June 2014

Elegie II

Its been over a month since I revisited Vieuxtemp's Elegie.

Surprisingly it only took a few weeks memorize the entirety of the piece. The memorization started when I didn't want to stop to turn the page, and just kept going as far as I could before I forgot what the notes were. Within a week after that I could make it all the way to the dreaded ending. A week or so after that, I had the ending memorized as well.

Once I had the piece memorized, something interesting happened. Rather than executing the piece note by note in a rather boring and mechanical fashion, I started to truly play the music. Something within me was liberated from the bond of the printed note and I felt the freedom to rocket to the high notes with sheer abandon. The final lines that I used to dread became a fury of emotion that had no limits.

Why did it take this long to figure it out? I have no idea.

2 replies