Transcript – Haunting Melody

[The Pensive Tower theme plays]

ANNOUNCER
Scroll & Dagger presents
The Pensive Tower
Episode Thirty Eight: Haunting Melody

[A click, and the strange whirring of the venoscribe begins]

PAXTON
This is the memory of Sheritan Bell. Pencori, aged thirty-one, identified as male. Memory regards a symphony written by Eltoiyan. It was donated on the fourteenth of Trevall, in the year 691. Inscribed by Paxton Ferox on the ninth of Kalla, 730.

We Begin.

PAXTON (STATEMENT)
It’s so quiet here. I don’t just mean this room, though it is very still and silent here and I am grateful that I have been left alone as per my request. But I meant this island.

Over in the city, it’s never quiet. There are always people, their feet rapping on the sidewalk as they jostle and push through each other. There are the carts, rickshaws and steam cars on the roads and the constant chugging of narrowboats and steamboats on the river or the lake.

Even at night there is a near constant cacophony of drunkards, scavengers going through the bins, and the caws of night birds as the flap overhead.

But there’s none of that here. There’s no hustle or bustle. Even the water seems quieter here. There’s nothing but the ticking of clocks and the scratching of pens which, though grating to my ears, is far more tolerable than the racket out there.

You are truly lucky to live and work in a place of such tranquility.

But you don’t want to read my compliments of Tower Island. If you’re reading this, it’s because you want to know of my experiences performing “The Ode to the Last,” the symphony composed by the great Eltoiyan.

I call him great, though he has only really started his career, because I have no doubt his name will go down as one of history’s greatest composers. I’m sure that when people looked on the old masters like Hesslebeck, Shakapil and Gilsintilio, they all would have seen greatness surrounding them like an aura.

That’s how it was with Eltoiyan. Though I only saw him once and from some distance, there was something in his face, maybe his eyes. There was a fire there. A passion and ambition that could drive a man to the Halls of Serenity themselves.

But, my story doesn’t start with Eltoiyan. It starts with my years of study with the five stringed assira.

I began learning at a very young age, I believe I was around seven or eight. To learn an instrument was an optional class that many children began but very few completed. I was, of course, one of those few.

I loved playing the assira and continued with my lessons well into the later years of school. I had achieved the seventh degree in the instrument before I graduated, which came as a great surprise to me considering that, though I did love the instrument, I never considered my ability with it of any particular note.

My tutor disagreed and encouraged me to audition for the Hy-Braelyn Philharmonic Orchestra. I initially dismissed the idea. It was laughable, I thought, that they would want me as part of the orchestra. They had some of the finest musicians in the Federation among their ranks, while I was just an enthusiastic amateur from a small school none of them would likely have even heard of.

But my tutor was persistent and eventually convinced me to go for it.

It was not nervousness I felt when I went up on that stage to audition. I knew the nerves prior to a performance, I’d felt those plenty of times before. No, it was embarrassment.

I thought the examiner would stop me before I’d even finished my piece. I’d decided to play the first page of Hesslebeck’s Fourth. It’s an ambitious piece and I might have chosen something a bit more straightforward but I’d wanted to at least give my best.

Every single note I pulled from those strings grinded my teeth. Every time I drew the bow I had to stop myself from throwing my assira to the ground in disgust. It was wrong. All wrong. With each measure I finished, all I could think of was how I could have done it better. This note could have been played smoother, I should have held that one a second longer.

I was half expecting laughter when I finished the piece. At best, a polite dismissal. I certainly wasn’t expecting the examiners to applaud me and for one to say that it was the best rendition of Hesslebeck’s Fourth that they’d ever heard.

I couldn’t believe my ears. Had they even been listening to my performance?

They said that I would hear from them within the week. I didn’t know what else to do so I just said thank you, packed up my assira and left.

On the way home, I think I managed to convince myself that I was remembering things wrong. The examiners were just being polite, they probably said similar things to every candidate.

So I braced myself for the rejection I felt certain was coming.

When the letter came, I almost couldn’t bring myself to open it. Rejection is never an easy thing to go through, even if you’re sure it’s coming.

But I gritted my teeth and unfastened the envelope. And there, printed on fine quality paper, was the letter.

I had been accepted.

I blinked in astonishment. I re-read the letter to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake. But no, there it was, in black and white. What’s more, not only had I been accepted, but I’d been offered a place on the First Bench.

I’d had to sit down. The First Bench was for the lead assira players and those who took the solo performances. Typically those who sat there had been with the orchestra for months if not years.

I didn’t deserve this. I hadn’t earned this. I was willing to admit I was a decent assira player, but certainly nowhere in the same league as the people I’d be joining on the First Bench.

So you can maybe understand why it was with some trepidation that I attended my first meeting and rehearsal with the Hy-Braelyn Philharmonic and, as I expected, I got more than a couple of funny looks when I was directed to my new seat at the front.

I knew that, as soon as I started playing, the other First Assiras would hear the lack of talent I had compared to them.

I just kept my head down, focussed on my instrument, and paid no attention to anything else around me.

In preparation for my first rehearsal, I had been instructed to learn Karlain’s Summer Rain, Tyiran’s Lament by Ja’ikkan and Hessleback’s Fourth Concerto. The fact that I had so recently learned the entirety of the Concerto by heart for my audition made no difference in my mind, and I had practiced each piece long into the night until my fingertips were almost bloody.

We began that rehearsal with “Summer Rain”. A simple piece but one that uses the whole orchestra to good effect.

I played my part, wincing at every stroke of the bow, hearing nothing but discord in my music, feeling like every note was a shrill squeak compared to the other First Assiras.

When the song was finished, I felt eyes looking at me and turned to my fellow Front Benchers, expecting jeers or, at the very least, contemptuous looks. But they were all smiling at me.

I felt nothing but confusion.

It went that way for the next few rehearsals and my confusion and frustration grew at every session at what I saw as my own rank amateurishness being rewarded and congratulated.

But that ended when a new piece was delivered to my door in preparation for the next rehearsal.

My eyes went wide when I opened the envelope and read the sheet music held inside. I had heard that Eltoiyan had been working on a new piece but I had no idea it was anywhere close to being done.

I’ve just realised you might not have actually heard of Eltoiyan. He’s a very big name in the music community but I don’t know if he’s well known to the general public yet. He came onto the scene a few years ago with his incredible “Ride of the Night Hunt”, that was all but immediately taken up by the Haradan Philharmonic, which was seriously impressive considering how young he was.

And since then, he’s been releasing new works at an incredible rate. In the past year alone he’s announced two symphonies and an opera.

It was the first of those symphonies that I now held in my hand. It was entitled “The Ode to the Last.”

The name meant little to me, just the sort of artsy title creatives give to their pieces. All of Eltoiyan’s titles so far had been rather flowery so this seemed very much on brand for him.

I began eagerly reading through the bars that filled the pages, hearing the notes in my head as I read through. I became more and more disheartened with each page I read. It was sublime. It was already the most beautiful thing I had ever heard and I had not even heard it yet.

By the time I’d finished, I was in a state of despair. How could I hope to play this?

But, it was my job now, I had to try. So, I tuned my assira, got settled and turned back to the first page, gritting my teeth for how I was about to mangle Eltoiyan’s work.

But then, something incredible happened. I began playing and… it was good. No, better than good, it was wondrous. The music that flowed from the strings was pure and perfect.

With each draw of the bow, I was filled with a feeling I don’t think I’d ever felt before. It took me until the end of the second page to realise that what I was feeling was pride and satisfaction.

I felt each note fill the room and I knew it was the best it could possibly be played and it was coming from me.

There were tears in my eyes when I finished, both for the beauty of the music and my own joy at finally feeling satisfied with something I had played.

The next rehearsal was two days later and I spent the entirety of that time in a state of impatient eagerness. I couldn’t wait hear the whole ensemble.

When the day finally came, I walked into the concert hall with none of my usual hesitancy. I took my place on the First Bench, readied my assira and then waited to begin.

When that first, glorious note rose up to fill the hall… words cannot do justice to what I felt. It was like paradise. The strings, brass, pipes and percussion all rising and combining in the sheer incredible perfection of Eltoiyan’s music was beyond anything I’d ever experienced before.

The Ode to the Last, in its entirety, is around twenty minutes long. About average for a modern symphony. But those twenty minutes for me stretched into something beyond and outside of time. Time had no meaning to me as I drew my bow across my assira strings, bringing life to Eltoiyan’s music.

Far too quickly for my liking, the piece was done. I glanced around and saw that I was certainly not the only one moved by the music’s beauty. There were many, like me, who were dabbing at their eyes with handkerchiefs while others looked rather as if they had been literally stunned by the music, standing and sitting with slack jaws.

The conductor, Mihael ElMorton, somehow seemed unaffected by the music. The only reaction he gave was to congratulate us on our performance, give a few notes and then instruct us to move onto the next piece; The Glass Pepper by Shakapil.

It was a piece I knew fairly well so I had only given it a few runs through before coming to rehearsal, just to reacquaint myself with it. It had been fine, though I was typically critical of how I’d played the assira section.

At least, that had been my opinion before we’d played Eltoiyan’s Ode to the Last. Suddenly, it was all I could do not to scream as the first notes of the song echoed around the hall.

It was discordant, shrill, wrong, wrong, so wrong!

I felt my teeth grinding as the melody reverberated around my skull. I didn’t understand what was going on. I must have heard The Glass Pepper at least a dozen times and certainly, it’s not my favourite piece but I’ve always liked it.

Every note was now hitting my ears like a slap.

It got so bad, I had to stop playing, and I wasn’t alone. Half of the string section were grimacing as if they were being tortured.

The music petered out and Mihael lowered his baton, looking confused. He asked what the matter was, why so many of us looked like we were having stomach problems.

None of us knew how to answer. What could we say? That The Glass Pepper sounded repulsive to us? That it physically hurt to play it?

Mihael tried, unsuccessfully, twice more to get through Shakapil’s piece but both times ended in much the same way. He finally gave up and said we could move on. Everyone else was looking so confused, like they couldn’t understand what was happening.

I didn’t know why I couldn’t stand the sound of The Glass Pepper and I didn’t much care. My mind was still full of The Ode to the Last. All I wanted was to hear it again.

The next piece we were to rehearse that night was Kikirin’s Second Symphony, which had been one of my absolute favourites. When I’d heard we were to perform it, I had been excited. Now though, I was frustrated. I wondered why we were wasting our time with this inferior piece when we could go back and play through The Ode to the Last again.

We began playing. It went better than the previous attempt. The rest of the orchestra seemed to have gotten over whatever had come over us and were able to play through the whole piece.

For me, though, it was agony.

Every note cut through me like a knife, every shriek of pipes, every scream of strings. It was like I was drowning in a wild sea of cacophonous noise.

I couldn’t stay there, I had to get out. I abruptly got up, said I wasn’t feeling well and left after packing away my assira.

I have the barest memories of travelling back to my home. I think I might have disassociated a little. The one thing I do remember was the noise.

The people, the carts, the talk, the birds. It was all so… dull. I used to like the sound of the city, the talk, the laughter, the twittering of the birds in the park, the vibrancy of life, always there in the background. But now… it was just so flat.

If the music in the concert hall had been an ocean made of a painful, screeching racket, the noise of the city was a barren wasteland beneath a grey sky. There was nothing vibrant about it, nothing of interest, just filled with nothingness.

I arrived home. I immediately got out my assira and began playing The Ode to the Last again.

Music. Actual, beautiful, sweet music poured from the assira, coaxed out by the bow and my fingers on the strings, each note, pure perfection. Once again I was filled with that feeling of satisfaction and pride in my ability to bring something so beautiful into the world.

I had been worried at the rehearsal, that something had happened to my hearing. Especially when I was the only one to react negatively to Kikirin’s Symphony. The fact I was hearing this music again, and hearing it as wonderful as I knew it to be, put me at my ease.

I played the Ode a few times through. I can’t tell you how many times because, if I’m honest, I don’t know. I was so focussed on the music that I lost count. Each time I finished, I went back to the beginning and played it again.

The only downside was that it was only my assira. It had, undoubtedly, been better with the rest of the ensemble. But it was enough to just play the assira part now, just until I could get back with the rest of the orchestra to hear it again in its full glory.

I only stopped when I realised it was dark outside. I looked down at my hands. My fingertips were worn, even bleeding a little.

I put down my assira, deciding it was time to head to bed.

All was quiet in and outside the house. I couldn’t see a clock but knew that it must be very late. I went to climb the stairs and placed my foot on the bottom step.

It creaked. And that sound was so loud and so hideous that it made me double over, clutching at my ears.

I hope you don’t think I was being melodramatic. I do mean it was literally physically painful to me. It was so bad that my vision clouded.

When I could finally see straight again, I stood up, eyeing the step warily.

I tentatively placed my foot back on the step. I was ready for the creak this time but the sound still stabbed into my ears, making me wince. It was like someone dragging their fingernails across a blackboard.

I took my foot back off and looked up at the stairs. The staircase in my house is quite old. I’ve been meaning to get it replaced but just haven’t gotten around to it. Almost every stair creaked and some were worse than the first.

I slept downstairs that night.

I awoke eagerly the next day, ready for the next rehearsal. I packed up my assira and went to leave the house.

The cacophony that hit me when I opened the door was overwhelming. I couldn’t process anything that I was hearing, it was just noise. I could hardly think. It was all I could do to close the door and shut out the din.

I was starting to panic. I didn’t know what was happening to me. But I almost didn’t care. If I couldn’t get to rehearsal, I wouldn’t be able to hear The Ode to the Last properly again. And I wanted that. More than anything I wanted to be part of it again. It was the only time I had ever felt pride in my performance, the only time I had thought I was good. I wanted to feel that again.

I had some earplugs from when my sister visited with her new baby. I love my nephew but not enough to listen to him crying all night. I dug them out and, after making sure they were securely in my ears, I made my way to the concert hall.

Mihael ElMorton began that day’s rehearsal with an announcement. It seemed Eltoiyan himself would be attending the opening night of our concert, to hear us perform The Ode to the Last.

A shiver of excitement ran through me at that news. And I steeled myself to practice harder than I ever had before.

Of course, this meant I also had to get through the other pieces that we were to perform at the concert.

Every squeaking note was too sharp or too flat. Everything was wrong. But I seemed to be the only one who heard it now. Everyone else was playing as though nothing at all was amiss. No one else heard how terrible it sounded. Story of my life.

I gritted my teeth and got through it. It would all be worth it, I thought, to perform The Ode to the Last in front of Eltoiyan.

That was how it was for the rest of the week. Each day was a storm as I experienced the dizzying high of the Ode performed by a full orchestra, only to be slammed back down as the other songs we were to perform crashed over me.

More than once, I was tempted to use the ear plugs. But I knew that wouldn’t work. People would notice. If they thought something was wrong, I might be asked to sit out of the performance. And I wouldn’t have been able to bear that.

Finally, it arrived. Opening night of the concert. I was so nervous and excited that I’d hardly slept the night before. I almost forgot to take out my earplugs before going out on stage.

The applause was like a thousand needles in my ears but I’d gotten better at tolerating the pain so I pushed through and took my seat.

I looked up at the Prime Box. And there he was. I had never seen Eltoiyan before. He was famously reclusive and had not allowed even a picture of himself to be found for a newspaper. But I knew the second I looked up that it was him. The composer of the great symphony that had so moved me.

He had quite a young face though I remember he had a head of thick white curls through which the tips of two black horns could be glimpsed. But it was his eyes that caught my attention most of all. They were so focussed. So intent. And I could have sworn he was looking right at me.

Then the performance started.

The Ode to the Last was to be the finale of the night, which meant I had to suffer through nearly two hours of screeching and scratching my way through the other pieces. It was dreadful, I was dreadful. No one else seemed to even notice but I knew. I looked down at the seat I occupied, every note I pulled from my assira making me feel more and more that I hadn’t earned my place here.

Then, finally, we began the finale, and everything else fell away.

I am not exaggerating when I say that my playing that night was the best it had ever been. Every note, every bar, every section was music perfection. Each instrument in the orchestra was like a needle weaving a piece of thread, combining and twisting and merging with the others to create something truly magnificent, rising to a crescendo that reduced the crowd and most of the orchestra to tears.

When the symphony was finished, there was a moment, a glorious moment, of absolute and total silence. I took the bow from the strings of my assira and basked in that single perfect instant. I had performed so well a song so beautiful. The feeling of fulfilment was overwhelming, made all the more complete by the absolute absence of everything. In that moment, it was possible to believe that the world was gone. That Eltoiyan’s symphony was the last music of the world and its final note had been the one to play out existence.

Then the applause started.

The pain was excruciating. Far worse than anything that had come before. The tears of joy in my eyes became tears of anguish. Through the pain I fished in my pocket for the earplugs and pushed them into my ears.

Blissful silence. I saw the audience applauding, they were all too caught up in the moment and their own emotions to notice my plight.

After a few seconds, I tested to see if I could take the earplugs out. The noise drove me to put them back in again.

I looked around the hall. Everyone was looking up to the Prime Box. A spotlight now shone, not on the stage but on Eltoiyan. He was standing, smiling, graciously clapping the orchestra while the rest of the audience applauded his genius.

Then I realised, with a jolt, that Eltoiyan was looking straight at me. He was not applauding the orchestra, he was applauding me. I know that makes me sound vain but I’m sure I am right. He waved to me. A wave as if we were the oldest of friends. Then turned and walked out of the box and out of sight.

And since that night, my hearing has never been the same. Every sound, even the gentlest whisper, is, to me, the most awful sound. I cannot go outside without earplugs, I cannot even move around my house without the sound of my own footsteps giving me pain.

I cannot even play my assira anymore. Just the sound of the bow against the strings is more than I can bear. I don’t know why this has happened. All I ever wanted was to give a good performance. And now I doubt I’ll ever perform again.

It really is very peaceful here.

PAXTON
Final Notes; On the seventeenth of Baretree, 691, Mr. Bell was employed here in the Pensive Tower, taking up the post of an archival assistant. He worked in the archive for many years, eventually being promoted to the position of Under Librarian within the Archive Department. I never met him myself, he apparently preferred to interact with people as little as possible but, according to reports, he was quite content with his job here. He unexpectedly died nearly two years ago of a brain aneurysm at the age of 68.

Something of note here is that the composer, Eltoiyan, also died at around the same time at the age of 59. I don’t have a cause of death here but something that caught my eye was that a number of other former musicians also died around that time, they all ended their careers under mysterious circumstances.

[Pause.]

It’s gotten very quiet.

[The chair squeaks as Paxton stands up, walks towards the door, and opens it.]

Szelia? Szelia!

[He walks back to the venoscribe.]

Where is she?

[The venoscribe clicks, and the whirring stops.]

[The end theme plays and the Announcer recites the credits.]