The Madrigal
Page 8
Other than the music I bring in for sight-reading practice, they choose their own tunes. They can each bring in a new piece every few months or so, and we have a session where we all listen to what’s been collected—on CD or from sheet music or sometimes the kid will just sing it out from memory after listening to Great Aunt Gertrude, or somebody. They each have to say why they think it’s important for us to learn the piece they’ve brought, what we are going to learn, what the significance of the piece is for them in terms of history, emotion, musical innovation, or whatever. There are some guidelines, though. In any given semester we try not to duplicate composers or styles or eras. The result is a far broader repertoire than I would have imagined they’d choose; they really push themselves and stretch their musical tastes. It’s become a bit of a competition in an easygoing way. Once in a while someone will even bring in something that I—or Jiro—have never heard before.
Jiro is our accompanist. He has a small piano lamp over his sheet music, and has trained one of his children to turn his pages for him—a perfectly proportioned, musical child who learned to read notes before she learned to read letters, and can remember when to turn the page without reading of any kind—but is still too young to come and sing in the choir.
We were working on a tune with Becky. She’d brought in a piece that her Polish grandmother used to sing along with on an old LP, and there was a soprano solo part that was a little tricky. It’s another unwritten rule that you get to sing the solo or lead part of the piece you bring in, if your voice is in the right range. We went over the first few bars about ten times, until I thought she had it. I gave her a little break while we went through the whole piece, and then started up from the beginning again. She missed again, a quarter beat late, but it didn’t even register with me until she stopped singing completely, a few bars in.
“I’m not any good at skipping, either, when the ropes are already turning,” Becky said.
I thought she might cry, so I left it until the next week. They’re supposed to be having fun.
MY FIRST CHOIR, the Boys and Men’s Choir at St. George’s, practised on Friday nights. I went for two months before I was allowed to sing at a service or concert. The man from the organ bench, who turned out to be Arthur Grey, the choirmaster, first made me learn every song in the boys’ repertoire. The music was like nothing I had ever sung before; I learned plain chant and the rudiments of musical notation. To me, we all sounded like the winged creatures who played on the clouds on the covers of our music folders. For the first time in my life, I was singing with other people for whom music was clearly a serious, other-worldly, and, most importantly, public business.
For the first few weeks, since I only came to practise, there was only the singing. I didn’t think there could be anything else; that was Heaven enough. But just before Thanksgiving, Arthur Grey kept me behind after the other boys had gone and told me he expected me to attend the early Sunday service even though I was not yet ready to sing at it.
“There is Someone I want you to meet,” he said.
So on Sundays at nine-fifteen I pulled on my cleanest, least-worn jeans, combed my hair, and ran out of the house through the falling leaves, zigzagging through the dappled streets. As directed, I sat in the front pew—by this time I knew it was a pew—and listened to the Very Reverend John Harris preach. He was a tall, thin man with a kind face, and his sermons captured me and everyone else in what he called “the hallway of God.” “Whichever door you open,” he declared, “do it in the service of the Lord.” As he spoke, I saw the colours of the window glass dance on the dark floor, and heard the whisper of wings. I began to learn what angels were. I began to imagine a God watching me, and everyone, from the blazing sky.
I was invited to sing with the choir at the Christmas service. We’d practised carols every Saturday from the middle of November. We sang “Adeste Fidelis,” Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” and the “Magnificat.” During practice, Mr. Grey always made me sing “Silent Night” on my own, facing the other boys—I thought it was because I couldn’t get the phrasing quite right. When I sang it, solo, in front of a packed congregation at the midnight service on Christmas Eve, I was briefly sorry that I hadn’t invited my mother—who believed, no doubt, that I was at home, asleep in bed.
I think that was the only time I thought of inviting her; soon, self-centred boyhood, and the joy of finally finding a place to belong, took her almost entirely from my mind. It has been hard to forgive myself for this, even though I was just a child. It’s been harder to forgive those adults around me who took me unthinkingly from my mother’s life. I know some of them thought they were saving me from something terrible; others, that they were providing me with the opportunity to develop an exceptional talent. They believed I should be grateful, and I was, and I am. That small dark-haired boy was saved, and his musical talent grew—and was put on display. But somewhere, we suffered, my mother and I both. She, because she lost me before I knew enough to sing with her. I, because I was taken alone into a life that was not my own. And in the end the consequences were terrible.
Occasionally, that first year, I would catch a glimpse of Constable Miller in the congregation. Once I saw him pointing me out to the young woman at his side—his girlfriend or his wife. I knew he was laying some kind of claim to me, to my being there in the choir. I didn’t mind, really. He was only one of what would turn out to be a number of men who felt they’d saved my life. I never thought of them as father figures, since I’d never really felt my father’s absence. If anything, I thought of them as Filander stand-ins, even though they were much older and didn’t look like me at all.
NOT LONG AFTER MY CHOIR SOLO that Christmas, there was a meeting of my community benefactors. My mother was either not invited or she chose not to attend; to this day I am not sure which is the case. It was held in the Rectory of St. George’s. I was asked to arrive promptly at a certain time and wait outside. Like Pip, I knew they existed, these benefactors, but I’d had no idea who they were until I was called in to stand before them. I expected to see the Reverend and the choirmaster, but Ed was there as well, and Constable Miller, and my grade six teacher, Mr. Bergeson, and the principal from Central. There was also a social worker who had been to the house a few times to talk to my mother about my brothers, but who had never seemed particularly interested in me. I didn’t even know her name.
There was also a severe-looking man in a thick black gown who was introduced to me as the choirmaster, Father Gregory, from St. Mary’s Cathedral.
“A Catholic cathedral,” said the Very Reverend Harris, but I didn’t understand the remark’s significance. I understood very little of what happened during my childhood, or at least, what seemed to be happening then has an entirely different meaning now; I guess that’s just the way of it. It seems such a distant place from this perspective, and I’m hardly old yet. We think we can explain ourselves to others by telling them the details of our young lives, our first families; really, I think we are trying hard to look back and understand ourselves in the days before we understood anything.
I remember my hands were very cold—I’d run through the winter streets without any mittens. After less than half a year in the choir, I knew not to stand with my hands in my pockets in front of my elders. I remember little of what was said among the adults at this meeting. I held my aching hands behind my back, worrying about whether that was okay or not, and squeezed my fingers together, five, and then five, alternately, throughout the ten minutes that so profoundly altered the course of my life. I remember wishing for Filander, those other fingers.
I was asked to sing “Silent Night,” even though it was January. It was explained to Father Gregory that this was the only solo I knew. I opened my mouth to object to this, since even then my repertoire of songs was enormous, but Arthur Grey shushed me quickly, using the hand movements he used with the choir to signal the dying of a note.
I sang for them,
standing on the deep blue carpet in front of the Rectory table. Father Gregory closed his eyes. I thought he’d gone to sleep, but when the last note had risen on the air he opened his eyes upwards as if to follow the lingering C to heaven.
“Ah,” he said. “I see.” He looked around at the other faces, nodding some mysterious agreement, as if he now understood something that he hadn’t previously. “And this has been achieved with virtually no training?”
“I found him on the street,” said Constable Miller.
“He’s had a few months of voice lessons,” said Ed.
Father Gregory raised his eyebrows. “Where did you learn to sing?” he asked me. Other than the actual singing, this small exchange was the only time I was called upon to contribute to the meeting.
“From my mother.”
“Ah” he said, “there is music in the family, then! Where does your mother sing?”
“In the kitchen,” I admitted reluctantly. He was, no doubt, expecting me to name a choir or a choral society. My embarrassment was because I believed that real music required an audience, and I was afraid that they would find her kitchen singing counterfeit solely because of its solitary location. I did not yet know that music always has an audience, even if there is only one person, the singer herself, to hear it. I did not yet understand how music changes the way the air moves around the world, the butterfly effect of quarter notes and half notes and the controlled intake of breath.
I don’t remember what the response to this admission was—whether he smiled or responded in any way, or simply soldiered on with the business of my future.
There was a flurry of talk that I didn’t understand. It didn’t last very long. It seemed that most of the group was in accord before I had even arrived. Something had been pondered and debated and decided about me, but I did not know for months what that something was. Just before I was told I could go, Arthur Grey said: “I will teach him the treble solo from Allegri’s ‘Miserere’ for his audition,” and Father Gregory nodded his approval. I don’t expect any of the others had the faintest idea what this piece sounded like. I didn’t then, either.
“Well, he can’t keep singing ‘Silent Night,’ said the principal. They all laughed and began to put on their scarves and coats, and I was told I could go home.
In this considered way, the Anglicans handed me over to the Catholics. When I finally realized what had happened, it did not occur to me to wonder if God would mind. I certainly did not.
ED TELLS ME NOW that he had serious reservations about the benefactors’ plan, and that he voiced them at the meeting. I don’t know if this is true. I don’t remember any dissent, but I know that doesn’t mean much after twenty-five years. He goes through phases where he gets pretty hung up on this.
“You don’t hold it against me, do you Frederick?” he asks, over and over. Given the way things turned out, he needs periodic reassurance that he is not to blame. I give it to him; I don’t mind not knowing what the truth is. These days I am not sure there is any such thing.
“I loved St. Mary’s, Ed,” I tell him. And that is true, while not being strictly Truth.
I HAD A VISIT FROM THE BIBLE. It came to my door accompanied by two earnest young men in suits, not yet done with pimples. “Good day, Sir,” one of them said. In my first glance I registered the black book under the elbow of one and a pile of pamphlets in the hands of the other, and started backing away instantly.
“No thanks,” I said. I was shaking my head, closing the door.
I do not think they teach them this in soul-saving school, but one of them—the taller one, with worse acne—leaned forward and put his boot in the diminishing crack. The bottom of the door hit his foot with a thunk, and shuddered to a stop.
A hand reached into the crack, waving a coloured pamphlet very close to my face.
“Sir?” said the boy. His voice was apologetic and too young to be doing this, and it was like an echo of a voice that had been unheard for twenty years. I felt sorry for him. I opened the door again.
“If you could just take a copy?” he almost begged. “We have to personally deliver a certain number before—” He stopped himself, and there was an awkward pause, and the two young men looked at each other doubtfully.
“Before what?” I asked.
“Before we stop for lunch,” his companion finished.
“How many?” I asked. “I didn’t know you guys had a quota to meet. How many do you have to deliver before lunch?”
“Well … about twenty.” The taller one removed his foot from the door, but still held the tract in his outstretched hand. There wasn’t much difference between them except for height, a dozen pimples, and the knots in their ties. Their eyes held the same amount of adolescent hunger.
I looked at my watch. “Can you just give me twenty?” I held out my hand.
The two boys looked at each other uncomfortably.
“All right, forget I said that. How many have you delivered so far?”
“Well … I think it’s … three, Sir.”
“Three? That’s seventeen more.”
“Yes, Sir. Unless we get a chance to talk to somebody. That counts more. Like, really talk to them. Like, get invited to sit on the porch and have a good heart to heart or something….” Tall One’s hand was finally lowering; we all looked at the tiny porch, where one lonely kitchen chair would fill all the available space.
“So do you like pizza?” I asked.
THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF THE EXODUS is a strange one. All that hardening of the Pharaoh’s heart! All that bloody murder of innocents! All that business about yeast! I didn’t remember half of it, though I don’t think it was only a memory issue. I suspect the versions I’d been taught in religion class and had heard preached from pulpits had been somewhat sanitized, with all the questionable bits left out. I think that happens a lot. Also, it seems that when God contradicts himself, as he does in spades, it is left to biblical scholars to decide what he really meant—and left to the rest of the flock to just accept the official verdict.
The pizza was two-thirds gone when we finally got to the part about the Ten Commandments and Moses going up and down the mountain like a yo-yo. All that arguing with God! First there are the commandments themselves, a kind of moral summary, followed by many passages that read like the Criminal Code for Israelites, and then a how-to guide on the construction and outfitting of a temple.
Here’s one of the parts I totally forgot about: when God called Moses up to the mountain, mostly he told him to bring his brother along, too.
Here’s another part I totally forgot about: when Moses came down from the mountain with the word of God written in stone, he found his people bored of waiting for his return, busy worshipping a golden calf, dancing, and singing. Turns out he’d left his brother in charge. Moses was so angry about the calf that he threw the stone tablets on the ground, and they broke. And some time later he had to go up and get God to write it all down again. He was so angry about the singing that he orchestrated the killing of three thousand of his own people in punishment. And then he set up—
“Wait, wait, wait,” I said. “He what?”
“They were totally out of control,” said Tall One. “Singing for no reason.” He was examining the crust he held in his hand, to see if there was any more meat on it. He decided not, discarded it, and helped himself to another piece, lowering the sagging end into his mouth like manna from heaven.
“He killed them because they’d been singing?” I asked.
MUSIC AND RELIGION HAVE LONG BEEN BEDFELLOWS. Some music historians have even suggested that we would not have music as we know it today in the West if we hadn’t had the Christian church with its monkish monopoly on musical notation. They suggest that all the early “folk music”—the music of the people—has been lost. What remains in the record is the history of music sung to the greater glory of God.
My early lack of religious education seemed part of the Grand Scheme. It made my pre-adolescent conversion more meaningful, as if God had really gone out of his way to find me. I began to believe that everything in my life led to the moment that He came looking. It wasn’t merely a Call, it was a Home Visit.
When I was twelve I saw God on my bedroom wall.
It was dark. A faint grey light filtered in from the front hallway, through the translucent white of the Canadian flags: the streetlight through the glass in the front door. My bed was pushed up against the wall opposite the doorway, lengthwise, underneath the fake mantle that hung above the fake fire grate. There was a real chimney behind there, for the clattering oil furnace in the basement. If I held my ear tightly up against the wall, I could sometimes hear a resonance from the SS’s voices in the room upstairs; I could never actually make out what they were saying, but could tell enough from the flow of words and blasts of expletives to determine how far I should stay out of their way. I wasn’t doing that then, though; my brothers were all out, my mother was asleep, and the house was dead quiet, but expectant—a fermata on the rest. I was lying on my back, staring up at the ceiling.
I had been trying to communicate with God for months. I wrote letters on stationery that I found in the vestry at St. George’s. It never occurred to me at the time to wonder if this was stealing since I believed that the paper had been placed there for this manifest purpose, to write notes to God. Honestly, I have no memory now of what I wrote, but I do know I made a serious effort at penmanship, folded the paper carefully, slid the half-sheet under a cracked tile in the fire grate—as if God were Santa Claus or a masculine Mary Poppins—and went to sleep trembling. I woke in the morning still trembling, reached out and retrieved and unfolded the paper, now curiously damp, hoping for who knows what?—an answer written in gold calligraphy, Express Post from heaven.