Once upon a time there was a prince, locked inside a fragile castle of polished wood and metal gear-wheels. His world was flawless, but bounded by the edges of an antique music box, and his days passed in constant waiting for a miracle. One day a princess peered inside. She could have walked past, or tried to break the mechanism – but instead she took a step against all common sense, and stepped right into someone else’s isolation. This is the quiet, slightly strange fairy tale that the piece “The Music Box Lovers” tells. It was written and performed by Tingting Wu. Usually in her music sound is never alone: light is almost always beside it. But here, it seems, the music box alone was enough for her – it became both the setting and the home for this melody.
Musically, the piece is built around the image of a wound-up mechanism, inside which miniature figures of lovers spin in a circle. Hence the state of duality that holds the whole piece together. The melody is light and airy, but behind it there’s always a faint melancholy – a tangible sense of transience and the impossibility of breaking free from the set rhythm. The piano sounds deliberately mechanical, without the usual fervent romanticism. But within this dripping, second-measuring rhythm there is only a light, transparent sadness.
Instead of a loud climax, Tingting Wu leads us into the very highest register of the instrument. The sounds become tiny, crystalline, like drops of water freezing in the cold. The music box slows down, the last sparks of melody dissolve into silence, and the listener is left before the closed lid – with the question of whether this was a happy ending or only a beautiful dream. The lovers go on dancing – forever, but inside the box. Tingting Wu writes as if she keeps whole worlds in reserve – of rain, silence, and dreams – and every so often opens the door into one or another.
“The Music Box Lovers” can, of course, be listened to simply as a beautiful piece about a wind-up mechanism. But it seems to me simpler – and more honest – to leave the lid slightly open. Who knows who else might be dancing in there, while no one’s watching.
