The October Music: Second Verse - Day 18

I Like Chopin
Classical music just hits a different chord, pardon the pun, with certain people. While most people tend to feel a sense of relaxation or excitement while listening to it, others – a scant few – have a different relationship with it. They use the music to see beyond and into worlds that are not our own. Something about the bend and sway of notes can bring them into something entirely new.

Therein lies the case of R. Spector. No first name because, well, it no longer matters. Spector had an obsession with Romantic period composers. Schumann. Liszt. Mendelssohn. Berlioz. All of them brought him to new places where he could explore to his heart’s content. None, however, could hold a candle to his absolute favorite: Chopin.

Spector exulted in the etudes. Was nourished by the nocturnes. Was pleased by the polonaises. Everything he could find was a vacation for him. He would spend hours, days, even weeks at home, letting the music waft through his house like breeze through a meadow. He would sit in his easy chair and drink brandy and let the notes settle on him as if butterflies alighting on a flower. To him, it was paradise.

But, with all things, even those we love, there comes the inevitable desire for more. New. Things we have not discovered before. Such was the case with Chopin and R. Spector. He knew that Chopin had posthumous music released, even going against his deathbed wish, and he needed to find it. Yes, there were the unpublished piano pieces that had been compiled, but there had to be more.

Rumor spread quietly about a piece for piano that Chopin had tried to burn after composing it. Something about opening doors. It was difficult to parse, as Spector did not speak Polish, but money talks sometimes more effectively than actual language. Through backroom dealings and exorbitant sums of case, one day a record arrived at Spector’s home, the entire box encased in wax. Had he understood the language, he would have known that the attached letter warned him to not open the box or play the record. That something different would happen. He did not understand, though, and cracked the wax with unsubtle glee in his eyes.

He sat down in his favorite chair, poured his favorite brandy, and leaned back as the music began to play. Right away, Spector was confused. Chopin’s music was normally elegant and lilting. This was atonal. Even harsh, in a way. He wondered if he had been ripped off.

That thought lost its importance, though, when the purple-gray hole opened in his wall and the long, thin, black leg reached through and pierced his chest with a sharp spike. Spector blinked as the lifeblood left him and he vaguely remembered how Chopin had died.

Pericarditis. Something to do with the heart. The irony there did not escape him, even when he saw his own heart pulled from his chest and into the hole.
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What a way to go.