Oompah, boom!

♪ Ttarara ttararara ♪

What a racket.

I stepped into the tent. In the middle of what looked like a circus ring, ten men were frantically playing cymbals, a battered violin, a trumpet and the like, making a huge din.

The instruments were junk, but the sound wound into my ears more than I'd expected.

No—I even felt something profound in it.

A strange feeling, like heaven and earth, humanity and the universe.

The musical inspiration that Casanova hyungnim had opened up in me kicked in.

Even among the crude instruments, an amazing harmony hovered.

The clash and balance of the instruments was something else.

I had no idea how instruments like that could create such a grand, epic atmosphere.

The word symphony comes from a Greek word meaning "to sound together with the gods."

This was faithful to exactly that idea.

The main purpose of a symphony was harmony.

I could sense Beethoven's signature technique of freely breaking apart the basic movements Haydn had created.

The musical grounding Nova hyungnim carried in him was no joke.

It sounded like the third movement or so.

Instead of the typical minuet dance form, it was a sharp, humorous scherzo.

It sounded like a symphony Beethoven had composed.

I'd never heard the melody in my life, so it had to be new.

With my eyes closed, it was even dreamlike.

♪ Kkiiing. Chaaang! ♪

But the space and the instruments were a mess.

They couldn't deliver a symphony, the height of splendor woven from many different tones.

The old tent couldn't make the sound ring out; it just scattered.

The piece needed instruments on a grand scale, and the junk the ten of them were holding couldn't draw out that kind of harmony.

A wave of regret washed over me.

A desire to really feel it stirred in me.

It needed a large orchestra of about a hundred, with brass, woodwinds, percussion and strings.

Heard like that, it would be moving beyond words.

Charararararak.

Unbelievable—playing a piece like that on a junk item like a tambourine!

A tambourine like the…