Adeena could hear his excitement. “You’re a blood hound for the truth, no matter who you piss off.”
“Yup. The PMO is lining up their heavy hitters as we speak. They’ve already got hacks on all the talk shows trying to protect their asses.”
“The Prime Minister’s Office?” Adeena whistled.
“Oui, mademoiselle,” Philippe replied with glee. “But the real fun is just getting started. I’m going to be working from Toronto for a few days chasing the story a bit more. I want to see how deep the shit is really piled.”
He paused for a few seconds. “I miss you, and . . .” he hesitated, unable to finish his thought.
“Me too,” Adeena said softly. “And what?”
“And, well, I have something. Something for you. I’ll be home Friday. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
“Have to run babe, my taxi's here,” he said and then the line went dead.
She laid the phone down, wondering what he had for her. She saw the score on the table and picked it up again. It was almost as if her grandmother was here, talking to her through the pages of this composition. Could she have known that Adeena had actually started to write this score herself?
She was sure they were the same notes. She dug up her old composition from her closet, laid it down beside the yellowed notebook from across the sea. She carefully compared the two works. The first five bars were note-for-note identical!
She stared out the window, watching dark clouds gathering over the Ottawa River, a sheet of rain falling far off in the distance. Her mind wandered, trying to make sense of the music. Who had written it - this score that completed to perfection something Adeena herself had never been able to finish?
And it was a ‘cantata,’ meant to be sung. But there were no lyrics in these ancient sheets. As she went through the rest of the score, Adeena saw how the opening phrases were used in a type of ‘ritornello’ form. Her university music professor would have loved this, as he used to lecture incessantly about how Vivaldi and Bach used the technique of including recurring variations of the same musical passage in their Baroque masterpieces.
She closed her eyes a moment, trying to play the whole score in her head. She needed other musicians to hear how it all came together.
I wonder if Walter is busy, she thought as she looked up his number on her iPhone.
ADEENA WAS ENRAPTURED by the music.
Walter had gladly agreed to work with her and even found a space for them at the home of Maria Valenzuela from the National Arts Centre Orchestra. She gladly volunteered to join them. Maria was a dark-haired virtuoso violinist in her late thirties who lived alone in a new upscale home near Island Park Drive.
Over the next four days, the three musicians explored the lost score. Each contributed ideas about style, texture, and pacing. The more they played, the more they were taken by it, as they discovered little nuances and made adjustments to their performances.
Lyrics came to Adeena the more they played. She would sing them to herself as she played, beginning with the phrase ‘Now that the time has come.’ The words began to take form in her head, and she jotted bits down after each session.
As they were setting up to play on Thursday evening, Maria turned to Adeena. “This music, it’s inside of me now,” Maria said. “The structure is so simple, but it has so much emotional depth. There’s such longing and yearning and . . .” she paused, studying Walter settling at the piano, “and loss,” she said finally, finishing her thought looking down at the floor.
Adeena reached for her bow. “I know what you mean. It’s almost like,” she paused searching for a way to express her feelings, “like liquid sadness. It seems to pour off the pages as we play.”
Walter seemed oblivious to the women’s analysis as he took a sip of water, put his glass down near the piano and pulled up his stool. “Ready, ladies?” he said.
As Walter began on the piano, Adeena felt the effects of the music again, the electricity of creation arcing through the circuits of her mind. These sessions had become one of the most powerful creative experiences she could ever recall. Only one other time could compare to these sessions of musical conception.
As a teenager, Adeena and her punk-rocker boyfriend Kurt had gone to her parents’ cottage on Wolfe Lake for the weekend while her folks were out of town. Besides smoking pot and having sex on every piece of furniture, Adeena and Kurt shared one desire – to make music.
They created a composition they christened Lake Nights. As Kurt worked out chords on his acoustic guitar, Adeena wrote the lyrics and composed the chorus on the portable piano her dad kept at the lake. She remembered how Kurt, a manicured city boy, had found her dad’s loon whistle shortly after they arrived at the cottage.
“What the hell is this?” he said, picking up the ivory-coloured, porcelain flute. It had an adjustable wooden stick inside of it, marked with tiny black lines on the outside to indicate the correct positions for creating various loon calls.
“It’s for calling loons,” Adeena laughed, as she watched him bring the flute to his lips and pull the wooden stick all the way out. Kurt blew it tentatively, making a strangely captivating wailing whistle on his first attempt.
“Cool!” he smiled and then tried it a few times. Adeena thought it perfectly mimicked the cries of the black loons that were always on the lake in the summer. Kurt was thrilled with his discovery. “We can use this!”
The plaintive tones of the loon whistle added a mystical sense to their finished composition. They recorded it on Kurt’s laptop and the act of creating and then listening to the final mix under a cloudless night sky, bursting with twinkling stars and an explosion of constellations, was a profound experience for Adeena. It was on par to seeing Maya Beiser’s solo on the cello as a young girl.
Now, as she started to move her bow across the strings of her cello, Adeena again felt the same intoxicating rush. She was giving life to a composition that had remained silent for nearly three centuries, a composition that completed a musical idea that she herself had begun. Together with Walter and Maria, they helped release notes confined for so long to the pages of dusty parchment.
After they finished playing, there was a long moment of silence from the three musicians. Each was lost in their own thoughts, flushed from the emotions their performance had stirred within. Walter spoke first. “Adeena,” he said with an unusually serious tone, “this music is going to change your life. I hope you’re ready.”
Maria, still holding her violin, stood up and she too seemed overcome. Her eyes were moist as she spoke her mind. “Walter’s right, Adeena. This music needs to be performed. Share it with the world,” she said, touching Adeena’s shoulder. “I’m honoured to have been a part of its re-discovery. Thank-you.”
DRIVING HOME THAT night, Adeena reflected on how the music had affected Walter and Maria. An emotion came over them, almost like a spell, each time they began to play. She thought about Maria’s moving performance, her long dark hair cascading in waves, moving slowly from side-to-side as she was drawn into the depths of the music.
Adeena thought again about the missing lyrics. There was no indication of the libretto for the Voci Soprano section. It was like they were playing the music from a Beatles song without knowing the words. As powerful as the piece was as an instrumental, Adeena wondered what effect the vocals would add.
She flashed back to the words she had written herself, when this music had first come to her one night. She smiled thinking about that day, getting her tongue pierced and fainting, and then riding home in the backseat of her mother’s car, working out lyrics in her head, pretending to be asleep.
Had she written them down? If so, they were long gone. Kurt had insisted on her helping him with his own song, and nothing more became of her backseat masterpiece.
As she drove she tried to remember those words. Were they still inside her somewhere? Could she find them again?
Maybe she mused, I just need get my tongu
e pierced again and they’ll all come back to me.
Pulling into the parking garage, she wondered what was next. Walter was still pleading with the music director at the NAC to let them perform the composition for him. The director said he was curious about the work, and wanted to see the score. Walter agreed, but only if they could perform it for him first.
She pulled into her parking garage, found her spot and turned off the ignition. She closed her eyes and her grandmother’s face flashed before Adeena.
Was she still guiding her, reaching out through this music?
FRIEDRICH LANG GLARED at his computer screen through gaunt, hollowed eyes.
He scratched his hand across his unshaven face as he watched the cursor mindlessly follow the progress of the musical notes that filled the room.
It was just after 3 AM.
An empty wineglass sat on top of his keyboard. Sheets of paper were strewn over the floor of his studio and torn pieces of paper were taped to the walls. Most of the lined score sheets had notations in red ink; many scratched out with notes off to the side in German.
“Christ!” he moaned as he listened to the playback in anger. He had enough and could no longer focus. He stood up, stopped the playback with a disgusted grunt and turned off the light.
The moonlight peeked through the windows and cast a soft glow on the portrait of Ludwig van Beethoven that dominated Lange’s work area. He studied the portrait for a moment and shook his head in disgust.
“Fuck you!” he said as he walked away and shut the door on the torture chamber that was his music studio.
7
THE LOUD CHIRP from Walter’s Chevy Camaro confirmed it was armed and locked. The sound boomeranged off the concrete walls off the NAC’s underground parking lot, where he had found an empty oasis near a back wall. There, his precious could hide, protected from being accidentally scraped by the rusted cars of the proletariat.
His new toy gleamed proudly in its blue velvet metallic paint. Only Walter’s red ‘67 Corvette Stingray, carefully stored in a garage all winter, was dearer to him.
He looked at his watch and then checked the Camaro one more time. Its menacing look reminded him of his boss, Friedrich Lang - ready to roll over anything in its path.
Walter turned away and strode toward the lobby, thinking about Adeena. What a day this must be for her! He was so relieved when Friedrich agreed to give her another chance. Thank God William had found that score in Scotland. It seemed the music was really the conductor’s main interest.
But if it gave Adeena an opportunity, so be it.
By the time Walter had walked through the parking garage and into the flood of daylight pouring through the gracious modern architecture of the National Arts Centre, he still had ten minutes before the two o’clock audition. Maybe “audition” was the wrong word. This was something a little different - a musical premiere?
As he sauntered past Southam Hall on his way toward Friedrich’s office, Maria carrying her violin case, came speeding towards him. Her face was contorted in displeasure.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Lang! I don’t get that guy.”
“Why? What is it?”
“He’s in there with Adeena. She got here early.”
Walter was confused. “Okay, and so? What’re they doing?”
“Not sure, but Lang said he didn’t need us. He is a great violinist after all,” Maria replied in resignation. “He started fooling with the piano part of the score as soon as Adeena showed it to him. He asked me to leave and shut the door. Said he would be fine and just to leave them alone!”
“Really?” Walter said with a peevish tone. “He is a nut!”
He looked at Maria, her sequinned black dress sparkling like a perfectly-buffed Cadillac.
She shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s go get a latté. We can come back later, in case he changes his mind.”
“Good idea!” Walter smiled as they turned and left together.
ADEENA WASN’T SURE what to make of her situation.
An hour ago, the music director of the National Arts Centre Orchestra was almost a stranger to her, more mythical creature than real person. Now, as she stood beside Friedrich Lang, with the pages of her score spread all over his piano, they were like old comrades.
She surveyed his private practice room. Baffles dampened reflected sound making the acoustics rich and pure. A row of spotlights lit a line of framed photographs highlighting Friedrich’s career, conducting and performing on stages around the world. One dramatic series of black and white photos captured him in performance at Carnegie Hall, dripping in sweat, entranced in what must have been a sorrowful violin solo.
“Ja! Ja! I see how this will work,” Lang shouted as he played parts of the score on the piano, getting a feel for the tone and tempo and muttering to himself.
Adeena began to worry that his interest was only in the music she had brought him.
“Would you like to hear me play, Mr. Lang?” she finally asked tentatively.
He suddenly stopped, looked up from the piano and stared at her, as if seeing her for the first time. “What?” he asked, focusing on her and then over at her cello case, propped up in the corner. “Yes, of course! Bring your cello over here. Let’s try playing this through, together.”
Adeena felt relieved as she unpacked the cello and lifted it carefully from the case and walked towards him. He stared at the old instrument she held.
“That’s your cello?” he asked. “No endpin? Where did you get that?”
Adeena felt her heart pounding through her chest like it might expose her at any second. She took a deep breath and spoke carefully.
“It’s the. . . the Duncan Cello,” she said matter-of-factly. “I work at the National Gallery and I have, uh, well . . . I have special permission to use it.”
Lang studied her carefully and Adeena wished she could read his thoughts.
“Really? I just saw a story about it on the news.” He examined it more closely and slapped his hands together in hearty approval. “Five million dollars? Scheisse! Okay, you’ve got my attention young lady.”
Lang stood up and moved a wooden stool near the piano. He motioned for her to sit.
“Let’s play my dear. See what we can do with this piece!”
AS THE CONDUCTOR focused on her music, Adeena glanced toward the open cello case and the original copy of the score in its plastic case. An image of her grandmother flashed in her mind. She mouthed a silent “Thank-you” to her.
It had not been easy to “borrow” the Duncan Cello from the National Gallery. Indeed it had required a certain degree of deviousness on her part. But for the moment, cello and musician were together. At last, she could perform the music that seemed a part of who she was with an instrument that felt like it had always belonged to her.
Adeena listened to the opening bars of the music coming from the piano. The conductor was astute. He understood this music instinctively. The effect on his face was clear and his focus profound as his fingers touched the keys. Lang’s head began to sway, directing an invisible orchestra in front of him.
Adeena sat watching him on a wooden stool. She pulled the Duncan Cello between her legs. It somehow felt naturally comfortable. This instrument was her voice, its haunting timbre was able to bestir her nethermost emotions with a depth she had never experienced. It brought release to the creativity imprisoned within her. As she traced her fingers along the smooth wood grain of its weathered fingerboard, a rush of blood pounded within her trembling hands.
Lang looked up from the piano. He seemed entranced as well, as he gave a slight nod of his head for her to begin, closing his eyes to better concentrate on the music.
Adeena tightened her grip, ready to start the dark, timeless tango of cello and cellist.
Slowly, she began to play. As the strands of her taut horse-hair bow glided across the strings of the cello with a lush friction, an odd sensation swept over her. The harmonics of cello and piano com
bined to create a sense of yearning, enveloping the windowless chamber in a wave of sound that focused the emotions rising within her.
Adeena closed her eyes and felt her head spin. It was like a drug-induced high, but more potent than anything she had ever felt. The lost score had found its true companion in this cello and she was simply re-uniting two lost lovers separated by time.
Clouds began to swallow her consciousness.
The conductor’s studio faded and a blinding ray of light filled her eyes. She was floating, looking down at a ghostly representation of herself and Friedrich Lang, both lost in the music. The light flared brighter, eclipsing the images in the conductor’s practice room until it pulled her into a symphony of blinding light and spectacular colours. A piercing sound bored through her head painfully as she felt an impossibly heavy pressure pushing down on her. It felt like every atom of her body was being flattened between slabs of granite. She tried to breathe, but could draw no air. The sense of motion, of being pushed faster and faster, continued to increase exponentially until suddenly she felt it release.
Then she felt nothing at all. Whiteness followed by blackness and then - total emptiness.
And then all her sense awoke at once. She gasped, desperately trying to fill her lungs. A volley of stars spun around her head. She felt a cool draft and shivered, still fighting for breath, as a fierce pain gripped her head, then relaxed.
Had she just fainted? Or had some kind of seizure? If so, what would Lang think of her now? Unable to withstand the pressure of playing great music, most likely. How could she explain this to him?
And then faintly at first, she heard the music again. Was someone playing Maria Valenzuela’s violin part? Was that the smell of burning candles?
She opened her eyes. The conductor’s tiny padded studio was gone, replaced by a massive stone chamber. Her eyes focused on a performance hall illuminated by candles and torches. The chamber was packed with wide-eyed men and women.
Song for a Lost Kingdom, Book I Page 7