The King of Instruments

Written by William Shi Graphic by Quynhmai Tran

I was seven years old when I sat in front of my first grand piano. I remember feeling overwhelmed, like a wanderer stumbling upon a gaping abyss. My feet dangled in the void several inches off the ground, unable to reach the pedals underneath. I was staring straight into the dark maw of a massive beast with its white teeth grinning at me. The keys felt so alien as I ran my fingers across them, like they were dancing across a frozen lake; in my periphery, I was acutely aware of the strange old woman fiercely staring at me with anticipation. There was a silence in the air, waiting to be filled with harmonies and song. The stranger jolted at the first sound she heard, but frowned as she heard no rich note created by the piano hammers striking the strings, rather just the quiet sobs of a child. I wanted to go home.

One of the most famous composers of all time, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, was said to have started playing the keyboard at three, composing songs when he was five, and performing at the imperial court of Vienna when he was six. The ability to play the piano has historically been recognized as a mark of social status and discipline. However, when proficiently played by a child, it becomes the mark of a genius. The instrument itself is a beauty of design, with its wide tonal ranges giving it the versatility to mimic a full orchestra.

With its tonal capabilities, you can invoke the dramatic triumph of bombastic trumpets or the somber rumbling of a tuba. You can instill the piercing melancholy of a violin and pair it with the swift melodies of a flute. It has the ability to capture any emotion and be played like an extension of your soul. For the power it gives a musician, it has always been called the king of instruments.

The piano has been the mainstay of Western classical music for the last 300 years. The waltzes and sonatas composed on it are deeply tied to the reverie and regality of European high society and noble parties. It is a centerpiece of American suburbia, with it frequently being featured in the parlors of picturesque 1980s nuclear family homes in media and reality. Having a nice piano, even one no one plays, is a visually imposing display of wealth. When played, the ambiance it creates gives an air of sophistication and grace. For all these reasons, many households, especially Asian ones, have encouraged or forced their child to try to learn the piano.

Sadly for my parents, I was not Mozart resurrected from the grave, but that didn’t mean I was allowed to quit. Having a child not being able to play an instrument would be a stain on my parents at dinner parties which, much like spilled wine, needed to be cleaned or hidden. For years I was forced to go to lessons where I constantly disappointed my teacher, performed in recitals for pieces that I didn’t care for, and I was stuck alone for hours at a time in my own corner of the world with nothing to confront but my mediocrity. I wasn’t like my friend, Dylan, who won piano competitions left and right, nor was I wowing people like Charlie by mastering the 3rd movement of “Moonlight Sonata” before I graduated elementary school. My abilities were simply nothing to brag about and not even useful enough to achieve noteworthy things for a college resume. Thus, once I entered high school, my mother largely lost her attachment to the idea of having a piano playing prodigy, and without her pushing me I let the eight years I’d sacrificed waste away.

A few months later my friend showed me an animated show called Your Lie in April, and it would change my life. The show followed the story of a young orphan boy who was the “Lebron James” of children’s piano competitions, but who quit when his mother died. For his entire life, his mother abusively pushed him to perfection and with her gone he mentally broke and could no longer play.

A quick aside for those who aren’t aware how piano competitions work, you might wonder how one judges a performance, since after all, isn’t art subjective? How does one reduce all the emotional complexities and nuances that are possible on the piano into a single, testable metric? The answer is you don’t. Instead, you force kids to follow the score.

The score is a very literal transcription for a piano performance that contains very rigid parameters about how you are supposed to play the various passages. You give impressionable, curious kids an instrument that gives them the freedom to explore the world and instead force them to box themselves into a tightly scripted, curated experience.

In the show, the main character is famously called a robot that is a “slave to the score” for his startling accuracy he displays at competition, but feels no joy for his playing since it has no soul. One day however, his life changes when he witnesses a girl throw a high stakes competition by playing the set piece, the piece everyone plays, completely differently from the other competitors. The slow, rather boring Beethoven song in her hands becomes injected with this levity and fierce passion which completely transforms the song. The stunned audience is enraptured by the performance of this fourteen year old girl with the main character remarking that, “This piece is no longer Beethoven’s … there’s no denying that she owns it.” The show goes on to explore the journey of these two character’s self-discovery through music; it is overall an excellent show that I recommend to anyone who loves music, but this scene I just described has always held a special place in my heart. There was something so beautiful about watching this child shed the expectations of those around her and create something that was so imbued with her own identity.

Musicians, especially in the classical world, live in the shadows of timeless giants who lived centuries ago and the concept of putting on a performance so powerful that people associate the song with you rather than the composer is just so inspiring. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I experienced something similar when my old teacher played one of their favorite songs for me—the intensity of the anguish and glory expressed in those moments seared into my memory.

Her hands struck the opening chords with such intensity that it felt like a boxer sucker punched me in the gut. Each note slowly rang out with this weight, as if her hands bore the weight of the world when falling on the keys. She tells me, “I imagine the great bells of a cathedral that my family has gone to for generations… the sound timeless and enduring with centuries of history.” The next part crashes against my bones in fast, successive waves of chromatic triplets that flow with this feeling of agitation, like emotions gushing out after being bottled up for an eternity. After a long explosive climax of the main theme, the passionate interlocking chords just fade into this sad, quiet seven bar coda. When I asked her why she ended a song filled with such rage and fervor with melancholy, she only told me, “At a certain point you are just tired, tired of being angry, and tired of longing for a past you can never go back to.”

I must have searched through dozens of different renditions of this song on YouTube and none of them are comparable to that experience. Not to say that the people playing in the videos I watched did a poor job, just that their expressions and styles were nothing alike. My teacher came to the U.S as a Russian immigrant and has very complex feelings towards her original country. The way she expresses herself while playing that song “brings back memories of her first home.”

Reflecting back on my own musical journey after watching this show, I realized the true beauty of playing music is how you can express feelings that language simply can’t. How you can leave behind your own legacy through your unique performances of songs. Now, making music is something I deeply cherish. It’s so therapeutic experiencing my emotions through the piano whether it be venting away my heartbreak and anger or basking in the joy of life.

The strange old woman, who was both my teacher and friend, smiled as I brought a few sheets of paper to her. It was the first time I’d ever brought a piece of my own volition, and I was a little nervous since it was no masterpiece like “Sonata” by Chopin. Rather, it was a theme song from a show I really liked. My fingers drummed restlessly on my thighs with anticipation at her next words and with excitement as I looked past her and at the piano. Its glowing keys beckoned to me as if it was begging to be played. After leafing through the stack she finally says, “This song is a bit unconventional, but I think it can work, though just to double check, are you certain you want to play this at the next recital?” I stare into her eyes with a certainty I’ve never felt in my entire artistic career: “Yes, I do.”