Death and Transfiguration

Chapter 30

As the weeks went by, Bertrand Sylvestre and I grew apart, but over time, I began to miss him. We had clashed from time to time, but he often had good advice. The Nightingales did too, but they were often too focused on the big picture, more concerned about giving me the most insane ideas they could come up with than teaching me technique and discipline. Sylvestre, for all of his faults, never failed to give me the tough love I needed, to tell me that I needed to learn to walk before I tried to run, and when I looked at the symphony, now nearly complete, I knew that was exactly what I needed.

I finished the cello sonata in one evening, hastily scribbling out an ending to the piece, and the next day, when Sylvestre came home in the afternoon, I told him that I had finally completed the composition.

"Good for you, Miss Brackenborough," he said. "I didn't think you would do it."

"I was hoping you would have a little more faith in me, Mr. Sylvestre," I said as I handed him my composition book.

Sylvestre flipped through the book, but he looked disappointed. "Interesting," he said. "I've never seen you write something this...cerebral."

"Why thank you," I said.

"That wasn't a compliment," Sylvestre said. He walked over to the piano, and he sat down on the bench and began to play the piano part for the last movement of the sonata.

Cerebral wasn't the word I would have used to describe what I heard, not when it seemed altogether devoid of emotion. It was dull, flat, lifeless, nothing but a series of simple chords following each other in the most basic order. I looked to the cello part, hoping to argue to Sylvestre that it would sound perfect if only we could find a cello soloist, but the other part was equally boring, droning on and on in the most tedious manner possible. The whole piece had fallen flat, but how? I'd worked so hard, or at least I had when I'd started writing the music. How had it fallen apart like this?

"I wrote it in one night," I explained to Sylvestre as soon as he finished playing. "I didn't really get a chance to look it over before I gave it to you."

"Your heart wasn't in it," Sylvestre said as he got up from the piano bench.

I paused and then realized that he was right. All I'd cared about was finishing the piece. I hadn't given it my love and attention like I'd done with the symphony. Perhaps art was like a garden, perhaps any idea could become something beautiful if you tended to it, cared for it, watered it every single day, but I hadn't done that. I had cast my cello sonata aside, put the bare minimum amount of effort in to call it a finished piece, and somehow, I expected true beauty to bloom from it.

I had failed, but perhaps the symphony, the piece I had poured every last piece of my soul into, would turn out better. I only had to convince Sylvestre to give it a chance.

I flipped ahead in the composition book, but Sylvestre rolled his eyes as soon as he saw that the symphony was based on Bergmann's last composition. "Come on," I said. "I promise it's better than the cello sonata."

"That's not hard, Miss Brackenborough."

"Can you please at least take a look?"

Sylvestre snatched the book out of my hands, and he slowly looked through the piece, scrutinizing each and every page. After a long time reading the score, he finally said, "It's too much like Bergmann."

"But I wrote everything myself!" I objected. "The only time I quoted Bergmann was at the beginning - he only had a sketch of this symphony anyways, he'd barely even started it..."

"Yes, but it sounds too much like him," Sylvestre said. "The melodies, the harmonies, the orchestration - it's all Bergmann."

"Well, it is a completion of his symphony."

"There's potential here," Sylvestre said. "It doesn't just have to be Bergmann's 10th Symphony. It can also be Matilda Brackenborough's first."

I smiled slightly, but before I could say anything, Sylvestre said, "The counterpoint in the development of the second movement seems off, and I think the finale is too repetitive, but I would work on trying not to sound so much like Bergmann first. Start by fixing the opening of the last movement. It seems reminiscent of one of the melodies in Bergmann's 6th Symphony."

"Oh, come on, Mr. Sylvestre," I said. "I saw your latest orchestral piece, and every last one of the melodies was stolen from that song you wrote."

"At least I plagiarized myself instead of plagiarizing Johann Bergmann."

I sighed, gave Sylvestre a nasty look, and sat down at the piano bench and got to work on revising the last movement. I played around on the piano for a while, figuring out what I liked and what I didn't, trying to find my own voice. I did whatever I could to change the piece, fixing rhythms, changing the orchestration, sometimes crossing out whole passages and replacing them with new music. I wasn't sure if it was any better, but it was certainly a lot more original.

It worked until I saw the soprano solo, the one I'd written for Léa, and I knew I couldn't change a note.

Sylvestre looked over my shoulder and said, "A soprano solo. Interesting."

"I thought it would add some color to this section," I said.

"It's an unusual choice, but not unprecedented," Sylvestre said. He hummed the tune, and when he finished, he said, "It's certainly reminiscent of Tchaikovsky."

"I don't hear that in the music," I said.

"It reminds me of that aria in The Queen of Spades...I'm forgetting the words...I'm afraid my Russian is rather rusty," Sylvestre said. He paused for a moment, and then he said, "I remember now. 'I love you, love you beyond all measure, I cannot conceive a day without you...'"

"I don't think I intended to borrow from Tchaikovsky or anyone else, Mr. Sylvestre," I said as I went back to working on another section of the symphony.

We went on with the lesson, but after it was over, while I was on my way home, I thought about what Sylvestre had said. I had never seen The Queen of Spades, but I had certainly heard of it. Perhaps I had borrowed from Tchaikovsky's opera unintentionally. Sylvestre was right - I needed to free myself of other composers' influences. I needed to find my own voice.

However, my mind kept drifting back to that soprano solo. I couldn't think of a better melody for it. I couldn't imagine changing even a single note - it was perfect just the way it was. It expressed exactly the right emotions - all of the tenderness and yearning I needed at that moment in the symphony - and it was exactly the sort of melody I wanted to hear Léa sing. I couldn't wait to hear it in her voice, to listen to her echo those words back to me...

That was when it hit me.

I had lifted that melody from Tchaikovsky, even if it was subconscious. I had borrowed it precisely because of the emotions in it, the same emotions I felt toward Léa, the same emotions I wanted Léa to express to me in song.

Because I had fallen in love with Léa Valencourt without even realizing it.