The day she met that piece changed her life. It was a dark and foggy day, she was bored and wandered around in YouTube. Mozart for the mood, then Liszt. Starting with Liebenstraum she ended to the sonata.
Love at first hearing. She played it again and again. She bought the notes the same day. It took some months, years actually, but eventually she learned to play it.
After the first time she got the whole masterpiece through without interruptions, she cried. ‘This is it, this is me, he must have made this for me’ she thought, referring to Liszt as him.
The Sonata became an unseparable part of her life. Boyfriends were tested with the music. She asked ‘how do you like Liszt?’ ‘Medium rather than raw, ha ha.’ answered one poor fellow and had no possibilities.
‘I don’t care about boyfriends, not as much as the Sonata’ she answered to her mother who was worried after another dumped prospect. ‘But honey, the sonata is not bringing you life nor kids!’ mother said. ‘Well, the Sonata is my life, I don’t need other lifes’ she answered.
Of course she finally found a guy who enjoyed the Sonata. They got married, they got kids. Not that life would have then started. Her love just widened to other directions.
She found a proper workplace. ‘You keep talking and talking’ she thought in boring meetings. ‘I don’t care. I have something else, I have more. I have my Sonata.’ She thought that especially when the meetings got a nasty articulation. ‘If only you would hear me playing the Sonata, you would not talk to me like that’ she thought.
This came her mantra. She categorised people to whom she would play the Sonata and to whom she would not. But she never did perform it to anybody except the family that heard it by nature.
‘Why on earth you stuck in that piece, change it, move on!’ her husband said. But she found no reason to do so. The Sonata was the core of her life.
The outer shelters of her life grew up. They moved on, they moved away. ‘Oh mother, we will miss you playing your Sonata!’ the kids said when flying away from the nest. ‘I can play it in your weddings’ she said. ‘Well… ’ they said, glancing each other. ‘Maybe you will’. But she didn’t.
‘I must play the Sonata to you some time!’ she said to her colleagues. ‘Yes, do!’ ‘In my retirement party if not earlier!’ she said and laughed. The party came, she did not perform anything. It was a nice cup of coffee party.
‘Life is too light!’ she said to her husband. ‘Is it really’ he answered thinking all the heavy accords she specially loved in the Sonata. ‘Yes, light and passes by too easyly !’ she answered.
One day she realised she couldn’t remember the Sonata through anymore. It was a dark and foggy day. Weeks and months after that remained melancholic. Slowly but inevitably she said good bye to the Sonata. She didn’t want to and that made the process so sad.
The last accords she remembered were the last ones. Sweet, tender, despondent.
‘Oh those accords, they are so you!’ her friends said when she tried them with their pianos when visiting there.
Then she could not play even them.
‘In my funeral, please arrange someone play the Sonata’ she asked her family. They promised. But when the day came that they had to plan the funeral they discussed about it. ‘It was her only wish!’ ‘But it is so long!’ ‘And do we know anybody who could play it!’ ‘I think Chopin funeral march is much more suitable’ they finally decided.
But whenever anybody she knew hears the Sonata, they remember her. It is remembering, after all, that remains. Lightly and then disappears, as life.
When I was young I thought happy and harmonious family life was an imaginary thing. A little related to Cinderella castle or Santa Claus. So nice if they were but they don’t.
