I just learned more about this composer, Schubert, yesterday. I was trying a new song in my lesson, and my cello teacher filled me in about the guy, (he does that all the time). At first, I thought he was showing off or trying to gain clout with my mom, who often flits through the lesson, trying to be unobserved, but that wasn’t it. After multiple lessons, I got it. Mister B constantly lives all this music stuff, the composers, the instruments, all the crazy theory, it all. He’s kind of obsessed that way and I get it. It’s like me with Minecraft.
So, about this Schubert, whose song I was learning, “He’s kind of a savant,” Mr. B said.
I guess he should have said he was a savant because Schubert was born like two hundred twenty-five years ago, in 1797. He died in 1828, when he was 31 years old, and my teacher said “He was so young.” I guess to him he was, since Mr. B is like over 50, but to me 31 is more than twice my age, and that sounds like another lifetime to me. So not that young, maybe.
Mr. B calling this Schubert a “savant” confused me. Of course, I didn’t ask about it, but then Mr. B said he rarely left his house, lived with his father, but he wrote seven effing symphonies. Do you know how long a symphony is? Because I do, as mom made me sit through an entire one for extra cred in my cultural appreciation class. (Sometimes it sucks to have your mom as one of your teachers).
Seven symphonies. I guess he didn’t often go out to hear them played. Then my cello teacher said he also wrote 600 vocal works, 2 operas, and lots and lots of sacred music which I can’t really get the weight of, but it sounds like a lot of work and a lot of time.
We worked on the song “An die Musik”, and the name is pretty self-explanatory, German to English, “To Music”. Maybe I should have picked German to learn instead of stupid Hindi, just because dad comes from Jaipur.
“To the Music” was pretty simple on the cello. I got to work on my second and third positions a bit, but Mr. B penciled fingerings also in first and fourth, my faves, so yay. It was actually kinda cool, the way it sounded. I went over it a few times and I tried to get it pretty fixed in my head since I hadn’t heard it before. I like to know where the notes are going and how they should sound before I play them so I don’t make stupid mistakes.
I make enough mistakes in life just from being on this “spectrum.” You put your fingers up to make quote marks here. So. Autism is the word people think but don’t say as much as “spectrum”, with the quotes, which doesn’t really clarify anything, in my opinion.
And I’m thinking this Schubert was maybe on this “spectrum” but maybe they didn’t call it that back then. They maybe used words like savant or I don’t know, but I’m sure they had them. I think a lot of us passionate people end up in some category that folks come up with to lump us all together so they can describe us with words that aren’t so judgey, like weirdo and all.
The more I thought about this Schubert, as I played along with those notes that had come out of his brain, the more I felt akin to him. Do you like that word akin? Means I’m almost like related to him. After the lesson I went to play Minecraft because I have a big session with Kirby and Colin coming up and Minecraft is one of my biggest passions. I think my mom hoped the cello would replace Minecraft, but that’ll never happen. Even though I like cello a lot.
In my room, in my game cave, I googled that Schubert. I thought I might like to hear his song, “to music” again, but I just kept running into other works by him. Mr. B was right, he wrote a ton. I did take note of his other names besides Schubert though. Names are important to me. I remember the names of everyone I ever met, including like, waiters at restaurants, and all the teachers and staff at school, which sometimes drives my mom crazy, because my dad’s always asking me everybody’s name on the few times he meets us at school functions, like plays and concerts and sporting events that my sister, Kiara, is all about. Not me, not a sporty kind of guy. Then my dad, says “Hello good to see you” to this and that person, saying their name and smiling. I guess mom thinks I make it too easy for my dad to look like he’s paying attention when he’s really just kinda an iPad dad.
So, Schubert’s whole name string is Franz Peter Schubert. He’s basically from Austria, well to be specific, between 1867 and 1918 Austria was allied with Hungary and they called it the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which collapsed 10 years before our Franz Peter Schubert died of disputable causes, which I’m not going to go into here.
Because I want to get to the nut of all this before 4:15 pm PST where I have to be ready and geared up for Minecraft with my friend Kirby, which happens at 4:30, exactly.
Back to the Music, and Franz, and me, and the nut of this story. Not to digress, again, but the nut of a cello is a raised piece of wood where the fingerboard meets the pegbox, which the strings rest on. It matters a lot, in cello playing, because if it’s too high, it makes the cello much harder to play. That’s why I care about the nut. Also, because I care about words, a lot. Nut, and nutty is what I’ve heard about me, when I’m stimming a bit, and people don’t know I hear them, but I do, in a piece of my brain that is set on record for later. Tic, tic, tic, I know, time’s fleeting, keep moving forward.
An die Musik-- to Music. After my lesson, I kept trying to capture that tune, like I told you, but it kept flying away from me because it wasn’t predictable, like a pop jam, a rock song, or a folk tune would be. There are these 16 measures where nothing’s related, but somehow it all fits together. I don’t know, it kept flying away from me and I wanted to pin it down before I went to sleep yesterday night. I noticed Mischa Maisky, (my fave cellist, along with Shaku, naturally) plays it on YouTube and then pops the repeat up an octave, which surprised me in a good way.
So, I’m plugged in, got my earbuds in, and I keep listening to Maisky’s version, (An die Musik, D. 547 (Op.88/4), listening over and over again, whenever I can.
Not at dinner—family rule, no earbuds at the table, no devices in fact, which is so unfair, but I guess I get it, the only time we’re together (except for dad), to talk and stuff, “bond” I guess. I don’t know, without dad, it’s so different.
But back to the nut of things. On and off during the day I guess I listened to the song seven or eight, maybe ten times, and I still didn’t have it. Then, as I was brushing my teeth before bed, I put it on for one more time, then my earbuds went out of power. So, I held the phone up to my ear. My sister, Kiara, was already in bed, close enough to yell out, ”Alok, turn down that music.” She’s getting ready for some kind of hurdling meet or, thing. So, I turned “An die Musik” down to a quiet buzz and pressed the phone against my ear with my left hand, while brushing with my right hand, and the vibrations swept through my skull as I brushed along with the piano accompaniment, beat, beat, beat, and the melody of the cello took flight and soared all over the galaxy of my brain, around the shooting stars, swirling in and out of planets and meteors and everything. I was in a space trance and the music took me into “An die Musik” until I got lost in it. Thank you, Maestro Schubert, thank you Mr. B. Sometimes I wish you were my dad, but then I banish those thoughts, because, well, it’s not right, not okay, not fair. But sometimes I can’t help it. My dad told me life’s not fair, and I guess he’s right, but I wish I could share some little things with him
like I share music with Mr. B, like Kiara shares sports with him.
And now the song ends and my teeth are way too clean, so I’m off to bed. Putting the phone away but it’s still vibrating. Did I not get out of YouTube? Yes, it looks like I did, but then why do I still hear it? Lifting it to my ear, I hear it faintly, quietly, rhythm not stopping, melody flying. Wait a minute. Now I’m turning the actual phone off. I do this but I still feel the buzz, like a car pumping a bass line, driving by. But this is different, like that, but not.
This is the music in me, in my head, in my cells, not a memory but a continuance. Not a device, but my neurodivergent brain singing along with what, Franz Peter Schubert? Or did the music take over the authorship of whatever is still singing in my head?
It wasn’t scary, at least not yet. Not like alien radio signals in your tooth fillings, but like an integral part of the ongoing inner workings of my body. Because it drifted now, from my ears into my cosmic brain, down my spine, and mingling into my arms and legs and feet and hands. Could I sleep with all this going on? I wondered, and I tucked into my lower bunk, turned off the light, and settled into sleep. Three deep breaths, ins and outs, and I remember nothing else until this morning when I heard Kiara doing her squats and burpees in her bedroom next to mine.
And I heard the music. Low level, yes, but still moving through me. It felt like it had been playing all night, and I wondered what it might feel like to hear this and play it on the cello. Would it change depending on what I was playing, or would it tune out and disappear? I didn’t want it to disappear.
Since I can remember I have owned multiple pairs of noise canceling head phones. From when I was a baby, random noises were always a problem for me. The Roomba was the first monster I remembered. It came chewing into my room one day when I was still in my crib and it felt like the noise was beating up my head. Mom said I was two years old, and I don’t remember anything before that, but I remember the Roomba monster.
After that, they got me puffy head phones and any time they took me out they kept them close, in case of loud repeating noise. Like if I was in the stroller and we passed a street fair with loud music, the headphones brought me peace and quiet. I always felt like they were safety marshmallows against the monster chewing noises that randomly happen in the world.
But weirdly, maybe, now, this ongoing “Musik” is nothing like that at all. It stays with me, but quietly, like I turned the volume way down, unless I pay attention to it, and then like holding my phone to my ear, I feel the vibration and it gets as loud as I want.
I’m enduring school now, but I can’t wait to get home to play. Not Minecraft this time, but cello, especially this song from Franz Peter Schubert’s head to my head. School is as normal as it ever gets for me, but better today because I have this secret power that only I know about, and it makes me smile. Smile inside, not all over my face like a clown. And I think it helps calm me down when stuff happens, like it always does, with bells ringing, and people bellowing, and cheerleaders cheering, like they always do. It’s not muffled, like my headphones, it’s bright and singing, that same song, “An Die Musik” but I’m not getting sick of it, rolling on and on, like a river that keeps flowing beneath my thoughts..
When we get home Kiara goes directly to her room to study so she can meet up later with friends at tennis practice. She’s on the school team, and she’s either #1 or #2 out of 12 contenders, depending on a lot of things she is not afraid to share with us.
I get my cello, and start the B major scale, just to get the notes in order before I start up, just to feel my fingers feel the right place on the fingerboard, to get the slide of the strings. They make my fingers tingle today, those notes running non-stop in my head and my fingers perfectly follow them through the scale, like walking up the stairs behind them, at first, but then after working my way up and down three octaves, my bow picks up the rhythm and the melody of Franz Peter Schubert’s song, and I follow along without reading any notes on the page. I follow along, even when his song “To the Music”, swirls into measures from his other songs, like “The Wanderer,” or “Ave Maria”, and others I never heard before. At least I assumed they were his songs. Who’s playing these I wonder, Schubert or me? Because I feel propelled, like I was seven years old, dancing with my mother, when she’d spin me around, and my feet were dancing the steps, but her force was moving me.
It was so fun with my mom, but when dad tried to do it, it didn’t work so well. I stumbled over my feet and he ended up swinging me in the air like a ball on a string and it scared me. We never got our steps together, dad and me, and now he’s not just separated by work trips, but he lives separately too. Mom is calling it a “trial separation”, but I don’t see anyone trying anything. Kiara and I go visit on weekends and they play tennis for hours, sweating and whacking balls interminably. You like that word? I just added it to my word collection. It means they don’t stop; they just keep going at it, while I just play Minecraft on my own.
Nothing against Minecraft, you know, my biggest obsession, I play it any time I can, but dad has no interest, and I might as well be home in my game cave, and a lot more comfy, because there’s zero interaction with dad here. I mean, he and Kiara may have been interacting in a tennis game, but dad just asks me questions about school and I can never say much, because I don’t think he’s listening. Dad and I don’t sync.
Suddenly the notes in my head take a deep diminuendo, and it feels like time for a cello break. I look at my timer and it dings. I’ve been playing nonstop for fifty-five minutes.
I guess I should say, we’ve been playing, Franz Peter Schubert and I have been playing “An die Musik” and more. I loosen my bow and pack it into my case, then my cello, snapping all 8 silver snaps.
We have a recital this evening at one of Mr. B’s other student’s houses that has a big room they call a salon and devote only to music. They have a nice Steinway and a little platform and music stands, so groups of Mr. B’s students can play, trios or duets, and such.
Mr. B plays the piano parts sometimes. He’s pretty good at a lot of instruments, along with his super cello powers.
So tonight, after school, I took my cello to dad’s place, which I never do, but since the recital was in his neighborhood it made sense. For the first time he was coming with me instead of mom, and for the first time that didn’t even bother me. Normally I don’t like to play with him anywhere nearby, cause it makes me think about messing up, and then I do mess up, majorly. See, dad used to play guitar, back in Boston, when he was in college, but now his guitar just hangs on the wall at his place and he never touches it. He always looks like he’s in pain when he hears bad music, and when I was first starting out with the cello, he had to leave the room when I practiced. You can see why I don’t like to play around him.
But today, with Franz Peter Schubert singing away in my head, letting me play along with him, I am just into the music and no fear. It’s not like I can’t concentrate on other things, like homework and dinner, and talking and stuff, the thing is I have this background loop, rolling around in a quite relaxing fashion. I have to say, it doesn’t scare me at all. In the very beginning, when it didn’t go away, it felt a little weird, like something in my brain was stuck on repeat, but now it keeps changing and it makes me calm like my puffy headphones but much better.
Dad and I get to the “salon” where they’re having the recital and I’m calm and buzzy at the same time. I go and sit with the other students on the benches in front and dad slips into the comfy chairs with random other parents.
Mr. B. goes over the performance order with us and makes sure we’re all cool with it. I usually hide somewhere in the middle of it all, but tonight I ask Mr. B. if I can go last, because I don’t want my dad tapping his foot and looking impatient while all the “not his kid” students play after I’ve already played. Not that he’s done that at a recital before, since this is his first, but I know how nervous he makes me feel when he’s impatient, and I want to enjoy this, and only think about the music.
Mr. B looks surprised, but says sure, and I settle in for the duration. Funny thing though, as Shaniqua plays “The Swan” and then Angelo plays “Arioso”, I hear them with my ears, while at the same time, “An die Musik” twirls around their notes, in a kind of wispy way that’s interesting to me and reassuring, even when the players make mistakes, which of course they do. No biggie. Six more students present their work, a couple of duets by the twins, and finally we come to me.
Mr. B. sits down at the piano with the accompaniment music, but I don’t even put my music on the stand. I know all of this by now, up and down, and all around. I plan to play it through once, and then go up an octave for the repeat.
Mr. B will be proud, he nods and we begin. It’s like playing, for sure, but again more like dancing to that music that’s swelling up in my head. I sway a bit with the cello, I close my eyes and feel my way along with the song. It’s pure happy. I looked up the lyrics but they were all in German so I found a translation of the poem that Franz Peter Schubert based the music on. I don’t remember it all, but it talked about how during the gray hours, when life’s wild circle entangles him, music transports him to a better world. And at the end, he talks directly to music and he says, “You, beautiful art, thank you for that.” And as I’m playing, I’m singing it out in my heart, thank you, music, you beautiful art.
Mr B. has stopped playing the piano, and he’s looking at me but I can’t stop myself from playing, and I’m playing my thanks too, for this new gift of music in me, and I’m crying a bit, so when I notice that, I do a few arpeggios, still in the key of B major where I started, and then I taper off on a long, long, note.
The clapping is very, very, loud. Normally I might put my hands over my ears, but tonight it doesn’t even matter, with the quiet music still flowing inside me.
I look over at my dad to see if he’s clapping and he is, but he’s crying too and I don’t know what to think about that. We head out; Mr. B gives me a big high five on the way out and says, “You’ve reached a new level in the game.” I laugh, because I feel happy.
We drive home to dad’s and on the way, we don’t say much, but it still feels good. Dad says, “I didn’t know you could scat like that.” I don’t really know what he means by that, but it sounds good so I plan to look it up later.
When we get back home dad asks if I’m tired or if I want to play a little more. Strange as it is, I’m not tired at all and yes, I do want to play more. We go into the living room, and for the first time since he’s been there, I watch dad take his guitar off the wall. I’m unsnapping my cello case, but I hear him blow some dust off the strings and he strums a chord. It’s all out of tune, no surprise there, and he sits down and begins tuning it all up.
Dad’s good at tuning; he used to do it for me when I was nine and new to cello. Then, of course, he’d leave the room. But now, he’s tuning his guitar to my cello, and he says “go ahead, I’ll follow you.” So, I go ahead, it’s as if I never stopped and somehow it just feels natural and nice to have dad finger-picking along. He’s doing a bit of what the piano played, but he’s doing his own kind of playing along too, and I feel like the music is taking over the two of us and making us one song.
We go on and on, and we don’t stop, until my phone rings and it’s mom, wondering how it all went. I talk to her a little and she asks about all the other students and their pieces. Dad goes to the kitchen and comes back with ice tea for him and that coconut drink I like mixed with ginger ale. I didn’t realize how thirsty I was.
Mom says, “Okay, I’ll let you go.” Dad reaches for the phone but I’ve already hung up. Somehow, for once, it feels good being just us. He lifts his glass of tea and makes a toast.
“To the music,” he says.
I raise up my glass, clink his, and to the music, I say, “Thank you.”
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