Monologue
(free for students & auditions)

from "Elegy"

By G. L. Horton
copyright © 1992 Geralyn Horton

RAYMOND, a middle aged violinist, is talking to Alicia, a talented youngster with whom he has been practicing a passage from a Haydn quartet.

Your husband should better advise you. He has been here before--when you were not married, yes? Four years ago? He knew my wife, my late wife, four years ago, at this same Festival. A wonderful pianist: Veronica Gavenor. You have heard of her?

If you have not, it is because of what I am saying to you. No matter how big the talent, the smallest slip can cast you out from the circle. Especially a woman. What is eccentric in a man, in a woman is frivolity. They say you are not serious --  Those same people who came up to you all smiling after yesterday, and told you what a great idea you had to fiddle the hoedown. So much fun you make, such good exercise--  Exercise, yes! Not music. That is how they think. I can see that they are thinking this, that you are not a violinist but only a fiddler, for fun, and it makes me sick at heart.

I have noticed you, from the first. When you came last year to visit your husband, and took over for Nina in the Brahms, I said to the Maestro, that woman is very good.

But what is it you want, ten years from now?  If you don't want the career you are capable of, then you won't have it. No one has a career who does not want it more than anything.  Or any one. Your husband--?  Does - Eliot - wish to be married to someone he must take seriously? Or does he just see you as a helpmeet: teaching beginners, playing in the Businessman's Philharmonic? Some one to come home to and get away from serious? He may not know himself what he thinks: but you, you must know. Or one day you will break, like this string.

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