Stolen Time

I loved Chopin when I was a teenager. I still do. A master of melancholy, he spoke the language of high school whether he meant to or not.

Do you know Chopin? Does he exist in this place? Maybe by another name. It doesn’t matter. I remember one piece. It’s not terribly hard, and I can play it from memory. The Waltz in A minor. No. 19. They call it the Posthumous Waltz as they didn’t even find the piece until decades after he died.

I don’t think I play it as well as I’ve heard professional pianists. Tempo Rubato is challenging. The left hand must maintain the steady pace in allegretto timing. More than a walk but less than a run is the best way to describe it. But all the while the right hand tries to break free. The right hand means to steal time—to rob it from the allegretto of its partner. Thus, it becomes rubato.

So even though the left is unhurried, even playful, the right flutters and flirts within the bars. Sound rises and falls within the phrases as the right hand trills and the left hand follows along.

But the true reason I love this piece is because of the story it tells. You see, music has story in it. You can see the tale in your mind. Sometimes you can even hear the words the notes express. Sound turns to feelings turns to sentences turns to meaning.

The story this song told me is of hope in an indifferent world. The treble is a young spirit. She is a girl. She is alone. She has to speak loudly to be heard but she cannot sustain that voice. She must fortify herself before she speaks. Even though she knows that each time she does she will end in quietness.

All around her are voices that do not listen. They are mouths with no ears, and she is only sound they have not the sense to understand. But she forges on. Trapped in a world that cannot hear, she is a melody in search of another realm. A world where her hope is not misplaced. A world where it is not dropped into a pianissimo that fades beneath the chatter of a crowded chamber. In that place, even that soft voice is listened to.

She searches for that room. Every measure brings a new attempt to break into that world. Every phrase another chance to steal away. She rises to forte, she trills, but then drops back into pianissimo. And so, she must try again.

She ends at the ritornello and dutifully goes back to the top of the page to repeat the section, bringing that same hope to a section she has already played.

It is such a sad song, but that is the nature of the minor key. Besides, I think sadness is the only true precursor of hope. For it is the rise one hopes for even when one knows the story. And knows that escape will never come.

Instead, she settles in. Calms herself; accepts her fate. There’s a little life in her still. For the left hand has been steady all along. It has followed her all the way to the end of the song.

Would you play it for me? he asked.