[ENF] Moonlight Sonata by Ludwig van Beethoven

[MichaelFJD50]

This happened many moons ago, and no, there are no pictures of this. Cell phones were not as popular back then and were also rather expensive. Both Allison and I were busy with our graduate studies in music at a college, Allison in piano performance, myself in musicology. Towards the end of each semester, we had a final recital to work on. Allison’s recital included among other Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata”, which was also to be the finale of her performance. Anyone, who knows anything about this piece, will agree that the third movement, the finale, can be the most challenging, which requires a lot of concentration.
Allison and I shared a studio and met quite often. We joked around that we were even “roommates”, although Allison lived in a different dorm than I. She once shared with me a recurring nightmare that she ended up naked on stage for her final recital and performance. Some of that had obviously to do with her struggle on the third movement, or that is what she thought and saw.
She was doing fine and was working hard on this, but her nightmares persisted. It was Friday evening, and there was almost one more week to go for her recital. I sat there and listened to her going through the entire performance. Around 10pm, the guard would go through the building, knock on any of the studios with their lights still on to let us know that we are to leave. And he would leave the building and lock it up, so o one could come back in. Usually, we would stay there sometimes until midnight, before leaving. In this case many students had already left and around midnight it was very quiet in the hallways.
Allison talked about her nightmares and I suggested putting that ghost permanently to rest.
“How?”
My suggestion was to rehears her recital I the recital hall,…….but doing it nude, since it was just her and I, and the building was empty. No one will notice, no one will hear. My suggestion made sense to her and we proceeded to the recital hall. The only light was a spotlight on stage towards the concert piano.
Allison had undressed completely and walked toward the piano on stage. Before she started I even thought that she should bow before and after her performance. She was very nervous, I could tell, but bowed before sitting down on the piano. I always believed in her and encouraged her. I knew that she was as close to perfect, as perfect will get. I was sitting in the front row, watching playing piece by piece. Even the sonata and the third movement came to a perfect ending. I started to clap as she stood up to take her bow.
Unfortunately, while she was playing, unbeknown to us, three more students had entered the recital hall and were sitting in the first row in the balcony. They clapped too.
After the graduation, we celebrated and Allison admitted that she felt extremely embarrassed being naked on stage while the other students had seen her recital. But then she admitted something else. She felt more embarrassed getting aroused by playing her recital in the nude. In fact so much, that she would practice her recital in the nude, while in the studio and no one was around.

[piecenick]

You should have changed your major to psychology.

[Gnome72141]

Interesting.

I know lots of theatre majors who have "nude parties" early in the year because they will all see each other nude in dressing rooms (and even on stage) at some point, so they "get it over with" by having nude parties right away. I even was great friends with a university theatre director who said that he was often invited to the parties himself but never went.

I had a very good friend who was a college Division I diver, and she said nude diving practices weren't the norm every time, but they were extremely common in general.

But as a music major and professional musician myself, I had never experienced nor heard of anything similar to the OP of this thread.