Twelve Etudes

by Emily Macdonald

Prelude

Hamish kisses her.  

“I hate it when you have to go.” Grace laughs but pulls free from his grasp.  

“You’re making me late.”

Grace rushes to her lesson, sprinting across the quad, cradling her violin case to stop it from knocking against her body. At the top of the flight of stairs, she hesitates at the door, taking deep breaths until her pulse stops racing. She knocks and waits for Professor Giuntini to call.

“Si, enter.” 

He’s standing with his back to her, staring out of the window, half-open to the warm September air. He will have seen her.  

Grace opens her case, unwraps her violin from its swaddling and fastens her shoulder rest.  

“Begin,” he says. “A minor.”

Grace starts on the scale, pacing each note in broad bow strokes, buying time to calm herself.  

“Again. Two octaves, legato and quasi presto.” Prof sings to indicate the tempo and four notes for each stroke. 

The warmup is routine. Scales and arpeggios. The choice of key, bowing technique and tempo varies. Soon she feels the notes fall under her fingers. She concentrates on keeping her bowing even.

“Again. Three octaves. Legato, one octave per bow.”

Grace starts again, increasing her tempo to contain the notes in each stroke. Prof keeps his back to her, but she senses his shoulders tense if her rhythm loses regimen, at less than perfect intonation. It’s too easy to disappoint him.

Prof can keep his back turned a whole lesson. She’s heard some students swear he doesn’t have a face. He only turns when he’s pleased with the playing. Or worse—when he finds no pleasure at all.

1. Scherzo

Grace runs in the early mornings. She likes the motion, to feel her blood race as she builds her strength and stamina. She uses her regulated pace to let her mind roam free. Grace knows she has talent—could be exceptional—but she needs more discipline. 

Being late—delayed by Hamish, rushing across the quad—was not a good start. Prof had kept his back to her as if he didn’t want to see her heightened colour, her heaving chest, his turned shoulder eloquent as if saying, “In a lesson, the heart might race but only for the music.” 

Grace quickens her pace. Fleet steps springing over the ground, skipping like grace notes, running like quavers, impatient to get back to practice.  

The music is difficult, but as she rehearses, she finds a natural, sweet, almost childlike element she hadn’t expected. Charm and humour, little jokes, and surprises, as well as the grandiose showing off. She becomes less intimidated by the virtuosity required. The discovery is freeing.

2. Grave

Grace rolls away from Hamish, sliding out from under his arm, being careful not to wake him. She doesn’t want to hear him plead; do you have to go? She closes the door to the flat with a quiet click. 

She runs into the wind, embracing the fresh air. Her hair streams behind her; her fluorescent anorak billows. The first leaves are falling, whipped from the trees.

Hamish wants Grace to move in with him. It makes sense, he says. Why pay for two flats? They can save money and spend more time together. 

It’s hard to argue with him—a man who presents arguments for a living— but she says she needs space to practice. He won’t like listening to her working all day and he needs quiet to write and read.  

When Grace practices her double-stopping—two notes played as chords on the G and D strings—she sees the notes in colour as if G is black and D is blue and combined, she can see the sea, fathoms deep or shallow pools and the sky, in midnight ink or pure and cloudless. She closes her eyes, picturing the colours intensify with resonant sound. 

“Grande pancia!” Prof had said. “Play like you have a big stomach.”

3. Misterioso

Her lesson is late in the afternoon. The days are shortening, and as the sun dips Grace sees Prof watching their reflections develop in the window, becoming clearer as the light outside recedes.

Their shadows waltz on the walls, joining the reflections in a ghostly orchestra. Grace plays the descending chromatic scales letting her bow skate, slippery on the strings. 

The music feels mystical, eerie, and dancing like her movements, casting a spell. Prof looks devilish in his shadow, his beard and long fingers exaggerated, conjuring the music.

“Next,” he says, clapping his hands. “Now you have cast your spell you must attack! Tak! Attack the base notes. They are the anchors of your shifts. Like a smack. A command. Discipline your child to give it freedom. Tak! Tak!”

Grace’s hand flies up and down the fingerboard and her bowing arm rises and falls as she travels in quick succession from the G string to the top of the E. Anchor, leap, anchor, leap, and fly.

4. Risoluto

Grace’s fingers close on the thirds and open, stretching wide for the tenths. Prof stands side on at the window. He clenches then expands his fingers with her chord progressions, stressing the physicality of the piece. 

“Your fingers need to learn the shapes. Expand, retract, and glide. To have control, you must understand the music. In the last bar play the A on an open string. Let it sing. It must be pure in contrast. Again!”

Again. Again.

Hamish says she looks tired. Happy tired, replies Grace. Hamish says he has a surprise. In the October reading week, starting in three days, he’s taking her away. 

“But I have to practice. I can’t take time off.”

Hamish has made bookings, paid a deposit. She can’t practice all the time. She needs a break. He needs a break. He deserves some time and attention.

Grace feels her hand clench and extend, clench, and extend as she listens to him. Hamish places his hands on her shoulders. Look at me he says, staring into her eyes. I need you, too.

She concedes two days, she can’t afford more. Ok, Hamish says, but no violin. Just you.

5. Scherzando

When Grace arrives in the cold afternoon, Prof opens the door before she has finished knocking. He smiles, then bows to her, sweeping his arms to the floor.  

“I see I have surprised you. This etude disturbs the expectation—it’s a relief. Il sollievo.”  

Grace nods, wide-eyed. Prof is smiling?

“Listen,” he says, taking her violin. “Does it sound like this?” He plays the first three bars stressing an accent on the first note.

“No,” he says. “The accent is not where you expect it. La sopresa! We enjoy a surprise.”

Grace finds she is smiling, too.

 6. Feroce

The heating in Grace’s flat has stopped working. She can’t practice in the cold; her hands seize up and if she wears too many layers, she feels restricted in her movements. Hamish says it’s a sign, meant to be.  

“Now you will have to move in with me. I can look after you.”

Hamish says he won’t mind Grace playing.  

“It’s practice, not playing,” she says. “It doesn’t sound the same as a performance.” 

Hamish says he can wear headphones if it gets to be too much. He can work less from home—but he doesn’t; he often interrupts her, breaking her concentration, bringing unwanted cups of tea, or asking what she’d like for lunch. Now she books ahead for rehearsal rooms at the conservatoire, rising even earlier to run so she can get her practice and study hours in.

Prof had told her to look at the original score. The three-note chords are written in slurs of eights.  Molto difficile!  But he will allow her to simplify. 

“You can play in pairs and separate the upper and lower voices. I want clarity.”

Grace had seethed, setting her jaw. She will separate the voices. She will play with clarity, and she will learn to play eight chords in one bow.

Her farewell was curt when she left. Prof faced her, his arms folded.

7. Solitario

Grace stares out of the train window. The city buildings recede, replaced with scrapyards and warehouses, then back gardens, greenhouses, and vegetable patches. Soon dug over fields of brown-black soil and clusters of skeleton trees, naked of leaves. The train whines as it gathers speed. Grace paces the rhythm in her head, tapping her fingers in time.

Her father is waiting at the ticket barrier. He gathers her in a bear hug.  

“Thank you for coming home. Just you? No Hamish?”

“Just me. How could I miss your birthday?” 

Grace’s father makes the same joke every year. How he must be special as the whole nation honours his birthday. When she was small, Grace believed him. Fireworks night she agreed, with certainty, was in celebration of her father.  

After the dinner, and the cake smothered in candles—blow, blow or the house will burn down! —they put on coats before stepping outside. Grace’s mother hands out the sparklers while they count down to the start of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks, booming from the stereo. They light the sparklers in relay, trying to keep the burning alight, fizzing until the end of the music. They laugh at the silliness of the game as rockets burst from village gardens around them, scattering stars and popping colours in the night sky.

Grace tries not to think about Hamish. He sulked; said she was deliberately excluding him. It’s not like that, she’d said. It’s just what we always do—it’s a family thing­—though this is not true. Her family would have welcomed him. Hamish had stormed out of the flat, slamming the door.

When Grace wakes in the morning, the slice of sky she can see through the curtains is a fierce blue. It will be a cold but bright day, autumn in crisp focus. She stares at the colour, hears it as a note. F sharp.

The bedroom still feels like hers. It’s simple and clean, repainted since she left home, but the bed is the same; the desk still sits in the bay window. Above the bed is a framed print of Picasso’s Composition with Violin. Her mother had suggested she take it with her when she moved to university, but she likes it here—a familiar sounding board. The violin body in faded orange newsprint, the fat hand-drawn f-holes, the solid blackness of the tailpiece, the scroll side on like a question mark.

Last night Grace’s father asked her, “Is Hamish a man who brings you joy?” She’d swerved answering by taking his plate and he didn’t ask anything more.

Grace stretches then grabs her pillow from behind and holds it over her head, smothering herself. She hums low, seeing black looming shapes and red burning glows.

8. Agitato

Hamish is waiting for her when she comes home from rehearsal. The table laid, candles lit, food in the oven. He seems skittish, excited.

Grace removes her gloves and unravels her scarf, but she still has her coat on when he bursts with his question.  

            “When were you going to tell me? I can’t wait any longer.”

            “Tell you what?”

            “Don’t play with me. You’re teasing me.”  

“Hamish, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” 

“This! This!” He waves in front of her the baby’s blanket, then clutches it to his chest, hands clasped, humming a lullaby. 

Grace sees the fierce expectation in his face and swallows her laugh.  

            “Hamish, I’m sorry but you have it all wrong. Mum gave me the blanket when I went home. She thought I’d like it to protect my violin. I’m not pregnant.”  

She nearly added, “How could you possibly think I’d want to be pregnant?” but arrested herself as Hamish lays the blanket, spreading it out on the table, and takes up his glass of wine. He pours in a slow stream. 

            He then walks to the kitchen and takes the plated food out of the oven. He eyeballs Grace and then drops both plates to the floor. He leaves the flat, closing the door with quiet deliberation, worse than a slam.

Grace stands rigid, watching the red wine stain grow on the soft chenille, seeping into the pink satin border while B sharp sirens in her ears.

9. Lacrimoso

Grace’s fingers are sore. The ridges on the pads of her left fingers have deep indents where she’s pressed against the strings. She has calluses on the sides where she’s squeezed against the fingerboards giving rigidity so she can pluck with her left hand and bow at the same time.  

“No, no, no! Basta!” Prof has his back to her again.  

“You have the technique, but where is the music? Basta. Play something else. I want to hear beauty. Lirismo, amore.  I don’t want a machine. Mai! I want music. Play!”

Grace blinks at Prof’s back and wipes her eyes. She works so hard and it’s not good enough. It never feels like she can be good enough. She hesitates, chewing her cheek, starts to lay her violin in its case. She closes her eyes, counts in her head until her shoulders drop. Amazing Grace. She thinks of her father singing, humming in the kitchen or the car. Playing his piano, working on different arrangements, saluting her with the hymn if she entered the room. She thinks of her father, kissing her goodnight. Sweet dreams my girl, my amazing Grace. 

She plays allowing the notes to sing, using open strings contrasting with vibrato, extending the notes. Strong but pure, letting the tune swell with her breath, a cresting wave, an expanding diaphragm.

“Si, si, si.  Very good choice.” Prof claps his hands.  

“Basta, enough. It’s good. Now you remember you are a musician. Now we can get back to work.”

10. Volante

Grace sits, sipping her coffee, cradling her violin in her lap. 

“Look at you. You love that violin. It’s your baby.” Hamish spits the words in disgust.

Grace starts to reply, to say something appeasing but instead, she starts to laugh. It’s true. 

It’s so beautifully true and with relief, she realises Hamish is breaking up with her, not the other way round. 

Her eyes stream as the laughter tumbles from her as if released from a dam. Hamish blusters, growing red in the face.  

            “What’s so funny? Why do you think you can laugh at me?” Hamish is strutting in front of her, clenching and extending his hands.  

“Stop it. Stop laughing. You’re hysterical, you selfish bitch.” When he slaps—tak! — Grace flies.

11. Cantabile

Prof waves her into the room. While she unpacks, he settles himself in the button back chair.

“Cantare. Sing to me.”  

Grace takes a deep inward breath. Prof nods. Her sound is ethereal, light, slow and delicate but never weak. She plays at the very top of the register, floating onto the harmonics—ice blue—revealing the halo around each note like celestial singing.

“Molto bene. It is good.” Prof nods his head. “Next time you will play me number twelve. Show me your interpretation. Warm-up before you arrive. The door will be open. I will be sitting here. I will be waiting to hear what you can do.”

12. Brillante

Prof is sitting in his chair. His eyes are closed, his hands held together as if in prayer. Grace tunes her violin and then pauses, narrowing her focus in concentration.

She plays, showing the structure but finding the space between, colouring with her chosen palette of paints. A harmonic extra octave, a glissando down the scale, a teasing of rhythm and dynamics. Her playing is bright and truthful, assertive but balanced. Prof listens, his fingers squeezed together.  

Grace plays in greens. Dense jungle and rain forest, verdant arpeggios of unfurling ferns, brilliant sparks of emeralds, triumphant pines piercing the sky, earthy discordant olive, and thrusting, staccato shoots of lime. She plays, cutting a path—the line of beauty between power and grace.

Finale

Grace treads down the stairs. Her toes are cold in her boots as she walks towards the Christmas tree standing in the middle of the quad. It’s tall and well-shaped but simply decorated with white glowing lights, crowned with a star. The carol singers will collect beside it later, voices lifted into the night air. 

Grace pauses by the tree and looks up to Prof's room. She waves farewell to him, standing in the window and he raises his hand in reply.

Prof had given Grace a present. A picture of a violin in twelve parts on concertinaed paper. Each fold revealing a different part of the instrument in abstract. The fingerboard, the strings, the pegs and the scroll, the tailpiece and chin rest, the belly and purfing, the pierced bridge on its two squat legs and the swirling f-holes. Flicking through the pages gives a semblance of the instrument in the whole but in movement—as if the shape surrenders to perspective and change—like music itself. 

On the very back page under the artists signature­ is a simple pen line drawing of a bird on the wing. Underneath, written in small italic letters, the words “Libera la musica nel tuo cuore.” Free the music in your heart.