Inverno in F Minor

by CrackedInkWell

17: A Lesson in Moztrot in D Major.

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The next morning, after breakfast was eaten and schedules are given out for the day, Inverno went straight to the music room, where he found his teacher waiting for him.

“Good morning,” Key nodded, “I thought that before we dive into today’s lesson, I think that we should take a bit of a field trip.”

“Field trip?” Inverno raised an eyebrow.

“We’re just going to be wandering around,” The Professor said, taking the lead, “Now come, there’s much to see.”

Confused, the young unicorn followed the elder stallion through the corridors. “Where are you going?” he asked.

“Since you’re technically not allowed to leave the palace, I’m going to do the next best thing. I’m going to show you the lives of those that keep this place running.”

“Why?” Inverno questioned, “How does this have anything to do with music?”

“It’s something that I have to show you in order for you to understand today’s lesson.”

They passed by hallways and down staircases until they reached the lower levels of the palace, a place where a small army of maids, butlers, waiters, cooks, and even some of the guards conducted many of their duties. Inverno was shown the clothes and sheets washed in the laundry rooms, the intense focus of cooks in gigantic kitchens, the complex system of dishwashers as they cleaned each and every piece of fine china.

The colt heard the ringing of bells; the commanding orders from head butlers, cooks, and maids; the ‘flop’ of wet laundry, the clinking sound of silverware, the scrape of armor as the guards walked by.

Yet, amongst the chaos, Inverno noticed that there’s a kind of harmony out of all of them, like pieces of a restless timepiece. Sometimes, a laundry maid would ask a guard to help unload a pile of clothes into the soapy water. Other times, waiters would ask butlers to straighten out their tray sets.

At the same time, neither he nor his teacher went unnoticed by the workers. Nearly all of them tried to keep a distance from the colt. Whenever Inverno entered any of the rooms, he would receive looks, some anxious, while others held nothing but despise.

“Who let the monster in?” Inverno heard one of the maids mutter through her teeth.

“Careful,” whispered a butler, “He might take over the Empire any day now.”

“Maybe he’s here to crack the whip on us,” a cook muttered into the pot he was mixing.

Annoyance and shame, that was what Inverno felt as they passed by. Even as they made their way back to the Music Room, Inverno could still feel their cold looks on him.

“You alright?” Professor Key asked.

“Do you think I’m a monster?” This made his teacher stop dead.

“What?” Inverno repeated his question. “Why would you ask that?” the stallion replied.

“Well… Those servants said that I’m the monster. So... am I?”

“Do you really think you’re a monster?”

“Well no but...” the young unicorn trailed off.

“Yes?” the Professor raised an eyebrow.

Inverno sighed and said, “Look… Key?” the elder stallion glanced towards him. “I-I don’t really know what to think. My Papa said that a monster is a scary thing that kills everything for no reason. He told me that the Princesses of the South, Celestia, and Luna, were monsters because they would do awful things to their subjects. But now… after meeting them and finding out what Papa really did… I don’t know. I mean, you saw what happened when I got angry right?”

“Yes,” Signature nodded, “I remember.”

“It got me thinking… Could it be possible that I might become a monster?”

“Do you want to?”

“No-”

“Then don’t,” Professor Key interrupted, “As simplistic as it might sound, being a monster can be easy to give into. But it’s not your only option, understand? What your Papa did shouldn’t determine what you want to do.”

“Try telling the servants that,” Inverno replied with a scowl.

Sighing, the elder stallion walked forward, “Mind if I tell you a story? And yes, it does have something to do with today’s lesson.”

“What story?”

“I don’t think you know much about Moztrot, do you?” Inverno shook his head, “Well then, W.A. Moztrot is today considered one of the greatest composers that have ever lived, high up there with Buch and Beethooven (we’ll get to him later). Anyway, when Moztrot was four, his father discovered that he was not only able to understand music quicker than his other children, but he could play and write music too. He started writing his first concerto piece when he was four years old, his first symphony at seven, and an entire opera when he was twelve.”

“So he’s been writing music since I’ve learned how to write music too?”

“More or less – as I was saying, Moztrot’s father saw that at an early age that not only could his son write music brilliantly, but he could play magnificently as well. So, for the sake of becoming rich, his father took the family to tour the great kingdoms of the day.

“As time went on, the young Moztrot grew ever so restless with his father. He wanted to make a name of himself other than a little genius underneath his father’s ever overprotective eyes. Well, one day, he broke away from his father to become his own stallion and worked for both himself and for commissions. At first, things went well with him, his operas were getting noticed, Kings and Emperors praised his music, and one day, he ended up marrying the mare he loved.

“However, the father didn’t approve the marriage, so you could imagine that the both of them were quite upset with the other. They were so mad at one another that Moztrot wrote to a friend, ‘My father is nothing but an uptight, bitpinching, arrogant, miser that cared more about how much bits we have than the music I’ve written.’ Pretty harsh, no?”

“What’s bitpinching?” Inverno asked.

“It means someone who is always too stingy about money, making sure they hardly spend anything that isn’t useful,” the Professor explained. “For a while, the two of them had come to despise each other, until one day, Moztrot heard the news that his father had died. Even though they were angry at each other, deep down, Moztrot still loved his father. So he became depressed, even angry, and sometimes blamed his sudden death upon himself. But what he did next was never done before.”

“What’s that?” Inverno tilted his head.

“He composed another opera, called Don Geovanni; it’s the darkest of all of his operas. You see, at the very end of it, a spirit comes on stage to accuse the villain, and that if he doesn’t apologize for his crimes; he shall be dragged down to Tartarus. What Moztrot actually did was he wrote his father into that character, basically to accuse his son of all to see and hear of the crimes he committed against him. In other words, he captured his distress, his anger, and fears of the future into music for the entire world to sympathize with him.”

By this point, they had arrived at the music room. When they entered, Inverno noticed that the phonograph was in the room too, along with a pile of records sitting on top of the piano.

“It was from this experience that Moztrot discovered something important,” Professor Signature went on, “He discovered that he could use real-life experiences, from himself and those around him to create wonderful music. You see, music up to this point was only written for those who were powerful and wealthy. A kind of background music to demonstrate their greatness to anypony that came in contact with them.

"Moztrot did something different. Not only did he make music personal, for the first time, but he also wrote music for everyone to enjoy. He did this by breaking the opera tradition that only myths and legends are only used in opera, instead, he created music about realistic, everyday events.”

“So… Something like writing a piece of music that reflects somepony’s life, like any of the servants?”

“Exactly!” Key said, putting a record on the turntable. “He pioneered the idea that through music, he could make the ordinarily become legends, while they, the legends, become ordinary.”

“So what are you doing?” Inverno inquired, as he saw his teacher crank up the phonograph, before putting the needle onto the record.

“Let me play you a little something,” he said, as the music began to flow out of the machine. The Professor sat down on the piano bench and took out a pencil with a notepad. He added: “Now tell me what you see.”

Inverno stood there for a moment as the fast pace march sprang to life. As expected, his eyes widened, and the colt immediately looked around the room. “I see servants,” he said, “Lots of them; this whole place is crowded with them. And so loud too! There’s too much talk going around. Something about getting ready I think. Butlers are checking waiters and maids making sure the ceiling is polished.”

“The ceiling?” Key inquired, taking down his notes.

“Yeah, there’s a giant mirror on the ceiling, and those pegasi maids are polishing it with cloths.”

“What are they doing now?”

“I don’t know,” Inverno answered, “They’re going all over the place. Some of them are carrying laundry, others silver plates, and there are those that are trying to tell everypony what to do. It’s really weird though.”

“What is?”

“That it’s all servants. There’s no master or anything, it's just servants doing stuff.”

It was right then that Professor Key lifted the phonograph’s needle. “That is exactly what Moztrot was intending. This comes to my point that his music tends to capture the grandeur of not just those in power, but for common ponies as well.”

“But why though?” Inverno asked, his eyes returning to normal. “Why make music for everyone?”

“I’m glad you asked,” the Professor said. “At the time Moztrot was writing his music, it was all taking place during what is now known as the Age of Enlightenment. It was during this time that a revolutionary idea had begun to take place. An idea that Celestia had adopted into her rule for centuries, is that all ponies, servants or nobles, baker or musician, are all created equal. Where all ponies shouldn’t be judged by what they are, where they’re from, what their cutie marks represent, or even what class they belong to – but by the character they put forth. The same line of thinking goes to stallions and mares, zebras and gryphons, Kings and subjects - that they are all deep down, living, thinking, and feeling beings.

“In music, Moztrot was one of the composers that adopted the Enlightenment into his music, where each instrument, each voice, and even melodies have their chance to shine.”

Inverno scratched his head, “Huh? Well, that’s new… Could you play something else from Moztrot?”

“I can,” Key went over to the phonograph, taking up a particular record to be played.

“And one more thing,” Inverno added before his teacher could put the needle to the record. “When am I going to start playing?”

Professor Signature thought for a moment, “I’ll tell you what. Tomorrow, I’ll bring something for you to play. Would you prefer to do it on the organ?”

The colt shook his head, “I want to play the piano,” he answered.

“Fair enough,” he teacher said, switching the phonograph on for the record to spin.

Comments

[Dan]

If the kid heard Entry of the Gladiators, would he visualize what Fucik intended to be conveyed or what everypony else sees when they hear it?