The Gradual Page 4

  I was going through a period of general contentment. I enjoyed being married to Alynna, and the first excitements we had for each other went on undimmed. I liked the feeling of being settled, of having a secure emotional base for my life. Alynna’s musical prowess was improving steadily and she was regularly invited to play: her session work brought money in reliably, and her occasional invitations to sit in with an orchestra or a smaller ensemble produced welcome cash bonuses.

  While Alynna played, I composed. I was working steadily, trying out new approaches all the time. The income from Tidal Symbols enabled me finally to leave my day job in the cost accounting department – I was now old enough to be low in priority for the draft, and so no longer needed the extra protection the job afforded me.

  I was never entirely free of dread thoughts about the draft though, because I could not forget the likely fate of my brother Jacj.

  A letter had arrived from Jacj not long after I married. It was sent to my parents, although I was named too at the top. It was on notepaper with the Battalion insignia printed as a heading, and although it was written by hand, for some reason Jacj had printed every word in capital letters. It was a short note in a mechanical style, as if he had been made to copy it from a pro forma, or someone had dictated it to him. It simply said that he was embarking on the great military campaign that would bring an end to the war, that he was travelling in the company of fellow soldiers he liked and admired, and that he wanted us to buy the war bonds sold by the government to protect him by helping to finance this great adventure.

  I imagine every family of every young recruit received a letter like this, and because we understood the way it was written and why it was sent, it was not in itself upsetting. However, from the date of the postmark it seemed to have been written not long after Jacj had sailed away, yet it had taken more than ten years for it to reach us. My parents, who were by this time moving towards old age, were upset by the thought that this letter had been lost or delayed en route.

  It had been sent from one of the islands: with a magnifying glass it was possible to read the faded red-ink franking on the front: Island Protectorate of Winho. Where was Winho? We had no maps, we knew no one who could tell us. Was it an island close to our shores, or was it far away on the other side of the world? This extra enigma only deepened the feelings we all had of worry, upset and apprehension about where Jacj was and what might be happening to him.

  I wrote to Denn Mytrie and asked him if he knew where the island of Winho might be. When his answer came, several weeks later, it was to say that he did not, but that people he knew on Muriseay believed it to be somewhere in the southern hemisphere. He told us that although maps were not forbidden in the Archipelago, it was always difficult finding any that depicted islands not in your own group or immediate area. He said that this was a problem throughout the Archipelago, and something to do with the gravitational anomalies. (He did not explain, and from the vague way he wrote I had the feeling he couldn’t.)

  Whenever I contacted Denn Mytrie, I felt I was groping across unknown seas, to an island I could not imagine, through delays and wasted time.

  8

  I made several more trips to Glaund City, partly to promote my music to the record managers, but also because I was sometimes offered session work in the studios. The money was helpful. Two more contracts were eventually signed and for one of the recordings I was allowed to rehearse the musicians and manage the actual performance. My reputation was slowly growing, and so too was my confidence. Alynna sometimes worked with me – these were occasions that were especially enjoyable for us.

  The music I produced that I was most proud of at this time was my Seasonal Gods oratorio. I had loved writing Dianme and I treasured the recording that had been made, but I knew that my lack of confidence at the time had prevented me from developing the work as much as I should. Working on Seasonal Gods encouraged me to try.

  It was a commissioned work: the Metropolitan of the See of Glaund City had heard Tidal Symbols, and through an intermediary enquired if I would consider a liturgical piece for his church. I am not religious, but the money was good and the brief was in musical terms open. I used as my text five of the psalms suggested to me by the Metropolitan’s staff. The format was complex, involving soloists and a choir, an organ part, and a small orchestra. I structured the music around the five psalms, which were followed by sung recitative and responsorial gradual. Passage of time was depicted by the antiphonal gradual.

  Seasonal Gods occupied me for the best part of a year. When it was complete, and the first performance had been achieved, I was free of financial worries for a while and felt inspired to return to Dianme and make it part of a larger work.

  It was a natural progression to conceive of making a trio of pieces, based on the three islands I thought of as my own: Dianme, Chlam and Herrin. The title of the overall work was suggested by the myths that were associated with each of the islands: Detriment in Calm Seas. With the thought came the imagining and the conception, and I was soon concentrating hard on the final two pieces of the suite.

  Chlam was disruptive, singular music. I wrote for instruments I had barely used before: a silver trombone, snare drums and two electrically amplified string instruments. I had learned that Chlam, the mythological being, had brought ruin to the island by making a pact with a diabolical creature.

  My piece called Herrin was different again. The myth on this island was one of calculated deception. Herrin had seemed to bring peace and wealth to the island, making the inhabitants trust him, but there was a price to pay. Time hung heavy. I orchestrated long romantic passages for the chamber orchestra, but these themes were gradually undermined by a creeping disharmony, until in the climax of both the piece and the suite every instrument was scored against every other in a cacophony of clashing notes.

  My career progressed. As well as my recordings I was honoured by two live performances of my music in Glaund City. I went to an inland town, high in the mountains, where I gave a performance on piano of my Travelling Circus suite – this was later chosen as the opening work of a concert by the eight-strong Academy Players at the Trade Hall in the industrial city of Leeth. I began writing a column of personal observations of the musical scene for one of the monthly magazines aimed at the serious listener. I reviewed records by other artists. I gave lectures and talks to students, and for one three-week period I was running a composition workshop for the best students in the conservatoire.

  Gradually, things were improving for me. The liveable income I was making from my music started to seem steady, reliable.

  Then, things started to go wrong.

  9

  The letter that arrived seemed innocuous at first. It was from someone who bought my records, and who had been to some of my concert performances. Towards the end of his long and mostly admiring letter, he wrote:

  I will not embarrass you, Monseignior Sussken, by noting my reactions to every single piece of music you have written, but I have enjoyed all your work. When a record is available I have always bought one, and several times I have bought extra copies to give to friends. I have particular admiration for Tidal Symbols, for Breath, and for your early masterpiece Dianme.

  So far so good. I had not received many letters like this, and I was glad to have this one. However, the writer went on:

  A few weeks ago my son, who had been on a school exchange trip to one of the islands to the south of us, came home with a record he had bought. It had the unusual title The Lost Aviator, or in its original language (the island demotic) Pilota Marret. It was rock music, which I do not like, but when I heard my son playing it my attention was immediately caught by some of the tracks. Much of the music sounded uncannily like yours, if you can imagine your work played in a raucous manner by a band of young men on electric guitars and drums. I’m sure I am not mistaken – at least half the tracks are either based on your work, or are crude transpositions of it. I have noticed distinct traces of Dianme and the rest of
the Detriment suite, Tidal Symbols, at least three of your magnificent flute sonatas, your first piano concerto, and here and there many phrases and passages which are uniquely in your style.

  And so he went on, listing several more of my compositions, transcribed into music for amplified guitars.

  In fact, I did not mind the idea of this transposition as much as my correspondent said he did, because for me all music has a common purpose. I was too old to involve myself in rock music. I knew it was not for me but I had nothing against it. I did not, though, like the idea of someone stealing what I had written.

  The name of this rock musician is And Ante, which is also the name of his group. My son tells me that ‘And’ is a common first name for men in the Dream Archipelago – ‘Ante’ might be an adopted name as a performer, or might be his real name. I was wondering if you have been in touch with Monseignior Ante directly, and whether you have heard his record?

  He then added the name and address, in Glaund City, of a specialist importer of records, who was carrying a stock of Msr Ante’s Lost Aviator, in case I wanted to get hold of a copy.

  I wrote back to thank my correspondent, and in the same mail I sent off an order for a copy of the record.

  During the week that followed I was overseeing a composition workshop for a second season, guiding half a dozen young musicians at the start of their careers. I barely had time to think about what the letter said, and mentally postponed any reaction until I received my own copy of the record. The postponement was longer than I expected – the importers responded to my order with a note saying that they were waiting for more copies to arrive at their office. They enclosed a page from their recent catalogue.

  This described Pilota Marret. The company who had issued the record was based on an island in the Dream Archipelago called Temmil – another place I had never heard of. The record consisted of ten tracks, with And Ante listed as the writer of all the songs. There were four musicians in the band, including Ante himself, who played lead guitar. The other three played bass guitar, trumpet and drums – the bass guitarist was credited with most of the singing. The longest track on the record, with a running time of nearly fifteen minutes, was an instrumental called ‘Pilota Marret’, giving the album its overall name.

  I took what I believed was a sensible approach. Plagiarism aside, there was an element of flattery, a compliment almost, in the fact that someone thought my work was worth pilfering. I could never condone it, and if I should ever run into Msr Ante in person I would tell him what I thought of what he had done, but that was unlikely and I had other things to worry about.

  Then the record itself arrived. Alynna had to travel to Glaund City that day for another recording session, so I waited until she was out of the house before putting the disc on the turntable.

  The reality of what this man Ante had done was greater than I had thought, or even feared. Every single track on his record contained, at the minimum, a reference to something of mine: a particular harmonic progression, a brief snatch of melody, a way of introducing a key change. But more than that, one track was virtually a note-for-note transcription of one of my Wind Songs. Another took the tiny cadenza of my flute concerto, a delicate, flowing piece, a mere eight bars in length, and made it into a six-minute sonic assault of screeching guitar and a maddening, thudding drum beat. I could even detect the silences of Breath in one of the songs.

  The main track, the title track, Pilota Marret, was not translated on the album sleeve. The man who had written to me had translated it as The Lost Aviator, which for a time I accepted. I was soon obsessed with trying to work out what this Ante person had been thinking, what clue that title might contain or perhaps reveal. I went to the Central Library in Glaund and found a tourist guide to the island demotic. The demotic did have a written form, and it obeyed rules of grammar, declension, syntax and so on, but because of the immense size of the Dream Archipelago, and the literally innumerable island patois, there were dozens, hundreds, of dialects. Island demotic was, in effect, best understood as an oral form, but with no one around me who spoke it, all I had to go on were the rules set out in the book.

  It turned out that ‘The Lost Aviator’ could be regarded as an adequate translation of the demotic spoken in a group of islands called the Torquil Group, which happened to be the islands closest to the Glaund coastline. Presumably the man who had written me the letter thought the Torquil version of the demotic would be accurate enough. In fact, Ante’s home island, Temmil, was on the other side of the world from the Torquils. I had no idea where. It was located in a sub-tropical island system known in demotic as the Ruller Islands – in the local patois ‘temmil’ meant ‘choker of air’, and ‘ruller’ meant ‘drifting flower scent’.

  I was getting lost in all this and feeling increasingly obsessive about what had been done to my music, but I was eventually able to rough out a translation of the album title as Sea Images. I believed this was as close to Tidal Symbols as made no difference, and with this detective work completed I suddenly felt deflated and worn out, the excitement of pursuit leaving me. I also felt as someone might whose home had been burgled, the contents ransacked, all the best possessions stolen and removed.

  There was nothing I could do, at least that I could think of doing. Of course I thought of trying to start a legal action for copyright infringement, but the difficulties of that – my ignorance of the law in the islands, the time it would take, and so on – not to mention the expense of hiring lawyers, made it impractical. I knew I had been wasting too much time. I grew tired of staring at the photographs of the band members on the front cover of the sleeve: four dishevelled young men posing with dissolute, even rebellious expressions, too thin in their bodies, dressed untidily. Their facial images had been mangled by the sleeve designer, who for some reason had rendered their photographs in median threshold: stark monochromatic faces, deep shadows and bleached highlights, making them skull-like, lacking in all detail. The photographs could literally be of anyone.

  They were young men half a world away, so removed from me musically and artistically that there could not be anything interesting to say to each other, certainly not about music. Their music, their record, seemed a crude thing to me. In spite of its apparent success, I assumed it would soon fade into obscurity.

  I felt tainted by the disdain for young musicians in the letter that had been sent to me, and could not entirely throw off the feeling, but I knew that the only way to deal with the problem was to try to ignore what had happened, move on. I had not created the situation. I did not want and could not afford a dispute with Msr Ante and his friends, but I wished he had not stolen my ideas.

  Other than this distraction I was busy and productive. Two more long-playing records were released, one of them to coincide with and celebrate my fortieth birthday. This brought my first symphonic work to the public. It was formally called Opus 37, Symphony No. 1 in E Flat Minor, but it was also known less formally as the ‘Marine’ Symphony. I had scribbled this word in pencil on the first page of the score and someone at the recording studio noticed it and picked up on it.

  The Marine Symphony was about imaginings, about dreams, wishes. It celebrated islands I was not supposed to know existed, it depicted the seas around them, the life that was in, of and on the sea, the ships and boats and the people who worked on them, the creatures who swam beneath the waves, but most of all it was about my imaginings of the beaches, houses, harbours, reefs, mountains, endless glowing vistas of the islands that crowded the shallow sea.

  Settled, feeling creatively fertile, I began to forget about Ante. It was a false dawn, though, because an experience much worse than plagiarism was soon to happen to me. This was a real crisis, a disaster, my life thrown into chaos – but there was no hint of what was to come or how it would develop. It started so well.

  10

  I was negotiating with the management of the Federal Hall in Glaund City for the first live performance of the Marine Symphony, when a large seale
d envelope was handed to me. It contained a letter of invitation. There was to be an overseas orchestral tour – I was requested to join it.

  The plan was for a series of concerts on a few prime islands in the Dream Archipelago. ‘Requested’ would be an inadequate way of describing the words they used. I was implored to grace the adventure with my presence, my lustrous genius, etc.

  I read the letter many times, savouring not the flattery and the blatant appeals to my vanity, but the thought of travelling at last in those islands so sacred to my inner world. There was a condition to the invitation, though, one I was not happy with. It created a conflict for me.

  As soon as I was home again I showed the invitation to Alynna, handing her the envelope, urging her to look inside. I tried not to reveal my feelings as she scanned the extravagantly polite letter.

  ‘Are you pleased?’ she said, still holding the letter.

  ‘Of course! Of course!’ I said, knowing I was shouting the words at her, but I had for the moment lost control, such were the feelings pouring through me. I had been holding back the excitement all day, waiting for this chance to share the news with my wife.

  ‘I thought you would be,’ she said, and we embraced and kissed.

  ‘Then you knew this was coming.’

  ‘Sandro, I have been trying for many weeks to find a way to have you included in this tour. They wanted you from the outset, but they were afraid to ask, did not know what to offer you, were concerned that you would reject them.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  She hugged me again. ‘You can be difficult to please sometimes.’

  I stepped away from her, taking up the letter again. I took what she said as a cue, because she knew me so well.

  ‘You know I would love to be on the tour,’ I said. ‘But they don’t want me to play. How could they do that to me? I have two concerti, several sonatas, the new symphony. Those suites about the islands! They are begging to be played by me. I am the best person, the only person, to perform them. I could conduct if they don’t want me to perform—’