Darkness resisted

It’s odd how often Christmas hosts un-fun.

Christmas Angst - Part one
V’s my singing teacher. Her mother, a dementia sufferer, died two weeks ago. The family organised a service in a farmland wood last Friday. With singing, of course. It rained heavily and access to the wood was flooded. Another entry was found. They sang A Gaelic Blessing and Ombra ma fu.

Christmas Angst – Part Two
Today, Monday morning, my traditional lesson. To find V crippled with back pain. Two-handed piano accompaniment limited to ten minutes. “But I can continue with one hand,” she said spiritedly. Dark circles under her eyes; slow movement at the keyboard. Wouldn’t hear of a cancellation.

Christmas Miracle
Christmas; we might have gone light-hearted. Instead we returned to the nitty-gritty of Schubert’s monumental Abschied, first tackled long ago. I struggled with “..hőrver-schwimmen…” The umlaut o is hard to articulate musically. It’s also just short of my absolute peak F.

Nothing seemed to work. Emphasising the aspirate h (huh), no go. Substituting “hőr” with “har” (which is cheating, anyway), another no go. V kept on. Finally she said: “You’re using that dark tone.” She was right; sometimes I imagine it makes me sound like a pro. V added, “Trouble is it makes you sing flat.” Oh!

“Sing with the front of your mouth.” Easier said than done, I’ve never had success with that weird command. But V was determined. Suddenly it clicked. A clear tone much closer to a tenor voice (I’m baritone). The hőrver problem just disappeared.

Driving home I sang a dozen songs all with problem passages. And lo, like a hot knife through butter. Also recalling the smile – the smile of a good teacher - that replaced the wincing on V’s face.

Music for bad back, hip, thigh, calf

At home, without letting V know, I’ve been teaching myself Purcell’s My Dearest, My Fairest. Difficult doing it alone, it’s a duet.

Meanwhile the sciatica which crippled me for four months in the winter has returned and the acupuncturist’s needles can’t reach it.

At yesterday’s lesson I reveal all and V suggests we try the first few lines of Dearest. I’m sitting because of the pain and V calls out from the keyboard, “It’s harder than anything you’ve done before.” Occasionally I get it right and my voice blends with V’s, more than an octave above. Bloody marvellous.

Looking at the detail is like opening a Swiss watch. As if Purcell were saying: yes it’s hard but I’ve built in assistance. In passage after passage he provides same-note reference points so that singers don’t lose themselves in a welter of minor keys.

I leave feeling euphoric but it’s a special euphoria. Buoyed up by information, not just inner feeling. Seeing the notation in my mind’s eye as I drive. Symbols for which I’ve never received any sustained formal instruction. Too old for that, I haven’t the time.

I join wife VR at the community centre in free exercise for the elderly, run – coincidentally – by the acupuncturist.  The previous week the standing exercises were murder but I’m determined to take advantage of the euphoria. My determination lasts almost to the end when the seated exercises begin and these are less demanding.

I dwell on the way music now affects my life. Think about Purcell, dead at 36;  me singing his masterpieces at 83, over three-hundred years later.

Here’s what the DUET should sound like, allowing for the domestic acoustic

On high

I knew it and V confirmed: a terrific lesson. V’s diary is crowded, we had only a couple of minutes left, but she turned to the keyboard and said: "Let's do it all again. Whatever."

V didn't actually say Whatever, more like Boo. Boo. But I got her drift and sang my heart out, hitting all the points we'd discussed - Boo! Boo! Boo!

Purcell's Evening Hymn is in two parts. The first a glorious narrative which I know fairly well. The second is Hallelujah fourteen times. The first Hallelujah occupies one bar, the second is stretched over five bars. The penultimate Hallelujah takes seven bars.

This is what a seven-bar Hallelujah looks like vocally:

Hahh - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ah - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ah - ahh-ha-ahh - ahh-ha-ahh - le - lu-u-u - jah.

You count the groups of notes, conserve your puff (For the first time I did it in one) and it sounds bloody marvellous. Despite the counting you must launch yourself as if it were Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star. I'm a mile from perfection but once it was a light-year.

If I could accurately describe what musical improvement - and there's a dull phrase - feels like. Luckily I recognise it. The hit the druggie expects. Someone who matters says yes. When earth, sea, sky, all parts of your body, your hopes and abilities combine to form sounds that are – within rules you have learned and re-learned – right! Or better than before. When you’re in tune with time and time, at your behest, is graciously standing still.

Nobody profits except me and, on this occasion, V. Some might say it’s gross indulgence but it does at least demand discipline. And doing my best for that genius, Henry Purcell. 

Back to twin tracks

Late last November I started a fifth novel wondering - aged eighty - whether I'd finish it. I knew its clunky title, Hardship Hope, would need replacing.

In January, suddenly, I took my first singing lesson. The subsequent elation - endlessly documented - caused Hardship Hope to be sidelined at only 18,000 words. It was hard concentrating on mere words with Sarastro's bass lines running between my ears.

One aim has always been to sing a duet with a soprano. This requires preparation of a different order, as much technical as musical. I accept this and am "buckling down". In a more balanced state of mind I've resumed the novel.

I realised the title's dullness had held me back; it made the MS seem dull. The novel's now called Rictangular Glasses (the misspelling is intentional) and suddenly I have 23,805 words. A corner has been turned, a new chapter begun. The scene's no longer North Birmingham but a hotel in Mauritius:

Astonishing, given the heat, the number of orders for curry soup although she was fairly sure she knew the answer to that one. Today was Wednesday half-way through most bookings and many diners, bored senseless by the blandness of the so-called international cuisine, were probably desperate – as Lindsay had been – for food with any kind of zip. Even at this distance the disenchantment was palpable: cutlery immobilised above plates that offered nothing in the way of stimulation. Another half an hour and she could hop on her bike and meet Shakeel at the Magnetisme for some real food.

That done and I'm ready to tease out the musical sense of: "And all I meant to doo-oo..." with its A-sharp and B-natural, signifying a minor key and (for me) a non-intuitive passage. Renaissance Man in miniature.

The dark of light

Light music worries me. Officially "music with an immediate appeal" which "bridges the gap between classical and popular music", it aims "to entertain and enjoy" and offers "a strong emphasis on melody". My immediate reaction is: why bother?

Light music includes operettas - operas that have shrunk in the wash, typically by Gilbert and Sullivan and Offenbach. Other light composers include Johann (not Richard) Strauss, Sousa, Eric Coates and Robert Farnon none of whom race my motor. Enthusiasts for this genre must have taken a knock when "light" transmuted recently into "lite", generally taken to be insubstantial and unimportant.

So why, you may ask, did I download the score of Ivor Novello's We'll Gather Lilacs In The Spring Again - echt light music - and why am I presently and hurriedly teaching myself to put notes to such lines as:

Although you're far away,
And life is sad and grey.

The obvious answer is: V said I should. The final ten minutes of Monday's lesson were devoted to a scrambled attempt on my part to sight-read Lilacs (Honestly, I'm not that good.) with promise of more to come next Monday.

Now you know me. I'm pretentiously and boringly committed to musical masterworks: Grosse Fuge, Cosi, Ives' Concord sonata, Bach's English Suite. How come I'm prepared to swallow Lilacs? Because, says V, she and I will eventually do it as a duet. I've always yearned to do a duet.

It makes sense. Duets are as thrilling as music gets but for the moment Rodolfo (with Mimi in Boheme), Papageno (with Papagena in Flute) and Wotan (with Brünnhilde in Walkure) are way beyond me. Novello must be my baby-walker

One good thing: Sinatra's done Lilacs.

Am I a natural C-minus?

Shy, died at 31 of an STD, songs for angels and the common herd

No fool like an old fool. Aged eighty I started singing lessons on January 4. Most of my life I've listened to music, live and recorded, mainly classical from operas to string quartets, and I’ve played trumpet, recorder and mouth organ by ear - badly, devoid of rhythmic sensibility. Forgetting some months with a church choir before my voice broke I’d had no formal instruction.
             
Half a year on; how's it gone?

I now know that technoid terms – semi-quavers and three-four time – are a turn-off however simplified. People’s eyes glaze over. So none of that.
      
Recently I’ve studied a glorious Schubert song Abschied (Farewell). It contains a phrase Hör verschwimmen... (Listen, becoming blurred...) the first note of which is an E. Whoops! That’s technoid. How about: just reachable by me. But the German word Hör has a bastard vowel to do singingly. There’s a trick involved and I managed to solve part of it myself.

Normally I ignore my reflection while shaving; I’ve seen it before and it’s starting to melt. But the reflection lets me experiment with mouth openings as I sing and these help develop a musical tone of voice. Variable progress there.

As well as V’s expert tuition.

I’ve recorded my own Abschied and sounded, say, bearable. But that’s my opinion. It’s V’s too but she’s frequently kind. I need another audience.

A special kind of audience. Capable of responding to Schubert while making allowances. Perhaps devoid of musical language but able to form judgments beyond generalised adjectives. That sings to itself in unguarded moments – because singing meets some unspecified need. That would be cast down without music.

No sweat, anyway. I don’t yet know how to post my own voice.

As James did to Louis

When did you last betray a friend? Five years ago? Ten? Never? Chances are it was within the last twenty-four hours.

Here's how. You've happily experienced a painting. It could have been a novel, a sonata, a sunset, a conversation or a sausage-roll; in which case the language may differ but not the nature of the betrayal.

You feel you must communicate this happy experience to a friend. You say: The painting looked like its subject (But a photo would have been even more realistic.). Its colours were well-chosen (But didn't nature choose the colours anyway?). It was inspired (By what? To what end?). It matches the painter's style (So what's the painter's style?). You get the idea. In broad terms you lied, not intentionally but because what you said didn't get close to "the truth". Whatever that is.

Your verbal inadequacy has left your friend uninformed about your happy experience. Since you felt it important to pass on details of this event, you've let your friend down. Betrayed your friend. But don't worry, your friend probably betrayed you twenty-four hours previously. It is in the nature of being human. Words are all we have. Words - so easy to understand as singletons, so slippery in groups.

V, my singing teacher, used to apologise before correcting me. But we've moved on. Things are more difficult (Intervals: oof!); V now shouts "No!" and I rectify. The level of difficulty, I’m told, betokens my progress. A happy event verifiable on the piano keyboard. I am unbetrayed because what V conveyed did not depend on the meaning of words.

Going back to that painting you enjoyed, perhaps you should try la-la-ing your happiness to your friend. You don't sing? Well V's tuition is worth a guinea a box.

Who has all the best tunes?

V is all the teachers I didn't get at grammar school. When I fall short she apologises before she corrects me. She strives manfully (Wrong adverb, surely? Ed.) to explain "interpretation", the musical equivalent of quantum mechanics. Her compliments are technically devised. Her lovely singing voice, commanding mega power, reminds me why I'm there, standing by the piano. And she applauds my initiatives.

Not forgetting her musical knowledge and taste. Two songs I'm doing are from genres (Irish folk, Neapolitan sentimental) I would normally avoid, yet I love them both. Last Monday V handed me a new score.

Her expression was quizzical and I was under scrutiny. Clearly she had noted more than the state of my larynx.

And the new score? The Lord's Prayer, set by Michael Head.

Anyone who knows Tone Deaf knows I parted brass rags with Le Grand Seigneur ages ago. But, in my own defence, I do not prosyletise. After all I play Bach's B Minor Mass on my car radio.

Theoretically music is non-ideological even if the Prayer’s words aren’t. Perhaps I flapped my hands.

V said, "I knew you'd react."

What could I say?

She played it on the piano, singing, while I sang the easier parts from the score. Struggling over “trespasses”.

Afterwards V may have mentioned the setting’s beauty but my mind was elsewhere. I was transfixed and asked if we could re-do “For thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory...” We did this several times. Here typography stands in for melody.

I nodded. The setting is complex and gorgeous; I envisage much hard work. Is my free-thinking at risk? I asked VR, another non-believer. “It’s just words,” she said. Whereas music is music.

Parallel turns/chromatic scales

Learning is more than just absorption. I ski-ed from 1978 until 2007 and for ten years always took ski-school. Ski-ing is predominantly about style and for that you need external judgement and tuition.
      
Some take ski-school and ignore the instructor's guidance, finding ways of faking the detail. But not from mere wilfulness. Often such pupils are being asked to move non-intuitively and this appears (to them) to risk falling. Were they to obey the instructor they would improve their control, ski more safely. But no one likes falling, even into soft snow.
      
During my singing lessons falling isn't a threat. And, to my eternal surprise, I have bypassed the agonies of possible humiliation. But there are under-currents. I don't want to let V down - I feel obliged to listen, practice her recommendations assiduously at home, and prove I've done so at the next lesson.
      
So what - given I want to sing? There's more. V has a singing voice both gorgeous and powerful; she likes modern British composers, a mildly esoteric taste which convinces me she truly enjoys singing. Yet for an hour a week (forget her other pupils of whom I know nothing) she must expose herself to my inexact sense of pitch, my tendency to get slower as the song progresses, my robotic phrasing.
      
OK, my vocal imperfections are V’s bread and butter. But defective sound is defective sound and I would hate to cause her pain. For which there can only be one valid compensation: that I should progress. I sing for pleasure; I aim to sing better to keep V from torment.

Also, singing lessons transport me into a thrilling new world which I previously only gawped at. I get over-enthusiastic and talk too much. That too requires attention. 

V tells me what's what

MUSIC LESSON Told V I needed "propping up", my recorded singing voice was embarrassing, I felt wimpish. V pointed out I had arrived seven weeks before, aged eighty, untutored in singing during a frequently self-destructive life (I'm adding in that last bit). That on the first lesson I stumbled through one of the great bass operatic arias of all time, that I now use scores and obviously enjoy doing so. That I am "perfectionist".

And then what really mattered. V said: "If I'd thought I couldn't do anything for you I'd have told you, immediately." Exercises, then Benjamin Britten’s round, Old Abr'am Brown is Dead and Gone. Rebirth!

And now Santa Lucia (see pic). "Neapolitan and sentimental," I said. As ever V was way ahead. I'm singing in the language best fitted for singing: Italian. "Come, my love, to the agile boat," I trill and it's oh-so-liquid as Venite al l'agile barchetta mia!

PAINTING With the other V in my life, VR, watched egg-shaped, Waldemar Januszczak, prove the Renaissance started long before the Italians thought it did. Exquisite Jan van Eyck shockingly labelled a "Flemish Primitive". Funny really.

Hardline Hope, a novel (14,040 words)
“Watching women who present TV news gave me the idea. About age forty their eyesight tends to go off and they face the big choice. There’s one in particular - handsome, intelligent, speaks well and quick with it; she tried contacts and her face lost all focus, as if she was struggling in a fog. Now uses discreet glasses that are almost invisible - a lot better than contacts and I’m glad for her. But there is another option.”

Gayle’s face lit up. “Don’t tell me, it’s like the legs isn’t it? Getting in and out of the car. Go for it, don’t hide it.”

Steep stuff

And now the grind, except I must not see it as that. Doing so closes off the route to those eminences far higher than the Himalayas (mere physical excrescences): the range that includes Mounts Leporello, Marschallin and Erlkönig.

It is V's job to teach. Her encouragement continues but mixed with less welcome matters. I am asked to reproduce continuous mounting and descending triads with octaves (doh-me-so-doh; doh-so-me-doh) legato style - ie, without gaps. Easy-peasy, I used to do this quite plausibly on the trumpet, moving up a note at a time.

But what's this? V tells me me that I sharpen the descending "so". By something less than a semitone, to be sure, but in music, just as in affairs between men and women, there is no such thing as "slightly" pregnant. And, a few minutes later, V unintentionally re-makes the point by filling the room with a sustained, powerful and glorious mid-range note of her own making that fictitious range of peaks seem much more distant.

But how can I rectify this fault practising on my own at home? Who's to guide me? I acquire recording software, and sing my Ghanaian warm-up song, Tu-we tu-we, Barima tu-we tu-we, into the computer. After ten goes all the notes sound to be there but it isn't really music - more the sound of a robot still in nappies (US: diapers).

I must be careful not to be despondent; there is progress and I know it. But that resounding soprano note - say, middle C - I heard days before in Little Dewchurch still echoes in my ears. I must have faith, and in so many ways. And this time it's not to be found in words I string together.

Late developer

FIRST SINGING LESSON
Like some unwanted old bassoon,
Sad comic of the orchestra,
Conduit of mistaken farts and groans,
Now left to gather attic dust,
Reeds split, keypads unstuck, the case
A velvet nest for mice and memories
Of Bartok and a starring Mozart role,
My voice responded only to a daily round,
Of supermarkets and desultory chat,
Of booking dentists and of movie seats.
An aural calling card but nothing
More, no call for skills or pleasantry.

But under tutelage it stirred at chords,
Aping their sonority. Catching the
Flight of clear soprano séductrice,
Adapted to instructive work.
My God! Such wanton eagerness!
Unhampered by those obstacles
Of hoarseness and of ignorance. This was
Immediacy, a sense that would improve,
That would disgorge the mystic dancing dots,
Their tones, their times, their links to all
Those godlike names and temperaments:
And there’s a jeux de mots to start the course.

Modest repeated echoes of a phrase,
A line, a verse and then the whole damn song,
The voice alone engaged; I left my mind
Behind just then; later I’ll comprehend
How sounds elide, combine and ultimately affect
Those cords – not chords – within the throat,
And I become a child again, helpless yet,
But loving it, the willing victim of a force
That, through adult complicity, tells of a
Language I may speak with competence,
Newly equipped and willing to discourse
About the better side of things.

Note: Rewritten before and after lunch.

Did I really think it was easy?

SINGING SCORE
Mistakes. During home practice errors are legion. I don't have perfect pitch and picking the right note (especially if it's highish) after a pause can be a lottery, despite fifty repeats.

I sing whole words as whole words instead of splitting them up and glueing them to other word parts; eg, "stepped away" where I should have sung "ste... -e- (sustained note rises here)... pta-way".

I don't breathe in regularly or enough; passages fade like dying whales.

I sing symmetrically varying phrases backwards-way round; thus "...for (down) your (up) lack (back down)..." becomes "...for (up) your (down) lack (back up)..."

Rewards. I told V journalism had taught me to mistrust compliments; her compliments now make a direct appeal. Exhausted by rehearsing the Irish country song I was told I could finish off with the Mozart aria - something of a treat. When I'd sung it V said I sounded "apologetic": the perfect rebuke based on an unexpected epithet. I sang it again, asserting myself, and V said: "Just four weeks, and you own the song!" Ahhh.

But you must love failure too. It is the measure of tiny triumphs.

PS: V's skill is to make me try harder; the last session I came within a squeaker of two octaves. But do I seriously intend to become a castrato? Not in all senses

Hardline Hope, a novel (12,220 words)
Initially she’d been satisfied to escape Stanley’s scrutiny. Selling and all it entailed seemed entirely theoretical, remote, even exotic. And then, convulsively, she reviewed her daily round, recognised its dullness, its repetitions, its lack of skills, the phone calls that lacked status, the meaningless paper, the endless to-ing and fro-ing between other offices with her heels clacking futilely on the floor tiles. Quicker still she remembered Gayle, the very embodiment of self-dependency: “You should be doing better kid.”

Placid's better

Stereo's twin channels
Shortish short story, 982 words

Stilettos!

“You’re so damn calm,” she said, moving her brand-new suitcase nearer the front door. “No, that’s giving you the benefit: calm can be noble, placid’s better.”

Eye-shadow, too.

He said, “I don’t want you to go.” Ravishing, that was it. “But I’m not such a fool as to stop you.”

“Perhaps you should.”

“That’s bollocks. Worse, it’s conventional.”

She laughed harshly. “Conventional! You read too much.” Now she glanced angrily at her watch. “What are your plans? You don’t have to tell me.”

“Sell the house.”

“Far too big for one. Or for two. Buy a semi, get a nest-egg.”

“There’s that.”

She caught the dying fall. “And…?”

The light in the hallway had a Tiffany shade. It caught his attention, perhaps for nothing other than that she’d bought it. He spread his hands, “Memories. Good memories.”

Briefly she was still.

He was left looking at the door that closed behind her. The stuttering in his throat gave way to tears. Not wanting to move he dried his face on the door curtain.

IT TOOK months, perhaps because he didn’t really want to sell. Semis, he discovered, carried signs. A trampoline in the back garden, a BskyB dish, both enemies of tranquillity. What swung it were fortyish neighbours who lacked dogs and children and who garaged their Audi at night. Crankily he’d taken against couples who filled their garages with cardboard boxes and unwanted furniture.

More time passed, including two weeks in a motel. Then he moved in. With only himself to please he could triangulate his easy chair with his two Quad loudspeakers. One Sunday, having seen Number Fifty-Four drive away together, he played Bruckner and Ives at full stereo. When the Audi returned at seven he switched to chamber music with the wick turned well down.

He nibbled fruit as he listened; meals had become erratic. When Bartok’s fifth came to an end he heard argument through the dividing wall, she sharply monotonous, his voice rising and falling, lurching, it seemed, towards defeat.

That meant they must have heard the quartet. Would the next step be complaints? Life without music was unthinkable and he’d move if necessary. But perhaps it would be worth talking first, to test their reactions.

The man appeared jowly and probably laid down the law in pubs. The wife he had never seen close-up but she had to be more congenial. Monday she was hanging out washing and he walked towards the fence, his mind unprepared, not even knowing her name.

“Er, I say.”

 She shrugged as if irritated.

“I’m Paul Cazalet. Your… neighbour.” He flamed with embarrassment at having stated the obvious. She went on picking pegs out of a basket hanging from the washing line. He said, “I thought I’d introduce myself. And there’s something else.”

She stopped what she was doing but remained in the centre of the lawn. He said, “These modern houses. The walls are so thin. I played music last night. Did I disturb you?”

She held a striped beach towel at odds with her fixed, discouraging expression. God! A matched husband and wife. When she sauntered forwards it wasn’t out of politeness but to scrutinise him as his wife had. To confirm his defects?

Close-up her angular face was hard and full of certainties. The curls in her dark hair were tightly contrived. No hint of friendship. “Isn’t it the other way round?” she said.

“I don’t understand.”

“You heard us.”

“I heard talk, true. It didn’t worry me. But the music might have worried you.”

“You keen on music?”

He nodded and she glanced back at his house. “Music a comfort?” she asked laconically.

He nodded again.

She shook out the towel as if talk were at an end. “We can live with what you play.”

“Live with? OK. But will it be a pain?”

“The lot that had your house were mad on sport.  Telly on most nights. Sport, music – it’s all just noise. We’re used to that.”

“Noise?”

“We’re not complaining,” she said, slightly irritated.

He still didn’t know her name. Not that it mattered.

But that was then. At midday the post brought a note from his wife about a shared insurance policy, a fiddling matter. But the curves of her handwriting were painful, evoking the last time in the hallway: seeing her dressed and groomed for someone else. That night, unable to sleep, he passed time idealising his unnamed neighbour’s appearance and manner, knowing what he was doing, knowing what it might lead to. Turning her brusqueness into moral strength, her coolness into sympathy, her tightly permed hair into proof she was sexually aware. Pure fantasy but fantasy was what he needed there and then.

On a hunch that evening he put away the Bartok and played a Schubert trio. Just that. No sound through the dividing wall but mid-morning the following day she knocked on his door, requiring coffee. Noise came in different forms! As he expected, his bedtime fantasy had disappeared completely. Her smoothed-out face had reverted to hollow cheeks and a narrow – now crimson – mouth. The imaginary warmth had cooled. There was only speculation in her brown eyes.

But not for long. Briefly she looked around at the shelves of CDs then finished her coffee quickly. “I won’t stay. No point at the moment.”

“At the moment?”

She smiled thinly. “You’re besotted with music. Convinced it will compensate. When you know it can't, well, we’ll see.”

He was appalled she was so far ahead.

“You seem bloody confident.”

“You’re so obvious. It doesn’t have to be with me, except I’m close at hand. And I’m not shy”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Why not try Hedda?”

Sheesh! He let her out, saying nothing. Saw the funny side later. But couldn’t see playing Schubert trios day in day out. Felt sure the Brahms sextets would be a goer.

More about the family

Ian (left) is nearly thirty and it's ridiculous he’s my grandson; grandsons play in sandpits. Months, sometimes years, pass between our meetings when bitter, meaningless spats often ensue. Usually about computer practice. I find these stimulating; for Ian they are water off a duck's back.

Recently Ian felt constrained to send me a gift. Although he sees me as an old fart he would more readily admit to liking Cliff Richard than despatch an old-fartish present (socks for instance). He knows I diddle simple tunes on my piano keyboard; hence a book ("150 Beloved Hymns including Amazing Grace, Be Thou My Vision," etc) complete with piano scores.

I appreciate the thought behind this gift which turns out to be slightly exotic. The American collection includes hymns unfamiliar in the UK. Often with ambiguous titles. Higher Ground, for instance, surely has a military theme. How Firm A Foundation is probably sung by estate agents (USA: realtors). Jesus Paid It All dwells on the resolution of capitalism.

I enjoy the style recommendations: To God Be The Glory (Moderately) vs. Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus (Meditatively). Sweet By And By (Cheerfully) vs. Take The Name Of Jesus With You (Brightly). Plus the enigmatic: Rock Of Ages (Prayerfully).

Hours of harmless fun 

WIP Second hand (34,059 words)
(Sadhu) slid back the glass partition. “I have switched on the air conditioning. It is a powerful system though quiet; you may smoke if you wish. The drive will last three-quarters of an hour. The reading lights are on and there are magazines in the door pockets.”

… She said, laughing. “This car is for executives but I work in a supermarket. Not as an executive.”

“The car is equally suitable for an English rose.” It was a phrase he’d obviously honed and she felt compelled to simper.

Quick call to PP was all it took

Relaxing between paragraphs I pick out tunes on my Yamaha keyboard. Hymns mostly, they're the simplest. The aim being to get the notes in order at a reasonable speed, nothing more.

In C-major, using just the white keys. But with some tunes I found I had to use a black key. The same black key too; B-flat since you ask. Remember these are very simple tunes that any congregation can sing; shouldn't be any need for sharps or flats.

Puzzled, I emailed the Prague Polymath, Julia. She knows most things, certainly everything about music. Turned out she was in Berlin, away from her books. Away from a keyboard too. She needed neither. Seems I was playing these maverick tunes in F-major, a key that only differs from C-major by one black note: B-flat. Always a sceptic (journalism does that for you) I played the tune in both keys but I knew she was right before I started. Beats Google.

DIET No measurable weight loss but I can tie up my laces without puffing. Then the ultimate achievement: cutting my toe-nails and not suffering syncope. I am a new man. More tolerant of the world. Regarding DC as merely a twerp and not a transmission from Hades.

WIP Secondhand (23,091 words written)
(Francine speaking:) "I’ve never seen myself as sexually attractive: I have this elf-like face, I’m thin rather than slender, I’ve no small talk. Someone once called my complexion old ivory; more honestly it’s pale sallow. Martin’s a vital sort of chap, Mediterranean confidence backed up by early success as a painter. I was bowled over by the way he approached me; the technical – anatomical – way he talked about my looks. I was flattered, no doubt about it. I slept with him at his first time of asking."

Actually, the hair helps

Over the last thirty years, music has tightened its grip on me; a nubby of awareness has grown, become more intense, more informed. Thanks to influences stretching from Joni Mitchell to Charles Rosen, to my late mate, Richard, to pianist Stephen Hough, to Wagner.

And to conductor Sir Colin Davis. When I play Messiah in my head, the template is always his with its tiny, pared-down super-expert choir. And when Fiordeligi and Dorabella engage in thrumming, organic duets the voices are Janet Baker and Montserrat Caballé but Cosi is being directed by the man whose hair-do proclaims "Conductor!"

Then there are his opinions. His sly digs at the authentic music cult. His belief that a day spent without access to the singing voice endangers the soul. His sudden revelation (last night on telly) about the conductor, Sir Malcolm Sargent: "Everybody disliked him."

Davis died a fortnight ago and yesterday they showed his final interview, punctuated by lengthy periods of contemplation. Characteristically he told me something I didn't know: singers are eternally at risk of arriving late on their cue.

In singing, for instance, "Misere" the word doesn't start with a musical note but with a humming sound as the voice begins to form the letter M. Thus (exaggeratedly): "Mmmm-is-a-rare-rrr-i." These delays can be significant. To the point where some singers only become musically audible at the point in time designated for the first E in Misere. Singers, said Davis, should fill up their windbags and be ready to sing immediately.

Was he religious? He didn't know. Did he fear death? No. Might after-death be silence? Perhaps, but a human would be needed to perceive silence.

But never mind my views. His words were preceded by his 2011 version of LvB's Missa Solemnis. Verily, the music spoke for him.

Too hard? So was LvB once

I sought out Double Concerto (for piano, harpsichord and two small chamber orchestras) by Elliott Carter who died recently, aged 104. Why? Because Charles Rosen, who’s performed the piano bit a dozen times, says it is “Carter’s most brilliantly attractive and… most complex work”. For me, whatever Rosen says goes. Also not much was written for harpsichord in 1959.

It’s playing now. Parts are quite noisy (“four percussionists, each with a formidable array of about dozen instruments”) and harpsichords have middle-class voices. Never mind.

Rosen says “the final section… contains the most complicated rhythmic passage I have ever been asked to play… the right hand plays seven even notes to each beat, the left hand plays three.” Pfooie. In the full score the ratio becomes 21 against 9 and (Rosen’s italics) the accents of all four lines in piano and harpsichord never coincide.

I’m not attending yet it hangs together. That’s good, separation can be a problem with modern stuff. Forget music for the moment, think of irregular sound sequences: distant F1 cars racing, a metal workshop, children in a playground. Are you engaged, held? So combine them.

But the concerto is planned. Explosions of funny struck noises, dramatic trumpet outbursts, the harpsichord a mouse within the piano. It lasts 22 minutes so play it again. A third time and you anticipate a passage here or there. And no, it isn’t random. It’s no longer “it” and “you”. Play it again looking out of the window in another room. Switch off, lean back, close your eyes. What can you hear? Nothing? OK, there are no penalties. Something? Perhaps you’ll play it tomorrow. Music cannot be explained.

Quotes from Rosen’s Critical Entertainments, Harvard UP $17.95 ( more in UK)

 

LATER THIS WEEK: Sink draining racks

Uh uh, technology again

Thursday, April 26, 2012: The Blogger’s Retreat. The Aldwych, London. (Plutarch).

Theoretically this is a social event: we meet, drink champagne, eat curry washed down by Kingfisher beer, walk across Waterloo Bridge, drink more beer at the pub on Roupell Street.

And talk. I’d like to think the talk is wide-ranging but I’m not sure it is. Some reminiscence (we worked on the same magazine between 1963 and 1965 and between 1972 and 1975, on related magazines between 1975 and 1978), guidance with my novel writing, guidance on poetry, wine (probably), Plutarch’s hats, blogging. Often we invite acquiescent others to join in. We avoid the weather and the disintegrations of old age. The talk is virtually continuous and initially incoherent as we start and break off subjects until a true give-and-take line is established. On the fast train from South Wales to Paddington I sometimes make notes about points I want to raise for neither of us is inclined to waste time on silence.

That agenda worked when I did Works Well. Now I’ve switched to Tone Deaf music is also discussed since Plutarch reveals a much wider interest than I suspected and is willing to talk about music’s abstractions.

But music requires a change in what was previously a simple modus operandi. Music requires musical references. A mouth organ (played quietly) might help but is a poor way of rendering orchestral themes. Neither of us has a congenial voice. The logical solution is an MP3 player with two sets of earphones to overcome the hygiene problem of earwax. But now I foresee some problems. Silence will reign as the MP3 player is used. Passing the player backwards and forwards hints disagreeably at the shared hubble-bubble. We will be depending on batteries and I for one am a battery-phobe. Aid please.

Friendship - a mixed blessing

Two friends shaped my interest in music. Richard I’ve already mentioned (See “I Told You So”). X came earlier and our friendship ended unpleasantly, hence the need to hide his true identity.

X dates back to mono LPs. He was widely knowledgeable and became a leader writer on The Times and then The Daily Telegraph. He introduced me to Beethoven, Respighi, Stravinsky, Holst and Elgar in particular, and the evolution of European music in general. But I paid a price. He didn’t like Mozart and my later rehabilitation took some time.

X liked jazz and used to play trumpet along with Ellington and Stan Kenton records. He taught me the rudiments of trumpet-playing and gave me his old trumpet when he bought a replacement. Again I paid a price.

His preference was for the high-note jazz-men, especially William Cat Anderson and Maynard Ferguson (left and right above respectively), and they became my favourites. But it was a very unbalanced view of jazz. Years passed before I was able to appreciate Miles Davies.

Despite the painfulness of our rupture he provided a large early chunk of my musical education. However, as I say, nothing comes for nothing. X was an extremely good journalist, widely read and powerfully opinionated. I was lucky to know him but he wasn’t well liked and impartiality wasn’t one of his qualities. He didn’t care to hear any of my independent opinions. When he pooh-poohed my view that string quartets might represent the most advanced form of musical language I realised he had nothing more to tell me.

Tone Deaf has already shown that music can be a “difficult” enthusiasm. Getting started often requires a kick up the backside. X kicked well and the word “friend” has no simple definition.