ext_51982 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
treeflamingo.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
31_days2011-02-01 01:12 am
treeflamingo.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2011-02-01 01:12 am
[Jan 31] [Nodame Cantabile] Bach and Culture Shock
Title: Bach and Culture Shock
Day/Theme: Jan 31/The Sciences Sing A Lullaby
Series: Nodame Cantabile
Characters: Nodame, Chiaki
Rating: K+
A/N: I... I have no idea what this is. Somebody keeps posting Nodame fic and I thought, "Hey, I haven't seen a good anime in a while, and this looks like fun..." And I totally ended up watching the whole thing between Friday and Saturday. v.v;; So this ficlet is basically a bizarre idea that involves heavy stretching of the prompt, a once-over of the anime, buttressed by no knowledge of the manga, but which I found strangely compelling for some reason and decided to write anyway. *sigh* Set after the end of the anime; not my best.
One of the first things Chiaki learned in Paris was that Streselmann had taught him nothing about womanizing. Streselmann’s womanizing was paltry and childish; if a man wanted to learn how to enjoy as many women as possible without becoming trapped by the ungainly chains of commitment, that man needed to study in Paris. (Chiaki briefly, very briefly thought to suggest that Kikuchi might like to study in France. Then he thought, Hell no.) Chiaki knew for a fact that a number of the professors in the music department were sleeping with their students, or with former students, or with the friends of former students, or with basically any good-looking woman who could discuss music for more than ten minutes. It irked him.
(He had business once with a professor of musical theory and had gone to visit him during his office hours. He reached the professor’s office – located at the far end of a long hallway in one of the lesser-used wings of one of the most obscure buildings on campus (Chiaki had gotten lost twice trying to get there) – and was startled when a young woman exited through the door he was about to enter, looking exhausted and rather pleased. She had died black hair, torn stockings, roughly a dozen piercings, an exceptionally short plaid skirt, a denim bomber jacket that was veritably covered in band-logo patches, and her shirt was on inside out and backwards. Chiaki stared at her as she left, and then stared again when he turned to find his professor slouched, comfortable and smug, in his large leather swivel chair, with his tie undone and a curious bruise on his neck. It was at this point that Chiaki decided he needed to apply his “professional distance” rule to his academic life, too.)
Another of the first things he learned was that French was nothing like German and that having to speak it all day every day was exhausting. And the exhaustion made him irritable. He ranted to Nodame on a daily basis about all the things that were wrong with the state of the culture, people, morals, music etc of Paris, France, although he was sure she neither noticed nor cared as much as he did. She got very worked up about very strange things, but she lived most of her life in a perpetual state of deliberate obtuseness, happiness, and piano. Chiaki was beginning to wonder if maybe she hadn’t the better worldview.
It wasn’t as if the French were having no effect on her, either, though. Some professor had gotten the idea across to her – Chiaki had no idea how, her French was atrocious – that “you have to know the rules before you’re allowed to break them.” This made precisely no sense to Chiaki – why bother learning the rules if you’re not going to observe them? And since when is anyone “allowed” to break the rules? – but it made some kind of point with Nodame. It got her to be more studious about the music she played. She still sent the works of Europe’s musical gods roaming all over the keyboard in her emotional flights of whimsy, but at some point she also learned to place each note and pause exactly where the composer had wanted it. Chiaki liked what this did for her style, and he had loved her style already.
At the end of one Tuesday that was neither especially long nor especially irritating (only average on both accounts; Chiaki had spent 15 minutes ranting about it), Nodame settled down to the piano in their apartment and played what he recognized to be the opening strains of one of Bach’s fugues. He winced. It was an undiscussed tradition that Nodame play piano for him at the end of the day, a tradition which had quickly grown into a necessity; he couldn’t relax properly without it. But Bach? Bach was not relaxing. The man was a genius of millennial proportions, but his music was not relaxing. Especially not his fugues. They were perfect and complex, exquisitely symmetrical, exacting and demanding. They were practically a science unto themselves. Chiaki, inevitably, fell into analyzing them, charting the complicated melodies and thinking of ways to apply them to an orchestra. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, in the right hands (Nodame’s for instance), could be played with enough gusto so as to distract from the mathematical purity of the music itself, but on this evening Nodame was not playing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. She was playing a lesser known piece, something from the collection known as Art of Fugue, although Chiaki couldn’t place it exactly. And he was trying. He was slouched on the couch and probably looked tranquil enough, but behind closed eyes his mind wound and unwound itself in a frenzy trying to identify the piece while following the patterns and key changes.
Until Nodame started messing with it. He winced again at her first off note, but that was mostly habit. By this point he trusted her artistry enough not to complain aloud. At least not at home. And as he listened, she took ever more license with the piece. She kept the tonic key, and what she was playing never ceased to be a fugue, but there frequent stretches of multiple measures wherein the melody was one he never heard before. At the very least, it was not Bach. He could see her swaying on the bench (it didn’t matter that his eyes were closed, he could see her), and the rhythm she moved to was simple and unassuming. She would return to Bach’s melody, but it would be reduced, pared down to a lovely skeleton of itself, and then she would be off again on one of her own caprices, winding in and about Bach’s intentions as though she had every right to.
And she did. What’s wrong with playing the piano how I want? Nothing. There was nothing at all wrong with that. Chiaki smiled softly at some point after he had stopped trying to keep track of when and how her music varied from Bach’s. And at some point after he smiled, he fell comfortably asleep.
Nodame brought her interpretation of the fugue to a close and opened her eyes to see Chiaki zonked out on the couch. Her eyes widened considerably.
“Higyaa~! He’s let his guard down.” She padded up to him and planted a furtive kiss on his forehead. When he didn’t move she ran into the bedroom, grabbed a blanket, ran back, settled quietly down against him, covered them both with the blanket, and went to sleep herself. Smiling.
Day/Theme: Jan 31/The Sciences Sing A Lullaby
Series: Nodame Cantabile
Characters: Nodame, Chiaki
Rating: K+
A/N: I... I have no idea what this is. Somebody keeps posting Nodame fic and I thought, "Hey, I haven't seen a good anime in a while, and this looks like fun..." And I totally ended up watching the whole thing between Friday and Saturday. v.v;; So this ficlet is basically a bizarre idea that involves heavy stretching of the prompt, a once-over of the anime, buttressed by no knowledge of the manga, but which I found strangely compelling for some reason and decided to write anyway. *sigh* Set after the end of the anime; not my best.
One of the first things Chiaki learned in Paris was that Streselmann had taught him nothing about womanizing. Streselmann’s womanizing was paltry and childish; if a man wanted to learn how to enjoy as many women as possible without becoming trapped by the ungainly chains of commitment, that man needed to study in Paris. (Chiaki briefly, very briefly thought to suggest that Kikuchi might like to study in France. Then he thought, Hell no.) Chiaki knew for a fact that a number of the professors in the music department were sleeping with their students, or with former students, or with the friends of former students, or with basically any good-looking woman who could discuss music for more than ten minutes. It irked him.
(He had business once with a professor of musical theory and had gone to visit him during his office hours. He reached the professor’s office – located at the far end of a long hallway in one of the lesser-used wings of one of the most obscure buildings on campus (Chiaki had gotten lost twice trying to get there) – and was startled when a young woman exited through the door he was about to enter, looking exhausted and rather pleased. She had died black hair, torn stockings, roughly a dozen piercings, an exceptionally short plaid skirt, a denim bomber jacket that was veritably covered in band-logo patches, and her shirt was on inside out and backwards. Chiaki stared at her as she left, and then stared again when he turned to find his professor slouched, comfortable and smug, in his large leather swivel chair, with his tie undone and a curious bruise on his neck. It was at this point that Chiaki decided he needed to apply his “professional distance” rule to his academic life, too.)
Another of the first things he learned was that French was nothing like German and that having to speak it all day every day was exhausting. And the exhaustion made him irritable. He ranted to Nodame on a daily basis about all the things that were wrong with the state of the culture, people, morals, music etc of Paris, France, although he was sure she neither noticed nor cared as much as he did. She got very worked up about very strange things, but she lived most of her life in a perpetual state of deliberate obtuseness, happiness, and piano. Chiaki was beginning to wonder if maybe she hadn’t the better worldview.
It wasn’t as if the French were having no effect on her, either, though. Some professor had gotten the idea across to her – Chiaki had no idea how, her French was atrocious – that “you have to know the rules before you’re allowed to break them.” This made precisely no sense to Chiaki – why bother learning the rules if you’re not going to observe them? And since when is anyone “allowed” to break the rules? – but it made some kind of point with Nodame. It got her to be more studious about the music she played. She still sent the works of Europe’s musical gods roaming all over the keyboard in her emotional flights of whimsy, but at some point she also learned to place each note and pause exactly where the composer had wanted it. Chiaki liked what this did for her style, and he had loved her style already.
At the end of one Tuesday that was neither especially long nor especially irritating (only average on both accounts; Chiaki had spent 15 minutes ranting about it), Nodame settled down to the piano in their apartment and played what he recognized to be the opening strains of one of Bach’s fugues. He winced. It was an undiscussed tradition that Nodame play piano for him at the end of the day, a tradition which had quickly grown into a necessity; he couldn’t relax properly without it. But Bach? Bach was not relaxing. The man was a genius of millennial proportions, but his music was not relaxing. Especially not his fugues. They were perfect and complex, exquisitely symmetrical, exacting and demanding. They were practically a science unto themselves. Chiaki, inevitably, fell into analyzing them, charting the complicated melodies and thinking of ways to apply them to an orchestra. Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, in the right hands (Nodame’s for instance), could be played with enough gusto so as to distract from the mathematical purity of the music itself, but on this evening Nodame was not playing Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. She was playing a lesser known piece, something from the collection known as Art of Fugue, although Chiaki couldn’t place it exactly. And he was trying. He was slouched on the couch and probably looked tranquil enough, but behind closed eyes his mind wound and unwound itself in a frenzy trying to identify the piece while following the patterns and key changes.
Until Nodame started messing with it. He winced again at her first off note, but that was mostly habit. By this point he trusted her artistry enough not to complain aloud. At least not at home. And as he listened, she took ever more license with the piece. She kept the tonic key, and what she was playing never ceased to be a fugue, but there frequent stretches of multiple measures wherein the melody was one he never heard before. At the very least, it was not Bach. He could see her swaying on the bench (it didn’t matter that his eyes were closed, he could see her), and the rhythm she moved to was simple and unassuming. She would return to Bach’s melody, but it would be reduced, pared down to a lovely skeleton of itself, and then she would be off again on one of her own caprices, winding in and about Bach’s intentions as though she had every right to.
And she did. What’s wrong with playing the piano how I want? Nothing. There was nothing at all wrong with that. Chiaki smiled softly at some point after he had stopped trying to keep track of when and how her music varied from Bach’s. And at some point after he smiled, he fell comfortably asleep.
Nodame brought her interpretation of the fugue to a close and opened her eyes to see Chiaki zonked out on the couch. Her eyes widened considerably.
“Higyaa~! He’s let his guard down.” She padded up to him and planted a furtive kiss on his forehead. When he didn’t move she ran into the bedroom, grabbed a blanket, ran back, settled quietly down against him, covered them both with the blanket, and went to sleep herself. Smiling.