It begins with a breath. The inhalation, yielding from somewhere deep within my core, but subtle enough so as to not lift my shoulders. Before a piece begins, there’s always a moment of inhalation, and some sort of magic spins out into anticipation.
Flute anchored against lip curved over bottom teeth, the stage lights seem to vibrate, and as intensely bright as they are, the darkness at their edges is even more dramatic, is even deeper. Beyond the darkness I can feel the life of the audience, slight stirring, before it quiets, and I know that they’re leaning in, waiting for that first note.
Before I begin a piece, launch myself into ten minutes of intense concentration and physical control, before I pour forth what hundreds of practice hours and my attempt at understanding and emoting the meaning behind the black and white plastered on the page before me, there’s a jumping off. The moment where I take that breath and can’t turn back, because it’s signaled the accompanist to begin, whether I’m ready or not. It’s a teetering balance, a checking in of whether I’m truly ready to proceed. So, I do.
The last piece of my senior recital is the Undine Sonata by Carl Reinecke. It depicts the tragic story of a water nymph who sacrifices her life for her lover, and who then suffers deep betrayal. It is a marathon piece, full of technically demanding passages, and it tests your physical and emotional endurance.
And I adore it. Its rhythmic waves of dynamics and scalar runs mimicking the ocean, it lulls you and turns on you as through the flute, Undine screams and wails.
During the first minute of every piece, I’m greeted by stage fright, my old friend. It’s hard to play the flute when your entire body shakes, your heart races the music’s tempo, and you can’t breathe past the tops of your lungs. But by my senior year, I know this old friend well. I know its games, I know it’s full of empty threats, and I know how to take control of my body back, to breathe deeper into my lungs until the suffocation feeling has passed.
I also know that this is control that I’m losing. Slowly, my body is rebelling. At first, doctors simply said I’d need this surgery, then that surgery. It would correct the numbness in my hands, it would correct the fatigue, it would address the pain that arched its way from my fingers through my wrists to my elbows.
But then the pain spread to other joints. It was in my knees and ankles, at first a shadow, but soon rolling into intense waves. And it was in my back, always, deep within, anchored to my spine, so that standing on the hardwood stage in high heels was an exercise in discomfort, in perseverance.
When I play, every detail is enhanced. I am aware of the twinge in my back with the opening notes, of the rough corner of the black music stand where the paint has been worn away to reveal grey steel, of the stirring in the audience as the piece begins, of the fact that I need to breathe, but I have two measures left to go before the end of the phrase.
Control. I ask my body to extend that breath and to wait for the inhalation, and it obeys. It also obeys when I tell my hands to stop shaking, when I focus on opening the back of my throat into an almost-yawn, when I relax the muscles of my jaw and am rewarded with a sonorous tone that I can feel spin into my sinus cavities.
But what I can’t control is the pain. I can’t alter the fact that I can’t feel the tips of my fingers, that they’re landing on the holes bored into the keys of my open-holed flute with a combination of luck and muscle memory, not touch. I can’t control the fact that my hands cramp, that the numbness spreads up my fingers, that I can feel an ache emerge in my neck, that I feel like a steel rod is being driven through the vertebrae of my lower back.
So I turn to the details. The fact that the lights create starbursts off of the edge of my eyelashes. The warmth they cast over my hands, the trickle of sweat I can feel travel down the back of my dress. I watch the way my breath moves the corner of the sheet music, remind myself to focus my air better. In the few measures when I rest and allow the piano to carry us forward, I glance at the worn stage floor, partially covered by flaking black paint. The glint of the gloss of the piano makes the floor look even duller, and down beyond the edge of the stage, I can just glimpse the edges of the first row of chairs, the feet of audience members perfectly still.
This is how I make it through. The details. The build of emotion, the complex passages that could trip me up had I not spent too many late nights in practice rooms running them until I couldn’t play them wrong. The thrill of the crazed last movement, Undine’s utter outrage at her betrayal, her letting go, and her leaving.
For me, it’s a goodbye, too. I know my body is betraying me, but I don’t know just why or how at the time. I know this is the end of my music career before it’s begun.
The chaos of the last movement ends in a dramatic phrase, cut off before it’s complete, and the piano takes over. I have thirteen measures to regain control of my breath and heartbeat, both sent into overdrive by the frenzied movement that I’ve just completed. And I do, slowing my breath, slowing my heart, stilling my arms and hands, feeling the weight of the flute against my palms.
And when I go to play the final phrases, in mourning of the lost Undine, in mourning of her betrayal, I breathe myself into every note. The piece ends on a V-I cadence, a sad attempt at resolution after tragedy, and I hold onto the last note, support it so it doesn’t die away, make sure to give it a proper ending. The air in the hall is still, the audience holding out for that last note, waiting for permission to move. And in that moment, all I can hear is my breath, echoing out over the lip plate of my silenced flute.
Paige Cerulli is a freelance writer in Western Massachusetts. She graduated from Westfield State University with a Bachelor's of Arts in music performance and English with a concentration in creative writing. In her spare time, Paige enjoys writing poetry and creative nonfiction, as well as riding horses.