Etelka Ferenczy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
patronizations) wrote2021-01-25 02:17 pm
patronizations) wrote2021-01-25 02:17 pm
writing • repertory
Her father favoured waltzes, composed more than 50 in his time, 34 of which have been preserved and are still performed today. Etelka can play the remaining seventeen from memory, like ghosts of a life she can barely call hers any longer. People who listen may think they're her own compositions, a figment of her imagination, but they're very real, and they're very important. Her mind is a vault, where she locks them up. If nothing else, they will still be attributed to the Ferenczy name.
However, she's no musical genius like her father was. Perhaps she could have been - she certainly worked towards it, back then - had she not lost her soul, but as a holster of hunger and blood thirst, she can't create anything as beautiful as Chopin's Minute Waltz. Can she play it? Of course. With her enhanced speed and endurance, she can hit every note perfectly and in time, but without a soul, it's just crescendi and timeliness. Empty perfection. She hates it, she never plays the melodies that would once have challenged her technique.
Instead Etelka sticks to her father's repertory, is an acknowledged expert out in his compositions, from the waltzes to the concertos and whenever someone wishes to use his music, the royalties and the paperwork go through her. She doesn't have to work a day, she has her lawyers sign contracts and her bankers collect interest while she plays his music on his old instrument, the 1845 Bösendorfer grand piano in her dining room, black polished wood, ebonized keys, tuned finely and with great care. It's his metaphorical coffin, that piano, so she tends to it in accordance.
In some ways, she thinks and closes the lid over the keyboard softly, it serves as a grave for her as well.
However, she's no musical genius like her father was. Perhaps she could have been - she certainly worked towards it, back then - had she not lost her soul, but as a holster of hunger and blood thirst, she can't create anything as beautiful as Chopin's Minute Waltz. Can she play it? Of course. With her enhanced speed and endurance, she can hit every note perfectly and in time, but without a soul, it's just crescendi and timeliness. Empty perfection. She hates it, she never plays the melodies that would once have challenged her technique.
Instead Etelka sticks to her father's repertory, is an acknowledged expert out in his compositions, from the waltzes to the concertos and whenever someone wishes to use his music, the royalties and the paperwork go through her. She doesn't have to work a day, she has her lawyers sign contracts and her bankers collect interest while she plays his music on his old instrument, the 1845 Bösendorfer grand piano in her dining room, black polished wood, ebonized keys, tuned finely and with great care. It's his metaphorical coffin, that piano, so she tends to it in accordance.
In some ways, she thinks and closes the lid over the keyboard softly, it serves as a grave for her as well.