Middle C

by Gass, William H

  But wait. What an imbecile he was! Skizzen struck his brow a blow that he’d seen first in the movies. He should mark and measure his head, think like a yardstick. Yes, what an imbecile, Joey was. Professor Skizzen could count on the cowardice of these people. Oh yes. They would do anything to avoid scandal. He could threaten them with exposure. Oh yes, oh yes! He was in the driver’s seat. He smacked both cheeks tenderly. Oh … oh dear. No, he wasn’t. Yes, he was.

  Miriam might find shelter at the farm. Nor did he think he’d be turned away, but would he be welcome? What could he do there, hoe beans? buy a banjo to play while setting fire to the hay? Her high school sweater would not rise up to cheer him, and in the stony glare of her husband’s eyes he would merely be seen as an impediment to the plow: a rock to be turned over and tossed from the field. He had come to love his position at the school. He enjoyed his nice April walks across the quad, exchanging nods with the friendlier students, Professor Skizzen as dignified yet as interestingly odd as his station demanded, yellow daffs arranged in applauding rows along the path, tulips turning to watch him pass, a brisk wind asking the treetops to prance. What was left now but a life of crime? by setting the flypaper danglers afire! casually watching the cuttings curl up in the flame. HUMAN CRUELTIES, IN A PANTOMIME OF HELL, CONSUMED BY OVERLY DRY ATTIC AIR, reports the Woodbine Times. He and his mother had flown solo through life. It had never mattered to him that he had no friends. Nevertheless, he must try to die with decency. He’d be marched to jail in manacles. What did they call it? the perp walk—not the name of a dance step. It had actually come—that fearful moment. Friendless. Motherless. Fatherless too. He began to cry.

  March 16, 1968. My Lai Massacre. Nearly five hundred people in the Vietnam villages of My Lai and My Khe were murdered by members of Charlie Company. The Americans demonstrated their skill in such matters (although for some it was their first time) by dropping many victims, like a line of cardboard targets at a carnival, into a handy drainage ditch. Babies were dispatched by gun and grenade, animals and women as well. There were no plants in pots or they’d have been shot. This riot of killing was observed by helicopters. The helicopters snitched.

  42

  I shall assume that you have each listened with full attention to Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra. Anyone like it? Hands. That’s nice. Several. We are blessed. This concerto is one of the major musical achievements of the twentieth century. Bartók was ill with leukemia and low on funds. His friends passed the hat behind his back in order to offer him their charity in the guise of a grant from the Koussevitzky Foundation. Koussevitzky was the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. You may have heard the results of his direction on some of your recordings. [… um …] This support enabled the composer to spend the summer of August 1943 at the spa at Saranac Lake—that’s in New York State—a spa is a health resort—where his illness momentarily improved. [……] Apologies. His illness did not improve, he did. His illness weakened. [……] The German poet Rainer Maria Rilke also died of luke. Lots of people do. Lots. It is cancer of the blood, cancer of the marrow of the bones. It should be the disease of duchesses and counts, but it isn’t. Of blue bloods, you see. But it isn’t.

  The concerto had its first performance, naturally under Koussevitzky’s leadership, in Boston during the winter of the following year. The audience’s reception was “tumultuous.” Critics were less excited, but performers liked the many opportunities the music gave them to blow their own horn and excel. Listeners were warm. Why shouldn’t they be? It was a wonderfully romantic nineteenth-century piece, with swelling strings, pounded drums, and plenty of trumpets. With a climax worthy of the movies. You can hear the music running into the arms of happiness.

  Koussevitzky was a faithful and genuine supporter of the music of his own time, an almost reckless thing to be, especially if you were the conductor of a significant American orchestra, because patrons were customarily twenty-five years off the clock and, like the busy noses of the bees, went for nectar and its sweetness, not newness however savory. For further information on the numbskullish nature of audiences and the even greater tin eardrum of critics, try to remember my earlier lectures. [……] Das Lied von der Erde may have opened the door for Bartók and Schoenberg—it took some pushing and shoving to hear who would get through first—but it was melancholy—a downer, do you say? [… ya? …] We did “Das Lied” two weeks ago. Remember? “The Song of the Earth.” Maa … ler. He died of a sore throat. I find it interesting that Mahler, Bartók, and Schoenberg changed their religion, not quite the way we change clothes, but as the occasion dictated nevertheless. Something for you to file away. Surprise the mind on a cloudy day.

  All right, class, we return to our sheep: who is—Koussevitzky—did I call him: commissioner? [……] I call him the Commissioner because he suggested and funded compositions from contemporary composers: for instance he asked Maurice Ravel to orchestrate Mussorgsky’s piano suite “Pictures at an Exhibition.” Listeners have forgotten that it was originally scored for the piano. For most folks only the full orchestra version answers to the name. Ravel’s version is a wonderful piece to test your loudspeakers with. Sorry. It is a good piece with which to test your speakers. [… um …] As colorful as Joseph’s coat. [… um …] A few good musical jokes about Jews. Listeners have forgotten about them, too.

  You have to drive these gentlemen—Mussorgsky—Ravel—Koussevitzky—into the same corral, get them used to the smell of one another. Koussevitzky, Ravel, Mussorgsky. Up hands! Come on, don’t you remember the Great Gate? Cymbal crash! [……] Palms aplenty? Well, several. We are blessed. Mein Gott.

  The Commissioner badgered work from Ravel—a piano concerto, not just the aforementioned orchestration. He encouraged a couple of operas: Douglas Moore’s The Ballad of Baby Doe, and Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes; then squeezed from Copeland, let’s see, Symphony no. 3. Next, what? [… um …] He gave Olivier Messiaen’s T-S symphony a push into the light of day, as well as Bartók’s Concerto. [……] No, it doesn’t mean what you gigglers think. [……] TS to you, too. It stands for Turangalîla-Symphonie. I shall write the title on the board. It is not easily spelled. [……] The news about Koussevitzky is not all positive. He led the Boston boys in one of the earlier recordings of Ravel’s Boléro. [……] I’m disappointed none of you groaned. Orchestras in those days were largely made up of scowling old men. Normally they didn’t like to learn, rehearse, or play new pieces, but the Concerto for Orchestra was bait too appealing to refuse.

  Words as always fail to convey the power and beauty of this composition. Even Bartók’s own description doesn’t approach that kind of success. I am quoting from the composer’s program notes for the debut performance: “The general mood of the work represents, apart from the jesting second movement, a gradual transition from the sternness of the first movement and the lugubrious death-song of the third, to the life-assertion of the last one.”

  Jesting! Jousting, rather. You heard the bray—the hee-haw—the yawp—and then the fairgrounds music? pretending to be a rodent running down an alley. Now, just because the second movement is designated, by the composer, “a game of pairs,” we mustn’t confuse it with boarding Noah’s ark—you know—bassoons two by two, oboes as twins, clarinets a pair, next two flutes, and, lest they be too overbearing and brutish, trumpets with mutes. Nor should we allow ourselves to be misled about the seriousness of these blurts. I was told that, while Bartók was composing the concerto, he heard a performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony on the radio and laughed when one of its subjects announced itself. He said it sounded like a Viennese cabaret song. This theme was so vacant of any real energy or significance that Bartók promptly borrowed it to use for an interruption he might ridicule. Why would he do that? Hands. [……] Hopeless. In the middle of a serious sermon, why would the preacher stick out his tongue? [… um …] Rather, my young friends, why would he stick out someone else’s tongue?

  What was happening around him when h
e wrote this work? Sorry—when he composed this work. [……] Well, yes, he was ill. He was dying. [……] Okay, he was also a pauper. But he had more important things on his mind. [……] What? His family I suppose. [……] Nothing more? [……] The world was at war, sillies. Everywhere. It was a very large war, deserving the name of “World.” It contained countless smaller ones, and the smaller ones were made of campaigns and battles, deadly encounters and single shootings, calamities on all fronts. But history can hold up for our inspection many different sorts of wars, and World War Two was made of nearly all of them: trade wars—tribal wars—civil wars—wars by peaceful means—wars of ideas—wars over oil—over opium—over living space—over access to the sea—whoopee, the war in the air—among feudal houses—raw raw siss-boom-bah—so many to choose from—holy wars—battles on ice floes between opposing ski patrols—by convoys under sub pack attacks—in the desert there might be a dry granular war fought between contesting tents, dump trucks, and tanks—or—one can always count on the perpetual war between social classes—such as—whom do you suppose? the Rich, the Well Off, the Sort Of, the So-So, and the Starving—or—the Smart, the Ordinary, and the Industriously Ignorant—or—the Reactionary and the Radical—not just the warmongers for war but those conflicts by pacifists who use war to reach peace—the many sorts of wars that old folks arrange, the middle-aged manage, and the young fight—oh, all of these, and sometimes simultaneously—not to neglect the wars of pigmentation: color against color, skin against skin, slant versus straight, the indigenous against immigrants, city slickers set at odds with village bumpkins, or in another formulation: factory workers taught to shake their fists at field hands (that’s hammer at sickle)—ah, yes—the relevant formula, familiar to you, I’m sure, is that scissors cut paper, sprawl eats space—Raum!—then in simpler eras, wars of succession—that is, wars to restore some king to his john or kill some kid in his cradle—wars between tribes kept going out of habit—wars to keep captured countries and people you have previously caged, caged—wars in search of the right death, often requiring suicide corps and much costly practice—wars, it seems, just for the fun of it, wars about symbols, wars of words—uns so weiter—wars to sustain the manufacture of munitions—bombs, ships, planes, rifles, cannons, pistols, gases, rockets, mines—wars against scapegoats to disguise the inadequacies of some ruling party—a few more wars—always a few more, wars fought to shorten the suffering, unfairness, and boredom of life.

  Bartók never carried a gun or felt the shame of defeat on the field; but you should remember that Béla von Bartók was a Hungarian whose birthplace had been cut from its country like a side of beef from its carcass, and, by its political butchers, given to Romania to devour in 1920. In protest, he dressed like a Hungarian, however that would be. He vowed to speak only his native tongue. Hungarian isn’t easy for anybody, so if you know how to speak it, you tend to brag. He dropped his “von” like a third shoe. He wrote a symphonic tone poem about Kossuth, a popular political figure. Bartók’s interest in local music, and eventually his loyalty to a generous variety of Balkan folk songs and dances (Hungarian, Romanian, Ukrainian, Slovak, even Bulgar) is demonstrated by the composer’s lifelong effort to record, protect, and encourage the survival of native styles while integrating their contributions into the more prestigious and demanding international movements. [….…] I see you writing. Should I repeat that?

  In the Great War … Surely … surely … you are acquainted with this conflict …? [……] May heaven help me to the door. [… um …] Oh yes, many of you, I see. Well, I shall not embarrass you by demanding a definition of “Axis.” [……] A significant part of that worldwide confrontation—“on sea, on land, and in the air”—was the struggle between Germany and Russia that took place on what was called the eastern front. Why east? [… um …] Because, on maps, Poland is depicted as east of France. [……] When World War Two began, the Russians were profiting from the German invasion of Poland to scoop up a few hunks of the smaller eastern countries—Baltic and Balkan—for themselves. At the same time that this was going on, the capitalist countries (including Germany) were the Soviets’ … that’s Russia’s … antagonists in a noncombative, or “cold” war, as well … it was called a cold war, not because it snowed throughout, but because there was no shooting … because the Russians were Communists … and we—especially the U.S.—were at words if not at swords against the Reds … Left-wingers are still called Reds … No, it is not a gang name. [……] I hope this isn’t too confusing for you. [……] The fact is that through World War Two, the USSR was first an enemy … because, as I said, it was a Communist country … the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics … then it was an ally … because it was also fighting the Nazis … NAZIs … and then an enemy again when the war ended because it was still Communist. I mention this—yes, the Germans were called National Socialists. Yes, they were capitalist and socialists. Yes, they were fascists, too. I am trying to explain that a friend, while remaining a friend, can be a foe, and as a foe, a greater foe than if it had never been a friend. You see? a dissonance heard in one place can be harmonious when heard in another. What would two mirrors, facing each other, see? The Soviet Union and the Third Reich. A theme and its inversion. “Monstrous” spelled “suortsnom.” [… um …] Something like that.

  A theme will meet its match and be momentarily banished from the flow, only to return later to sing in harmony with that early enemy as though nothing bad had ever happened between them. By reopposing, end it. If you wish a crude but commonly employed example, think of the “1814 Overture” of Tchaikovsky, played to death, so that it only appears in performance as a zombie. It is partly built upon a battle of anthems. Some idiot fires a cannon. Ah, hands at last. So good of you. 1812. [… um …] Yes. “La Marseillaise.”

  This is not a course in military history. Yet I do not digress. Music, too, has its necessary opposites, ripe peaches that relish their worms. Don’t scrape your chair. I might mention Rimsky-Korsakov and Mussorgsky—in fact, I have—they represent nationalistic fervor, while pretty old Tchaikovsky suits up for the cosmopolitan high hat. Hah. I know a secret about him that you must hunt for. Nor can we ignore the snobbish claim of superiority made by the Bach-to-Beethoven Teutonic Club over the Polish-French connection established by Chopin and Liszt, or the pronounced lack of enthusiasm of the followers of Berlioz toward the person, work, and partisans of Wagner who persist in thinking that the Ring is more impressive than Les Troyens. All right—you should say at this point—but what about that fellow Liszt, wasn’t he transcribing both Mozart and Wagner for the piano? [……] Oh, Liszt needed to be a leader of every movement. He had to do well by all and sundry, even Bellini. These transcriptions were once ridiculed by critics but now they are widely appreciated and admired. [……] This proves nothing, one way or the other. [……] Liszt was handsomely paid in money, fame, and sexual favor. In all things the fellow was an accomplished performer: so affected when he entered the chamber, such a show-off as he sat before the keys, and what a virtuoso with his fingers. I’ve been told ladies fainted as a consequence of the close salon air, their cinched waists, and alleged emotion. Liszt was a womanizer who became religious just to see how it felt, I’d like to think, and to be on God’s good side when he died, but even in childhood he voiced his desire to become a monk [……] okay, a priest [……]—both ridiculous—and, although during his life he sinned repeatedly, in his old age he demonstrated his devotion to the Catholic church, in the laudable sacrifice of his talent, by offering to its altar many sacred works. The pope who was Pius at the time made Liszt an abbey. There is nothing unusual about this combination. Members of the Sicilian mafia love their mothers, their murders, their boys’ club, and their God. So Liszt can be both a programmer—ideal for bourgeois tastes—yet a darling of the avant guard. [… um …] Now I remember why we are here. Well, I am here at least. Liszt, a fellow Hungarian, was an enormous early influence on Bartók. The man traveled the piano, coast to coast, lik
e a coach. Late Liszt, my young friends, anticipates almost everything including the whole-tone scale. [……] Did you know one of his kids, Cosima, married Wagner? [……] She was a notable bitch. Isn’t that how you say it? Liszt made an enormous contribution to the very notation that composes a score, but I cannot take time for that here, or offer you juicy stories about his girlfriends though there is a shelfful, along with a lot of books.

  Now listen to what he says—von Bartók, I mean—the words he uses: “The outcome of these studies was of decisive influence upon my work, because it freed me from the tyrannical rule of the major and minor keys.” “Tyrannical rule” indeed. Blame it all on the diatonic scale. Worse than an electric fence. What was at stake? Freedom, first off. From an imaginary limit. From the tyrannical State of Music. [……] Got that?

  Equality, second. For the composer, the instruments, the notes. “This new way of using the diatonic scale brought freedom from the rigid use of the major and minor keys, and eventually led to a new conception of the chromatic scale, every tone of which came to be considered of equal value and could be used freely and independently.” I won’t let anyone tell me that music isn’t political: this is the dictatorship of democracy. Down with the subordinate clause.

  You all know how the freedom sought by the French Revolution—revolutionaries take note—or was it carnage? revenge? was it bloodlust?—was usurped—was reversed by Napoléon’s emperorship, and [……] ah, you don’t know, do you? [……] Well, good for you, you have nothing to forget.