#Tournament of Ages | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

cellody · 1 year ago

Text

Tournament of Ages 2023

youtube

The performance area was taken up by one lone soul with an equally as lonely stage; no assistance with background entertainment nor effects, no enchantments prepared for illusions nor audio enhancing, no props nor... anything at all. Just a chair, the microphone, and the natural, wintery lighting of Northrend though it seemed apparent why he made such choices when nerves were evident from the start.

The mic was readjusted with subtly-trembling fingers (after having failed to offer any sort of introduction or explanation about what this may entail) to aim lower towards the cello he’d brought with him, a small, white hand towel peculiarly draped over the instrument’s upper bout. Seemed that was it. He took one gut-wrenching look out across the gathered crowds and slumped into his seat with a visible swallow.

Following that was a rather loud sigh. His bow raised, hovered in place, and... hesitation lagged through his limbs. There was no backing out now, though; he needed to do this for himself. What then finally boomed forth was a piece likely (and hopefully, by choice,) unexpected of someone so wracked by stage fright.

...It was not a bore nor a classical ballad at all; this was just a flex to prove that the lamb had a monstrous wolf of a talent, wasn’t it? The textures of the notes dribbled, the craft of the cello bore through the tone’s volume, and his brows knit in an immediate show of focus. Lance may have been petrified and had to force himself into position where he now was but the moment he began, he was lost in perfectionism.

His speed fluctuating through all those notes was worthy of awe on its own but as the seconds passed, it became clearer and clearer that this was no mere proof of his prodigious exhibit. There was not one pause. One technique after another—rapid fingerboard ups and downs and fortississimo measures—seemed all the more profound, too, when his focused breathing periodically came through the mic.

Then came the plucking. It was, after all, a stringed instrument not unlike a guitar; it didn’t need a bow (kept out of the way in his cupped palm) to be played in all the ways possible. But of course he would display that when wanting the world to know he not only had this mastered; he crafted this very cello himself through a luthier-ancestral background. No embellishments, no magic.

He ought to have played for the tournament duels considering how tension-focused and vrykul-esque the melody was—or perhaps that was part of the reason he chose such a song for his first true performance. There seemed to be no end in sight, though; just how long was this? And with not a single sheet of music nor a stand in front of him, this must have been practiced like an exercise, the towel of which now made sense. Lance’s forehead was beginning to mist with the sweat that it was meant to soak up and keep off the wood should any eventually drip. This was not easy.

The expressions upon his fair face were ones very rarely ever made unless in the zone of acute, musical concert; he almost looked irate. It was, however, pure, unadulterated concentration. He was as one with the cello as he was with the piece never once allowing him a second of reprieve. For there to be this much contained in the music and for it to stretch across his entire allotted time slot was frankly absurd. He could have gone with two simpler tear-jerkers expected of an orchestral man, but... there he still sat, shredding away so fervently that even the hair of his bow was beginning to fray.

A third of the way through yet still unsatisfied. Lance would not look up properly towards the audience nor break from his trance. It really was no wonder at all why he chose to present on such an isolated stage; had he any other support or pizzazz added, it would have distracted from the raw mood and kept others from being able to soak in what musicians and their apparatuses were truly capable of at their peak—unleashed, exposed, and intense. Hard to believe he was a crybaby in his everyday life when he had all of this grandeur thrumming through his veins.

Adding to the wear of his craft was the accumulating dust of overworked resin and hair fibers settling upon the cello’s waist. At the very least, this came at a time where there finally seemed to be some relief in the tune though it came only in the form of a more hushed, memorized page; he was still swiftly fluctuating from low to high notes no matter what the volume. Then, finally, a true respite! His bow gracefully drifted away from the strings for a handful of seconds though he did not appear to have finished. When the cello’s neck was leaned back into his form as proof of there being more to come in the same piece, his spaced-out gaze resumed closing and his head bowed forth like a metronome in time with the fragile sawing of work that made up this entire composition.

The essence that grew from the silence was less like a peaceful breath and more like one being held to keep from having an intruder overhear. That is to say... the stress came right back in full swing, hushed notes lifting in volume over a series of buzzing measures meant to keep listeners on the edge of their seat. Had he any room to think about things beyond playing, Lance would have wondered what stories others were envisioning to the aura all of this depicted. Surely, everyone’s would be unique; his arrangement was bare-bones mainly to act as a canvas for the audience’s imagination, after all.

It was not feasible for him to waver the notes out any quicker. What began as the whirr of a bee’s wings taking flight turned into the nearly-impossible consonance of a hummingbird’s. Speed, speed, and more speed—easing during one span then picking right back up in the next like a chase across the very strings of his cello. The fact that they could even hold up throughout all of this was outright astonishing.

Pizzicato rejoined the song—this round alongside the usual, bowed notes that now left one feeling as though the race either came to a standstill or a long, grueling fall. Lance was definably (albeit metaphorically) intoxicated by how deeply he himself had fallen into making sure this was seen all the way through, heart and soul. If he ever held back, the entire piece would fall apart. This needed passion and this needed drama unlike anything others would have thought him capable of.

B minor chords began to take on the likenesses of sea shanties whence the music swelled forth like waves across a sea. Travel, shadowed adventures, clothing drenched against flesh; there were so many things he tried to paint through the medium of his instrument and it depended entirely on one’s perspective which hues rang truest.

White-knuckled serenity. This sonata could not at all be deemed soothing, no, but he’d be damned if that wasn’t pulled off to some degree during the next moment—at least as far as the usual rigidity was concerned. The notes remained steadfast in their flair for toil though the hush had even the musician bowing forward to curl towards the dwindled volume like a child drawn into a ghost story. There then came a refrain to an earlier tune strummed out as though teasing at others’ hope for a brighter outlook.

As fate would have it, however, that very hope would then begin lilting back towards the weight of the song’s ever-brewing temper. Strange buildups merging sunlight with a distant storm acted out through the soundwaves he played—the fluctuation of which formed a very stand-out, brief glissando that sounded entirely like one that belonged to the slide of an electric guitar.

Back to the reminder of his skill over that fingerboard. His thumb lingered over a note as the other four digits trekked to and fro across the chords’ joining, vibrato-brimming pairs, the hairs of which cascade them forth from down below by this point thinned seemingly to repair. It was in this stanza his accruing sweat would have been visible even to those seated furthest away, no amount of wintery air able to balance out the exertion this song wracked his form through. This... this was the thrill and lineage of music.

Rubbery connotations bounced through the playfulness that pushed onward when stern, bow-less portrayals once more found their place within the song. Strumming a cello made for such a bizarrely familiar yet eerily mesmerizing sound no matter how often it was shown off; what, then, would the method sound like on other stringed instruments? Could those usually plucked be instead bowed? This was exactly the sort of creativity he would have died to bring back into Azeroth’s population.

Lance’s entire left arm got into position when posing through some of those thumbed notes. His right, naturally, only stopped rowing just that once for the song’s earlier rest, but it otherwise kept on due course with very few changes in angle. It was surely the handiwork higher up on the fingerboard that would catch the eyes of most. Even that seemed to be an art form of its own; hells, to go so far as to say it looked a bit sensual wasn’t unfathomable. Perhaps the passion of intimacy wasn’t a stranger to the passion of playing music.

How much of this was even a struggle for the young man? Clearly, physically, he was working himself out to the point of perspiring, but there were uncountable moments where it seemed more like a game to him than a gift. What more could he accomplish? What more could he prove? How many more notes, how fast, how whispered? Just as the piece was peaking towards the finale, the unanswered wonder over whether this was a cello solo or philosophical performance art must have weighed heavy on the mind. It’d gone on for what seemed to be forever... and some parts were so raw it felt almost like studying the naked form of an exhibitionist rather than that of a perfect-pitch, instrumentalist prodigy.

By the final, heavy, long note, Lance appeared forlorn. It took a while for the reality to dawn but when it did, he hastily used that little towel to dab at his face and then to hide his unoccupied fist in—the other being clutched about the cello’s neck in preparation to dart from his seat with it. However... at the very least (and thankfully), he’d managed to muster up enough sense in himself to pause halfway off the stage, lean over in a bow, and wait five rapid yet formal seconds before actually fleeing.

#strings #tournament of ages #so nerve-wracking!!! but also worth it and finally done. <3

15 notes · View notes