Requiem for Genius

Author's note: I know this oneshot has a rather pretentious title, but I thought it suited, considering the subject matter. :)
I don't want to write a lengthy author's note, since the text itself is only 1000 words long, but just be content enough to know that I play the piano (Although I'm only average on a good day), and this was written as a stream-of-consciousness after a particularly bad practice in order to convince myself that even genii have trouble with music.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick...

Artemis lifted his fingers from the keys. A flat minor. He thought absently. If Mulch were here that would be worked into a joke. His right foot - loafered, of course - remained pressed to the sustain pedal as though there was some sort of insect beneath it he hoped to crush. The sombre chord lingered in the air, intangible and yet as penetrative as a silver knife.

Tick.

The metronome was perched on the edge of the Steinway grand piano, ticking away resolutely. The weighted tip would swing in a steady beat, as it was designed to do, until the owner clipped its plastic case back on to the front and stilled the beat for another day.

It was not needed, of course. Artemis's mind was more than capable of keeping to a simple beat, and he had displayed virtuosic abilities since his fingers had enough dexterity in them to press one key at a time. It was rumoured that the great classical composers - Mozart, Beethoven and Bach, as well as those less appreciated, but no less talented - could hold upto seven different rhythms and melodies in their heads as they played or composed. Artemis Fowl the second could hold thirteen.

Tick.

Tick.

And yet, as he finally, slowly released the sustain pedal and let the strings rest, he scowled. No matter how much he practiced, or what techniques he tried, his playing could never match that of his mother's.

While it was true there was no pianist on his side of Ireland that could outperform Artemis in terms of tempo, fluidity or emotion, the young heir was never happy. He kept his pieces in time by devoting one corner of his mind to the count. His style and motion were completely textbook. It was said, during his exam for the prestigious title of Concert Pianist, that Rachmaninov himself would have wept with envy at the boy's skills.

But they also said that skills were all he had. He could master Scriabin's Etude Op. 8 No. 12 with less than two hours of practice, inserting his own musical markings and producing an entirely new way of viewing the music, but throughout the performance, though his fingers reached the notes and played the trills with a perfection any other human being would have spent years studying, his eyes would be glazed and the movement of his fingers would be perfunctory as his mind would be working out possible answers for a theorem he had been struggling with.

Tick.

He rewound the spring in his metronome, setting a faster beat in preparation for a Romanticism piece. Clair de Lune. Debussy. An obvious choice for the era, but it was a fine display of his playing anyway. The soft, muffiliato playing filled the living room and the gentle, swelling sound of the music echoed throughout the house, quieting its occupants.

But as he got to the end, his scowl that was reserved solely for piano playing was back on his face. In a fit of uncharacteristic frustration, He made claws out of his hands and drove the tips into the keys. G Major. Even in what was supposed to be a display of raw emotion - anger - his fingers found the right notes and produced the happy, ringing sound of the major chord, so at odds with his feelings.

Tick.

Artemis glared at the metronome.

Tick.

Tick.

His mother. The reason Clair de Lune was still in his repertoire despite being several grades behind his skill. It had been the piece she had played to him as a baby. After hearing the research that listening to classical music in the womb and in infancy could increase a child's IQ, she had begun to play the long-neglected piano again, believing that if classical recorded music could increase IQ, then surely live classical music would increase it further?

Butler had, of course, rolled his eyes, but thirteen years later, when the younger Artemis Fowl became the first human in history to successfully kidnap a fairy, he had quite graciously admitted he was wrong.

Only, as Artemis played the piece with infinite skill and timing - much better than his mother could ever have dreamed of playing - all he could think was how, no matter how hard he practised, his rendition would never be the better one.

Music, to him, was like a computer code. Binary information streamed inside his head at such a rate that his fingers were a blur on the keyboard. A series of ones and zeros. But that was not how music is meant to be performed. A true piece of music - a work of beauty; harmony; layer upon layer of lush, full sound merged together until the listener cannot tell when one section ends and another begins: they are simply caught up in the majesty of it all. Music cannot be dissected. It cannot be pickled and placed in a jar for further examination. And therefore, in Artemis's brain, it could not have a true place. He had learnt all the notes, all the scales. He could sight-read a piece from Chopin's work and play it perfectly. However, he could never play like his mother, who played by feeling.

Tick.

Tick.

Later, she took to the piano stool, whilst Artemis was in his study, feeling much more content whilst hacking into a Swedish bank account. His door was open, and the music from the living room rang throughout the house. It was harsh; disjointed and full of slips in tones and trills. The other household members fixed a smile to their faces whilst wondering when the boy genius would take over from his mother and give their ears a private taste of heaven.

The boy just smiled to himself, humming the leaping melody and drumming what should be the correct tempo on the mahogany desk. This, he thought, as his mother jarred the rhythm, ruining the slight swelling effect the music should give, is ecstasy.

Tick.

Tick.

Tick.

What do you think? OK, or should I give up the ghost that I'm well-versed in classical music?

Reviewers get their own frustrated genius to play a piano solo just for them :)