Finally state Gustav Holst with The Planets on the program, cinematic music I’ve never played. I can’t believe my luck if I also win a cash prize in the same week. Not very much but enough to make you happy. My happiness soon overrides the music and gets on my nerves, because what are we going to do with it? A special trip is an enticing option. But then corona?
During rehearsals the trick is to concentrate. I try to moderate my excitement and distract myself with Holst’s astrological world. But that The Planets there is no program music and there are no connections with the mythological gods, which disappoints me. Yet his superior orchestration is already throbbing through my body and I manage to distance myself from the prize on the wings of Holst’s sonorous universe. Before I know it I’m fighting col legno with Mars, vibrate the sensual runs of Venus and tease the playful Jupiter with my over-enthusiastic pizzicato. But with Saturn things go wrong, because of too many pauses my thoughts get the upper hand again. Saturn stands for vision and fulfillment: the Saturn armchairs at my girlfriend’s house that I’ve loved for years, circle in my head. If we don’t travel…
My viola is lecturing me. Pursuing my desires I do not notice how it gets antennae for the occult and conspires with Uranus. Dreamily I follow the musical notes and just as my stick tilts on the d-string, it bursts and catapults me to reality. Still not suspecting that my viola is in on the conspiracy with the planets, I meander my car through the wet autumn back home, fail to see the van parking around the bend and… bang! His door opens, an old man with tattoos on his face dances out. “Girl, what are you doing, huh?” A curse recitative follows and he grabs a claim form. Startled, I check whether my viola is intact. Still with my hands around the coffin, I look up. On the side of the van, next to a colorful star, it says: “Happiness is doing your job with attention.”
Ewa Maria Wagner is a violist and writer.
A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of November 16, 2021
#wrong #Saturn