Book 1 of The Gift
Historical Fiction
Date to be Published: November 5, 2025
Publisher: Acorn Publishing
But the violin Marthe’s father left her is a constant reminder of the profound bond between them, and it gives her the strength to begin healing. When the Köln Conservatory offers her an unexpected scholarship, she seizes her chance to reach for excellence.
Under the rigorous tutelage of Professorin Wolff, and subjected to predatory harassment by a fellow student determined to destroy both her self-worth and her chances of success, Marthe quickly learns she will need more than motivation and talent to rise to the top.
Filled with heart, wit, and music, The Well-Tempered Violinist is an enduring coming-of-age tale about an artist striving for greatness against enormous odds.
MARCH
1909
Haydn’s
Symphony No. 50 is a pleasure, as any Haydn is. But even in rehearsal I always
get a chill from the ominous opening phrases of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5,
like an announcement of impending doom out of a clear blue sky. The rest of the
Fifth is, in Anni’s phrase, like riding a tiger. Beethoven tears his themes
apart, hurls the fragments back and forth between sections, and reassembles
them, over and over again in his titanic struggle from darkness toward light.
It’s even more exhilarating to play than it is to hear, over half an hour of
tumultuous, relentless drama.
Wagner, on the other hand, even early on, abandoned melodic structure,
while Dvořák filtered the American tunes he heard through his Czech
sensibilities and came up with something neither entirely Czech nor entirely
American, but certainly not German.
I wanted to learn about music beyond Germany. I’m getting my wish and
working hard for it. If Orchestra were always like this, I might not be looking
forward to our next quartet quite so much.
Early on I hear whispers from a few other students in our section and
notice a few strange looks. No one challenges the seating chart, however, and
it’s not as though I stole the seat out from under someone else. Besides, as
rehearsals progress, everyone behind me can see I know what I’m doing. I always
arrive early, I have the music under my fingers, I ask intelligent questions, and
I’m polite to everyone. After a few weeks, the novelty of my presence at the
front of the section wears off and, much to my relief, other topics of gossip
take my place.
I keep my head down and concentrate on getting the phrasing and mood of
the Wagner Polonia Overture.
***
Saint-Saëns,
too, is proving a different sort of challenge. The Wolff knows more than she
let on about French style and essence and she approves of Robert. Still, he
inevitably comes in for his share of the Wolff’s special treatment.
“Herr MacInness, I will blindfold you!” she snaps during our second
rehearsal. “You are too fond of looking at your hands. Keep your eyes on the
violinist! Your fingers must know where they belong without your eyes for
help.”
I, on the other hand, endure a large dose of remedial instruction in
French essence.
“The bow must always caress the strings, even at volume,” she says. “The
French attack must be as authoritative as the German, but the passion is
different. The French are always singing. They are always in love. It is the
chief reason they lost the Franco-Prussian War.”
Robert loses his place as he tries to keep from laughing.
“You didn’t tell me she had a sense of humor,” he says afterward as we
head down the stairs.
“I didn’t know,” I say.
I can’t worry about our slow progress at this point. Orchestra, plus the
Wolff’s other assignments, take first priority. After our orchestra concert in
April, that will be the time to devote myself to Saint-Saëns.
Still, by the middle of term we have the skeleton of the sonata down.
The Wolff makes us take it apart measure by measure and reassemble it,
refining, searching for meaning, seeking deeper nuance. I begin to understand
the singing attack. I wonder idly if I’d grasp it more easily if I’d ever been
in love. Since I haven’t, and since that’s unlikely to change before June, I’ll
have to get it through extra practice instead.
One night, I’m working over the slow second movement at home in my
bedroom. It has deep emotional resonance, but mostly I’m wrestling with the
trouble spots, repeating them over and over, then starting from the beginning
and trying to play it all the way through. I happen to glance up at the
photograph of my father I kept for myself after he died. In those first awful
months, I held this photograph by the hour, memorizing his features, which mine
resemble, his expression of gentle, amused earnestness, the way he combed his
hair, the weave of his necktie. Since I began at the Conservatory, I haven’t
looked at it as much, but now I pick it up and study it again.
We contemplate each other for a long time, my father and I. It’s not
that I don’t think of him anymore; he’s present for me, always, in his violin,
if I’m aware enough to feel him. I sense him here with me now, through his
photograph. I think of the happiness he would have felt in my progress, the
encouragement he would have given me when I needed courage, how, when I’ve felt
overwhelmed, he would have said, Of course, you can do it. Just keep
working. It will come.
I think of how much he loved me. How much I loved him. How much I still
love him, though his easy smile and even temper are frozen in this picture,
where I can’t reach them. My eyes sting, not with the raw grief that consumed
me in the beginning, but because of the bond we share now between us, a bond
that no one, and no amount of time, can break.
I look at the little photograph a while longer, then dust it off with my
sleeve and put it back on the bureau. When I pick up his violin again and take
the second movement from the beginning, I find it no longer matters that I have
never been in love.
I have loved. I do love. I will always love.
The Well-Tempered Violinist, Book 1 of The Gift series, is her first novel.
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Facebook: Barbara Thornburgh Carlton, Writer
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