Dream: Sons of Mozart

I dreamed that me and my twin brother were the youngest direct decedents of Mozart. Our father was a very well-off composer who was well known for several famous and near-genius compositions he wrote as a young man. He had not written anything since that time. When asked by the public, he claimed to have a work of utter and unspeakable genius in the works which has taken all this time. He even told this to us, his children. My brother and I have always suspected it to be a lie. We suspected that he had lost his gift.

Growing up, our father taught us the art of music. he taught us the mechanics, the subtleties, and the art. He exposed us to the world's best musicians and composers. After all, the children of the "Next Mozart" should be musical. But we were absolutely forbidden to write music ourselves.
"You're too young," he would say. "You're not ready. You wouldn't' want to write anything you're not proud of. You wouldn't want to disgrace the family name, would you?"

This, despite the fact that he wrote his first symphony when he was twelve, and W.A. Mozart himself when he was only eight. My twin and I were eleven years old. We had been writing music in secret since we were old enough to hold a pen. We wrote duets, mostly, which is understandable. But we also wrote chamber music -quartets and quintets. We performed them ourselves in secret, only able to hear two of the instruments at a time.

Our father had no objection to us learning to play instruments. After all, performance is a lower art, and our jealous father had no qualms with us indulging in it. We spent all waking hours consumed in music -most of our dreaming hours as well. We learned to play everything, and we composed for everything.

One day, my brother and I were playing a duet that I had composed for violin and cello. It was beautiful, its main melody haunting. We were almost crying in happiness as we played, for the sheer joy of playing this new beautiful music. Just before the end, our father burst into the room, tears on his face. We thought he wasn't home. He had been listening in the corridor. He had heard my composition. He had an expression on his face of horror, betrayal, and most of all, fear.

Over the next few months, our father did not speak to us. Our instruments disappeared. It caused us near-unbearable pain to be without them, but we thought it best not to go looking for them just yet. We were eventually informed that within days we were to be sent to St. Noble's Academy for Boys. Students at this school, generally the sons of the wealthy nobility, studied three subjects: accounting, politics and military tactics. More importantly, the arts of every kind were strictly forbidden to the students of the Academy, dismissed as unsuitable for noblemen.

There was only one thing to do, of course: we ran away.
Our father searched for us. To the public he looked like a passionately devoted father looking for his children. We knew the truth. We knew he could not let us go. He needed to be the next Mozart.

We traveled by train, getting as far away as possible. For the first time, we saw the ocean. We stopped in an abandoned fisherman's hut by the sea. We used all the money we had brought with us on paper, pens and a shabby old harpsichord that we spent all day bringing back to the hut. We decided to write an opera, away from our father, and away from Mozart. It would be entirely our own, and it would be perfect.