Time Will Tell (5 page)

As I was saying, I developed my skills as a scribe over many years in the service of Jehan Ockeghem. He never made any musical sketches of any kind. To do so would have been contrary to his learning. Instead, he held the music in his mind and then would relate each part in turn, just as he had done on that occasion when I had first met him as a ten-year-old. This required much of me, for I had to mark down the notes immediately on the first hearing. Over time I developed a simpler method, assigning notes their own value within the
tactus
, and not according to alteration as explained by Franco of Cologne. (If modesty would permit, I might suggest that unwittingly I anticipated the thinking of Gaffurius and Tinctoris, though I never had the patience or interest in the theory of music to pursue the idea.)

Although under great pressure, I enjoyed those sessions together. We would work between Mass and Vespers on a Sunday, a day that Jehan loved because he could forget the affairs of state and city and devote himself to God and to music. In the morning we would sing in the choir, where he and I were the basses, and then leave St Martin for his house across the river in St Cyr.

It was a pleasant walk with the shops closed for the Holy Day, quieter than the weekdays when the hawkers lined the Rue de la Scellerie. We would pass by the churches of St Hilaire, St Étienne and St Vincent, and the tall houses of the rich silk merchants, then turn north towards the river at the Cathedral of St Gatien, its bells signalling the end of Mass. There we would inevitably encounter clergy and noblemen leaving the Cathedral, and Jehan would stop to talk. Finally, we would cross the river just beyond the Château de Tours. He still maintained the residence accorded to the Treasurer of St Martin in Châteauneuf, though he preferred the calm of the north bank and the view it afforded him of the City of Tours.

‘Sometimes,' he said, ‘it is important to view the City as a whole, and that is only possible when you are far enough away from it.'

The house in St Cyr was small but cosy, and Christiane, his servant, would provide us with a wonderful meal before our afternoon's work. Jehan always sat behind me on a trestle using his cloak as a cushion. Having told me which line he wanted to start with, he would remove his spectacles, just as he had that day in class, and indicate the
tactus
with a light tap on my shoulder.

The first dictation was for the notes themselves, and the second for me to write in the words. Jehan never cared if I made a mistake. ‘In my experience,' he said, ‘singers are intelligent creatures. If they want to change a word, let them.' (How different from Desprez's attitude!)

Later, in my own home, I was usually able to correct my own errors simply by singing the music, for it possessed a logic and internal consistency like the canons of which Jehan was so fond. Even the more free-flowing lines that I loved so much revealed a design that escaped the ear at times. There would be one more stage of consultation and then a final correction – usually rhythmic changes, occasionally the addition of a
ficta
note that he knew would save argument in a rehearsal, perhaps the use of ligature to suggest to a singer the shape of the line – and then I created the final performance copy.

I would present it to Jehan and we would pour some of his favourite wine and make a toast to God, to the King, and to Tours, his beloved town. Finally we would raise a glass to Bacchus. By then Jehan would have relaxed enough to tell me the stories that I knew and loved so well: stories of his travels to the North; of his meetings with famous men; of the parties he had organised; of his troubled dealings with the chapter of St Martin; of meetings with Dufay (or Silenus, as he called him, Dufay being a man much given to drink); of Gilles Binchois, his teacher and advisor; and of singing in the choir at St Martin.

Though my memory of more recent events is less clear, I can accurately recall the old anecdotes, and the testament that I am writing will contain some of those tales. It would be a shame not to record them for whoever might read this.

Alas, I may not be able to revisit what I have written; this version may well be my last. If Jehan were still alive, I would offer a draft of my memoirs for his approval, though, through his natural modesty, he would doubtless remove many of my most sincere expressions of regard for him and insist upon the removal of any criticism of the likes of Desprez. And so what you will read will be but one man's view, subject to no revision or interpretation like a musical composition. No choir will ever sing this text and realise in sound the mental design contained herein; no one will guide my hand. It is my vision, and mine alone. As the psalmist says:
Quia ipse Deus Deus noster in saeculum et in perpetuum ipse erit dux noster in morte. Amen

[For this God is our God for ever and ever: he will be our guide even unto death. Amen].

 

Andrew Eiger bumped his battered suitcase up the metal steps of the bus and looked around: nowhere to sit. He grabbed the plastic strap hanging from the rail as the bus lurched through the slow-moving traffic past a succession of terminals. It looked like the Third World – or at least like his private image of the Third World, for he'd never visited any part of it. People were rushing in different directions, too much traffic honking and snorting its way to myriad destinations past double- and even triple-parked cars and buses, the sidewalks lined with hawkers, taxi drivers and hustlers.

Still, it was only a short trip from Terminal 4 to Terminal 7 at John F. Kennedy airport and he would have plenty of time to make a phone call home. Rather than the fond farewell with Karen that he'd envisaged, it had been a frantic parting, with him snatching his belongings from the trunk, late for check-in because they'd had to return to the house to pick up his forgotten luggage. John, strapped into his car seat, had sensed the gathering tension and started crying, then screaming when he was ignored. Andrew and Karen had begun one of their frequent arguments, which traced the same familiar course: she accused him of being unable to apply the necessary common sense to the simplest of organisational tasks, and he resented being treated as a child.

He was able to review the argument calmly now, his mood considerably more buoyant without Earl, the trombone-playing salesman, next to him. He knew there was more than an element of truth in Karen's criticism, though that never made it any easier to back down. His intellect could grasp the most abstruse arguments, be they mathematical, musical or philosophical, but even aged sixteen he lacked common social graces and, left to his own devices, was late for everything. He had expected that when he became an adult such inadequacies would become less important and, for a while, when Karen entered his life, they had. She managed the kinds of things at which he was so bad – organisation of his time and his basic needs. But all too soon he realised that what she once found endearing was becoming irksome and, after John's unexpected arrival, things had got much worse. When they had first moved to Ohio for Andrew to take up his first full university post, the plan had been that Karen would finish her training as a psychotherapist. Then, when the situation allowed, she would set herself up in practice and, some five years down the road, they would start a family. But Karen had become pregnant and Andrew suspected that his wife held him and his characteristic ineptitude responsible for the failure of a condom. When John was born, it was clear that Karen's training would have to be put on hold, and it was equally obvious that Andrew was not going to get a ‘World's Best Dad' mug unless he bought it himself. As John grew from baby to toddler, once again Andrew found himself dealing with the minutiae of everyday life from which the ministrations of a capable woman had momentarily freed him – only now, in addition to looking after his own needs, he had to care for John as well. Bathing his son, changing nappies, preparing his food, even playing with him, didn't come naturally, and an exasperated Karen would frequently have to take over the tasks with which Andrew had been charged. Impatience, the constant companion of young parents, grew exponentially, manifest most obviously in the arguments that took place in the relative privacy of the bedroom at the end of another unrelenting day.

It wasn't John's fault, an understanding of which fortunately neither of the child's parents lost sight. The simple truth was that they had not foreseen the amount of time that a baby demanded. It didn't help that John was active and inquisitive, proclivities that revealed themselves to often disastrous effect once he'd learned how to crawl. The video machine was his first victim, rendered inoperative by a typically unrelenting investigation into its mysteries, followed shortly by the pedals of the piano and, once summer arrived, a collection of potted herbs. After the piano incident, Karen and Andrew had systematically raised everything four feet off the ground, which worked until John started to walk some three months before any of his peers, leaving his parents wondering if their strategy had inadvertently been taken by their precocious offspring as a challenge.

For all the frustrations caused by his dynamic curiosity, John was charming and loving, qualities which his father would have done well to cultivate. For, since the shattering discovery of the composition in Amiens, Andrew had become aware that, in his wife's eyes, his usual self-centeredness had spawned a dangerously selfish obsession that often excluded the rest of the family. As much as it was the focus of Andrew's attention, so it was the object of Karen's resentment, both cause and symbol of the constant crises of which their home life seemed to consist.

The significance of the trip to Tours was not lost on either of them on that fractious journey to the airport, their argument inevitable. Andrew was desperate to go; Karen was eager for him to leave. It was this guilty truth that neither was quite able to acknowledge and which made Karen volunteer to drive Andrew to the airport and him accept. She framed it as a financial decision – a cab would be an extravagance – but behind it lay an unspoken hope: that things could change; that the trip might make Andrew realise something about his behaviour; and that the break would do them both good.

Why he'd left his suitcase on the bed he didn't know, nor why he'd told Karen that he had put his suitcase in the car when he hadn't. Karen would probably describe it as a slip of the mind, which meant that, even if he hadn't consciously intended it, a part of him had. He was guilty either way; the onus was on him to call one last time before he headed to Tours. It wasn't just that he needed to express gratitude for the lift to the airport and apologise for what Karen would see as leaving her literally and metaphorically holding the baby whilst he swanned off to Europe for three days to talk, eat and drink with interesting people. He knew that when he returned in three days' time his wife would be tired and stressed after caring for John on her own and, tired and jetlagged as he would be, a phone call now might buy him some much-needed credit.

Of course, he also wanted to tell Karen that he might have cracked the notational puzzle. The nagging sense that Earl's naïve reading of the score might just work was now no longer possible to ignore. It made sense; the transition from the old to the new notation systems was not down to the theorists who explained it, but to the scribes who developed it. Obviously the Amiens example was one of the first such examples – yet another valuable feature of his extraordinary discovery. Without referring to the transcription – opening the file once more would doubtless have rekindled Earl's interest – Andrew sat for the remainder of the flight extrapolating the lines from memory and fitting them together in his head. He'd immediately been struck by the consistency of the solution. Earl's proposition, though lacking musicological reasoning, was nonetheless correct; and knowing too much had led Andrew up a blind alley. Not that he would credit Earl for his inadvertent perception, even to Karen. His was a fortuitous error, no more, like a child discovering that a round peg could occasionally fit into a square hole. No, this deserved a thorough academic explication, and it would get one, in a chapter entitled ‘Notation in transition'. That would be the premise from which the solution flowed.

The call home had to wait until the flight was nearly boarding. Check-in had been fairly efficient, but it was a busy day at JFK and getting through security had taken more time than Andrew had expected. He found a payphone with a vacant power point close by, plugged in his laptop to charge the battery for the transatlantic journey ahead, and dialled home. Eight o'clock: John would be in bed. He realised his mistake as soon as Karen answered, slightly out of breath. It was seven o'clock in Ohio, slap bang in the middle of John's bath time. Karen was obviously on the cordless phone, John in the background, singing tunelessly.

‘Karen,' said Andrew. ‘I've just realised. It's seven there, isn't it? Bath time?'

‘Yes. John. Put that down now. No. Don't splash mummy. Yes. Bath time. Is there a problem?'

‘No. No problem. Thought I'd just ring to say hi. I'm at JFK.'

‘Good,' she said absently. He could hear her reasoning with John, her voice muffled, the phone against her chest. He waited.

‘Are you all right?' she asked again. She was probably fishing for an apology, he thought.

‘I've cracked the code.'

‘Sorry? John, Daddy's on the phone. Do you want to talk to him?'

Karen came back on the line. No, then.

‘The code? Sorry?'

‘The notational problem. You know. I couldn't get the motet to work. I'm pretty sure I've worked it out. I've got to check it, but it just seems right. D'you know what?' He chuckled to indicate that he was being rhetorical. ‘It was simply a question of real note values. I'd been assuming alteration and imperfection, but it's in a later notational system. It's written in modern note values. Do you see?'

‘No. No!'

Andrew wondered why Karen was so assertive about her ignorance and was about to embark on an explanation of medieval musical notation when he realised that she wasn't talking to him.

‘John's just tipped water on the floor. Hold on,' she said. There was a clunk as she put down the phone, followed by the muffled sound of her crying out and John laughing. ‘That's naughty. Mummy's wet now.' Her voice came more clearly down the line. ‘He just dumped some water on my head. Didn't you? Didn't you? And now he's laughing because he thinks I look funny with a towel on my head. You're not helping, aren't you?'

‘Well, I can't…'

‘Not you, Andrew. Can't you tell I'm talking to John? I'm talking to you, aren't I, you cheeky boy.'

‘Not a good time, is it?' he said hopefully.

Karen sighed. ‘Look, Andrew, I'm very glad you've cracked it, even if I don't understand, but can we talk another time? You know how it is at bath time.'

He'd wanted to share the moment with her, to discuss the implications with someone who knew how important this was to him. Was she paying him back for the airport incident? Surely she shouldn't allow his barely sentient son to upstage this triumphant moment? Throwing him a rubber duck or a sponge would keep him occupied for the five minutes of Karen's time Andrew felt he deserved.

The announcement for boarding broke the silence between them and reminded him that he needed to secure his seat to prevent a repeat of the cramped conditions of the previous flight.

‘I shouldn't have called at bath time,' he said, hoping his bald admission counted as an apology. ‘I'll call you when I can. From France, but I don't know when that will be.'

‘Fine. That would be better. And try to make it when I've got some time to talk, rather than at meals or bath times, OK?'

As a request it was reasonable enough, but he resented the world-weary tone and, rather than thank his wife for the lift to the airport, he offered a curt farewell. ‘Love to John.'

He joined the line of people boarding the aircraft, most of them Brits with harsh accents. This being British Airways, the six-hour flight would provide his first of many authentic re-engagements with European exoticism. Momentarily now meant
for
a moment and not
in
a moment. A cigarette was a fag, the trunk of the car the boot, sidewalks would become pavements. His brief stopover at London's Heathrow would provide scant opportunity to use any of these substitutions, yet the amateur philologist in him – a string to every medieval musicologist's bow, he observed – thrilled to the mutability of language and entertained him as he stood in line. No, not in line. In a queue. And in another ten hours' time he'd be in France and it would all change again and
queue
would mean ‘tail'.

‘Welcome on board the British Airways flight, sir. Can I see your boarding pass, please?'

He registered the glottal on ‘Airways', the sibilant ‘t', so different to the softer dental ‘d' to which he was accustomed, and the general harshness of the open
vowel sounds, the more so without the velvety, post-vocalic ‘r' typical of Irish and American speakers.

‘Over to the other side, then down to your right, sir.'

Directed away from the Club Class cabin, he recalled his reverie from the previous flight and, for once, felt none of the usual jealousy and bitterness towards the privileged few. Soon he would join them.

There was a spare seat between him and the young man in the window seat to whom he nodded a hello. He arranged his luggage in the overhead bin, stowed his bag at his feet and immediately withdrew his blue folder.

He began with the acid test: would the
discantus
and
tenor
parts fit together? If they didn't, he was back to square one. It was too easy: they fitted perfectly as he'd instinctively known they would. He heard the careful contrary motion between the flowing lines in perfect harmony. The second test was the canon within each part. The Latin instruction made immediate sense to him and, habitually paranoid as he was, he realised that it was fortuitously impenetrable to the average transatlantic tourist.
Canon ad breve.
It told the singers to sing the same phrase exactly one breve after the previous singer. He heard the parts setting off at fixed time intervals, like a staggered race. The long note values in the
bassus
made it easy to sing, but only professionals would be able to shape that line with the necessary grace to make it sound convincing. When all the parts joined in it would sound much more rich and complex than it looked here on the page. That was equally true for the
contratenor
part, which, in the manuscript, was provided no musical example of its own, only text:
Contratenor sequit bassus in diatesseron in canon ad breve
. It told the singer to sing the bass phrase a fourth higher and a breve later. Where the
bassus
would sing the first note to the value of a breve, the
contratenor
would sing the same note pitched a fourth higher. But there was a different mensuration sign for the
contratenor
, effectively a tempo marking which meant that the part would be sung at a faster speed than the basses. That principle would hold for the eight other
contratenor
singers as well, and the net effect would be that they would overtake their bass colleagues. The image of a race was, Andrew realised, quite appropriate and also explained why there were only eight
bassus
parts, yet nine
contratenor
parts. Otherwise the
contratenors
would be holding long notes waiting for their colleagues to catch up.