A book that has been closed for too long. A boy decided to open it. And a music ready to return to the world.
by Marialuisa Veneziano
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🎧 MUSIC FOR LETTURE
To accompany The awakening of the Giant, we recommend listening to the initial chorus "Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen" from Passion according to Matthew, BWV 244 by Johann Sebastian Bach, in the execution of Netherlands Bach Society direct from Jos van Veldhoven. It is precisely the music at the center of our fairy tale: the great one Passion that, in 1829, Mendelssohn helped to bring back to the public.
Two choirs, orchestra and choral intertwine in a monumental construction that seems to progress slowly from a long time to us. It is not only the beginning of a Passion: for our history it is the very voice of the Giant reopening his eyes, abandon the powder of the shelf and breathe back through other hands, other voices, another time. Click on the arrow of the logo "cuffie", press play and start reading.
In Berlin, in a large hall where men spoke undervoice for respect for music and scores spoke loudly as soon as men left, there was a shelf that no one ever looked at.
It was tall, dark and slightly crooked.
On the last shelf, crushed between a volume of motets and a collection of corals that claimed to have personally known at least three principles, he rested a huge book.
It had the worn cover, the folded corners and many pages that the little Minuetto, the most vain among the compartments of the room, considered it almost a manufacturing defect.
— How many pages do you have? — He asked him one night.
— Lots.
— I see that. How many?
— Enough.
Minuetto sighed.
— That's why they don't play you. Today we have to be brief.
The great book did not answer.
On the back he had a name that dust had almost hidden:
Johann Sebastian Bach.
And below, in letters now a little discolored:
Passion according to Matthew.
The other scores called him simply The Giant.
Not because he was scared.
Because it occupied a lot of space and spoke very little, two characteristics that, according to Minuetto, in the musical environments were often enough to be considered important.
Every night, when the lights went out in the hall, the scores started their conversations.
Ottavia the Chromium ran from one leggio to another bringing news that no one had asked her.
— Tomorrow they try Mozart! I heard everything! Full orchestra! Two oboi! Two horns! And maybe even cookies in the range!
— Cookies do not concern music — Herr Fagotto.
Herr Fagotto was an old tool that lived in the corner and considered everything that had happened after his youth a progressive deterioration of civilization.
— In my day... — He often said.
No one had ever understood exactly what his time was.
They changed according to the subject.
Madame Ragnatela lived above the Giant.
She was a small ragna convinced that she was appointed General Custodian of the Archive, although no one remembered by whom.
— The Giant is perfectly preserved — He declared.
— You're covering me with webs. — He was watching.
— Preventive storage.
— I can't almost see.
— The light spoils the paper.
And so years passed.
The scores were coming.
They were open.
Play.
Closed.
Others became fashionable.
Others stopped being.
The Giant stayed there.
But what no one knew was that he had not been completely forgotten.
He was the one who learned to hide.
A long time before he had known hands that peeled him, musicians who bowed on his pages, voices that turned those little black signs into something capable of filling a church.
He remembered a man.
Not his face with precision.
Hands.
Hands tired, strong, fast.
Hands they wrote.
Correct.
Cleared.
Recomposed.
Those hands were gone.
Not even those rumors.
And the Giant had discovered one of the most difficult things to understand:
time also takes away what we thought should remain.
So he made a decision.
He wouldn't sing anymore.
If it had been closed, nothing would have changed.
No new voice would take the place of the ancients.
No one could have played it differently.
The past would have been safe.
Or at least he thought so.
Every afternoon, however, a little girl arrived in the room.
His name was Lotte.
He was nine years old, two braids that never remained of the same length and a curiosity considered excessive by all adults except his father, who worked in the hall and had now given up to prevent her from asking questions.
Lotte couldn't read a score.
So, unlike adults, he wasn't afraid of important scores.
One day he sat down in front of the shelf.
He looked at the Giant.
— You must be very sad.
The book had a taste.
Of course, Lotte couldn't hear him talk.
Or maybe.
In the fables this distinction has never been particularly useful.
— Why? — asked the Giant.
— Because no one opens you.
— Maybe I don't want to be open.
Lotte thought about it.
— This is even more sad.
The Giant is offended.
— I belong to another time.
— My grandfather belonged to another time.
The book was silent.
— Where is it?
Lotte lowered his eyes.
— There is no more.
For some time no one said anything.
Even Ottavia la Croma, who had passed to announce an urgent matter concerning a dynamic fork, decided to postpone.
Then Lotte smiled.
— But some things I say to her.
The Giant didn't understand.
Lotte got up and ran from his father.
But that phrase remained in the pages.
A young man came to the room some time later.
She was twenty years old, hair that seemed to have discussed with the comb and lost all interest in reconciliation, and a curiosity at least equal to that of Lotte.
His name was Felix Mendelssohn.
Minuetto observed it.
— Too young.
Herr Fagotto:
— In my time at 20 years, we had already the decency to look tired.
Felix began to examine the scores.
He opened one.
Then another.
Then he came to the giant shelf.
Madame Ragnatela came down immediately.
— Vietato.
Felix, of course, didn't hear it.
He extended his hand.
The Giant stiffened.
The cover was opened.
A dust cloud hit Felix.
Ottavia sneezed for seven consecutive games.
Felix began reading.
Slowly first.
Then more and more carefully.
The Giant felt something he hadn't felt for years.
The notes inside him were moving.
A distant voice seemed to wake up.
Then another.
Then a choir.
The old book was afraid.
Turn around.
Felix stepped back.
— Curious.
— Damn it! — protested the Giant.
— Interesting — said Felix.
— I said rude!
But Felix reopened it.
Minuetto observed the scene with growing concern.
— This young man does not know respect for ancient music.
Herr Fagotto brontolò:
— Finally.
That night Felix had a dream.
It was in the large hall, but the shelves had become very high and the leaves flew in the air like white birds.
In the end there was the Giant.
— Why don't you want to be played? — Felix asked him.
— Because nobody can play me like that.
Felix was silent.
— That's true. — he finally said.
The Giant didn't expect that answer.
— Then leave me here.
— No.
— Why?
Felix approached.
— Because remembering doesn't mean remaking yesterday.
— So what does that mean?
Felix looked at his pages.
— Allow yesterday to arrive until tomorrow.
The Giant trembled.
— But if new voices sing my notes, the old ones will disappear.
Felix pointed out Lotte, who was sitting at the bottom of the room in his dream.
— When you repeat a phrase from your grandfather, do you cancel your grandfather?
The Giant looked at the baby.
— No.
— Then maybe a new voice doesn't erase the old one.
Felix smiled.
— Maybe the door farther.
The Giant did not answer.
Because there are thoughts that, when they really come deep, they need silence before finding an answer.
The evidence began.
And they were a disaster.
At least according to Herr Fagotto.
— Too fast.
— We haven't started yet — they noticed.
— Exactly. An unbearable rush.
Ottavia the Chroma ran on the pentagrams shouting:
— Wake up! Wake up! After almost a hundred years we can’t show up!
Minuetto offered himself as an artistic consultant.
— I'd notice.
— What?
— Everything.
— Why?
— The modern public.
— And what does the modern public want?
Minuetto stopped.
— I have no idea. But everyone says you have to give it to him.
Madame Ragnatela suffered a lot.
Every time someone turned a page, his web was destroyed.
— Barbary! — screamed. — Years of archival work!
Little by little, though, something happened.
The notes that had long remained still began to remember that they were not born to be watched.
One after another they became sound.
The Giant listened.
They were different voices.
Different hands.
A different time.
At first it hurt him.
Then he understood something strange.
Those new voices weren't taking the old place.
They were doing what the old had done before them:
They got the music.
And then they delivered it.
He arrived on 11 March 1829.
The Sing-Akademie Hall in Berlin was full.
Felix Mendelssohn went to the podium.
The Giant was open in front of him.
The pages trembled.
— I can still run. — said Minuetto, hidden under a chair.
— You are not even part of the work — Sibilò Ottavia.
— Precisely. I have less to lose.
Herr Fagotto took a position.
— If we have to attend a historical event, I hope at least that it will end at a reasonable hour.
The Giant didn't listen to them.
He looked at the audience.
New faces.
New clothes.
Another century.
— They won't recognize me. — He whispered.
Felix put a hand on the score.
For a moment the Giant had the impression that he could hear it.
— Are you taking me back? — He asked.
Felix lifted his eyes.
And in the mysterious language that sometimes exists between a musician and a page he replied:
— No. I'm entrusting you to the future.
He raised his arms.
Quiet.
Then the music began.
The first sentence crossed the hall.
The Giant recognized every note.
But no voice.
For a moment he felt a fit.
It's not them.
Then a voice picked up a sentence.
Another led her forward.
The instruments took advantage of it.
The choir raised her.
And something began to pass from one person to another.
You couldn't see.
And yet there was.
Like a little light.
From the composer to the pages.
From pages to musicians.
From musicians to the audience.
From past to present.
The Giant finally understood what had been wrong for many years.
He believed that living meant staying the same.
Instead, living meant continuing to be received.
Bach didn't come back to the hall.
The old voices didn't reappear.
No dead hand returned to browse the pages.
That's why the miracle was bigger.
The past had not returned.
He found a way to move on.
Under the chair, Minuetto had become strangely silent.
Ottavia looked at him.
— What?
— It's not modern at all.
— Is that a problem?
Minuetto listened a little longer.
— No.
Then, almost countervoke:
— I think it's the opposite.
Herr Fagotto dried an eye.
— Are you crying?
— Condensa.
— March?
— Historical condense.
When the last note is lost, for a few seconds no one moves.
The Giant waited.
Then the applause came.
Strong.
Long.
The old book felt something like happiness.
— I'm back — He said.
Madame Ragnatela, for once, did not answer.
Because the most important moment had not yet arrived.
Outside the hall, Lotte walked by his father.
He listened to everything.
He didn't understand all the words.
He didn't know the story of that score.
He couldn’t even explain why that music hit her.
But as he walked the road he began, without noticing, to sing a small sentence.
The Giant heard it from the window.
— My music!
Lotte kept moving away.
— He's taking away my music!
Madame Ragnatela slowly came down on the cover.
— No.
— How not? Can you hear her?
— Of course.
— So what are you doing?
The ragna looked at the child disappearing at the corner of the road.
— He's moving her on.
Then the Giant remembered.
A child sitting on the ground.
Two unequal braids.
A phrase pronounced almost by chance:
Some things my grandfather said to her, too.
Finally understood.
People don't defeat time by preventing things from changing.
They cross it by leaving something in the hands, words, gestures and memory of those who come after.
That night the Giant returned to the shelf.
Minuetto approached him.
— So?
— So what?
— You're back young?
— No.
— Have you become modern?
— No.
— Famous?
The Giant reflects.
— Maybe.
Minuetto seemed satisfied.
— I knew it.
— But it doesn't matter.
Minuetto was deeply troubled by such a little worldly statement.
— So what does it matter?
The Giant looked at their pages.
— Someone can open me again tomorrow.
Madame Ragnatela began instinctively to weave a thread on the cover.
The Giant shook him gently.
— Not this time.
— What's that?
— Let me open.
— But dust!
— Come in.
— The light!
— That'll come too.
— Your fingers!
— They'll turn the pages.
Madame Ragnatela was scandalized.
— You're gonna ruin yourself.
The Giant smiled.
— Maybe. But at least I'll live.
And that night was slightly open on the shelf.
He no longer waited for someone to bring him back to the past.
He was waiting for someone willing to take him a little further to the future.
And somewhere in the streets of Berlin, a little girl kept singing.
Remembering does not mean holding back the past so that it remains still. It means delivering what we have received to someone who will come after us. Things really live change voice, change hands, cross other times; and that's exactly how they don't end up with who created them.
🎬 IN FAVOLA CAST
Each character has a part. And someone, maybe, plays more than one. (click on the arrow and find out more!)
📖 The Giant
An old score that stopped wanting to be opened.
(The memory) — represents what we have received from the past and that, for fear of losing or changing it, we risk transforming it into something real. His journey teaches that guarding does not mean closing: it means delivering.
🎼 Felix Mendelssohn
Twenty years, curiosity and the dangerous habit of opening what others have left closed.
(The bridge) — is the one who communicates two times. He does not want to rebuild the past, but to allow him to reach the future. It represents the interpreter, the scholar, the teacher and whoever receives something and chooses to hand down it.
👧 Loans
Nine years, two unequal tresses and no subjugation in front of important things.
(The inheritance) — represents what continues without knowing yet to continue. The phrase learned by the grandfather and the melody chanted after the concert show that we often bring within us what we received much before understanding its value.
🎩 Minu
Elegant, vain and convinced that anything too long should be immediately shortened.
(La moda) — represents the need to be always new, current, easy to consume. He is convinced that what does not belong to the present is inevitably overcome, until Bach shows him that some works do not need to be modern because they manage to be contemporary at every age.
🎶 Ottavia la Croma
Very small, very fast and unable to stay still long enough to finish a conversation.
(The future) — is what runs forward. Brings news, movement, curiosity. Remember to the Giant that time cannot be stopped: we can only decide whether to stay still or travel with him.
🎵 Herr
Burbero, nostalgic and absolutely certain that "at his time" everything worked better.
(The nostalgia) — represents the other temptation of memory: to idealize what has been until it makes it untouchable. He loves the past, but he risks loving him because he can no longer change.
🕸️ Madame Ragna
Self-proclaimed responsible for the preservation of the entire archive.
(The fear of losing) — She wants to protect everything so well that she can almost breathe. It is the symbol of a conservation that, when it becomes excessive, ends up resembling the burial. His comedy hides a serious question: How much can we protect something before we stop her from living?
What about Bach?
Bach doesn't need to get into the scene.
(The voice remaining) — is present precisely through what he left. He does not return as a ghost, he does not speak, he does not ask to be remembered. His music does something much more powerful: continue without him.
BOX HISTORY
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