Nightmare in D Minor - By hypericin
I awoke seated behind a grand piano, surrounded by tuxedoed musicians and their instruments. Beyond, an ocean of expectant faces, extending to dimness.
A cacophony: the musicians were warming up.
Was I supposed to? I essayed a note:
Plooooooooong.
An Einsteinian man entered, to thunderous applause. The conductor turned to us, raised his baton. Expectant silence. Then:
DUN-DUN! DUN-DUN!
And with that, the attention of thousands fixed palpably upon me.
Milliseconds crawled. The conductor stared into my soul, expressing growing displeasure by the finest increments.
Then... Revelation!
Yes! I can do this, I always could! Relief flooded through me. I played:
Cleraaaang!
A shocking discordance! The conductor's face blanched. Dreadful silence. Then, an over-cultured, female "Good heavens!" from the audience.
Desperate, feigning maverick boldness, I plunged into the dark waters of experimental music:
Clerooong! Goodolering! Plink, plink plink...
The conductor collapsed, ashen faced, his survival suddenly in doubt.
A great harp toppled over with a resounding crash, along with its player.
Clong! Burrlang!
I heard an uncouth moaning sound. It was me.
KLAAAAARP! KLAAAAARP! Someone pulled the fire alarm. Screams from the audience. People teemed, arms flailing.
It was an "interesting" beginning to my new life.
A cacophony: the musicians were warming up.
Was I supposed to? I essayed a note:
Plooooooooong.
An Einsteinian man entered, to thunderous applause. The conductor turned to us, raised his baton. Expectant silence. Then:
DUN-DUN! DUN-DUN!
And with that, the attention of thousands fixed palpably upon me.
Milliseconds crawled. The conductor stared into my soul, expressing growing displeasure by the finest increments.
Then... Revelation!
Yes! I can do this, I always could! Relief flooded through me. I played:
Cleraaaang!
A shocking discordance! The conductor's face blanched. Dreadful silence. Then, an over-cultured, female "Good heavens!" from the audience.
Desperate, feigning maverick boldness, I plunged into the dark waters of experimental music:
Clerooong! Goodolering! Plink, plink plink...
The conductor collapsed, ashen faced, his survival suddenly in doubt.
A great harp toppled over with a resounding crash, along with its player.
Clong! Burrlang!
I heard an uncouth moaning sound. It was me.
KLAAAAARP! KLAAAAARP! Someone pulled the fire alarm. Screams from the audience. People teemed, arms flailing.
It was an "interesting" beginning to my new life.
Comments (43)
Kaplunk clerang tingaling
The only change I'd be tempted to make is to take "interesting" out of the quotation marks in the last line, or ditch the humorous understatement and use "disastrous" or "dramatic" or similar (again, not in quotation marks).
That was my guess, or an unprepared transmigration, or like that movie where people borrow each other's bodies. I really liked the sound effects and the dreamlike situation. To whom has something like this not happened on a night when the room was too hot?
The title says it all. Or does it? The key of D Minor is usually thought of as reflecting sadness and contrasted to the gladness of the major key of C or G. But is this the case for everyone?
Who is having the nightmare and why? We can speculate.
It could be the anxiety dream of a pianist before premiering a new discordant piece to a traditional classical 'cultured' audience. Or just a young child before a school concert.
Warming up but separate from the other musicians in the orchestra, he plays a note.
Quoting Caldwell
Now, how cool is that? How do you hear that string of letters forming a word?
Extended, low and deep?
Followed by the next sound eagerly anticipated by the paying listeners.
The loud and dramatic:
Quoting Caldwell
Enough to wake the dead. He feels the fix of 1,000's of such eyes on him. A strong malignant force.
Quoting Caldwell
Lasting for eternity. The pianist's soul pierced. It seems to wake him up to a new awareness and confidence. Stuff the conductor, he'd play for himself...
Quoting Caldwell
Cleraaaang! :lol:
Just for fun copy and paste into Google Translate then hit the 'listen' symbol.
Use the drop-down menu for all languages.
Chinese is a simple p??It doesn't quite cut it.
A useful insight into the difficulties of describing a musical sound in any language.
And how ears can be differently attuned; culturally and emotionally.
Beautifully exemplified:
Quoting Caldwell
The nightmare continues but with the humour we hear in the musical phrasing. Brilliant plinking.
Quoting Caldwell
The classical conductor and the angelic harpist get their comeuppance; we see and hear it:
Quoting Caldwell
More sounds. Not musical but understandable with meaning:
Quoting Caldwell
A long, low sound of the pianist in the dream or on wakening from it. That in-between groggy state.
The KLAAAAARP of the fire alarm - his bedside clock clanging time to get up.
Quoting Caldwell
I like it. Early morning meditations. A new chapter awaits...challenging but he's ready for it.
***
It took me a while to even want to read this cacophony of words and sensations.
My eyes and ears accosted by this uncompromising dissonant piece.
So, a few run-throughs before accustomising to the new, perhaps genius work?!
No more "Good Heavens!" :cool:
It's very clever indeed :clap:
Yes, that sounds correct. But I'm puzzled by this line ..
I think the awakening at the start of the story is part of the anxiety dream.
It's a lucid dream; an awareness of self within a dream.
Experiencing the emotions e.g. of relief as in:
Quoting Caldwell
So, the sounds you hear in the story are nightmarish. Not reality. Yes? :chin:
Quoting Benkei
No grand piano doing a Plink, plink, plink but pretty sure you could plinking well do it! :100:
...but most humans understand the sound of a light 'plink' better than 'plind' which is flat and dull. It's like the difference between 'wink' and 'wind'...
Braaang! :lol:
Don't tell me, you're the author :gasp:
Anyway, the sounds that can be made with a grand piano are much more varied and weird than traditionally explored in pre-1950s straight music or in popular music. See (hear) e.g., Terry Riley, John Cage.
Agree :up: I like the progression from the recognisable heavy and bolded DUN-DUN! DUN-DUN! through the angsty cacophony to the light italicised Plink, plink plink...
The relief after the tension of the nightmare.
Quoting Jamal
Thank you so much for this. Listening now to:
Terry Riley - 'The Dream' for justly tuned piano - Live in Rome 1999
Now, can someone explain to me what is meant by 'justly tuned', thanks :sparkle:
I did google it. That's why I was asking for help. Thanks for keeping it crisp and clear :up:
You know Jamal, you are forgiven everything for this introduction.
I'm 10 minutes from the end and I could listen forever...
Yes you are :kiss:
I am tempted to write Every Good Boy Deserves F... but that would spoil the moment.
I can't describe how I feel after listening to Riley's 'The Dream'.
Dazed and amazed will have to do...captivating...
Can't thank you enough :heart: :flower:
You know it well?
It's the first time for me and I adore it.
Makes me wanna go pick up a pizza :fire:
Quoting Amity
I've heard a lot of Leroy Anderson. He produced, I don't know, around 250 (+/-) compositions some more famous than others.
Syncopated Clock
Sleigh Ride
Bugler's Holiday
A Christmas Festival
The Waltzing Cat
Blue Tango
Belle of the Ball
Trumpeter's Lullaby
The Typewriter
A version of Syncopated Clock was the theme song for a long running radio show back in the '50s, sponsored by North Western National Bank (later Norwest, now Wells Fargo). "Light classical" was popular on adult A.M. radio back in the 50s. This bugle piece was played pretty often.
Thank you for all of this.
Utterly amazing what lips, lungs, tongues and love of music can do.
Will listen more tomorrow. It's been a busy day. Totally wow'd :cool:
As a counter point to your pizzicato, here is the folk music that is pizzica...
Only, he can't. The notion that he could comes from assuming the alternate identity; he thinks the motor memory is all the musical knowledge he needs. But he's wrong; he doesn't have a conscious memory of the piece he's expected to play.
Yes, good point. I was confused by that line because he had an *awareness* that he did not belong there, let alone play the piano.
[quote="Benkei;767100]I like the idea but at the same time I'm not connecting the sounds to a grand piano and as an avid piano player I do manage to get all sorts of sounds out of it.[/quote]
I've forgotten -- I did see your video when you were playing a piece. :cool:
Quoting Jamal
Yes, could be.
Recently I heard about a musician from a country in the Middle East or thereaboutsmaybe it was Turkey, I cant rememberwho plays both in his local musical style and also travels to the US to play there. He said that each time he goes to the US, or returns home, the music everyones playing sounds out of tune for a couple of days before he gets used to it again.
So to many people the Riley piece will sound simply out of tune, at least to begin with. Its a different sound world.
Quoting Jamal
The Riley piece didn't seem out of tune to me at all. It is certainly different but wow...I listened to it again last night...no jarringness to it at all. It flowed beautifully...
'Justly tuned' doesn't mean 'out of tune' to my ears. It's something else. Dunno :chin:
Terry Riley's piece is a justly tuned piano but that's done in a certain key and then he decided to play in a different key. A justly tuned instruments only sounds harmonious in the key it was tuned to. So if everything is tuned to C and everybody plays in C, it will sound great (better than well-tempered tuning). However, if it's tuned to C and you play in Bes, it's going to be discordant.
Thank you. I think I understand what you're saying about harmony. How Riley played in a different key to that of the 'justly tuned' piano. And that should not sound harmonious but discordant.
However, my point was that it didn't sound discordant to me. I don't know why that is... :chin:
My ears do not usually take kindly to any kind of jarring sound.
Perhaps it was the use of 'the so-called wolf tones'. I've done the wiki. It has an example of a wolf tone on a cello. Could it be that my ears are more attuned to this music when my brain is on a low frequency.
I have no idea what I mean by that. Other than, perhaps a mood thing...
Nobody knows.
Quoting Jamal
Yeah, I really wasn't sure about that.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Exactly what I was going for :up:
Quoting Jack Cummins
I am an amateur musician with stage fright, and this is a real nightmare scenario for me.
Quoting Jamal
Something like that, I was going for confidence born of disorientation, in a desperate moment.
Quoting Vera Mont
This is a better explanation than I had conceived.
Quoting Benkei
This is a good call out. I didn't really know how or frankly take the effort to translate the dissonant piano sounds in my head to letters, so I just winged it.
I frankly don't have the musical knowledge to make this kind of association. The title was just a filing in of the cliched template:
x in key
I just wanted "nightmare" in the title to reinforce that this was a mere nightmare, only in the end to reveal that it was in fact a nightmarish beginning to a new life.
Quoting Amity
That is exactly what that tentative, lone note was meant to convey
Quoting Amity
In my mind, the pianist was terrified, desperate to somehow please the conductor, players, and audience. The seeming confidence was a mere mental hail mary in the face of immanent psychic collapse.
Quoting Amity
Haha, I like this interpretation, even though I was going for some sci-fi scenario (or perhaps the pianist was a stroke victim?)
Quoting Amity
Very generous and flattering, thanks for your thoughtful comments as always!
It comes from my own recurring dream of entering an unfamiliar classroom and having a test placed in front of me. After the dread of "But that was 60 years ago!!! How am I supposed to remember? ", there is usually a moment of calm, "But it seems I belong in this class. The knowledge will come back to me." Then I turn over the paper and I have not a clue.
Yes, I can identify with your stage fright as I don't think that I could perform on stage, even though my mother used to act on stage. I don't know how all the rock stars manage to get up and perform before crowds. It made me nervous enough when I was in creative writing activities and had to read out my work. However, when I got used to it I did find that reading one's work was in important way of showing personal voice through performance. I would imagine the same applies to music although unfortunately the only instrument I play is my CD player. I hope that you still get outlets to express your musical side.
'Not a "dream" but an actual psychotic break à la Syd Barrett.-' Weird fun. I really like it. :cool: