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Authors: Donald Greig

Tags: #Literary Fiction, #Poetry, #Fiction/Suspense

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BOOK: Time Will Tell
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But the greatest compliment he paid me was when he asked me to help him with his new composition, the mass-setting that was to become
Missa Cuiusvis toni
. I 
remember the occasion well. It was after Mass on the feast of St Michael and All Angels.

‘Geoffroy,' he said (he always called me by my first name), ‘I remember that, as a young boy, you had an elegant hand. I wonder if you would be good enough to help me with some work I am doing? My usual scribe is unavailable.'

There was only one answer.

Thus the first composition upon which I worked with him was that very mass, the
Missa Cuiusvis toni
. And that is why it holds the place it does in my heart. It was a piece that I came to know well, not just through singing it many times with Jehan himself at the Abbey of St Martin, but because I was there at the inception of the idea and responsible for its first realisation in written form. Jehan could have asked one of the monks who worked daily in the scriptorium to write out the music, yet he preferred to work with someone familiar with singing. He explained: St Gregory had not merely written down the chants when the Holy Spirit had dictated them to him, he had understood them too. In this – blasphemous as it might be, and with all due humility – it was I who was St Gregory. Jehan, of course, was the true Orpheus.

Today the Mass was sung by four men whilst the choirboys sang the plainsong, and all the singers accomplished their task commendably. Seated in my stall, I was able to see and hear, yet as always, my awareness of the difficulties of their task made taking pleasure from their endeavours difficult. I reminded myself that we should not be bound by earthly matters, and instead, quite properly, I followed the direction of their praise: to God in heaven. If I might be permitted to comment, I would say that the endings of the Credo and the Kyrie were uncertain and, rather than a sense of finality, I experienced instead a feeling of loss, hardly a fitting ending for a statement of our faith in God. That would not have happened in our day when the choir was enlarged by new appointments made by Louis XI. Then, with more singers swelling our ranks, one would have heard a noise more suited to the expression of faith. Nor would the Mass have taken so long given our preference for faster speeds.

The plainsong was acceptable. Plainsong is the foundation, the rock upon which the education of choirboys is built. It must proceed from the heart and be controlled through breathing and a gentle movement of the body. The boys are not so good this year. There is a roughness of tone where there should be sweetness, a hesitancy of movement that cracks the line so one hears individual notes and isolated voices. Plainsong should flow like a river. The occasional inflections and decorations should be like the stones that lie on the river bed, making no disturbance to the progress of the water, but suggesting instead a design beneath the surface. One or two voices dominated where the aim is to sing praises to the Creator
una voce
[with one voice], as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abed'nego did when they were thrown into the fiery furnace. Only a practised eye like mine, weakened as it is by old age, could discern the occasional look between the boys when one voice threatened to drag the others back; only a trained ear like mine could hear a syllable applied to the wrong note.

Observing the
jeune chapelain
[the oldest boy] commanding the younger ones, I fell to thinking about Jehan's theory about the young Compère and the young Desprez. Jehan liked to study causes and, though he had no proof, he believed that their time as choirboys at St Quentin was the root of their unsteady relationship.

Loyset Compère was the older of the two by some five years and thus, when Josquin Desprez arrived from his home in Condé, Loyset would have been one of the senior boys with authority over Josquin. According to Jehan, as children they would have been much as they were as adults: Compère would have been innocent and unaware, blind to his own abilities, and unable to communicate with people, for he could not understand the emotions of others; Desprez, by contrast, was defined by his confrontations with others and, throughout his life, was prepared for a fight if he thought he had been in any way slighted. Such physicality was a family trait, or so it was said, for Desprez's father had been a violent man, which is why the young Josquin was cared for by his uncle and aunt.

I could quite easily imagine little Loys and little Jos meeting at St Quentin, the former already renowned and respected for having composed a piece that the choir performed occasionally, even though he was but thirteen years old, and little Jos, ambitious even at the tender age of eight, immediately jealous. Put the unaware older boy in charge of the arrogant younger one, and conflict would be the consequence.

 For anyone else, the resentments of youth have been forgotten when they became men. But Desprez never forgot. And Desprez never forgave. I never saw Desprez smile, nor did I know the sound of his laugh. If I ask myself now to describe him, all I can summon are images of darkness and anger – those piercing small eyes, his shaded complexion, and the constant concentration expressed as a scowl. He was not a happy man. In contrast, Compère was always smiling, the expression of one who does not fully understand, like a child who does not comprehend the conversation of adults. And he laughed a lot as well, like the braying of a donkey. For all that, and for all his lack of social grace, he was a man full of joy and without guile.

Compère was to Desprez as Esau was to Jacob, the elder in possession of a birthright that the younger felt was rightfully his but which he could only gain through deception. And, even in later life, when Desprez had become the more celebrated of the two, he must have believed he had achieved fame by guile, not because of his own ability.

There was never to be a reconciliation between them. Undoubtedly Compère would have said to Desprez, had he been asked, the same words that Esau said to Jacob:
et ille habeo ait plurima, frater, mi sint tua tibi
[And he said: I have plenty, my brother, keep what is thine for thyself]. But even if Compère had said it, Desprez would never have been able to accept it for thereby he would have had to acknowledge to himself his own true nature. Such wilful blindness was similarly evident in the younger's opinion of the elder's music: Desprez believed that Compère was the better composer. It was an opinion that only Desprez held, one that he sustained throughout his life against the force of his own reputation. He formed that view as a child, when it was undoubtedly true, but to believe it as an adult was possible only for a man who could never admit he was wrong. Thus Desprez hated himself, and his anger turned into hatred of Compère, a man who remained happily oblivious.

Desprez was a great composer, perhaps even greater than Jehan, yet he himself never believed it. When he looked at Compère or heard his name, all he saw was an older, more celebrated figure. Yet Compère remained a child throughout his life, from his days as a choirboy to his elevated state as a composer. Little Jos? Well, he became a monster. A monster with talent.

 

 

Chapter 8
 

The deep, intense sleep that had overwhelmed him after breakfast was broken by the bump of the plane onto the tarmac. For a moment Andrew thought he was back at home, that perhaps he'd fallen out of bed or John had jumped on top of him. The announcement from the captain to remain seated until the seat belt signs had been turned off returned him to his prosaic surroundings; he was still on an aeroplane, the second of his three flights. His eyes were glued shut and his body felt too weary to have experienced real sleep. God, why had he done this? He could have broken the trip here in London, maybe stayed near the British Library, drunk a pint of beer and eaten fish and chips. Budget was the main reason, that and the argument he'd had with Karen when he'd announced that he would be attending the conference in Tours ‘and might fit in a trip to Paris at the same time'.

It had come out the wrong way, as things always seemed to. What he should have said was that he would take advantage of flying all that way to do some research. A couple of days in the Bibliothèque Nationale might provide him with circumstantial evidence to prove authorship of the motet, and further biographical detail about Geoffroy Chiron whose letter accompanied it. If he'd framed his plan in terms vague enough to suggest his pursuit was a dull and necessary chore, holding little interest for him, then he might have stood a chance, but the veiled implication that he was hiding the real reason had raised Karen's suspicions. Almost immediately he'd found himself in the middle of one of their familiar rows with its well-visited themes: his selfishness, her sacrifices, and their shared responsibility for John. The subsequent price of his lack of forethought was forty-eight hours of the silent treatment, broken only by the occasional terse instruction and heavy sighs when he failed to fulfil simple domestic tasks. He had responded in kind, conducting a loud conversation with his travel agent. ‘You're sure I can make that connection?' he'd asked, frowning and shaking his head. ‘Well,' he added, sucking his teeth, ‘I suppose it will have to be like that.' Now, halfway through his arduous journey, he felt a stab of pure hatred for his wife, which softened only slightly into angry jealousy as he thought of her sleeping soundly in their bed.

In the musty air of Heathrow's Terminal Four, he eased the stiffness out of his body with a gentle walk and followed the directions provided by the prim British Airways ground staff to his gate. As his final destination was Paris, the indignities
of immigration and customs were mercifully few; he'd face more at Charles de Gaulle airport.

To sit down would be to risk being overcome by sleep and missing his flight, so he bought a coffee and a chocolate bar then browsed the newsagents where he bought
The Times
and
The Gramophone
. Normally he wouldn't consider looking at such a magazine, but its cover promised an article on Ockeghem and, on further investigation, he found it contained an interview with Emma Mitchell of Beyond Compère. Given that he was meeting her later that day, it seemed propitious, yet when he reached the boarding area and saw Emma Mitchell sitting there, the coincidence was less easy to dismiss. For a split second he wondered, had she come to meet him? In his tired state he was unable to immediately accept the obvious explanation: that she and her group were simply on the same plane to the conference.

He was tempted to introduce himself, but reasoned that he was in no fit state. The ground had been shifting beneath his feet since he'd landed as if it was made from the same rubberised walkway as the travelators that had aided his journey across the terminal, and he was hardly at his best. His clothes were rumpled, his teeth un-brushed and his body limp with fatigue. He took a seat, set down his coffee, and picked up his purchases.
The Times
provided cover and, like a teenager hiding a pornographic magazine inside something more respectable, he opened up
The Gramophone
behind the newspaper. The real Emma Mitchell was sitting just twenty feet away with several other people, all of them dressed casually in jeans, jumpers and sweat-shirts. These must be the members of her group, and the photograph accompanying the interview provided the key: Susan Moore, Claire Slingsby, and Peter Merrill were sitting together, and Emma Mitchell herself was sitting next to a man whom the photo identified as Oliver Martin. Emma was smaller than Andrew had expected,
gamine
as the French would have it, with her short hair and elfin features. He saw her nudge Oliver Martin and point out something in her newspaper at which they both laughed. Andrew wondered if they were a couple. There was something about their body language that suggested they were, though he had no faith in his powers of observation and knew that he lacked a simple understanding of others' motivations and behaviour. Gossip and innuendo provided most people with an appreciation of the human condition rendered in complex hues of diverse colours, yet to Andrew the emotional world was sketched in black and white. Affairs between colleagues had usually run the entire course, from desperate secret assignations to bitter dénouement, before he found out. Rivalries and long-held resentments between academics that he read as hyperbole or irrelevant diversions turned out to be evidence of intense, immature, territorial skirmishes. And tensions in his own marriage always took him by surprise. He certainly couldn't assume, then, that Emma and Oliver Martin were a couple. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realised this was probably the kind of easy relationship that actors and performers usually enjoyed. It was all ‘darling' this and ‘darling' that, wasn't it? Perhaps this Oliver was actually gay or even bisexual? He wouldn't be surprised if they'd all slept with each other.

He scanned the interview. It began, predictably enough, with the announcement of the Ockeghem anniversary. Suddenly he was fully awake. This was the day! This was the day and he'd forgotten it! It was the travel of course, the jetlag and the resultant confusion of time. But, yes, it was February 6
th
, 1997, exactly five hundred years since the death of Johannes Ockeghem. Andrew felt as if he'd betrayed the composer; today, of all days, his first waking thought should have been for him. Ironically, obsession with Ockeghem was exactly what Karen had once bitterly accused him of, and now, here he was, on his own, free to enjoy the moment and he'd forgotten. It was as if one of his parents had died and he'd forgotten to commemorate the day. He reached for a further example with which to berate himself, but all he could come up with was forgetting his wedding anniversary, something he'd done twice in five years. He made a small embarrassed noise in his throat as he remembered Karen's reactions: the first time she'd been angry; the second, upset as she was, she had been unnervingly calm, as though she had expected it. He looked back at the article to push the thought away. There was little here that he didn't know. It traced the original theatrical production of
Beyond Compère
, the transition from a stage show to a concert-giving group, and the subsequent recordings. A CD of Ockeghem would be out next month, a review of which appeared elsewhere in the magazine.

Other than that, there was little of interest to Andrew beside Emma's assertion that she wouldn't necessarily devote her entire career to early music: she was still young and still developing as a musician. The only other thing that caught his eye was a constant refusal to call it ‘
her
group', a refrain to which the interviewer drew attention.
The
group, she said, was a collection of talented individuals, not a pack of which she was the leader. They certainly didn't need her on stage to conduct a
chanson
, for example. Her role, she emphasised, was very much as a programmer and researcher and, to use the term in the theatrical sense, director. Looking across at her now, her hand gently stroking Oliver's arm, she certainly didn't look autocratic.

He turned to the review.

BOOK: Time Will Tell
10.48Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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