A Splendid Gift by Alyson Richman Read Free Book Online Page A

inside her head.
    ***
    Her parents had given her that first instrument when she was seven. For several months prior, she had gone to sleep hearing them discuss which instrument she would study. Her mother had wanted the flute, but her father had pushed for the violin. But Elodie had begged for a cello. She had first become enamored by the instrument’s beautiful sound while at a concert at her father’s school. The students had played the Dvořák cello concerto, and she sat there mesmerized.
    On that walk home, she pierced the air with her own imaginary bow. She still heard the music in her head, every note lingering inside her. The dance of that cellist imprinted on every fiber of muscle and piece of bone.
    The day she was finally given her first cello, and the sight of her father placing the dark leather case on their dining room table, were memories that Elodie stored inside her mind, each image like a single note connected to the next. She would never forget the sight as her father unsnapped the case. The instrument had been wrapped in a beautiful red scarf to protect the bow from scratching the varnish, and when her father removed it, Elodie gasped.
    “It’s a three-quarter size,” her father told her as he handed the cello for her to hold. “When you get a little older, you’ll play on a full size.”
    She took the instrument from him and, immediately, Elodie felt her heart begin to race. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever held.
    “And the bow, Elodie. . . .” Her father took out the bow and handed that to her as well.
    “She is her father’s daughter,” Orsina said, sensing that her daughter would have no problem once she learned the necessary techniques. “I can’t wait to hear her play.”
    ***
    Elodie began her studies slowly, her father adamant that whatever she learned, she would learn correctly. The first thing he taught her was to caress her cello.
    The ideal, he told his young daughter, was not to distort oneself. Instead, one needed to find a natural way to embrace the instrument. “You need to become one with it,” he told her.
    He took her hands and placed them on the top of the shoulders of the instrument. Then, slowly, he moved Elodie’s hands alongside the cello’s edges, allowing her to feel every curve.
    The sensation of the wood beneath her palms was soothing. Each part of the instrument’s construction, evoked its own tactile response; the varnish of the wood, the length of the fingerboard, and the ridges within the scrolled neck.
    Elodie’s father showed her how to use her knees to secure the cello’s tail into the floor to prevent slipping. He lifted her bow from the table, “A cellist holds the bow naturally, not like a violinist,” he told her. And then he laughed and did a small pantomime, mimicking the awkward way a violinist gripped his bow, the left fingers rolling slightly, a technique that was used to increase the volume.
    Over the next few weeks, she learned to make notes emerge from her cello. She began to feel her arms transform. No longer did they seem like two unremarkable appendages, but a part of her that had their own unique power. Like a bird’s wings, they could lift and stretch. Her wrist, too, she learned to curl and extend, lending grace and beauty to her playing. She learned to wait. To take breaths. To hover her bow just above the bridge and then finally strike. She absorbed her father’s instructions with an understanding beyond her years.
    “A good musician must cultivate the art of interpreting,” he instructed her. “The staves of the score are a road map. You read the notes, you play them as the composer dictates, but the emotion. . . . that is what makes the music your own.”
    She looked at him wide-eyed and rested her bow on her knee.
    “You must always listen to what your teacher tells you, then interpret it . . . demonstrate that you’ve understood far beyond just the playing. Do you understand, Elodie?”
    Elodie