Closed Overture PV Ira Thornfield

5th December 2024
“Speech | “Thoughts”
@Ira Thornfield

The chill outside had been biting. The frozen moistness of his breathing had stuck to his lips and was unwilling to come off, no mater how vigorously Noah rubbed. Thankfully, he had escaped the cold and found shelter in the Rehearsal Room. His cheeks tingled as they began to thaw. He slowly approached the grand piano in the room and pulled out his music book from his bag. Noah had packed this into his suitcase on a whim just before he left his house to venture off to Hogwarts. Good decision, he supposed.

Noah stood before it, hesitating. His breathing fastened as he sat down on the somewhat creaky stool in front of the piano as he gently plopped the music booklet down. His fingers hovered over the keys, unsure. C, right? He pressed down, and the note rang out, brittle yet warm. Yakim had freshened him up, but it would still take a while to get back to his prime. Not that he was any good in his 'prime', but he was certainly better than this.

"Alright, which piece should I play tod- crap." He muttered to himself, before his voice raised to an unruly pitch to finish off the 'crap'. Noah had brought his fathers music book, and not his sweet simple Grade 3 ABRSM pieces. It had been a while, so he wanted to start light. He supposed that in the panic of his almost late arrival to the Hogwarts Express, he had mistakenly put the wrong one in? What followed was Noah internally yelling at himself for messing up and not even checking the book. It had been 3 months, how had he not checked it once, he moaned mentally. Disheartened, he opened up the book and- oh, it was inside it. Whole lotta stress for nothing. "Nevermind!"

He moved his fathers much harder pieces to the side and opened up the Grade 3 booklet. ABRSM was a piano examination test in the British muggle world, so he wondered if the magical world had something similar. It was the 2021-2022 syllabus so it was rather outdated, but he didn't really care. It would do. He flipped the page and stared at the first piece he saw. Ecossaise in E Flat, by Ludwig van Beethoven. "Should be easy enough."

"Alright. C- wait no, it's one under C so... _{A, B, C-} B! The first note is B!" He muttered to himself, looking up and down from the notation to his hands. He deciphered that the first note on the right hand was a B. Noah’s fingers trembled as he lifted them, the muscles in his arms taut. Yikes. "Am I really this bad? It's been 3 years, but still. I used to play from dad's big book. Now I can hardly read the damn thing..." Of course he would find it difficult. It was the like the third time he had played the piano after 3-4 years of basically social distancing from it. But he didn't care. He had to be perfect. If he could do this when he was 8 years old, he could do it now.

Relying on his shaky sight-reading and essentially non-existent muscle memory, he tried again. In all fairness, it started alright. Untiiiiil it sounded like a fork scraping against a metal board. He needed a little bit of guidance.

Reducio

The piece: