Three Intertwined Souls

By Clayton Canney

There’s something so terribly human about a piano recital, something impossible to record.

The concert hall—a monument to the beauty of the moment, precisely crafted to generate the truest form of the sound created.

The selection—a piece created with the sole purpose of being played, to create a legacy that will never falter.

The pianist—a musician, alone on a grand stage, endowed with the task of bringing to life a piece often decades, centuries old and into a new world.

The audience—brought together for the spectacle, confirming the reality of the occasion, that everything that happens truly transpired.

With everything set in motion and as the pianist begins to play, the ethereal manifests itself.

Three souls intertwined: the audience, the pianist, and the composer; no longer do these distinctions matter, all are one as the music swells.

The pianist writhes onstage, they jump, they jolt, filled to bursting with stories and histories begging to be told.

The audience cries, honed at a level superhuman, nothing alive capable of taking them out of this moment here and now.

And the composer smiles, wherever they may be, alive or dead, their soul smiles because they are known, their story truly told.

But this recital must come to an end, all songs must reach their conclusions, all set lists must have finales.

As the last note is played, as the performer takes their bow, one soul becomes three. And the audience leaves, the pianist prepares for the next, and the composer, once more, rests.