Fic: The Science of Musicality (Sherlock BBC) (1/2)
Title: The Science of Musicality (On AO3)
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Sherlock, Watson, Lestrade, Moriarty
Genre: Gen/AU (classical musicians)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 10,500
Content Advisory: Abuse of classical music knowledge; oboe jokes
Summary: Classical musician AU: Sherlock is a professional solo violinist, and John is his new accompanist collaborator. They've got a recital in three months, and someone doesn't want them to do it.
Artist: le_prince_lutin
Art masterpost: Here on AO3
Author's Notes: Written for the Sherlock Big Bang 2012. Thanks to adorb_eggplant, imachar, feels_like_fire, and leopardwrites for inspiration, Britpicking, being whined at, and fantastic beta-work and a non-academic-musician's perspective, respectively. And thanks so much to le_prince_lutin for her fabulous artwork!
Also, here's a listing and links to all the music I mentioned.
John played the final chords of the sonata, Beethoven’s Waldstein, Op. 53, and sat at the piano, panting, for a moment, before he heard slow applause from the doorway. He jumped, and turned, as he hadn’t heard the door open, but then again, he was practicing in a semi-public location, after all. “Mike,” he said, recognizing the listener. “Mike Stamford. How are you?”
“John Watson,” Mike said. He had been studying for his first degree when John was finishing his doctorate at Guildhall, and while they hadn’t been best mates, they’d been friendly. “How are you? Last I’d heard you--” He gestured at his shoulder and winced. “Sounds like you’re back, though.”
“I am,” John said, “albeit unemployed and, well, lacking an instrument.” He waved at the room around him. “Here by the grace of an old friend.” He’d always made it a point of being friendly with the technicians for various reasons, but this was one of the perks: who else could let him practice in the dressing rooms at the Barbican Centre when the practice piano was already checked out?
“Looking to play again?”
“Well, the ballet won’t take me back,” John said, trying to turn it into a joke. He’d been the rehearsal pianist for the London Ballet Theatre for ten years, touring with them around the world, until the bursitis in his shoulder had necessitated surgery and he’d been forced to quit. “Know anyone looking for an accompanist?” If he had to, he’d teach small children piano until he could land a job at one of the conservatories in town, but he’d rather not. When he’d inquired around last, there hadn’t been any openings, and he didn’t know how long it would be until there was.
“As a matter of fact,” Mike said, “I do. Sherlock Holmes.”
“Sherlock Holmes.” The name rang a bell in John’s mind. “Isn’t he--didn’t he put out that strange version of the Four Seasons a couple years back?”
“That’s him,” Mike said. “He’s um. A bit eccentric.”
“I used to work with dancers,” John reminded him.
“I’m currently working with an oboist,” Mike countered, and they both had a laugh. “Seriously, though: he’s intense, and he’ll likely insist that you move in with him.”
“Does he own a piano?” John asked. “For one that's decent enough, I’d live with a dragon. A hungry one.”
“What happened to your piano?” Mike asked.
“I’ve never owned one,” John admitted. “Well, not a decent one. My parents have an old Kawai institutional upright but the action on that one is a trainwreck. I’ve had access to much better ones through Guildhall and then the Ballet since I got good enough to care. And the last few months . . .” He shrugged. “Didn’t so much need one.”
“True, that,” Mike said, nodding. “Well, I mean, if you’re interested, and you’d like to meet him now, he’s here. When I walked through, he’d just pulled out his violin in the lobby to demonstrate to an unsuspecting child how to play ‘Lightly Row’ properly. You might be able to catch him before he makes her cry.”
John stared at him for a second, shook his head, and closed the key cover while Mike put the lid down on the piano.
Sherlock Holmes was tall and thin, with a head of curly brown hair. Other than the hair, from the rear, he looked rather as John might have expected Paganini to look. If Paganini wore a trench coat when he played, which he probably didn’t as it was not yet in fashion. “No, you see, it’s like this--” Holmes said, his voice rather lower than John might have expected. He played a few notes, and then let down the violin to speak again. “For if you can’t play that--” And here, he played the same few notes, demonstrating something about the angle of the bow--John wasn’t a violinist and couldn’t see the subtle difference. “--you’ll never be able to play this.”
Here, he launched into Paganini’s Twenty-Fourth Caprice, the Aria, which made John smile, considering his earlier observations, although--he didn’t have perfect pitch, but that didn’t sound as if it were in the correct key.
It was also at double speed, but that wasn’t entirely unexpected.
At some point, he appeared to have forgotten that he was demonstrating something for an eight-year-old and wandered off into--well, not into the rest of the Caprice, certainly. John recognized bits of a handful of different violin concertos ranging from Bach to Penderecki, and a couple of sonatas, before he ended with a trill, very high on the E string, in a range that would have been shrill in the hands of anyone other than a master. Which Holmes decidedly was; John had more than enough training to recognize that the man was on a level beyond his own. Then again, there were few accompanists who were even at John’s level, so it was kind of a moot point.
“Well played,” John said, but didn’t clap; Holmes still started, and turned around. The child scampered away, but Holmes didn’t appear to notice.
“Who are you?” Holmes said. “No, wait--I recognize you, I think. The former pianist for the London Ballet, correct? Name, name--Watson. Guildhall, MPerf 1992, DMA 1996, studied with Havill primarily, four or so years of miscellaneous work with small chamber groups, then with the Ballet until a few months ago.”
“Ah, yes, that’s me,” John said, surprised--he was rarely recognized by sight. Unlike Holmes, he wasn’t particularly striking, and despite the fact that his degree was in solo performance, John had mostly done accompanying--excuse him, it was called ‘collaboration’ now--ever since. “John Watson.” He held out his hand, but Holmes didn’t notice--he was plucking out a few notes with his thumb, staring into the distance. “I’ve heard you may be in the market for a--a collaborator?”
Holmes started. “Collaborator? I’ve always hated that term, although I suppose it’s accurate. I’m looking for a pianist. We will collaborate.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re, what, seven and a half months out from surgery? Is that long enough?”
John shrugged, and it was a little lopsided, sure. “I’m not where I was eight years ago, but I’m better than I have been for the past couple years.”
“Yes,” Holmes said. “I wasn’t all that impressed with you last year, but I’ve heard your recording of Cafe Music--that cellist wasn’t much, but you . . . you understood the piece, I think. At least more than the average--” He snapped his fingers. “All right. Where’s the nearest piano?”
John led him back to the piano he’d been using earlier; Mike bid him adieu and disappeared. “Do you have any music?”
Holmes stared at him blankly. “What would I need music for?”
“I assumed,” John said, “that you’d want us to, I don’t know, play together for a moment.”
“You play,” Holmes said. “I shall join in where appropriate.”
John had reams of music memorized, but none of it was piano-violin duets. He asked, “What would you like me to play, then?”
Holmes waved his violin at him. “Whatever you like. Pick something that isn’t boring.”
Not boring. Well. John tended to think very little music was boring, but he started in on Chopin’s first Ballade, in G minor.
“Ah! Boring,” Holmes said, without even looking at him.
Well, it was top-twenty classical music. He skipped a few years forward and started playing Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on the same Paganini Caprice Holmes had been playing earlier, although he started at the eighteenth variation just for his own amusement.
“Still boring,” Holmes said, although he let him get through about twenty measures that time.
John thought for about ten seconds and then started playing one of two five-voice fugues from the first volume of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, the one in B-flat minor. Five-voice fugues were certainly not boring, he thought.
“Almost not boring,” Holmes said. “Seriously, Watson, you have to know something less boring than that.”
Less boring than Bach? For a violinist? Fuck it, he thought, and burst into the opening piano part from Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
He looked up to see Holmes looking at him in disbelief. “What on earth is that rubbish?” he asked.
“It’s not rubbish,” John started to say, because it wasn’t, just a bit cliched, but Holmes snapped his fingers at him.
“Go back to the Bach,” he said, “or on to something else not boring, I don’t care. Something you like.”
Something he liked? John liked Bach, and Beethoven (although he suspected that all the Beethoven he knew would get a ‘Boring!’ right away), and Brahms--maybe something twentieth century? He started with a very low tritone and some staccato notes that rumbled out from the bottom of the piano, and then a fluttering, evil trill--Prokofiev’s Suggestion Diabolique.
It wasn’t that difficult of a piece; Grade 8 students played it on occasion. John himself had originally learned it when he was fifteen or sixteen, but it was still one of his favorite pieces to play. He realized, a page or two in, that Holmes had put his violin under his chin and was playing pizzicato along with him. It wasn’t a duet, but that didn’t seem to be stopping him.
Well then. If there was one thing that John knew how to do, it was this, so he watched Holmes; watched him for cues of timing, and tempo, and breaths; watched to see where he wanted to go with the volume. He ceded control while retaining it, guiding Holmes through the piece.
It wasn’t that long of a piece; under three minutes, certainly. When it finished, though, Holmes stood with the violin under his chin, bow at his side, and stared at the wall for a moment. When he finally spoke, he said, “The acoustics are terrible here, backstage, especially with the lid down. Come. I know where it will sound better.”
The place he had in mind was, of course, the main stage there at the Barbican Centre; how Holmes had a key to the piano there was beyond him, and John rather thought that the London Symphony should be coming in to rehearse soon, but he propped up the lid of the piano, opened the key cover, and sat.
“What now?” John asked, even as his fingers found the keys. This was a much better piano; a Hamburg Steinway, if he wasn’t mistaken. (And with the name written above the keys, it was not likely that he was.) The other piano, the one in the dressing room, was an upright Baldwin, and while not a terrible piano, it could hardly compete with a full concert grand.
“Something else. Debussy, Ravel? Impressionist. Not Clair de Lune or Reverie or anything else obvious like that.”
“I don’t have every piano work ever memorized,” John said, but he started with the trills that opened Debussy’s “L’Isle Joyeuse.”
Holmes apparently approved of his choice, but didn’t join in until the unbearably melodic section, a couple minutes in. When he did, though, it was--
--fun. It was fun.
John hadn’t really had fun playing with another musician in a while; practicing wasn’t fun, but performing was. As a rehearsal pianist, he never got to, well, perform. Relearning how to play the piano after the surgery also hadn’t been fun. But this--playing with Sherlock Holmes, of the uncanny green-gray eyes and exacting tastes--it was fun.
Well, hell. He hoped he passed the audition.
When the piece finished, Holmes whipped his head around and said, “When can you move in? Rent’s seven hundred pounds a month, your part.”
“Move in?” Mike had mentioned it, but . . . “Well, this weekend, I suppose.” He’d had to give up his nice single flat due to a much-reduced income but was currently staying at a hotel, had been since he’d been recovered enough to live on his own and could stop living with his sister. Seven hundred a month wasn’t cheap, but it was doable, especially if Holmes lived somewhere decent.
“Not soon enough,” Holmes said. He pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and said, “It’s eleven-thirty-four now. I’ll be home around two; I expect you before dinner.”
“Well, that’s rather peremptory, isn’t it?” John said. “And we haven’t discussed rates or anything.”
“Rates?” Holmes looked up. “Well, you’ll get half of whatever we make, won’t you? And I must tell you, I am generally paid quite well.”
Well. John knew that, especially if he’d done CDs. And half--that was certainly better than what he’d gotten in the past.
Also, he liked the ‘we.’
“I’ll speak to Lestrade; he’ll let me do a recital here at some point.” Holmes loosened the hair on his bow and removed the chin-rest from his violin before putting his instrument away in the case. “This isn’t my favorite hall in town, but it’s the only one where I can pull strings, so to speak, and get time on short notice. Lestrade owes me one. Well, more than one, really; I filled in once when Rostropovitch dropped out at the last minute a few years ago.”
For some reason, the only response John had to that was, “You play cello, too?”
Holmes directed a look at him, but didn’t otherwise respond to his comment. “Well. Ring the doorbell; either Mrs. Hudson, the landlady, will let you in, or I might hear it, who knows.”
“Ah. Where do you live?”
“221B Baker Street,” Holmes said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe.
Well, maybe it was. John put the address, along with Holmes’s mobile number, into his phone, so he wouldn’t forget, and gave Holmes his number.
Holmes swooped out with his coat swirling behind him; John took a few extra minutes to lock up the piano properly, and to ask the ceiling, “What am I doing?” When it didn’t answer, he shrugged and left.
On the way out, John dropped off the key to the backstage piano at the front desk of the library, as he always did; a different man than usual took the key from him, and paused. “John Watson?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s me,” John said.
“Greg Lestrade,” the other man said; he was a few years older than John, maybe ten, and looked a bit worn, as if he’d already worked forty hours that week and it was only Wednesday. “I understand you’ll be collaborating with Sherlock Holmes in the near future.”
“I think so,” John said.
Lestrade gave a thin smile. “Well, since you look somewhat more responsible than Sherlock is, can you give him this, and remind him that ‘collections manager’ and ‘supreme ruler of the Barbican Centre’ are not synonymous?”
‘This’ was a piece of paper, folded in half; John did not inquire about the contents. He chuckled, though, and said, “I’ll do what I can. Thank you, Mr. Lestrade.”
“You’re welcome.”
John nodded and turned to walk away, but then turned back. “Wait--how did Mr. Holmes fill in for Rostropovitch?”
Lestrade looked at him blankly, and said, “Oh, that. For a lecture. It was almost, but not quite, an unmitigated disaster. He’ll never let me forget about that, will he?”
“Most likely not.”
John took the Tube home; re-packed all of his clothing and music--at least, the stuff that wasn’t in storage at his parents’--into his two suitcases, and called a taxi. He made it over to 221B Baker Street by three-thirty, and rang the doorbell.
An older woman, smartly dressed but with a general air of being harried, opened the door. “Are you John Watson?” she asked.
He nodded. “Are you Mrs. Hudson?”
“I am,” she said, and smiled, taking a step back to let him in. “221B is just upstairs. Sherlock’s home but he’s playing, lord only knows what, so I’d just walk in if I were you.”
John nodded and hauled his two suitcases upstairs, his shoulder paining him enough that it took a while--long enough to hear Holmes skip through the themes to about eight different movements of Bach solo violin works. The man just couldn’t actually stick to one piece, could he? John smiled, and then schooled his face to something a little more composed.
He pushed the door open quietly and rolled his suitcases in first, then shut it behind himself. It was rather a standard flat from the fifties, with orange and avocado trim; there was a couch, a chair, and a footstool shoved in one corner. The kitchen was through one doorway, and through another, John saw the edge of a keyboard, that of an upright piano. The main room of the flat was taken up by a shiny black grand piano, which made him ache to play just by looking at it, and, well, Sherlock Holmes himself. He stood in the center of a triangle formed by three different music stands, one black metal, one wire, and one wooden. Literally every flat surface, and a few that weren’t flat, was covered in sheet music, some bound collections, some loose papers. There were bookshelves on every available wall, and they were full of more sheet music as well as music books, mostly theory and biographies.
It was, well, exactly what John should have expected.
“John!” Holmes called out. “It’s a grand afternoon to play Chopin, isn’t it?”
“Every afternoon is a grand afternoon to play Chopin,” John said, and inched a little farther into the room. “Ah. Where shall I put my things?”
“Oh, the bedroom is upstairs.”
John paused. “Bedroom, singular?”
Holmes frowned. “The flat has two bedrooms but I put the spinet piano and all of my spare instruments in the downstairs bedroom. The other has got a very large closet and I do not sleep very much. I doubt we’ll ever be in there at the same time.”
John ducked his head into the downstairs bedroom which--good lord--contained a spinet piano, a portable keyboard and amplifier, a full set of recording equipment including a reel-to-reel machine, two cellos, a bass, a tenor viola da gamba, and no fewer than eight violin cases, although a couple might actually have been violas.
“Is the bed at least big enough for both of us?” he asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous, John, there are two beds.”
“Oh.”
Holmes returned to playing--something; John thought it might be a Kreutzer etude--while John lugged his stuff up a second flight of stairs to a smallish bedroom with, yes, two single beds, both neatly made. One bed was covered in stacks of music, books, and CDs, with a dinner jacket in plastic draped over a chair at the foot of the bed; the other was completely empty, and John assumed it was to be his.
He unpacked some of the more wrinkleable of his clothing, hanging it in the wardrobe or putting it in the empty dresser drawer, plugged his mobile into the charger, took his portfolio of music with him and went back downstairs.
Holmes was playing--actually, he was pretty certain it was Mercury, from Holst’s Planets--as expected when John arrived, but he stopped when he saw him and said, “Good. Sit down; the music’s on the right-hand side.”
John nodded and looked through the stack. The Finzi Elegy, Chopin--an arrangement, obviously, of a couple of nocturnes, Op. 9--the Shostakovich Violin Sonata, Op. 134, and something John didn’t recognize, obviously printed out from a computer. The title was Morceau, French for ‘piece,’ and the composer was . . . ahh, S. Holmes. Obviously Holmes would have something he wrote on his own recital. “So this is about seventy-five minutes of music, then?”
Holmes snorted. “Only if we play at the standard tempi.”
“Oh, we aren’t?”
“We’ll play at the correct tempi.”
“Of course.”
“How many hours can you play a day?” Holmes asked.
John shrugged. “Six or so.”
“Hm. Well, since Lestrade hasn’t told us when we can have the recital hall, we’ll have to structure our time after he calls.”
“Oh,” John said, and pulled the folded paper out of his pocket. “This is for you.”
Holmes took the paper and unfolded it. “Tuesday! We can have a Tuesday afternoon in the Barbican Theatre, in three months’ time. That’s . . . well, I’ve had less acceptable offers. Is three months enough time for you?”
John thought. Of course he’d played the Chopin before, albeit in the original versions; he’d done the Shostakovich with a fellow student back at Guildhall, more than fifteen years ago. He knew the Finzi but hadn’t played it, and the original work was new, so yes, likely three months was enough time. “Sure,” he said. “But that’s a massive hall--what, more than a thousand seats? How are we going to fill it?”
“We’ll fill it. I’ll text him and tell him we’ll accept. He can take care of tickets and whatnot; I don’t care as long as I get paid enough to make up for three months of work.” Holmes shoved one of the stands out of the way abruptly; it teetered precariously before settling on its base. “I think the only way for the two of us to learn to play together is to play together, don’t you?”
“Ah, sure,” John said, and watched Holmes dig through a stack of music before he came up with what he was apparently looking for. Then, rather than returning to his spot between the stands, he set his violin in the case on the piano, set the bow down as well, and sat on the piano bench.
“Well?” he said and patted the bench next to him.
John shrugged, joined him, and looked at the music: Debussy’s Petite Suite.
“You’ll have to forgive me; I’m not much of a pianist. You’ll play Prime, obviously. Do you play any other instruments?”
“I played clarinet in secondary school,” John said.
“I believe I’ve got a clarinet in the wardrobe,” Holmes said, “but I’m certain I don’t have any reeds. You can pop down to the shop and find some; we’ll do violin duets that way. Unless you can’t transpose in your head?”
“Of course I can transpose in my head,” John said. “I’ll need a day or so to remember how to play the clarinet; it’s been twenty years and I was never very good.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Holmes said, waving one hand. “We’ll start from the beginning and play on until we reach the end.”
“It usually works that way,” John agreed, and they started.
They worked their way through the Debussy, and then some Brahms, and by the time that Sherlock was banging his way through the Secundo part of the third movement of Milhaud’s Scaramouche from the spinet in the other room, John realized that yes, this was completely ridiculous, but it was still fun.
* * *
That night was not as awkward as it could be; John fell asleep at about eleven-thirty and woke up just after seven, and as far as he could tell, Sherlock--for he’d become Sherlock somewhere between Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge and Faure’s Dolly Suite--hadn’t been in the room at all. Music school had given John the unerring ability to sleep through anything short of a punk band rehearsal, and he found it pleasant to wake up to Tchaikovsky and brush his teeth to Ravel.
When he got downstairs, Sherlock was sitting on the piano bench. “How much time do you think you’ll need to learn your part? I suppose you’ll want me to disappear for some portion of your practicing.”
John frowned. “I don’t know; a couple weeks? I’ve already played most of the recital and the Finzi isn’t terribly difficult, from what I recall. I don’t know about your piece but it’s not that long. And I don’t care whether you come or go as long as you aren’t actually breathing down my neck.”
Sherlock tapped his fingers on the lid of the piano. “Well, all right. I have students from noon to two this afternoon. I don’t know if you teach but you’re welcome to, as long as I’m not teaching at the same time and as long as it’s not tiny children.” He sniffed.
John nodded. “Do you teach every Thursday?”
“Of course not. I teach when I have spare time, and when my students need lessons.”
“How do you keep track?”
Sherlock pointed to his mobile on the piano. “They text me, asking for a lesson. I tell them when it will be. They text me again twelve hours in advance. It works.”
John looked at the phone and blinked, recognizing the name of one of the violinists from the London Symphony. “Oh. Well, I haven’t taught in years. I might start again. We’ll see.”
“Keep me apprised.”
Somewhat before noon, John left, not wanting to disturb Sherlock’s lessons, intending to go food shopping after he’d grabbed lunch. They’d ordered in yesterday evening, as Sherlock didn’t keep much in the way of food around the house, but John’s budget was not unlimited and he could cook enough to keep himself fed. He’d gotten through his curry but not all the way to the supermarket before he got a text from Sherlock.
John, I need you back here now. SH
And then another one: Well, not necessarily you, but I need a pianist, and you are a pianist. SH
And a third, as he was walking up the stairs: I would call Lestrade but he is a terrible pianist and also he seems to have a day job. SH
John shook his head and opened the door to the flat.
“There you are!” Sherlock said. “What took so long? Never mind. Come play this section.”
“Um, hello,” John said to the violinist, the one from the London Symphony, who nodded, apparently used to Sherlock’s hijacking of other people to make a point.
He sat down at the piano, and--ahh, the Spring sonata, Beethoven. He’d played the accompaniment any number of times. Starting where Sherlock indicated, he played for a couple lines, and then stopped when Sherlock said, “Stop! Did you hear that?”
The violinist looked confused for a moment. “It’s a dominant seventh chord,” she said.
“Yes, but which one?” Sherlock set down his violin and whirled around to pull a blackboard out from behind the couch, one with staff lines already drawn in. He sketched out the chord, putting in clefs and a key signature as well. “John, you’ve a doctorate, yes?”
“Ah, yes,” he said.
“And you’re a pianist. What was your dissertation on?”
John knew that Sherlock knew, as there was a well-thumbed copy of it--Sherlock’s, not John’s--sitting on the kitchen counter, next to the microwave, but he said, “Harmonic progressions and chromatic tension in Chopin’s Ballades.”
“So you would say you’re a decent theorist.”
John shrugged. He was well more than a decent theorist--he had almost gone that track instead of performance--but he was arguably out of practice, so he said, “Yes, decent.”
“Would you tell me what this chord is?”
The violinist was turning red. “Sherlock, I--”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Sherlock interrupted. “You’re not paying for a theory lesson. Well, guess what. All that money you spent on a fancy degree in Paris left you with less knowledge of theory than a sixth-form trumpeter at a Birmingham comprehensive. John, the chord, please?”
“It’s a G7 chord,” John said.
“I know that,” the violinist said.
“And what function does a G7 perform in F major?” Sherlock said, ignoring her.
“It’s a V7 of V chord--a pre-dominant chord,” John said.
“I knew that, too!” the violinist said.
Sherlock sniffed. “Obviously you did not, as you did not, and you’ve clearly been playing this chord--” He tapped his chalk on the G7 chord. “--as if it were an actual dominant seventh instead of part of the pre-dominant buildup.” He turned away. “You performers simply have forgotten that every single note in a piece is connected to every single other note in a piece, whether it’s because of form, harmony, or orchestration. This is all three. I expect you not to make the same mistake again. John, I don’t need you anymore.”
John gave an embarrassed nod to the violinist and left.
He came home a couple hours later, arms overflowing with vegetables and pasta and wrapped packets from the butcher; in his pocket was a box of clarinet reeds, although he doubted his ability to honk a few notes would satisfy Sherlock at all. The blackboard was still sitting on the couch, but Sherlock wasn’t anywhere in the flat, so John put the food away in peace and then sat at the piano for a moment. Something about Sherlock’s analysis was bothering him, and he looked back and forth between the chords and the music for a moment.
Ah, he’d written the notes in the wrong order. John fixed it and, while he was there, added the C7 chord and the F major chord that would resolve it properly. There. He looked at it for a moment, and then added a flat, changing it to an F minor chord just to mess with Sherlock.
He sat down to play and was working through the Finzi when Sherlock returned. “Ah, there you are, John,” he said. “I went to see Lestrade. There’s paperwork.” He threw a manila folder down on top of the piano. “Contracts, tax forms, the like. What are you doing--that’s not the correct rhythm.”
“I know it’s not,” John said. “It’s a practice rhythm. This is an odd choice for the program, the Elegy.”
“You think?” Sherlock said. “I like it.”
“Well, it’s very pretty, but it’s still odd.”
“Oh, it’s a decent enough piece; a tad pedestrian and not as brilliant as the Faure, but I like the fact that it’s an odd choice for the program.” Sherlock turned to head for the kitchen, but got distracted by the blackboard. “John! F minor?”
John just laughed.
* * *
Sherlock dug out the clarinet for John and gave him approximately five minutes to remember how to play before he found a Suzuki book of duets and made him sight-read; fortunately twenty years of being a musician, student and professional, stood him in good stead and he didn’t sound as bad as he expected.
Not that Sherlock apparently agreed. “Well, that was an exercise in futility,” he said. “I expect you’ll sound much better next time we try that.”
“We could invest in actual violin-clarinet duets,” John said.
“Or you could learn to play your instrument properly.”
John shook his head. It wasn’t worth pointing out that the clarinet was not his instrument, and that his piano skills were clearly up to Sherlock’s standards or he wouldn’t be here.
“Let’s go out for dinner,” Sherlock said suddenly, and loosened his bow before putting it away.
They ended up at a small Italian restaurant; the owner greeted Sherlock like a beloved son. “I threw together a quartet for his daughter’s wedding the night before the event,” Sherlock said in John’s ear. “We were terrible, of course, but as long as we did the damn Canon, everyone was happy.”
“Anything you want, for you and your date!”
“I’m not--” But the owner, Angelo, was gone already, and returned with menus and a tea light. John gave up and ordered fettuccine.
A couple minutes after their food came, Sherlock looked out the window and made an awful face before turning his collar up and looking to the center of the room.
“What is it?” John asked, after he swallowed his bite.
“Jim Moriarty,” Sherlock said.
“The composer?” John asked, and looked out the window. He saw a dark-haired man in a blue shirt waiting for the light to change at a crossing, but he didn’t recognize him.
“Composer? At the very best, he’s an arranger.” Sherlock sniffed. “He routinely attempts to get me to play his music, or at least he did before I informed an interviewer of my opinion on his, er, attempted work.”
“And what was that opinion?” John asked, already amused.
“That multi-media presentations and prepared instruments merely deluded the less-rational among us into overlooking his absolute inability to write a melody, harmony, and counterpoint. I happen to know he failed eighteenth-century counterpoint.”
“Did he,” John said, grinning. “RCM, I suppose.” It was safe to assume he’d attended the Royal College of Music as John didn’t know him and he wasn’t that much younger than he.
“Yes,” Sherlock said. “As did I, and you don’t see me looking down on you for going to Guildhall, so kindly refrain from commenting that I accidentally attended the same institution as that hack.”
“Ah. Zivoni?”
“Who else?” Sherlock said, with a hitch of his shoulder. “Oh, I suppose Boyarski is good; I studied with her for a summer once. Most of her students aren’t complete wastes of space.”
John didn’t even blink; he’d engaged in enough of his own ‘sorry, I study with the world’s expert on X and your teacher is terrible’ blather back in the days when he cared, but he’d come to the conclusion that it was all a crapshoot, anyway. “Besides, I’m sure I went to school with some complete berks, as well.”
“You did,” Sherlock said promptly, and proceeded to eviscerate all of them.
Later, after Angelo had called John Sherlock’s ‘date’ for a third time, John gave Sherlock a sideways look and said, “Bring a lot of dates here, do you?”
“No, of course not, John. I’ve never taken a date here.”
“You have a different date restaurant, then?” He was fishing, maybe, but he really wanted to know how often he’d be kicked out of the room for the night.
Sherlock stared at him. “No,” he said shortly. “Look, John, I consider myself married to my music.”
“And I don’t?” John said. So not all that often, apparently.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Not as such, no, although you are very dedicated. Weren’t you involved with . . .” And he named one of the prominent members of the ballet company.
John blinked. “Not officially, no,” he said.
Sherlock smiled cryptically. “And that is the difference. You cheat on your mistress, and I do not.”
Right.
* * *
“The oboe,” Sherlock announced one morning while John was scooping up eggs with his toast, “is a very stupid instrument.”
“Are we playing a trio with one?” John asked.
Sherlock stopped in his tracks and looked at John. “Why on earth would we do that? No, I am in the middle of orchestrating. You know, of course, that the bassoon and the oboe are the only orchestral woodwind instruments without simplified Boehm-style fingerings.”
John just nodded; he didn’t want to get into the Albert system clarinets, so he let Sherlock rail on about the oboe.
“They crack all the time, the conical bore distorts the overtone series such that the high notes are consistently out of tune and have illogical fingerings, the instruments wear out quickly, and there are four--four!--different octave mechanisms for an instrument with a practical range of about two and a half octaves. And the low notes, regardless, are nasal and sound rather like a duck. Really, I can’t understand why anyone ever takes up the instrument.”
“The piano is consistently out of tune,” John said. “I’ve heard that people with perfect pitch are sometimes annoyed by equal temperament.”
Sherlock winced. “That is true. One does get used to it, though.”
“Unwound E strings have been known to be described as ‘shrill.’”
“That is why sensible violinists play wound Es.”
“All instruments have their pitfalls,” John said.
“Yes, but the oboe itself seems to be a pitfall,” Sherlock said.
John was forced to concede his point, and went back to his eggs.
Onto part 2
Fandom: Sherlock BBC
Characters: Sherlock, Watson, Lestrade, Moriarty
Genre: Gen/AU (classical musicians)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 10,500
Content Advisory: Abuse of classical music knowledge; oboe jokes
Summary: Classical musician AU: Sherlock is a professional solo violinist, and John is his new accompanist collaborator. They've got a recital in three months, and someone doesn't want them to do it.
Artist: le_prince_lutin
Art masterpost: Here on AO3
Author's Notes: Written for the Sherlock Big Bang 2012. Thanks to adorb_eggplant, imachar, feels_like_fire, and leopardwrites for inspiration, Britpicking, being whined at, and fantastic beta-work and a non-academic-musician's perspective, respectively. And thanks so much to le_prince_lutin for her fabulous artwork!
Also, here's a listing and links to all the music I mentioned.
John played the final chords of the sonata, Beethoven’s Waldstein, Op. 53, and sat at the piano, panting, for a moment, before he heard slow applause from the doorway. He jumped, and turned, as he hadn’t heard the door open, but then again, he was practicing in a semi-public location, after all. “Mike,” he said, recognizing the listener. “Mike Stamford. How are you?”
“John Watson,” Mike said. He had been studying for his first degree when John was finishing his doctorate at Guildhall, and while they hadn’t been best mates, they’d been friendly. “How are you? Last I’d heard you--” He gestured at his shoulder and winced. “Sounds like you’re back, though.”
“I am,” John said, “albeit unemployed and, well, lacking an instrument.” He waved at the room around him. “Here by the grace of an old friend.” He’d always made it a point of being friendly with the technicians for various reasons, but this was one of the perks: who else could let him practice in the dressing rooms at the Barbican Centre when the practice piano was already checked out?
“Looking to play again?”
“Well, the ballet won’t take me back,” John said, trying to turn it into a joke. He’d been the rehearsal pianist for the London Ballet Theatre for ten years, touring with them around the world, until the bursitis in his shoulder had necessitated surgery and he’d been forced to quit. “Know anyone looking for an accompanist?” If he had to, he’d teach small children piano until he could land a job at one of the conservatories in town, but he’d rather not. When he’d inquired around last, there hadn’t been any openings, and he didn’t know how long it would be until there was.
“As a matter of fact,” Mike said, “I do. Sherlock Holmes.”
“Sherlock Holmes.” The name rang a bell in John’s mind. “Isn’t he--didn’t he put out that strange version of the Four Seasons a couple years back?”
“That’s him,” Mike said. “He’s um. A bit eccentric.”
“I used to work with dancers,” John reminded him.
“I’m currently working with an oboist,” Mike countered, and they both had a laugh. “Seriously, though: he’s intense, and he’ll likely insist that you move in with him.”
“Does he own a piano?” John asked. “For one that's decent enough, I’d live with a dragon. A hungry one.”
“What happened to your piano?” Mike asked.
“I’ve never owned one,” John admitted. “Well, not a decent one. My parents have an old Kawai institutional upright but the action on that one is a trainwreck. I’ve had access to much better ones through Guildhall and then the Ballet since I got good enough to care. And the last few months . . .” He shrugged. “Didn’t so much need one.”
“True, that,” Mike said, nodding. “Well, I mean, if you’re interested, and you’d like to meet him now, he’s here. When I walked through, he’d just pulled out his violin in the lobby to demonstrate to an unsuspecting child how to play ‘Lightly Row’ properly. You might be able to catch him before he makes her cry.”
John stared at him for a second, shook his head, and closed the key cover while Mike put the lid down on the piano.
Sherlock Holmes was tall and thin, with a head of curly brown hair. Other than the hair, from the rear, he looked rather as John might have expected Paganini to look. If Paganini wore a trench coat when he played, which he probably didn’t as it was not yet in fashion. “No, you see, it’s like this--” Holmes said, his voice rather lower than John might have expected. He played a few notes, and then let down the violin to speak again. “For if you can’t play that--” And here, he played the same few notes, demonstrating something about the angle of the bow--John wasn’t a violinist and couldn’t see the subtle difference. “--you’ll never be able to play this.”
Here, he launched into Paganini’s Twenty-Fourth Caprice, the Aria, which made John smile, considering his earlier observations, although--he didn’t have perfect pitch, but that didn’t sound as if it were in the correct key.
It was also at double speed, but that wasn’t entirely unexpected.
At some point, he appeared to have forgotten that he was demonstrating something for an eight-year-old and wandered off into--well, not into the rest of the Caprice, certainly. John recognized bits of a handful of different violin concertos ranging from Bach to Penderecki, and a couple of sonatas, before he ended with a trill, very high on the E string, in a range that would have been shrill in the hands of anyone other than a master. Which Holmes decidedly was; John had more than enough training to recognize that the man was on a level beyond his own. Then again, there were few accompanists who were even at John’s level, so it was kind of a moot point.
“Well played,” John said, but didn’t clap; Holmes still started, and turned around. The child scampered away, but Holmes didn’t appear to notice.
“Who are you?” Holmes said. “No, wait--I recognize you, I think. The former pianist for the London Ballet, correct? Name, name--Watson. Guildhall, MPerf 1992, DMA 1996, studied with Havill primarily, four or so years of miscellaneous work with small chamber groups, then with the Ballet until a few months ago.”
“Ah, yes, that’s me,” John said, surprised--he was rarely recognized by sight. Unlike Holmes, he wasn’t particularly striking, and despite the fact that his degree was in solo performance, John had mostly done accompanying--excuse him, it was called ‘collaboration’ now--ever since. “John Watson.” He held out his hand, but Holmes didn’t notice--he was plucking out a few notes with his thumb, staring into the distance. “I’ve heard you may be in the market for a--a collaborator?”
Holmes started. “Collaborator? I’ve always hated that term, although I suppose it’s accurate. I’m looking for a pianist. We will collaborate.” His eyes narrowed. “You’re, what, seven and a half months out from surgery? Is that long enough?”
John shrugged, and it was a little lopsided, sure. “I’m not where I was eight years ago, but I’m better than I have been for the past couple years.”
“Yes,” Holmes said. “I wasn’t all that impressed with you last year, but I’ve heard your recording of Cafe Music--that cellist wasn’t much, but you . . . you understood the piece, I think. At least more than the average--” He snapped his fingers. “All right. Where’s the nearest piano?”
John led him back to the piano he’d been using earlier; Mike bid him adieu and disappeared. “Do you have any music?”
Holmes stared at him blankly. “What would I need music for?”
“I assumed,” John said, “that you’d want us to, I don’t know, play together for a moment.”
“You play,” Holmes said. “I shall join in where appropriate.”
John had reams of music memorized, but none of it was piano-violin duets. He asked, “What would you like me to play, then?”
Holmes waved his violin at him. “Whatever you like. Pick something that isn’t boring.”
Not boring. Well. John tended to think very little music was boring, but he started in on Chopin’s first Ballade, in G minor.
“Ah! Boring,” Holmes said, without even looking at him.
Well, it was top-twenty classical music. He skipped a few years forward and started playing Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on the same Paganini Caprice Holmes had been playing earlier, although he started at the eighteenth variation just for his own amusement.
“Still boring,” Holmes said, although he let him get through about twenty measures that time.
John thought for about ten seconds and then started playing one of two five-voice fugues from the first volume of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, the one in B-flat minor. Five-voice fugues were certainly not boring, he thought.
“Almost not boring,” Holmes said. “Seriously, Watson, you have to know something less boring than that.”
Less boring than Bach? For a violinist? Fuck it, he thought, and burst into the opening piano part from Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
He looked up to see Holmes looking at him in disbelief. “What on earth is that rubbish?” he asked.
“It’s not rubbish,” John started to say, because it wasn’t, just a bit cliched, but Holmes snapped his fingers at him.
“Go back to the Bach,” he said, “or on to something else not boring, I don’t care. Something you like.”
Something he liked? John liked Bach, and Beethoven (although he suspected that all the Beethoven he knew would get a ‘Boring!’ right away), and Brahms--maybe something twentieth century? He started with a very low tritone and some staccato notes that rumbled out from the bottom of the piano, and then a fluttering, evil trill--Prokofiev’s Suggestion Diabolique.
It wasn’t that difficult of a piece; Grade 8 students played it on occasion. John himself had originally learned it when he was fifteen or sixteen, but it was still one of his favorite pieces to play. He realized, a page or two in, that Holmes had put his violin under his chin and was playing pizzicato along with him. It wasn’t a duet, but that didn’t seem to be stopping him.
Well then. If there was one thing that John knew how to do, it was this, so he watched Holmes; watched him for cues of timing, and tempo, and breaths; watched to see where he wanted to go with the volume. He ceded control while retaining it, guiding Holmes through the piece.
It wasn’t that long of a piece; under three minutes, certainly. When it finished, though, Holmes stood with the violin under his chin, bow at his side, and stared at the wall for a moment. When he finally spoke, he said, “The acoustics are terrible here, backstage, especially with the lid down. Come. I know where it will sound better.”
The place he had in mind was, of course, the main stage there at the Barbican Centre; how Holmes had a key to the piano there was beyond him, and John rather thought that the London Symphony should be coming in to rehearse soon, but he propped up the lid of the piano, opened the key cover, and sat.
“What now?” John asked, even as his fingers found the keys. This was a much better piano; a Hamburg Steinway, if he wasn’t mistaken. (And with the name written above the keys, it was not likely that he was.) The other piano, the one in the dressing room, was an upright Baldwin, and while not a terrible piano, it could hardly compete with a full concert grand.
“Something else. Debussy, Ravel? Impressionist. Not Clair de Lune or Reverie or anything else obvious like that.”
“I don’t have every piano work ever memorized,” John said, but he started with the trills that opened Debussy’s “L’Isle Joyeuse.”
Holmes apparently approved of his choice, but didn’t join in until the unbearably melodic section, a couple minutes in. When he did, though, it was--
--fun. It was fun.
John hadn’t really had fun playing with another musician in a while; practicing wasn’t fun, but performing was. As a rehearsal pianist, he never got to, well, perform. Relearning how to play the piano after the surgery also hadn’t been fun. But this--playing with Sherlock Holmes, of the uncanny green-gray eyes and exacting tastes--it was fun.
Well, hell. He hoped he passed the audition.
When the piece finished, Holmes whipped his head around and said, “When can you move in? Rent’s seven hundred pounds a month, your part.”
“Move in?” Mike had mentioned it, but . . . “Well, this weekend, I suppose.” He’d had to give up his nice single flat due to a much-reduced income but was currently staying at a hotel, had been since he’d been recovered enough to live on his own and could stop living with his sister. Seven hundred a month wasn’t cheap, but it was doable, especially if Holmes lived somewhere decent.
“Not soon enough,” Holmes said. He pulled a mobile phone out of his pocket and said, “It’s eleven-thirty-four now. I’ll be home around two; I expect you before dinner.”
“Well, that’s rather peremptory, isn’t it?” John said. “And we haven’t discussed rates or anything.”
“Rates?” Holmes looked up. “Well, you’ll get half of whatever we make, won’t you? And I must tell you, I am generally paid quite well.”
Well. John knew that, especially if he’d done CDs. And half--that was certainly better than what he’d gotten in the past.
Also, he liked the ‘we.’
“I’ll speak to Lestrade; he’ll let me do a recital here at some point.” Holmes loosened the hair on his bow and removed the chin-rest from his violin before putting his instrument away in the case. “This isn’t my favorite hall in town, but it’s the only one where I can pull strings, so to speak, and get time on short notice. Lestrade owes me one. Well, more than one, really; I filled in once when Rostropovitch dropped out at the last minute a few years ago.”
For some reason, the only response John had to that was, “You play cello, too?”
Holmes directed a look at him, but didn’t otherwise respond to his comment. “Well. Ring the doorbell; either Mrs. Hudson, the landlady, will let you in, or I might hear it, who knows.”
“Ah. Where do you live?”
“221B Baker Street,” Holmes said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the universe.
Well, maybe it was. John put the address, along with Holmes’s mobile number, into his phone, so he wouldn’t forget, and gave Holmes his number.
Holmes swooped out with his coat swirling behind him; John took a few extra minutes to lock up the piano properly, and to ask the ceiling, “What am I doing?” When it didn’t answer, he shrugged and left.
On the way out, John dropped off the key to the backstage piano at the front desk of the library, as he always did; a different man than usual took the key from him, and paused. “John Watson?” he asked.
“Yes, that’s me,” John said.
“Greg Lestrade,” the other man said; he was a few years older than John, maybe ten, and looked a bit worn, as if he’d already worked forty hours that week and it was only Wednesday. “I understand you’ll be collaborating with Sherlock Holmes in the near future.”
“I think so,” John said.
Lestrade gave a thin smile. “Well, since you look somewhat more responsible than Sherlock is, can you give him this, and remind him that ‘collections manager’ and ‘supreme ruler of the Barbican Centre’ are not synonymous?”
‘This’ was a piece of paper, folded in half; John did not inquire about the contents. He chuckled, though, and said, “I’ll do what I can. Thank you, Mr. Lestrade.”
“You’re welcome.”
John nodded and turned to walk away, but then turned back. “Wait--how did Mr. Holmes fill in for Rostropovitch?”
Lestrade looked at him blankly, and said, “Oh, that. For a lecture. It was almost, but not quite, an unmitigated disaster. He’ll never let me forget about that, will he?”
“Most likely not.”
John took the Tube home; re-packed all of his clothing and music--at least, the stuff that wasn’t in storage at his parents’--into his two suitcases, and called a taxi. He made it over to 221B Baker Street by three-thirty, and rang the doorbell.
An older woman, smartly dressed but with a general air of being harried, opened the door. “Are you John Watson?” she asked.
He nodded. “Are you Mrs. Hudson?”
“I am,” she said, and smiled, taking a step back to let him in. “221B is just upstairs. Sherlock’s home but he’s playing, lord only knows what, so I’d just walk in if I were you.”
John nodded and hauled his two suitcases upstairs, his shoulder paining him enough that it took a while--long enough to hear Holmes skip through the themes to about eight different movements of Bach solo violin works. The man just couldn’t actually stick to one piece, could he? John smiled, and then schooled his face to something a little more composed.
He pushed the door open quietly and rolled his suitcases in first, then shut it behind himself. It was rather a standard flat from the fifties, with orange and avocado trim; there was a couch, a chair, and a footstool shoved in one corner. The kitchen was through one doorway, and through another, John saw the edge of a keyboard, that of an upright piano. The main room of the flat was taken up by a shiny black grand piano, which made him ache to play just by looking at it, and, well, Sherlock Holmes himself. He stood in the center of a triangle formed by three different music stands, one black metal, one wire, and one wooden. Literally every flat surface, and a few that weren’t flat, was covered in sheet music, some bound collections, some loose papers. There were bookshelves on every available wall, and they were full of more sheet music as well as music books, mostly theory and biographies.
It was, well, exactly what John should have expected.
“John!” Holmes called out. “It’s a grand afternoon to play Chopin, isn’t it?”
“Every afternoon is a grand afternoon to play Chopin,” John said, and inched a little farther into the room. “Ah. Where shall I put my things?”
“Oh, the bedroom is upstairs.”
John paused. “Bedroom, singular?”
Holmes frowned. “The flat has two bedrooms but I put the spinet piano and all of my spare instruments in the downstairs bedroom. The other has got a very large closet and I do not sleep very much. I doubt we’ll ever be in there at the same time.”
John ducked his head into the downstairs bedroom which--good lord--contained a spinet piano, a portable keyboard and amplifier, a full set of recording equipment including a reel-to-reel machine, two cellos, a bass, a tenor viola da gamba, and no fewer than eight violin cases, although a couple might actually have been violas.
“Is the bed at least big enough for both of us?” he asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous, John, there are two beds.”
“Oh.”
Holmes returned to playing--something; John thought it might be a Kreutzer etude--while John lugged his stuff up a second flight of stairs to a smallish bedroom with, yes, two single beds, both neatly made. One bed was covered in stacks of music, books, and CDs, with a dinner jacket in plastic draped over a chair at the foot of the bed; the other was completely empty, and John assumed it was to be his.
He unpacked some of the more wrinkleable of his clothing, hanging it in the wardrobe or putting it in the empty dresser drawer, plugged his mobile into the charger, took his portfolio of music with him and went back downstairs.
Holmes was playing--actually, he was pretty certain it was Mercury, from Holst’s Planets--as expected when John arrived, but he stopped when he saw him and said, “Good. Sit down; the music’s on the right-hand side.”
John nodded and looked through the stack. The Finzi Elegy, Chopin--an arrangement, obviously, of a couple of nocturnes, Op. 9--the Shostakovich Violin Sonata, Op. 134, and something John didn’t recognize, obviously printed out from a computer. The title was Morceau, French for ‘piece,’ and the composer was . . . ahh, S. Holmes. Obviously Holmes would have something he wrote on his own recital. “So this is about seventy-five minutes of music, then?”
Holmes snorted. “Only if we play at the standard tempi.”
“Oh, we aren’t?”
“We’ll play at the correct tempi.”
“Of course.”
“How many hours can you play a day?” Holmes asked.
John shrugged. “Six or so.”
“Hm. Well, since Lestrade hasn’t told us when we can have the recital hall, we’ll have to structure our time after he calls.”
“Oh,” John said, and pulled the folded paper out of his pocket. “This is for you.”
Holmes took the paper and unfolded it. “Tuesday! We can have a Tuesday afternoon in the Barbican Theatre, in three months’ time. That’s . . . well, I’ve had less acceptable offers. Is three months enough time for you?”
John thought. Of course he’d played the Chopin before, albeit in the original versions; he’d done the Shostakovich with a fellow student back at Guildhall, more than fifteen years ago. He knew the Finzi but hadn’t played it, and the original work was new, so yes, likely three months was enough time. “Sure,” he said. “But that’s a massive hall--what, more than a thousand seats? How are we going to fill it?”
“We’ll fill it. I’ll text him and tell him we’ll accept. He can take care of tickets and whatnot; I don’t care as long as I get paid enough to make up for three months of work.” Holmes shoved one of the stands out of the way abruptly; it teetered precariously before settling on its base. “I think the only way for the two of us to learn to play together is to play together, don’t you?”
“Ah, sure,” John said, and watched Holmes dig through a stack of music before he came up with what he was apparently looking for. Then, rather than returning to his spot between the stands, he set his violin in the case on the piano, set the bow down as well, and sat on the piano bench.
“Well?” he said and patted the bench next to him.
John shrugged, joined him, and looked at the music: Debussy’s Petite Suite.
“You’ll have to forgive me; I’m not much of a pianist. You’ll play Prime, obviously. Do you play any other instruments?”
“I played clarinet in secondary school,” John said.
“I believe I’ve got a clarinet in the wardrobe,” Holmes said, “but I’m certain I don’t have any reeds. You can pop down to the shop and find some; we’ll do violin duets that way. Unless you can’t transpose in your head?”
“Of course I can transpose in my head,” John said. “I’ll need a day or so to remember how to play the clarinet; it’s been twenty years and I was never very good.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Holmes said, waving one hand. “We’ll start from the beginning and play on until we reach the end.”
“It usually works that way,” John agreed, and they started.
They worked their way through the Debussy, and then some Brahms, and by the time that Sherlock was banging his way through the Secundo part of the third movement of Milhaud’s Scaramouche from the spinet in the other room, John realized that yes, this was completely ridiculous, but it was still fun.
* * *
That night was not as awkward as it could be; John fell asleep at about eleven-thirty and woke up just after seven, and as far as he could tell, Sherlock--for he’d become Sherlock somewhere between Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge and Faure’s Dolly Suite--hadn’t been in the room at all. Music school had given John the unerring ability to sleep through anything short of a punk band rehearsal, and he found it pleasant to wake up to Tchaikovsky and brush his teeth to Ravel.
When he got downstairs, Sherlock was sitting on the piano bench. “How much time do you think you’ll need to learn your part? I suppose you’ll want me to disappear for some portion of your practicing.”
John frowned. “I don’t know; a couple weeks? I’ve already played most of the recital and the Finzi isn’t terribly difficult, from what I recall. I don’t know about your piece but it’s not that long. And I don’t care whether you come or go as long as you aren’t actually breathing down my neck.”
Sherlock tapped his fingers on the lid of the piano. “Well, all right. I have students from noon to two this afternoon. I don’t know if you teach but you’re welcome to, as long as I’m not teaching at the same time and as long as it’s not tiny children.” He sniffed.
John nodded. “Do you teach every Thursday?”
“Of course not. I teach when I have spare time, and when my students need lessons.”
“How do you keep track?”
Sherlock pointed to his mobile on the piano. “They text me, asking for a lesson. I tell them when it will be. They text me again twelve hours in advance. It works.”
John looked at the phone and blinked, recognizing the name of one of the violinists from the London Symphony. “Oh. Well, I haven’t taught in years. I might start again. We’ll see.”
“Keep me apprised.”
Somewhat before noon, John left, not wanting to disturb Sherlock’s lessons, intending to go food shopping after he’d grabbed lunch. They’d ordered in yesterday evening, as Sherlock didn’t keep much in the way of food around the house, but John’s budget was not unlimited and he could cook enough to keep himself fed. He’d gotten through his curry but not all the way to the supermarket before he got a text from Sherlock.
John, I need you back here now. SH
And then another one: Well, not necessarily you, but I need a pianist, and you are a pianist. SH
And a third, as he was walking up the stairs: I would call Lestrade but he is a terrible pianist and also he seems to have a day job. SH
John shook his head and opened the door to the flat.
“There you are!” Sherlock said. “What took so long? Never mind. Come play this section.”
“Um, hello,” John said to the violinist, the one from the London Symphony, who nodded, apparently used to Sherlock’s hijacking of other people to make a point.
He sat down at the piano, and--ahh, the Spring sonata, Beethoven. He’d played the accompaniment any number of times. Starting where Sherlock indicated, he played for a couple lines, and then stopped when Sherlock said, “Stop! Did you hear that?”
The violinist looked confused for a moment. “It’s a dominant seventh chord,” she said.
“Yes, but which one?” Sherlock set down his violin and whirled around to pull a blackboard out from behind the couch, one with staff lines already drawn in. He sketched out the chord, putting in clefs and a key signature as well. “John, you’ve a doctorate, yes?”
“Ah, yes,” he said.
“And you’re a pianist. What was your dissertation on?”
John knew that Sherlock knew, as there was a well-thumbed copy of it--Sherlock’s, not John’s--sitting on the kitchen counter, next to the microwave, but he said, “Harmonic progressions and chromatic tension in Chopin’s Ballades.”
“So you would say you’re a decent theorist.”
John shrugged. He was well more than a decent theorist--he had almost gone that track instead of performance--but he was arguably out of practice, so he said, “Yes, decent.”
“Would you tell me what this chord is?”
The violinist was turning red. “Sherlock, I--”
“Yes, yes, I know,” Sherlock interrupted. “You’re not paying for a theory lesson. Well, guess what. All that money you spent on a fancy degree in Paris left you with less knowledge of theory than a sixth-form trumpeter at a Birmingham comprehensive. John, the chord, please?”
“It’s a G7 chord,” John said.
“I know that,” the violinist said.
“And what function does a G7 perform in F major?” Sherlock said, ignoring her.
“It’s a V7 of V chord--a pre-dominant chord,” John said.
“I knew that, too!” the violinist said.
Sherlock sniffed. “Obviously you did not, as you did not, and you’ve clearly been playing this chord--” He tapped his chalk on the G7 chord. “--as if it were an actual dominant seventh instead of part of the pre-dominant buildup.” He turned away. “You performers simply have forgotten that every single note in a piece is connected to every single other note in a piece, whether it’s because of form, harmony, or orchestration. This is all three. I expect you not to make the same mistake again. John, I don’t need you anymore.”
John gave an embarrassed nod to the violinist and left.
He came home a couple hours later, arms overflowing with vegetables and pasta and wrapped packets from the butcher; in his pocket was a box of clarinet reeds, although he doubted his ability to honk a few notes would satisfy Sherlock at all. The blackboard was still sitting on the couch, but Sherlock wasn’t anywhere in the flat, so John put the food away in peace and then sat at the piano for a moment. Something about Sherlock’s analysis was bothering him, and he looked back and forth between the chords and the music for a moment.
Ah, he’d written the notes in the wrong order. John fixed it and, while he was there, added the C7 chord and the F major chord that would resolve it properly. There. He looked at it for a moment, and then added a flat, changing it to an F minor chord just to mess with Sherlock.
He sat down to play and was working through the Finzi when Sherlock returned. “Ah, there you are, John,” he said. “I went to see Lestrade. There’s paperwork.” He threw a manila folder down on top of the piano. “Contracts, tax forms, the like. What are you doing--that’s not the correct rhythm.”
“I know it’s not,” John said. “It’s a practice rhythm. This is an odd choice for the program, the Elegy.”
“You think?” Sherlock said. “I like it.”
“Well, it’s very pretty, but it’s still odd.”
“Oh, it’s a decent enough piece; a tad pedestrian and not as brilliant as the Faure, but I like the fact that it’s an odd choice for the program.” Sherlock turned to head for the kitchen, but got distracted by the blackboard. “John! F minor?”
John just laughed.
* * *
Sherlock dug out the clarinet for John and gave him approximately five minutes to remember how to play before he found a Suzuki book of duets and made him sight-read; fortunately twenty years of being a musician, student and professional, stood him in good stead and he didn’t sound as bad as he expected.
Not that Sherlock apparently agreed. “Well, that was an exercise in futility,” he said. “I expect you’ll sound much better next time we try that.”
“We could invest in actual violin-clarinet duets,” John said.
“Or you could learn to play your instrument properly.”
John shook his head. It wasn’t worth pointing out that the clarinet was not his instrument, and that his piano skills were clearly up to Sherlock’s standards or he wouldn’t be here.
“Let’s go out for dinner,” Sherlock said suddenly, and loosened his bow before putting it away.
They ended up at a small Italian restaurant; the owner greeted Sherlock like a beloved son. “I threw together a quartet for his daughter’s wedding the night before the event,” Sherlock said in John’s ear. “We were terrible, of course, but as long as we did the damn Canon, everyone was happy.”
“Anything you want, for you and your date!”
“I’m not--” But the owner, Angelo, was gone already, and returned with menus and a tea light. John gave up and ordered fettuccine.
A couple minutes after their food came, Sherlock looked out the window and made an awful face before turning his collar up and looking to the center of the room.
“What is it?” John asked, after he swallowed his bite.
“Jim Moriarty,” Sherlock said.
“The composer?” John asked, and looked out the window. He saw a dark-haired man in a blue shirt waiting for the light to change at a crossing, but he didn’t recognize him.
“Composer? At the very best, he’s an arranger.” Sherlock sniffed. “He routinely attempts to get me to play his music, or at least he did before I informed an interviewer of my opinion on his, er, attempted work.”
“And what was that opinion?” John asked, already amused.
“That multi-media presentations and prepared instruments merely deluded the less-rational among us into overlooking his absolute inability to write a melody, harmony, and counterpoint. I happen to know he failed eighteenth-century counterpoint.”
“Did he,” John said, grinning. “RCM, I suppose.” It was safe to assume he’d attended the Royal College of Music as John didn’t know him and he wasn’t that much younger than he.
“Yes,” Sherlock said. “As did I, and you don’t see me looking down on you for going to Guildhall, so kindly refrain from commenting that I accidentally attended the same institution as that hack.”
“Ah. Zivoni?”
“Who else?” Sherlock said, with a hitch of his shoulder. “Oh, I suppose Boyarski is good; I studied with her for a summer once. Most of her students aren’t complete wastes of space.”
John didn’t even blink; he’d engaged in enough of his own ‘sorry, I study with the world’s expert on X and your teacher is terrible’ blather back in the days when he cared, but he’d come to the conclusion that it was all a crapshoot, anyway. “Besides, I’m sure I went to school with some complete berks, as well.”
“You did,” Sherlock said promptly, and proceeded to eviscerate all of them.
Later, after Angelo had called John Sherlock’s ‘date’ for a third time, John gave Sherlock a sideways look and said, “Bring a lot of dates here, do you?”
“No, of course not, John. I’ve never taken a date here.”
“You have a different date restaurant, then?” He was fishing, maybe, but he really wanted to know how often he’d be kicked out of the room for the night.
Sherlock stared at him. “No,” he said shortly. “Look, John, I consider myself married to my music.”
“And I don’t?” John said. So not all that often, apparently.
Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “Not as such, no, although you are very dedicated. Weren’t you involved with . . .” And he named one of the prominent members of the ballet company.
John blinked. “Not officially, no,” he said.
Sherlock smiled cryptically. “And that is the difference. You cheat on your mistress, and I do not.”
Right.
* * *
“The oboe,” Sherlock announced one morning while John was scooping up eggs with his toast, “is a very stupid instrument.”
“Are we playing a trio with one?” John asked.
Sherlock stopped in his tracks and looked at John. “Why on earth would we do that? No, I am in the middle of orchestrating. You know, of course, that the bassoon and the oboe are the only orchestral woodwind instruments without simplified Boehm-style fingerings.”
John just nodded; he didn’t want to get into the Albert system clarinets, so he let Sherlock rail on about the oboe.
“They crack all the time, the conical bore distorts the overtone series such that the high notes are consistently out of tune and have illogical fingerings, the instruments wear out quickly, and there are four--four!--different octave mechanisms for an instrument with a practical range of about two and a half octaves. And the low notes, regardless, are nasal and sound rather like a duck. Really, I can’t understand why anyone ever takes up the instrument.”
“The piano is consistently out of tune,” John said. “I’ve heard that people with perfect pitch are sometimes annoyed by equal temperament.”
Sherlock winced. “That is true. One does get used to it, though.”
“Unwound E strings have been known to be described as ‘shrill.’”
“That is why sensible violinists play wound Es.”
“All instruments have their pitfalls,” John said.
“Yes, but the oboe itself seems to be a pitfall,” Sherlock said.
John was forced to concede his point, and went back to his eggs.
Onto part 2