The Duet

Prelude

I'm just finishing up my last class of the day, composition, my brain feeling like it's been fried, turned inside out, and double fried by the riddles of music theory when a text from Olivier, my program director, lights up my phone:

Need you and Leo to take an hour and start working through the Ibert trio parts this afternoon. We're gonna fast track it for the May program. Saw Leo and he's headed up to 512 - expecting you. Freya can't make it.

A second text immediately follows the first:

Don't kill each other, please. We need you both 🙂

We'll see.

---

Practice room 512 is on top floor of the music building, music theory is in the basement. As I hustle up the stairs, I realize Leo and I have managed to avoid this one-on-one interaction for the entirety of undergrad. My stomach drops as I ascend the final flights of stairs. No Freya at piano, no teacher listening in, just Leo and me. A duo where a trio should be. Silence within silences. How wonderful, I think.

Because Leo and I hate each other.

At least, that's the running joke which over the years has become a universal truth in our orchestra. And to be fair, the narrative practically writes itself. On the one hand you have me, the extroverted first chair flute born and raised in a musical epicenter - New York City. On the other, you have introverted Leo, the first chair violin hailing from Tidewater Virginia - closer to North Carolina than Virginia, I'm told, even though he was literally born in Virginia? Regardless, no one has seen us exchange one word in the four years we've played together. We even avoid talking about each other. We don't elaborate as to why. Equal in talent and ambition, seemingly at odds in every other way. The perfect protagonist/antagonist, hero/antihero trope. Who's who depends on who you ask.

But here's the thing - the narrative's wrong and the tropes ill-fitting. The truth, as it so often is, is much less exciting and pettier than I, and probably Leo, would care to admit.

And it's really all Olivier's fault.

I've known Olivier for a long time. As a high school student, I'd come to the college of music every year for a heady week-long intensive of chamber music, solo work, improv, and jazz. Olivier and I clicked immediately as mentor and mentee. I was willing to try anything, jump in anywhere; I wouldn't back down from a piece, no matter how challenging. I was brave with the music, and he gave me a lot of freedom because of that. And because he knows almost nothing about the mechanics of playing a flute and is wildly impressed with really very little.

He is, however, very familiar with the mechanics of playing a violin, having left behind a not-too-shabby professional playing career for conducting. He's a much harder customer to please on his own instrument.

As I reach the fifth-floor landing, leaning on the railing for a moment to catch my breath, I can see the entire exchange, that original sin, unfold in my mind's eye, as crisp as if it were yesterday.

It's freshman year, one of our first orchestral rehearsals. Olivier is annoyed with the violin section for some small infraction. Annoyed specifically with his wildly talented but reticent freshman first chair violin, Leo.

Olivier impatiently waves off our playing mid-measure.

"Violins," he says, not truly addressing the violins, plural, but his first chair violin, singular, "Look up. You're playing within an orchestra." He gestures around at said orchestra, sitting quietly, glad the tirade isn't about them. "It's not good enough to just hammer away at your part. Think about how you integrate with the whole." He laces his fingers together to demonstrate integration. "Listen. Where else is the melody? Who are you in conversation with?" He cups his ear with his non-baton hand, pretending to listen. "The woodwinds!" He spears the air in the direction of my section with his baton hand. "So instead of playing like violins, play like woodwinds."

This conclusion is met with blank stares from the violins. I try my best to hide a fiendish little smile. I know where this is going. I've heard this bit from Olivier before. Personally, I think it's bullshit, but he thinks it's a marvelous coaching exercise and I like to play along.

As I more than half-expected, he calls me in to help.

"Cecilia. Play your flute like a violin. Go ahead, show them what I mean - from the ritardando."

A hush falls over the orchestra as I, undaunted by such a request, put on a very serious face, square my shoulders, throw out my chin, raise my flute, and...

play it exactly the same as I always do, like a flute.

"Yes!" Oliver exclaims, bouncing on his toes. "Do you see that?! Do you hear the difference?!"

I'm pleased Olivier has already given me a chance to shine. To my delight, almost the entire orchestra bought it too - but not Leo. He glares at me with the burning pinpoint precision of a magnifying glass, his eyes the color of sunspots. A look echoing the word in my own head:

Bullshit.

---

But no, I don't hate Leo. I never have.

I was ashamed by his look, that he knew it was bullshit, that he knew I knew it was bullshit, and that I was being a teacher's pet. Then I got indignant. Who was he to judge me? And judge me so harshly, once and for all? He didn't have to take it so seriously. Olivier quickly fell in love with him, anyway. We're the undisputed favorites he's forever trying to push together into greatness, oblivious to the fact that he was the one that drove us apart.

Leo's embarrassment, my brown-nosing, it was all so silly, and so long ago. I thought sooner or later the tension between Leo and me would thaw, but it hasn't. Whether on purpose or through sheer luck, Olivier's finally gotten his wish: his two rising stars in a room together for an hour. A friendly reminder not to kill each other. The thaw is now or never.

---

Leaning on the railing outside 512, I can hear Leo playing through the door, ribbon runs of scales, lazy and beautiful. Even if I didn't already know he was in there, I would know him by this sound. The sound not of a feather on the wind, but the wind itself that makes the feather move.

Don't think in all these years of silence I haven't listened to him. Don't think I haven't admired his artistic sense, envied his talent, studied his technique. If I got caught looking, I would brush it off and say one learns more from their enemies than their friends, but truthfully, I was looking just to look. Listening to listen. No one, not Oliver, not anyone else, plays a violin the way Leo does.

If he's expecting me, like Olivier said, he knows I'll hear him through the door. Maybe he imagines I'll stop and listen. Maybe he hopes I do. I realize I caught my breath a while ago and that's exactly what I'm doing. I go through the door with an electrified jolt.

Unlike every other practice room ever constructed, a doomsday cell with an out-of-tune piano, 512 has an unusually high ceiling, an unusually well-tuned piano, and a large square window that opens out. Facing south, the room gets sunlight all day long, even in the pale days of winter. A pine tree grows just outside the window, green even in the winter, its nettle fingers tapping out of time on the window frame. Now, framed exquisitely in the center of the room, facing the door, is Leo - violin still tucked under his stubbled chin, bow and bow hand resting lightly on his right thigh. He looks like a still shot from the most aesthetic, plotless movie you've ever seen. God only knows what I look like.

If he's surprised by my sudden entrance, the feeling passes quickly through his honey eyes and melts into something more dignified and dismissive. He barely raises a brow while returning his attention to his music, fingering through his part, silently.

If there was a moment for us to speak, we missed it. So, this is how it'll be. Fine. I start unpacking methodically. Music on the stand, pencil out, snap my flute case open, foot joint into the body, head joint into the body -

Concert A.

Leo's standing at the piano sustaining a concert A for me to tune against. This wordless act of service, his foot resting on the pedal, his finger on the thin ivory, something about the quiet thoughtfulness of it, the casualness, the ritual - it strikes me as a thawing. Could it really be? Let's see. I press the cold plate and embouchure of the flute just under the swell of my lower lip and play a big fat B-flat in response.

Just to keep him on his toes. Just to see what's really going on in his head.

The look on his face is a totally undignified puzzle. It reveals three thoughts and feelings to me in rapid succession: Did Cecilia just fuck up? (Disbelief/Glee). Is Cecilia nervous around me? (Disbelief/Pleasure). Oh, she meant to do that, to get this reaction out of me. Fuck. (Embarrassment/Respect?).

The look on my face says, Gotcha. I play my A. It blends into the piano note and disappears. A perfect 440 Hz. Not my first tune-up rodeo, Leo.

Leo returns to his seat, directly across from mine, slumped and casual. I play my A again for him to tune against. He doesn't try my own trick against me. No, serious as ever, he begins tuning for real - a wordless conversation with his strings. He alternately strums through thick meaty chords and shrill chirping chords, twisting a peg ever so slightly every so often, his head perpendicular to the violin, his left ear almost touching the strings, listening closely to the vibrations.

I don't really understand string tuning and I don't think I want to. The older you get and the more you have to worry about, the more you recognize the beauty of letting certain mysteries be mysteries. It's just beautiful to witness. I trust Leo to do what he needs to do, just as I think he trusts me (my pranks aside). We don't ask too many questions, because really, we don't want to know.

Suddenly, this silence, these unknowns, the mystery - it all feels quite intimate. As Leo's A disappears into mine, we enter the same wavelength, the same language.

His eyes meet mine, his casual slump gone. At the edge of his seat, his left leg is kicked forward, his right leg behind him, balanced carefully on the tip of his boot. He leans in and with a tilt of his head and flash of his bow into the air asks the question.

I dip my flute like an oar into water and answer it. We inhale the spring evening sharply together in perfect sync.

And we begin.

I - Andante Espressivo

The first note of any piece is terrifying. Music is as much about the silence, the space between the notes, as it is about the notes themselves. It's only the combination of sound and silence that creates the expression of music. But to enter into sound from silence for the very first time is to cross a threshold, a threshold from which there is no turning back.

The first note also reveals a lot about how the rest of the piece will go: if it'll be a struggle or effortless, if it'll be as expected or a surprise, if it'll be an average or brilliant performance, as written, or something more, something mysterious.

In the Ibert trio, now the Ibert duet without Freya at piano, Leo and I begin together. From the first note, I know this will be effortless, surprising, brilliant, and mysterious.

I soar, and Leo anchors me. Then he climbs to great heights, and I become the net beneath him. I open space between us, Leo closes it, and vice versa. And so we listen, and so we speak. The wall between us, so formidable in everyday life, is nonexistent here. Leo is selfless with his art. So am I.

The Andante movement is a minuet of remembrance, a tale told by two voices that encircle each other at a distance before they finally converge.

The scene: a tucked away cafe, some smoky hole in the wall off a Parisian boulevard that's seen better days. We step into the past in three-quarter time. Fractional, incomplete, autumnal. With commiseration and nodding, expansions and interjections, Leo and I unravel a well-told story over half-empty drink glasses, dreamy looks, and sighs.

Oh, the days we have seen! The people we once knew!

Yes, those dear, dear places long lost to us, lost forever!

And like any conversation between two friends, there come pauses, brief silences, where perhaps another voice would have spoken once, one of those friends, long gone. And so we sit and give them the breath and space they might have taken before we take up our threads of the story again.

Oh, the days we have seen! The people we once knew!

Yes, those dear, dear places long lost to us, lost forever!

In the dim twilight of the cafe, a ray of sunlight materializes through a high window. The beam falls aslant the wooden table, trapping the dove gray cigarette smoke within its ethereal beam. Its appearance signifies that the story has been told, the end reached, the voices, one.

Olivier's voice plays my mind as we arrive at this final, gossamer note, play like a violin, Cecilia. I do my best to vibrate the air like a string. I picture the ray of sun, the smoke within it, and try to play the image into life. Leo mirrors my movements. Maybe he imagines the same picture, attempting to transform his strings into air. Do we achieve what Olivier believes is possible this time? Is it still bullshit? It doesn't matter. The note is perfect, and we know it.

II - Allegro Vivo

If the Andante is suited to Leo's style, the Allegro is suited to mine. More speed, more complexity, more fire, more bravery required. I hardly let that silky ray of sunlight linger before we're off.

This time the flute begins alone, one long sustained note. A siren, a warning, a gauntlet thrown down. Leo answers the challenge with runs of 16th notes, his hand flying up and down the fingerboard, bow sawing the air, eyes fixated on the music in front of him, yet somehow, I feel them wanting to engage mine. I snatch the runs from him, almost before he has a chance to finish them. I push the tempo up just for fun, then Leo surprises me by pushing it further. Not one to be frightened, I push it again. There's no responsible piano player here to stop us.

The Allegro movement is a competition, a duel as much as a duet.

Yet, out of nowhere, the momentum flags and Leo's violin pulls us away into a folklore lushness, a momentary truce in the battle of the 16th notes. The line between what's real and what's fantasy vanishes into pure romance.

The scene: a lonely medieval English glen. Two riders on horseback, neck-and-neck, flying through knee-high grass. An overcast sky stretches to the far horizon, a dense wood off to the right. Wind, isolation, the joy of hurtling over-land at a constant speed...

This call and response, this being atop and astride the world, this rush to the edge of the cliff, this arrival, this heartbreak, and not a soul in the world knows it except for us. Except us and the gulls and kites that reel and twirl over our heads.

To stay in this place forever, to be a bird on the wind, to be the wind.

But a scene is all it is. Momentary. We remember who we are. The music demands it. We fall back to earth from that weightless enchantment, the battle is rejoined.

As we hurtle toward the end, my 16th notes descend into my lower register, where I'm strongest as a player. My secret weapon. Leo knows it and pushes the tempo off the edge of the cliff as he ascends into his higher register. With a final leap, I join him. The vertical space between our notes expands, the horizontal space collapses. This is how music escapes the page and becomes a three-dimensional thing, alive.

And just as it seems the wheel will jump the track, we pull up the tempo, slow down time, and arrive at the final note together: the same note, two octaves apart.

Coda

Seven minutes. That's the Ibert trio, without piano, the Allegro movement taken at a breakneck speed.

Leo and I relax a bit into our seats, looking at each other, listening to the last ripples of the piece as it fades away, back into the silence that preceded it.

We have the room for the rest of the hour.

Leo closes the window. I push my chair toward the lockless door.

Penance. Forgiveness. Given and taken.