Time Will Tell

by Donald Greig

  With boarding nearly complete, he was relieved that the spare seat next to him was still empty so he could spread out his papers. He felt vindicated for standing his ground.

  ‘Howdee,’ said a voice. ‘Well, things are gonna get a little bit snugger now!’ A heavy belly was thrust into Andrew’s face as a large figure stretched up to deposit his bag in the overhead locker. The face leered down at him and a ham-like hand was proffered. Andrew offered his in return but, rather than the expected handshake, he was hoisted onto his feet, his injured palm screaming in protest.

  ‘Sorry, fella, but I’m in there.’ The red-faced man indicated the middle seat and then waggled his fingers at the woman by the window. She smiled back and retreated into her magazine. The huge man squeezed his body into the narrow confines with some difficulty and the woman turned away to accommodate the huge bulk.

  ‘Looks like she won’t be joining in the conversation then.’ The man gave Andrew a conspiratorial wink. Andrew had no intention of conducting any such exchange with his new neighbour. But politeness needed to be observed, and might well be his best strategy. The space he’d momentarily envisaged had shrunk considerably and working on his laptop would be impossible; the man’s broad shoulders were simply too wide for the airline seat and, with the armrest swamped by the spill of his waist and his fleshy forearms, it was impossible for Andrew to avoid physical contact. He could feel the damp warmth of the man’s body gusting through his shirt, and a vague reek of socks and cheap deodorant made him wish that he’d left the air vent fully open.

  ‘Foster. Earl Foster. But you can call me Earl,’ said the man, trotting out his well-polished introduction.

  ‘Andrew Eiger. I have a lot of work to do, so I probably won’t be talking much.’

  ‘What kind of work?’ said Earl, ignoring the hint. ‘I’m in sales. Extruded plastic. This kind of stuff.’ With a meaty forefinger, he tapped the seat-tray and then the plastic housing for the overhead lights and air vents.

  ‘And this stuff,’ he added, tapping his head. ‘Both solid. Both my business.’ He chuckled at his own patter. ‘You?’

  ‘Er, musicology. The study of music, that is. Music history and music theory.’ Andrew hoped for once that it sounded duller than it was, and that his career afforded his neighbour no conversational comeback.

  ‘Hey, buddy. That used to be my thing too. Well, not the musicology bit. That was boring. To me, that is,’ Earl added quickly. ‘I was a music major. Trombone.’

  If Earl was involved in music in any way at all, then he had to be a brass player, thought Andrew – one of the clowns of the orchestra given to drinking games and horseplay. They were the ones who offered nothing in music history classes other than the occasional supposedly witty one-liner; they were the people who laughed at early music, and medieval music in particular, the ones who thought music began when the trumpet got valves. An oaf, in other words; one who laughed at historians and theorists.

  ‘Oh. Trombone?’ Andrew tried desperately to think of some way of closing down the conversation. ‘Do you still play?’ he asked, hoping the answer was no.

  ‘Sure. If you’ve got the money,’ said Earl, laughing loudly. He slapped his broad thighs and then Andrew’s knee. Andrew, who never paid much attention to the safety demonstration, found himself fervently wishing for it to begin, if only to quieten down the garrulous salesman. He reached under the seat in front and pulled out his briefcase to signal his intention to work, flicked through his papers and withdrew the conference proceedings, a copy of his lecture and the familiar blue folder.

  ‘Please stow your briefcase right under the seat in front of you, sir.’ It was the stewardess again.

  ‘I was only…’ he began. But she had swept away to the front of the cabin, closing the overhead lockers as she went.

  ‘She got ya!’ said Earl, chuckling. ‘She got ya, didn’t she?’

  ‘Well, it was a bit unnecessary,’ remonstrated Andrew. ‘I was just about to put it away.’

  The flight attendants had begun their routine, holding up seat belts and showing how to lock and unlock them. Andrew gave them his full attention, frowning in a display of exaggerated concentration, hoping it would stop his neighbour talking. Earl shrugged his enormous shoulders making Andrew’s body lurch into the aisle, then he dropped his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. By the time the safety demonstration was over and the plane had pushed back from its stand, he was snoring loudly, his mouth dropped open like the drawer of a Coke-dispenser.

  From the various papers on his lap, Andrew pulled out the printed copy of his lecture. ‘“Ockeghem’s Katholika: obscurity, calculation and reception” © Andrew Eiger.’ The previous night he’d delivered it to a post-graduate seminar and, as he’d fully expected, it was received coolly. The title alluded to the composer’s preference for musical and notational games, features which had come to define the composer’s genius; it added nothing new to Ockeghem studies, nor was it going to set the conference alight, not least because, yet again, his audience was being presented with a rehash of old material from his Ph.D. It was getting to the stage where there was virtually nothing left of it, the flesh having been stripped from the bones to provide material for lectures and academic articles on so many occasions – yet still he hoped his thesis might be published as a book. His pursuit had not been helped by the appearance of what had been hailed as the definitive book on Ockeghem by Francis Porter, a scholar three years his junior whom Andrew viewed, with more than a trace of hopeful envy, as his chief rival. Porter had received his D.Mus. from Oxford, having graduated summa cum laude from Yale. His area of expertise was the same as Andrew’s, in the relatively new field of reception theory, but where Andrew’s thesis was a dully pedestrian, essentially chronological account, Porter’s book was ground-breaking, strongly influenced by fashionable French revisionist theory, yet lucid and accessible. Entitled Framing Music History, it was everything that Andrew’s Ph.D. was not – witty, light, insightful and graceful; it had been picked up immediately by Yale University Press and was now in its third reprint in only five years.

  Andrew scanned his lecture. It began with the definition of a canon provided by Tinctoris, a musical theorist of the time, which was ‘a rule showing the purpose of the composer behind a certain obscurity’. It was this opposition between design and uncertainty, between the overt and the hidden, that still divided people today, most obviously the students in his Med/Ren class. It didn’t help that most of them had signed up merely because they had once heard or sung a madrigal in High School. Rather than an extended encounter with frolicking nymphs and randy shepherds singing ‘Hey nonny no’ and ‘fa la la’, they found themselves grappling with arcane subjects like isorhythms, modes, and formes fixes. If he’d had his way he would have avoided the madrigal entirely. To him, it was the lowest common denominator, a cheap entertainment whose musical sophistication was best compared to today’s popular music, which he held in equal contempt. Behind the pastoral image lay equally ignorant assumptions of medieval music as plainchant sung by po-faced monks or simplistic folk tunes designed to entertain smelly peasants with maybe a thudding drum to liven up proceedings. Such beliefs were reinforced by terms like The Dark Ages which suggested the absence of knowledge, whereas the medieval period was rich in literature and philosophy, and peopled with multi-talented individuals like Andrew’s hero, Ockeghem – composer, Treasurer of St Martin at Tours, premier chapelain of the royal chapel, and Baron of Châteauneuf – who should properly have been described as a Renaissance man, had the term not been hijacked for later history.

  That very morning, one of his more troublesome students, Peter Giacometti, a boy who thought himself cool and who always sat at the back, had banged another nail in Ockeghem’s coffin: ‘I reckon this dude’s problem was that he thought too much. He should have just got on with it like Josquin did.’ The other students had laughed. It was the kind of line Giacometti often came up with: derisory yet, annoyingly for Andrew, a
distillation of the prevailing view and, in its way, astute.

  Though not a quote from a contemporary observer like Tinctoris, it echoed the common themes of Ockeghemian reception that his lecture would address – calculation and musical pleasure – and Andrew transcribed the student’s comment at the top of his paper. He’d begin his talk with it, offering it as a friendly ad lib, a suitable antidote to his sterile delivery. And maybe, if the mood took him, he would tell his audience about how difficult it was sometimes to excite his students with Ockeghem’s music: proof that Ockeghem was only for those of more refined sensibilities.

  When he’d begun to teach the course four years ago, he’d started by playing a recording of Nymphes des bois, the lament on Ockeghem’s death by the composer’s own pupil, the great Josquin Desprez. The idea was, through the personal testament of the younger generation of composers, to introduce students to Ockeghem. It had backfired. The students loved the lament itself rather than its subject, and thereafter all they wanted to talk about was Josquin. He’d tried to rescue the situation by playing more Ockeghem, but with each new piece of music, accompanied by an explanation of the complex musical design, he’d only bolstered their initial reaction. He felt like a shopkeeper trying to sell vegetables to six-year-olds; however much he proclaimed the health benefits, all they wanted was candy.

  These days he had stopped playing the music entirely, instead presenting a handout of Nymphes des bois in the original black notation, a fitting garb for Ockeghem’s memorial. Thus presented, the lament yielded none of its moving sensuousness to his classes and they were forced to take as fact his assertion that Ockeghem was the greatest composer of them all. At least in Tours, surrounded by academics who had devoted a considerable portion of their academic lives to the study of the fifteenth century, he would be in the company of like-minded enthusiasts. He wouldn’t have to sell Ockeghem there.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  February 5th, 1997: Beecham Concert Hall, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England

  As Andrew Eiger fretted over Ockeghem’s place in the pantheon of medieval composers, 3,700 miles away Emma Mitchell was offstage contemplating the very piece that Andrew refused to play in his music class: Josquin Desprez’s Nymphes des bois. Earlier, when they’d rehearsed in the unappreciative acoustic, the members of Beyond Compère had agreed that an encore wouldn’t be needed: the acoustic would kill it off. Unlike large churches or cathedrals where the sound of clapping rolled in the vaulted space, rewarding the audience’s appreciation with echoing encouragement, dry concert halls like this one muffled sound and gave each concertgoer the impression that he or she had been the only one who’d really enjoyed the performance, leaving all but the wilfully arrogant doubting their judgement. But now the applause showed no sign of stopping.

  In the wings Emma turned to the singers to issue her instructions. Released from the concentration of performance, they were trading excited apologies for minor mistakes and observations of audience reactions, acknowledgements of a job well done.

  ‘We’ll have to do it,’ said Emma over the hubbub. ‘Nymphes des bois. I’m sorry it doesn’t involve everyone, but it’ll make a good ending.’

  Even after coming offstage having twice delivered their bows, they could still hear the audience cheering and the occasional wolf whistle.

  ‘We’re going to have to do it,’ she repeated. ‘Nymphes des bois. Just the five singers. The rest come on for a final bow.’

  The group split into two. The five required for the encore lined up in voice-order and walked confidently onto the stage, smiling at the audience; Emma followed, carrying the bouquet with which she’d been presented.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said loudly, as the applause died away and the audience re-took their seats. ‘Thank you so much for that lovely reception. I’d love to say that we have a new piece by Ockeghem to round off the concert, but he hasn’t written much recently.’ The audience laughed, obviously pleased that an encore was going to be forthcoming. ‘As you know,’ continued Emma, ‘Beyond Compère consists of eight singers – and me – yet there are only five singers here.’ She gestured upstage to the smaller group.

  ‘It’s our policy when we do an encore to include everyone, but it’s a special occasion. Tomorrow marks the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Johannes Ockeghem, an event that we will commemorate in a concert tomorrow in the very place where he lived most of his life: Tours, the old capital of France. We thought it appropriate, then, to break with our usual tradition and sing a piece dedicated to the great composer: Josquin Desprez’s beautiful lament on the death of Ockeghem, Nymphes des bois.’

  Someone whistled encouragement from the audience.

  ‘Well, I see that somebody knows it,’ said Emma, prompting further laughter. ‘I’ll let the music speak for itself – it really is lovely – but I’ll just draw your attention to the fact that the song references the four composers who may well have sung it: Josquin himself; Loyset Compère, after whom our group is named; Pierre De La Rue; and Antoine Brumel. No one knows who the fifth singer was.’

  The audience applauded and Emma walked offstage to join her colleagues in the wings.

  ‘Nice one, Em,’ hissed Charlie, one of the tenors, giving her the thumbs-up. She smiled back and they turned to watch the performance. It was already underway, the music being greeted with hushed respect, and finally she allowed herself to relax, closing her eyes and tipping back her head to ease the tension from her neck. The decision to perform Josquin’s lament made a lot of sense both theatrically and musically, as an intimate portrait of Ockeghem. But it had also been forced on them by circumstance; there simply wasn’t another obvious piece with which to close the concert. Ideally they would have ended with something on a symphonic scale, but such pieces weren’t written in the fifteenth century. Or they could even have concluded with something unknown but, as the conference tomorrow would prove, there was nothing new in Ockeghem studies.

  The singers had reached the point where the composers were named, a moment that never failed to send shivers down her spine:

  Acoutrés vous d’abis de dœul,

  Josquin, Perchon, Brumel, Compère,

  [Wear garments of mourning,

  Josquin, De La Rue, Brumel, Compère,]

  Emma loved this section. The top voice and the bass moved in parallel, a limpid sweep towards a high note that fell back on itself like a sob of grief. It was rare for Josquin to marry musical expression so intimately with graphic description, and she was convinced that this descending phrase deliberately mimicked the falling tears demanded by the poet. Ockeghem’s children were called upon by the poet not just to mourn their ‘good father’, but to cry heavy tears, a poetic and musical hyperbole that argued nothing less would suffice:

  Et plourés grosses larmes d’oeil;

  Perdu avés vostre bon père.

  [And cry heavy tears;

  You have lost your good father.]

  Emma wanted the audience to feel what she did, a communion with the past that perhaps only those who sang the lines could fully appreciate. She envied the singers that direct contact, and much more. Her voice was too weak to shape and mould the lines as they did with that even yet muscular tone. One American commentator had likened it to high-speed jet formation-flying: they could power through a straight, he said, and then veer off at any angle with effortless precision.

  The lament was nearing its conclusion where all the voices would sing ‘Requiescant in pace’, and Ollie, her boyfriend and the group’s baritone, cast a discreet glance towards her. He had to swap parts at that point with Marco, the tenor, Ollie’s line rising over an octave for no apparent reason, making it almost impossible to sing, and the slight smile he exchanged with Emma referenced their agreed solution to the strange problem.

  The piece ended and the silence was interrupted by a few murmurs of satisfaction before the applause began. Allie, the bass, led Emma and the group back onto the stage for the final bow and then they were all in the win
gs again, congratulating each other. As the applause died away the short evening and early morning ahead became the group’s new focus.

  ‘Six-thirty: taxis,’ said Emma.

  ‘Ouch,’ said Charlie, the other tenor, speaking for them all.

  ‘I know, I know, but we can’t miss the flight and that’s cutting it fine as it is,’ she explained. ‘The champagne’s on me tomorrow night. In Tours.’

  The announcement was greeted by a muted cheer, grudging acknowledgement of the tough schedule ahead and due recognition of Emma’s thoughtfulness in promising a quiet celebration at the end of a tough day.

  ‘What are you up to?’ she asked Ollie, as the others drifted away to the dressing room.

  ‘Thought I’d go off with the boys. Are you going to come?’

  It was a familiar routine. Emma’s duties as the leader of the group required her to schmooze with management, fans and other concert promoters, while Ollie, as one of the singers, had no further responsibilities. Their relationship, they’d agreed after several well-meaning attempts to accommodate each other, only suffered from manufactured compromises and sometimes it was easier if they went their own ways. The conversation they were having now was merely residual politeness, a conversational ritual whose practice, if overheard by anyone else, suggested the pursuit of a normal relationship in the face of an abnormal career. Spending the remains of the evening with her lover was tempting, but the reality was that Ollie would become fractious and she would feel pressured. Instead she would have a quick drink in the bar with the two sopranos, Susan and Claire, and one of the altos, Peter, who formed the self-christened ‘Wet Set’ because of their tendency to look after themselves, in contrast to most of the men in the group who liked to burn the candle at both ends.