The aged keyboard whistles hesitant notes. The high sounds pierce the air and remain engraved in it for a moment.
The two hands walk over those whites and blacks, as if to complete the instrument.
Synchronous and precise, the right hand presses the high keys to bring forth countless notes that are heard in order and harmony. Anyone would take the perfect movement of that right hand for experienced and ancient.
The left, by contrast, waits, undecided, lacking experience, without joining the concert that sounds with precision. It waits without daring to formulate its art. But nevertheless a low note is heard, a “C”, low but firm, almost imperceptible, that holds on.
On the right the keyboard exercises itself and accumulates precise chords. The performing hand, focused on its role, leaps from side to side translating everything into a defined and haughty music.
At last, trembling, its companion plays a first sound, heavy, dull, a low note without variation, accompanying the lively mastery that can be heard beside it. One first note is joined by another and yet another, always with the aim of a harmonious fit with the high notes that mark the melody, not always with the intended result. Ashamed at times, afraid at others, the left hand goes on working hopefully on its keys. Behind it, an imperceptible, low “C” repairs its mistakes.
Beneath that synchronous black-and-white perfection played by the right hand, the masterful chords of the great ones can be recognized, expertly reconstructed. Beside it, with effort and determination, its companion tries to find its footing. The sounds it articulates seem to do nothing but smudge, with an indelible brushstroke, what the master hand has written musically.
But sometimes it gets it right, and then the conjunction between the high melody and the low sound seems perfect. The keys lend themselves unconditionally to the game, the sharps bow down, the flats step in, displaying the black keys; one by one the whites also follow, working in scale, giving efficiency to the right hand that sets the rhythm. And then the left takes heart and dances, dances over the keyboard what it learned from the other, and learns what it will dance, accompanying in the low register the high melody that grows more resonant through the contrast.
The lows of the left begin to stand out, clear, agile. A “D” sounds, followed by an “E” and a powerful-voiced “G”. The keys draw the sounds and the movement of the keyboard seems to even out from one end to the other.
The right hand continues its effective, systematic, clear performance, without errors. But it is the left hand that, even with something clumsy about it, performs beauty, simple and joyful beauty, and makes the tones of its melody paint an indelible chiaroscuro, without order or prescriptions.
The keys on the right remain in their harmonic impassivity, while those on the left now go by themselves, by the one who directs them; and in a vital enthusiasm of leaping movements they find the sound of art. The right continues its performance. The left lets itself be carried, dragged along by the burning inspiration of a composition that, at the height of its splendor, lets a firm and sustained “C” shine through, though almost imperceptible.
The keyboard trembles to the right and to the left. The high registers turn violent, and then deafening, though they remain balanced and fail to distort the low melody. Then they fall silent, incomprehensibly, becoming muffled sounds wrapped in an impotence that does not let them recover. The earlier fingerings of the right hand, precise and delicate, have become tense, and now strike the keyboard hard only to produce noises, high and untidy noises, but noises that fail to smudge the candor of the musical picture painted by the left hand.
The noisy blows suddenly make the highest “B” key jump. Torn from the keyboard, it drags along, tangled with itself, a “D” that comes back thundering to pick up the “C” that gives beginning to the continuing end. The right hand protests as if wanting to contain the Uncontainable. But the keys, starting with the highest, tear themselves off the keyboard accompanied by a din that even now fails to cut the majestic symphony the left hand goes on orchestrating.
The collapse extends to the exact middle of the keyboard.
Whoever watched then would see the high notes fall into dispersion on one side, and art enthroned and rising on the other.
And at this, the left hand plays the lowest chord ever heard, and then the melodic symphony descends, making the low keys also leap to perform, around the right hand — which desperately strikes the high keys that fall without stopping — that perfect black-and-white dance, in time with an imperceptible “C”.
The dance lasts, swaying, as long as the fall lasts.
The silence is now complete.
The right hand that was moving desperately a moment ago is now motionless among its keys, waiting for something that enters neither calculations nor plans.
Around it the dancing hand creates, with its directed keys, before the gaze of its desolate companion, the most dazzling movements ever seen.
The darkness of the right hand is deep. Not understanding what is happening immobilizes it, failure dethrones it, silence suffocates it.
Then, between dance and desolation, the ending bursts forth with a terrible crash, a crash that grows and concentrates. Sordid, deafening. It reaches the limits of Immensity to become now a majestic roar, and from there on it quiets little by little, softly falls silent, until at last a gentle silence covers everything.
A single point is drawn in the picture, the point that paints the silence. Into that point the calm, gentle silence has slipped; and from that same point a murmur begins to emerge, clear and defined, of lows and highs. And then old melodies begin to be recognized, the masterful melodies of both hands intertwined. One perceives the musical perfection of the right and the sweet beauty of the art of the left; both in one. United go beauty and perfection, united the hands and the keyboard, and united to the whole goes that brilliant composition that paints with a masterful pulse a chiaroscuro line from which escapes the firm, though almost imperceptible, sound of a heavenly “C”.
ARIEL DEMARCHI · BUENOS AIRES, ARGENTINA, 1988
