From the beginning until now (처음부터 지금까지) – piano interpretation | Winter Sonata OST | Original composition by Yoo Hae-jun (유해준) & Oh Seok-jun (오석준)
"Music makes me forget myself, my real position; it transports me to some other position not my own. Under the influence of music it seems to me that I feel what I do not really feel, that I understand what I do not understand, that I can do what I cannot do." — Leo Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata (1889)
The music catches the traveler’s attention with sudden, sharp clarity. It is a song from years ago—a theme from a drama that was once widely popular back home. The melody was a constant backdrop to the everyday back then, surfacing in cafes during long lunches with friends, or drifting in from another corner as work was discussed in a manager’s office.
This was one of the pieces the traveler had tried to play in more recent years, soon after arriving in the new city. It was a different version of the self who had worked on the arrangement at that time—restless, perhaps; uncertain, definitely; though a tad hopeful as the horizon still felt wide. Yet, even then, the interpretation drew the piano teacher’s playful chiding, "Diminished chords again? You’re making it sound too sad."
"Music is the effort we make to explain to ourselves how our brains work. We listen to Bach transfixed because this is listening to a human mind." — Lewis Thomas, The Medusa and the Snail: More Notes of a Biology Watcher (1979)
Then there was the mother’s voice, from an even more distant past. A mix of resignation and good-natured irony as she noted that years of rigorous classical training had culminated in "playing for fun" with pop melodies. A conversation that remains unfinished.
Now all these feel like an echo from a life that belongs to someone else. Only the music remains—a record of time passing, a reminder of present realities, a solitary companion for the night. The notes seem to whisper the names of those distant faces and places; a past that feels vividly close, yet simply beyond reach. Too far away, too long ago.
The traveler wonders, almost absently: if one were to play this piece again tonight, would the teacher perhaps agree this time that the diminished arrangement is indeed just right...?
From the Nocturnal Notes: Away...Elsewhere... series by Jacquie T.
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