Marcus Sterling handed her the sheet music. Maya looked at it quickly, trying to assess how difficult it would be to learn in twenty-four hours. The notes seemed to dance and swim before her eyes.
"You may practice in Room 15 for the rest of today," Marcus Sterling said. "The room will be available to you until 10:00 tonight. Dr. Rosetti may stay if she wishes, but no coaching is allowed during the official practice time."
Maya and Elena went to Room 15, which contained an old but well-maintained piano. Maya sat down at the bench and spread out the Bach music. Her hands were shaking slightly as she placed them on the keys.
"Just start slowly," Elena whispered. "Don't worry about the tempo yet. Focus on getting the notes right first."
Maya began to play the first few measures very slowly. The music was beautiful, but incredibly complex. Bach had written multiple melodic lines that wove together like a musical tapestry. Maya had to make each line clear and distinct while still keeping the overall flow of the piece.
For the first hour, Maya just worked on reading the notes correctly. There were many sharps and flats, and the key signature kept changing. Maya's eyes hurt from concentrating so hard on the small printed notes.
After the first hour, Maya began to work on the fingering. In piano music, the choice of which fingers to use for which notes is very important: good fingering makes difficult passages possible to play smoothly; bad fingering makes even simple passages sound choppy and awkward.
Elena sat quietly in a corner of the room, occasionally offering encouragement, but mostly just listening. She could see that Maya was working harder than she had ever worked before.
By lunchtime, Maya had learned about half of the piece. Her fingers were getting tired and her back ached from sitting at the piano for so long. Elena brought her a sandwich and some water.
"How do you feel about it so far?" Elena asked.
Maya rubbed her eyes. "It's very difficult, but I think I can learn all the notes by tonight. The hard part will be making it sound musical instead of just technical."
Elena nodded. "That's always the challenge with Bach. The technical demands are so high that it's easy to focus only on getting the notes right and forget about the beauty of the music."