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#26: Musical Genius

January 27th marks 264 years since the birth of one of western music’s greatest composers: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

To celebrate Mozart’s birthday, this week we’re inviting you to explore different facets of both his life and his legacy. From little-known biographical details to the things he’s most remembered for, let the tune of his life inspire you to create your own entirely unique masterpiece.

P.S — Want to learn more about the lives and legacies of other greats? Check out this list of our 30 favorite biographies.

🥇 Winner

“Lara” by Hannah Carter

I sit, frozen and rigid, on a cold bench as I stare at the stringed instrument that taunts me with its very existence. So you are a prodigy, the voices whisper in my head. No, of course not, I tell them right back. I am not a prodigy. I am just Lara. The voices are relentless, whispering that dreaded word in my ear, mocking me with its weighty meaning. Fame and exploits, wealth and power: all of these things come with being a prodigy. Lara is not a prodigy. She is just a ...

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⭐️ Shortlisted

“The Patron Saint of Lost Things or Lost People ” by Emily Sperber

For the longest time, I didn’t know what my name was. That is the thing you should know when you don’t know anything else. But I didn’t mind it. I could tell when people were talking to me and when they weren’t. My mother called me Honey, Sugar, Pumpkin, Gum Drop, Caramelo when she slipped into her Spanish. I grew up thinking I was the derivatives of sugar. I was the ingredients that went into making a cake. My father called me son. His voice the way I read italics in books. It made me believe I was the yello...

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“A Song For A Flower” by Jennifer Riley

Leda noticed the guitar case as soon as the man entered the inn. Too small for a guitar, actually. A mandolin, maybe. She narrowed her eyes as she watched him, her hands busy with her barkeep tasks. He stayed by the door for a minute, looking around the taproom, at the tables only sparsely filled with customers, every single one of whom had been there at The Sow’s Ear a dozen or a hundred times before. This man by the door, this musician, was a newcomer. Newcomers were a ra...

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“A Veteran Fiddle” by Dakota Geiger

First was my Pop. He served in the Civil War, a drummer boy, and an excellent one at that. Somewhere buried deep in my drawers I bet I could find his badge he willed to me. He was only 16, but he still marched just as tall –if not taller– than the other soldiers. Fighting for the unity of our country, he was my idol. I never quite knew how he was able to play music after the war. He told me the bloody details...

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“Five Years Afterwards” by Deborah Mercer

An urban vocalist. That’s what I’m “supposed” to call myself. Not that I’m the only one. Begging is illegal (officially) and street singer makes it sound as if we’re poverty stricken here (which we are). It saves the state having to pay benefits (which it rarely does) or making the hard-pressed and supposedly neutral charities even more over-stretched, when those of us with some talent – that glorious, clumsy, old-fashioned word ACCOMPLISHMENT springs to mind – can eke out our own in...

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“Holding” by Carmen Friesen

He wakes up in an empty bed. A pang of hollowness stabs him. It will take a long time before he’s used to this, the raw ache of missing. It’s a familiar feeling. It feels like losing a limb. For a minute he lies there, crushed by the weight of a thousand empty mornings stretching out before him. He doesn’t want to get out of bed, to face the loneliness of the future that yawns like a gaping mouth. How can he bring himself to move forward into a world without her? He will not think of the future. Not yet. Today is for rememb...

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“E Flat” by Rachel Fendrich

He was surrounded by notes, and they were taunting him. Dozens of lined pages were strewn haphazardly around him, ensnaring Abraham in a tight circle of accusation. The quarter notes were now eyes, black as death and unforgiving, never shifting their gaze away from him. The eighth notes had twisted into sneers, the sixteenth notes snarls, with the white space between the beams shape-shifting into bared teeth. And the whole notes opened wide, screaming a...

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“The Mortician” by Elena Welsh

I remember the day I first stumbled upon the name ‘William Banting.’ I was fourteen years old, friendless and awkward, and obsessed with poetry. The school library was my haunting ground. One day I was wandering through the back recesses of the library when I found a pamphlet titled Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public. I’m still not entirely sure why my public school had this buried in its depths, but I am forever grateful it did. That was my first day experiencing faith. &nb...

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This week's prompts:

Write about a character who was considered a prodigy when they were young.

General – 65 stories

Write about a character who goes by many different names throughout their life.

General – 55 stories

Write about a character who was raised in a musical family.

General – 54 stories

Write a story about a musician struggling to find work during wartime.

Historical Fiction – 43 stories

Write a story about a character obsessed with one of the long-dead “greats” in their profession.

General – 25 stories

Stories

“Lara” by Hannah Carter

I sit, frozen and rigid, on a cold bench as I stare at the stringed instrument that taunts me with its very existence. So you are a prodigy, the voices whisper in my head. No, of course not, I tell them right back. I am not a prodigy. I am just Lara. The voices are relentless, whispering that dreaded word in my ear, mocking me with its weighty meaning. Fame and exploits, wealth and power: all of these things come with being a prodigy. Lara is not a prodigy. She is just a ...

Read story

“FreeFall” by Abigail Airuedomwinya

The morning came by accident. The night before, two young teenagers had held hands as the rain fell on their brown skins and had listened as someone sang a terrible cover of Ed Sheeran's One. The lyrics were the last thing they heard before the morning came. As the sun wove its head from amongst the clouds, the girl let his hand slip from her wrists. The boy looked at her, long and hard and then he smiled and looked back at the street. She said, "I got the scholarship." It was so sudden the boy paused h...

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“Hard Lessons ” by Abigail Airuedomwinya

Back then in a family of five, Gerald was the black sheep. Which meant that he was the useless one who couldn't handle anything or make things go right. There was the pretty twenty-year-old daughter who could play the banjo so well; there was Jack who played the piano like a second skin and then there was mother and father who sang songs that reached the heart.Gerald was the one who couldn't play a thing. Father tried hard to make him just right, after all, theirs was a family of musicians. But not much could have been done. Gerald...

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“Poison Ivy - stage 1” by Yoomi Ari

You and I are like poison ivy. We irritate ourselves or others until they are swollen, then we leave them. We delegate our pains to be like bubbles. Like bubbles? Like bubbles who rise up in water in a pressurising pan, pushing others down, popping them out, then we rise or pop ourselves. Sink: pop. Rise too far above: pop. So keep your toes on the ground and float. You stay down then you will be delegated on, fly too high then you will fling your burdens to others. Poison ivy.Gentle though they seem to appear, pounce on you like a...

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“Festival of the Bear's Hand” by Zilla Babbitt

I am the woman who sits at the café edge, the one with bluish curled hair, the one who writers her Ls all cursive, the one who only loves men named Martin. I am she. I sit. I watch. The café belongs to me within my soul. I live here. I sit under a viney shade with a cup in my raw-rubbed fingers, blue curls hiding my eyebrows, sitting, watching. They call me Mademoiselle Sorcière. The witch-lady.I do this every day, here in this café. I drink the same tea, smile the same smile, sit i...

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“Chair Found on the Planet Vextar” by K. Apple

Make no mistake about Bethelda, though she’s five years old. If anyone dares to misjudge or overlook creatures like her, God help them then.Go ahead. Look at her. The curling brown hair, the scrutinizing eyes. The make-believe ballet executed with authority. The rumba, punctuated here and there by her fierce roar. That night at dinner you could see her stiff lips when they told her to shut up. “I could kill,” she muttered under her five-year-old’s breath.She wanted to discuss the artfully seasoned string beans. It wasn’t cas...

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“Cimmaron Creek” by Samuel Blue

“Cut, cut Goddamn it cut!” yelled the director. “Come on, Ben, this is the eighth time we’ve tried to get this scene right and you still haven’t got your lines correct. Enough for today. Let’s shut it down and regroup in the morning. Ben, for God’s sake, know your lines tomorrow.” Ben Fielding has heard the word “cut” too many times this week. Even though he had appeared in over 35 western films in the last 25 years, he was feeling that his age and his drinking was finally taking its toll. Cimmaron Creek was probably going to be ...

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“Dead Name Alicia” by Paige Leppanen

My birth parents named me Joy. They always said it was because they were so happy and excited about becoming parents for the first time. That excitement apparently wasn’t enough. At seven years old I was in my first foster home, unable to sleep in a strange bed, wishing that my parents had named me “Crystal” because I heard them talk about her a lot. I cried for hours because I figured they loved her more than they loved me.I didn’t talk much in that first home. I missed my family and my stuffed a...

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“The Baron's Daughter” by Arthur Tiberio

They locked the cello in the cellar. Now, before we go any further, understand that this was not the sort of cellar in which we find homey cabinets of jams and pickled beets. Mrs. Maganis is more than fond of the story and, before the incident, acquired quite a knack for telling it.Her husband was the sort of man who takes great pride in the guests he brings to his table, and though he was not usually a proponent for letting the women "prattle on through gentlemen's business," as he put it, it was not long before she developed such...

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“The Case of Helen Marie” by Najwa Zandlo

I grew up in the small town of Greenville – a catacomb of high school beauty queens, football stars with knees that never stopped popping out of place, wasted potential, and nameless skeletons. I saw it as a spiderweb, with every resident inexplicably connected to his or her neighbors in a shiny, silky string that functioned more like a conveyer belt than anything else. Everyone hatched the same babies, carried them on their backs to the same places, and ate the same flies as everyone else – the ubiquitous experience of anyone born in a s...

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“The Codebreak-her by Linda Herskovic” by Linda Herskovic

Rachel was standing at Doug’s computer showing him their version of a coding system. Doug was new to the company.“Sorry. I’m not used to all these characters being used,” Doug said. “At Richter, we only used only about five at a time.”“Well, forget everything you know. Well, not everything obviously,” she said with a little giggle.Doug looked up at Rachel. She had an awesome smile when s...

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“A Bird in a Golden Cage” by Daniella Cressman

My name is Miranda. My mom is a pianist for the local classical band: Strings and Keys. My dad is a singer for the rock band Leather and Roses. He shouts about angst, murder, stealing, and all kinds of other things. The two of them could not be more upset. I’m honestly 100% sure I am tone-deaf. Yes, it sucks. If I had to play an instrument, it would be electric guitar. It’s a beautiful instrument. My dad’s less of a perfectionist when it comes to technicalities. He tells me passion’s more importa...

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“The Orphan's Song” by Claire Tucker

There was something about the way the wind was blowing that day that echoed how I felt. It had the same notes of rising hopelessness, of despair descending into depression, that I stopped to listen. A building across the street was hit last night, and men are digging through the rubble. The staccato of bricks striking each other provides a funeral march’s percussion to the lament of the wind. A perfect accompaniment to my thoughts. William Taylor’s Orchestra was my last hope. Or had be...

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“Arthur was a Rolling Stone” by Najwa Zandlo

“We were gonna top the charts, kid,” he says, the hand holding his cigarette shaking violently, “We were gonna go far.” He’s talking to me, but he’s also talking to everyone else – all the shapeless, nameless voices in his head. His name is Arthur McCarthy, and he was the lead guitarist in a rock band called, “The Weeping.” He’s also my bunkmate at St. Lucia’s’ House, the rehab facility I’ve been living in for the last six months. Rehab is sort of like the first day of school, every day. ...

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“Haunted House of Music” by Libby Carter

I didn’t know what to expect when I said I wanted to come back here, but it wasn’t this. The house is black and burnt is most places but it’s still standing, and that’s all I need. At least the fires didn’t destroy everything. I said that I’d catch up to Reg, Chase, and Mace in a few minutes after I checked on my house first. I’m sure Reg knew I meant my dad’s house and not the apartment I’ve been living in for three years now, because he wanted to come with me. I had to assure that I’d be fine, and he needed to go...

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$50

Prize money

283

Submissions

Ended on 23:59 - Jan 31, 2020 EST

Won by Hannah Carter 🏆

Title: Lara

Winning stories will be featured on our website and in our weekly newsletter. For more information, please consult our terms of use.

Submissions will be approved and published within 7 days of the contest closing.

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