world. It was Glenn Gould’s Goldberg Variations.
This is a song I listened to several times while practicing Goldberg. But now, Rowoon couldn’t help but realize that his attitude towards this song was definitely different from before.
The independence of melody was felt more clearly than before. As many as the number of fingers, no, if you include pedaling, the piano can theoretically express 88 notes at the same time.
As such, it is never easy to discriminate each sound that is heard in the ear. If you don’t pay attention to even the stems of the melodies that are flowing at the same time, it’s easy to hear them as if they overlap.
But that was the case, now I can hear the melodies one by one.
‘It must be because of the eyes of music.’
It was hard to see that it was a change that occurred because the pitch level had risen. Rather, it was better to see that his musical horizons have broadened while getting a sense of how to use his musical eyes.
Of course, the reason why the view of the Goldberg Variations seems to have changed a lot is probably because I personally felt Bach’s performance through the performance log. It was the first stage, so all he could feel was the sensation in his hands, but that was enough. Could there be any other pianist in the world who knew how Bach’s hands moved and how it felt?
‘I wonder if he deserves this.’
In fact, Rowoon was not a fan of Bach. Baroque music, which emphasized formality, felt relatively unattractive compared to the music of more splendid romanticism and more systematic classicism.
But I guess I know now. The reason he thought so was because he didn’t know this feeling right now.
Rowoon heard the beauty that the rule itself speaks of in the rhythm that was so regular that it was obsessive. And I realized That the Bach he was listening to was not Bach. That the Bach he was playing wasn’t even Bach.
“hey.”
Now was the time to be proud of being able to understand Bach. Mila appeared in front of him and got on her knees in the funeral chair. Rowoon slowly pulled the earphones out of his ears. Mila was looking down at him.
“What are you doing?”
“Listening to music?”
“What are you listening to?”
“Goldberg Variations. Glenn Gould.”
“······ Take a break on Sundays. rest.”
“This is a break.”
At Rowoon’s words, Mila laughed and shook her head as if it was ridiculous. However, Rowoon did not answer like that just to pretend to live a hard life. After getting the Walkman, he didn’t feel like all these moments were particularly laborious.
Over the past few years, Rowoon has done his best to the point where there is no room for further effort. Even so, I had to live without feeling even half a step out. It was so that these days, it was difficult to even guess how many steps I took each time every day.