A Month of Music, Day 4

“Don’t think of it,” she said. “I’m just home from the hospital, and really…today…well, I just can’t.”

“I know that,” I told my friend Lady. “Do you know, I hadn’t ever been hospitalized until last year? And then, the year began and ended with a hospitalization. And the curious thing is that both times, I had intended to pass the time with music. And both times I failed.”

It was true. The first time I was hospitalized was for a broken back: I had fallen and fractured two of my lumbar vertebrae. And so I had gone to the hospital, taking all of the electronics I owned with me (barring the flat screen and the speakers). I would, I thought, do some serious listening. Has anyone ever devoted himself to listening to the entire piano sonatas of Beethoven, followed by the entire string quartets? Undoubtedly I would be the first, and since it would take at least two or three days to complete each cycle…well, I’d have to be hospitalized for a week at least.

In fact, I wasn’t, though I wish I had been. I had been struggling with the broken back for at least two weeks, and very possibly a month before I had done all the tests, seen all the doctors, and been taken to the hospital. And in that month, my days had followed an invariable routine.

Let me see—where do we start?

Welcome to the world of pain. There were no days, simply because there was no night of uninterrupted sleep. I was just as likely to be up at 2 AM as 2 PM, and in both cases I was counting my breaths, since that was virtually all I could do. When I was utterly still, the pain was great but bearable…just. But turning in bed was agony, and everybody who has shared a bed with me reports the same: I am seriously in the same league as a whirling dervish.

The one semblance of a routine came in the morning, when I struggled out of bed and went to the café to eat breakfast. Even now, I have no idea how I did it, nor do I have any words for the pain it involved. I can only say that it was very much like the magician sawing the lady in half. Only the magic was gone, and the saw was very real.

I ate breakfast. I went to the store, next door, and got lunch. At this point, I threw monetary caution out the window, and often bought two packages of smoked salmon. Alternatively, I bought a pound of frozen shrimp, which I would cook. But on many days, I simply ate chocolate chip cookies. I bought wine and then, fatally…

…a bottle of scotch.

I then went home, and discovered, to my amazement, that the pain was actually slightly reduced when I went up the stairs. I pondered for a moment whether I should spend all day going up and down the stairs, when I realized that the pain increased when I went down. This sort of situation is the metaphor for my life.

I was taking nothing more than Advil and Tylenol for the pain. Well, wrong—remember that bottle of scotch?

And so the time passed.

I have always drunk a lot, and many in my family have as well. But I was lucky to have a job that occupied me, and that made walk for the most part on the rim of the volcano. But now, there was no time. And so what difference did it make if I was drinking at eight in the evening or eight in the morning? The point was that I was in agony, dammit, and if I could drink enough, and take twice the recommended dose of Benadryl…I could probably get two or three hours of sleep.

And when I woke up?

Any guess what I reached for?

By the time I finally reached the hospital, I was utterly exhausted. I had gone from lying on a stretcher in the state hospital to being seen in a private hospital. It was, in fact, literally the difference between night and day (the private hospital was twenty miles away from the state hospital—and we drove there just at dusk. I registered the astonishing beauty of the light falling and fading on the mountains in between each astonishing and horrific bump in the road).

“What are you taking for the pain?” asked the doctor, “morphine?”

“Tylenol and Advil,” I told him.

“I think we can do better,” he replied.

Better arrived soon after, in the form of two Percosets and two Klonopin. And it indeed was better, because I experienced it very much as I experienced anesthesia. There came the moment, some 40 minutes after I had taken the pills, when I felt that some wonderful, unknown and primitive force was pulling me down into the bed. And with that pull came sleep, blessed sleep. And the first sleep free of pain in nearly a month.

This magic was repeated three times a day, during which I got an astonishing amount done. Or rather, an astonishing amount was done to me: CT scans, MRIs, lab work, and even old-fashioned X-rays. And so I would be taken here and there, and this and that would be done to me. And then? A nurse would appear, holding salvation in her hand in the form of four pills.

You want the truth? I would go back there in an instant, that sleep was so pleasant!

I had been, in fact, utterly dishonest. Because it occurred to me, as I lay on a stretcher in the hallway of the state facility, that I wanted a drink quite badly. And then it further occurred to me: I was going through withdrawal.

Nobody had sent the email, it turned out, to my liver. You know, with the news that that daily bottle of scotch didn’t count, since there was a forest fire rage along my spine.

I used to be an RN: I knew the trouble I was in. Because there was the real possibility that I would be in the hospital, with a broken back, and then start to see giant black spiders on the wall. And who knew what would happen, as I attempted to bolt out of my bed in escape.

Having the DTs would almost have been better than the withdrawal symptoms that preceded them. Because alcohol withdrawal is a special form of hell, with its own special devil. And that devil sends anxiety to the point of panic, severe tremors, a dry mouth, nausea to the point of the dry heaves. None of this, as I write it, seems particularly bad. But in fact, the disconcerting thing about withdrawal is the realization: the devil has taken over you. You, your mind, your soul, and your body: they are now someone else’s, and that someone is both utterly evil and also utterly divine, because, you see…

…he has the key.

Yes, if you take a drink, you will feel a jolt. You may know, as I knew, that alcohol takes minutes to half an hour to enter the blood stream to the point where it makes a difference. But I can tell you, as both a drunk and an RN, that I got the equivalent of the email confirmation: your message has been sent. Yes, I would have to wait half an hour for the full effect, but it was a half hour that passed relatively quickly.

So I knew all that, and also knew that my chance of running to the grocery store to pick up the bottle of scotch, during that three day hospitalization, was zero. So I lied, and told the admitting doctor that I suffered anxiety (which was true, though I didn’t reveal the cause) and that I normally took 2 mg of Klonopin three times a day. Since I was also taking antidepressants, that seemed reasonable.

To be free of pain was wonderful; to be free of withdrawal was wonderful. And to have nothing to do, utterly nothing to do except give myself over to other persons’ care, that…

…was wonderful.

It was not to last. After three days, I was sent home, to rest in bed for two months. I had passed my first hospitalization sleeping for the first time in a month, and then being examined. And during that time?

There was no time for music.

   

A Month of Music, Day 3

“Now then,” I told Lady, “we have to get straight down to work, since it now turns out that you absolutely cannot listen to the Tchaikovsky or the Prokofiev that I was trying to fob off on you, yesterday.”

“Wonderful,” said Lady, “since I am either under general anesthesia, or very soon to be so, or just out of. Anyway, I’m languishing here at Centro Médico, which, as you know, is ideally suited to languishing. So it’s completely inappropriate that you even think of putting me in your blog, today.”

“Deadline,” I told her. “If it’s 31 days, it’s 31 days. And now it turns out that I’ve wasted nearly 1/31th of them, since the Tchaikovsky and the Prokofiev were no-go’s.”

“What’s the matter with those guys?”

“Well, a very-intelligent reader of this blog deemed Tchaikovsky’s music ‘pathetic….’”

“Well, is it?”

“Quite possibly,” I told her. “Let’s put it this way: if you are attending a cocktail party held by the International Association of Music Critics, do not drop the name of Tchaikovsky as one of your ‘go-to’ guys….”

“Wonderful,” she said. “Another thing for my anesthiated mind to wrap around. Or around which to wrap, just to satisfy Mr. Fernández.”

“Yes, about his prepositions he is persnickety. Anyway, today I have to get right on track. Though I have to say, I feel distinctly unsettled today…”

“Indeed? And has anybody been doing surgery on you? If not, you’re definitely settled, or even in fact well-populated….”

“It’s the day after Ash Wednesday,” I told her, “and Ash Wednesday is always jarring to me. In fact, I won’t feel better until we get Jesus out of the desert, onto the cross, into the tomb, and then resurrected again. I hate not knowing the outcome of things….”

“Surely there isn’t much doubt…”

“Easy for you to say: You’re a believer.”

“Well, I believe in God,” said Lady, “just not so much the other stuff.”

“You know, that totally irks me,” I told her. “Because believe me, it’s no fun being an atheist. Everybody thinks I just sail through life, never shedding a scruple. But it’s just the opposite! First of all, I have to work twice as hard to be a good person, and then I have to worry about everything that you believers know is going to happen. So Advent is torment, since what happens if God forgets to blow into Mary’s ear?”

“God blew into Mary’s ear?”

“Think I read that somewhere, but did a Google search help? Of course not. And that’s the point—if I had any sort of belief, I’d know all about God and the Virgin Mary’s ear. It just increases the angst, somehow, not knowing and having to worry all the same….”

“Hmm,” said Lady, “rather like being in the hospital, awaiting surgery?”

“Err, yes….”

“Well, anyway, don’t you have some work to do? You completely flubbed yesterday, you know, and given that you’re just three days in, it doesn’t look promising.”

“That’s the problem,” I told her. “What if I do something really criminal, like recommending Elgar? Or Smetana? They’d probably take away my musician’s license.”

“Don’t tell me…”

“Well, of course! You wouldn’t want anyone un-credentialed or unauthorized to be performing ‘music,’ would you?”

“Hmm,” she said, “not a bad idea. Let’s see, there could be a poet’s license, as opposed…”

“…to poetic license,” we said in unison.

“Anyway,” I told her, “I’m completely unsure what music to play, or indeed, if it’s OK to play any music at all, during Lent. But obviously it has to be something religious, and that’s a problem, because we could do a whole year of religious music, and still not have scratched the surface. Damn, and at some point, I suppose I’ll have to tackle the passions….”

“Tackle the passions,” said Lady. “And exactly what sort of blog am I being dragged into, this dread day that I’m spending in Centro Médico? You might wait a day or two, until the anesthesia entirely wears off, before tackling any passions with me!”

“Theologically speaking, you have nothing to worry about,” I told her. “Passion—from the past participle of the Latin verb patī….”

“Into my sick chamber does he come,” began Lady, “strewing past participles…”

“I am NOT strewing past participles!”

“Casting then, or perhaps dribbling,” she replied, “and it’s entirely unfair. Please, whatever you do, keep your passions well and truly to yourself!”

“I intend to,” I told her, “though the word ‘passion’ here refers only to the suffering of Christ…”

“Only?” she asked.  “You call being crucified….”

“We’re well astray, here,” I told her. “anyway, it’s very much on my mind to do something about Buxtehude, since generally speaking, very few people do anything about Buxtehude.”

“Well, since he died in 1704 why in the world should anyone do anything about Buxtehude? What do you want—a mass said? Flowers on the grave? And is it true, by the way…”

“Why do you always hit on the scandalous bits of every composer? Wasn’t it enough that Bach walked 200 unauthorized miles or so to study with Buxtehude? Bach! But now you’re going to dredge up the story…”

“Well, I just wanted to know….”

“Yes, he seems to have had seven daughters, the eldest of which was Anna Margareta. And yes, Handel, Bach, and a guy named Johann Matheson all got the same pitch. Buxtehude was ready for retirement, and perfectly happy to give up his post to any of the three…”

“Hah!” said Lady. “I knew it! So Anna Margareta got thrown into the bargain! And since all three skedaddled, well, she couldn’t have been too much of a beauty! My my, how the human resources profession has blossomed, over the years!”

“Surgery has done little to improve your mood,” I told her. “How would you like to go through history as the eldest daughter of Dieterich Buxtehude? Snigger, snigger, all down the centuries!”

“I would disdain to snigger,” said Lady. “And certainly not down the centuries. All right—let’s have Buxtehude, if we must. What’s it to be?”

“Membra Jesu Nostri,” I told her. “Actually, just the second cantata of the seven. You know, after the seven….”

“…limbs of Christ. But I’ve never gotten: why are the knees considered limbs?”

“Probably just to get it up to seven,” I told her. “You know, it’s one of those numbers that has all that symbolism attached to it. Anyway, whether the knees are limbs or not, the image is wonderful. ‘You will be brought to nurse, and be dandled on the knees….’ Who doesn’t wish for that?”

“It is a particularly strong post-surgical yearning,” said Lady. “Yes, dandling! Well, and is that all for the day? Surely there’s something more up that authorial or musical sleeve?”

“Well, there’s always Biber—that is, Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber….”

“Dear me, he certainly went a long way to distinguish himself just Justin…”

“Wouldn’t you? Makes checking into a hotel, or a country inn, lots easier.”

“Obviously. OK—so what are we hearing from HIF Biber?”

“HIF?”

“Henry, or whatever…”

“A civil tongue,” I told her, “which is what you ought to keep. Well, how about the introit from the Requiem a 15? True, it starts out a bit slow, but after 45 seconds or so, it turns just glorious. And it’s a nice introduction to requiems, you know.”

“Am I to be introduced to requiems?” said Lady. “Are they the sort to whom a lady, or especially a Lady, might be introduced? And how much of an acquaintance am I supposed to have with them? It would make a difference, when I set out to buy the Thanksgiving turkey.”

“They’re quite circumspect,” I told her, “and really need little in the area of entertaining. And since it is a mass for the repose of the soul of the dead…”

“First dandling,” said Lady, “and now repose. Well, well, I suppose I can give it a listen. Unless, of course, you have somebody else that I’m supposed to blather on about? Really, Marc, I have just had surgery!”

“Well, there’s always Zelenka,” I started off saying.

But the Biber had done its work. I looked at her, and the old nurse in me checked her breathing: yes, the chest was rising and falling rhythmically. It was cold in the room, so I drew the blanket she had brought from home up to her cheeks. And then, since she didn’t have to answer, I asked her the question.

“Sometimes I wonder,” I whispered to her, “are you my sister…

… or my daughter?”

(Note to readers—I just got a call. She came through surgery fine….)    

                

A Month of Music, Day 2

“Well, there has to be a place in the world for pissed-off music meant for something else,” I told Lady. “Though it’s easy to forget about it, somehow….”

“Whatever do you mean,” said Lady. “And why should music be pissed-off?”

“Well, I don’t know if the music is pissed-off, but the listener…”

“Dear me,” said Lady resignedly, “and what has he done now?”

“That’s just the problem,” I told her.

“And…?”

“’What has he done now’ is what you said. And no need to specify who that ‘he’ would be! Why couldn’t he stay on reality TV where he belonged? It was a perfect arrangement for everybody. He could be there getting adulation and I could be here, ignoring him. But how do you ignore….”

“You’re becoming completely unbalanced, Marc….”

“I AM NOT!” I told her, though perhaps speaking in capitals….

“Anyway, wouldn’t it be better, given your agitated state of mind, to listen to something soothing? A Haydn quartet, perhaps, or a Mozart divertimento…”

“Oh God, don’t remind me. I have to do something about damn Josef Haydn!”

“Surely he wrote a masterpiece or two?”

“The problem may have been that he was too nice a man,” I told her. “Has anyone ever studied how temperament modifies talent? Think of how we imagine Haydn: there he is, in his frock coat, with his wig perfectly powdered. And then there’s Beethoven—he makes Einstein look perfectly coifed….”

“ Was Beethoven really that tempestuous? Or was he just unconventional?”

“Who knows? According to some, he was good to his nephew…or at least, better to his nephew than the nephew was to him. Anyway, there are days you just have to listen to Beethoven….”

“And today was one of those days?”

“Yeah,” I told her. “And so that got me thinking about Egmont….”

“Ah, Egmont,” said Lady, perhaps suspiciously easily. “Yes, opus 84. Based on the work of Goethe, concerning the 16^th century Count of Egmont….”

“You’ve been cheating,” I told her.

She immediately took umbrage.

“Indeed not,” she said, snatching the umbrage from my lap.

“Where are you going,” I called.

“Do you think you’re the only person who can have umbrage?!” she shouted. “Well, I’m tired of it, Marc. Tired of always having to be told things. Tired of always being the straight man!”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to be the straight man,” I told her. “I didn’t come out all those years before it was fashionable just to crawl back in the closet!”

“Here,” called Lady, “Santana—catch! You want Marc’s umbrage?”

“This is ridiculous,” I told Lady. “I invite you into this blog and here you are, stealing my umbrage, and worse, completely deflecting attention from the serious business at hand. We’ve barely touched Beethoven, to say nothing of Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev.”

Lady tossed the umbrage to Santana.

“Well, I don’t want this old umbrage,” said Santana. “Why should I? I have plenty of umbrage of my own….”

“Anyway,” said Lady, “I don’t see what Tchaikovsky is doing here at all. Prokofiev I get. He obviously got a bad deal all his life, even up until the day he died. Which, by the way, was the same day Stalin died. So they had to wait three days to bury him, and then guess what! No flowers—because Stalin had hogged them all!”

“Ridiculous,” I told her, “and give me my umbrage back, because now I seriously need to take it. Or have it. Whatever—that story is completely unsubstantiated.”

“Yo, Santana! Guy here wants his umbrage back!”

“Well, I don’t have any umbrage,” said Santana. “Anyway, I’m busy here, running this café. However, it’s certainly an irony that Stalin and Prokofiev…”

“That’s Prokofiev and Stalin,” I told him.

“…that they died the same day. Poor Prokofiev. He didn’t seem able to live either abroad or in Russia. He said he was miserable in Paris and the United States, but then he got slapped down, just as Shostakovich did, for writing ‘degenerate’ music. Or maybe it was ‘decadent.’ Anyway, it wasn’t music that exalted the struggle of the proletariat. So the composers’ union got onto him, and then Prokofiev had to write a letter, in which he had to renounce all his previous music. Then, he started to write an opera called The Story of a Real Man.”

“Surely you jest,” said Lady.

“Hah!” I told her. “And I thought you knew everything! All this business of Goethe and the Count of Egmont! But you don’t know a thing about Prokofiev!”

“We divided it up,” said Lady. “I wikipediaed Beethoven, and Santana wikipediaed the other. We were also busy trying to figure out how to cop your umbrage….”

“’Wikipedia’ is not a verb,” I told her.

She stuck her tongue out.

“Anyway,” I told her, “if you’re so smart, what about Tchaikovsky? What’s the skinny on him?”

“I refuse to have anything to do with Tchaikovsky,” said Lady. “I don’t approve of gay men marrying women for cover.”

“It’s that old story,” I told her. “Does a thing exist before you’ve named it? Because we can hardly say that Tchaikovsky was gay—at least the way we see it today.”

“I know all about this theory,” said Lady, “and I call it specious with a capital ‘SP.’”

“You mean a capital ‘S’”

“I mean an ‘SP,’” said Lady. “Did Tchaikovsky ever write anything serious? All that ballet stuff—The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, Peeping Beauty…”

“Sleeping,” I told her. “Anyway, the man wrote at least six symphonies. One of which, by the way, Mr. Fernández would give an entire day to. Number 6—Pathetique!”

“Not convinced,” said Lady. “And I don’t see why he’s here at all.”

“Three outsiders,” I told her. “Outsiders because of temperament, or sexuality, or politics. Outsiders who chose to use—or maybe had to use—somebody else’s story. Is that why this music is the perfect music for the adolescent, or post-adolescent? Think so…. Anyway, it’s definitely music written with one fist raised in the air!”

But by then, Lady had dive bombed Santana. She headed for the door, throwing my umbrage back at me as she left.

           

A Month of Music, Day 1

“OK—this isn’t starting so well,” I told my friend Lady. “As always, it sounded easy, when I first thought about it. 31 days, 31 pieces of music—simple, right?”

“Well, it should be,” said Lady. “You do know more than 31 pieces of music, don’t you?”

“Yeah, and that’s the problem. I don’t just want to do an electronic version of ‘Classical Music for Sunday Mornings.’ And God knows I don’t want to do ‘Mozart for Baby.’”

“What’s the matter with Mozart for babies?”

“You know, Mozart is not a vitamin pill. And there are at least 30,000 better reasons to listen to Mozart than the alleged boost to cognition, or whatever it is. I’m so tired of all this business of justifying classical music education based on the supposed neurological benefits. Do we study literature because of its effect on the brain? Or art? Of course not. Oh, and notice that the football coach never has to jump through those hoops….”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Well, in the first place, what to do with the war-horses?”

“War-horses?”

“You know,” I told her, “Beethoven’s Fifth, the William Tell Overture, Carmina Burana, and that damn Bolero. The problem is that some of them are wonderful pieces, but who can hear William Tell without thinking of the Lone Ranger? Anyway, I’m not going to waste one of my 31 days on Rossini….”

“We have a grudge against Rossini?”

“Not as seriously as I have a grudge against a lot of people,” I told her, “and Beethoven said Rossini’s opera buffa…”

“Ah, opera buffa,” said Lady, “not a great favorite of mine….”

“It’s just comic opera,” I told her, “unlike opera seria, which is….”

She just gave me a look.

“Anyway, Beethoven liked the opera buffa, but told Rossini he couldn’t write the serious stuff. Oh, and then there’s his reputed comment; Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough on the backside….”

“OK, so no Rossini. So now what’s the problem?”

“Well, should I simply devote each day to a different composer? Sort of, ‘if today is Tuesday, it must be Fauré?’ But there’s a problem, there….”

“And that is?”

“Oh come on, does that mean that Bach and Beethoven only get the same attention as Reynaldo Hahn? I mean, I love Hahn, and I wouldn’t be without Hahn, but still….”

“I see the point,” said Lady. “So spend a week on Bach, if you’re so inclined….”

“And then, of course, there are all the composers I should like, and don’t. Which means, of course, that I’m the complete Philistine. Sorry, but almost everything I’ve ever heard of Debussy make me want to jump off the balcony, if not the nearest bridge. So though he’s important compositionally….”

“Compositionally?”

“Sorry—anyway, it’s my book, and if I don’t want to invite Debussy into it, well, so what? Mr. Fernández loves Debussy, so he can write a rebuttal, or his own damn book. Anyway, Debussy is out, and very likely so is Wagner, as well as most of the 20^th century. I might make an exception for Samuel Barber….”

“All of this,” said Lady, “is nothing more than an excuse to get down to work. You’re throwing up objections simply to avoid getting the nose anywhere near the grindstone….”

“Easy enough for you to say,” I told her. “But what about chronology? Shouldn’t we progress in orderly fashion from Monteverdi, say, to Barber? That seems like the serious thing to do…”

Lady yawned.

“Aren’t you forgetting,” she said, “that this is supposed to be fun? As in ‘not a chore?’ Anyway, how did you begin to listen to classical music? Surely your mother didn’t sit you down with a study guide….”

“Absolutely the opposite,” I told her, “my mother, by the time I came around, was considerably worn down. She had a sort idea that it didn’t matter much what you did, your child was either going to turn into a mass murderer or not. Well, she may not have been quite that loose, but still…”

“Well, so what did you listen to, early on?”

“Oddly enough, quite a lot of The Weavers, as well as Burl Ives. I think my father was into that; it was when she was alone, and very often when she was editing, that she played classical music. Mostly, of course, because it’s hard to edit if you’re distracted by the lyrics of ‘itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini…’”

“Surely you jest….”

“The fifties brought us many things,” I told her. “Including, I’m sorry to say, the infamous witch hunts, led by Joe McCarthy from Appleton, Wisconsin. And oddly, The Weavers and Burl Ives—who I always thought were hopelessly square and old-fashioned—suffered greatly under McCarthy. Nothing as seditious as a folksong, is there?”

“Folksongs? Seditious?”

“Surprisingly. After all, when you sing, ‘this land is my land, this land is your land,’ well…has anyone ever sung ‘this land is Monsanto’s land?’”

“That actually might not be a bad idea….”

“Well,” said Lady, “since you obviously are turning just a bit chicken-livered about this whole project, why don’t you simply invite whatever composer is hanging around, over there in the dining room of Fortaleza Street? You know, if you really can’t decide, well, let it be open mic. What’s wrong with that? After all, I do it every Tuesday night at the café….”

“Well,” I said, “if it got me off the hook of deciding on one masterpiece and throwing out the other, it would be worth it. And it is, after all, how I came to so much music….”

“So, folksongs?”

“Hmm…folksongs. Wonder what Alfred Deller is doing, at the moment.”

“I’m right here,” said the disembodied voice. “nor did I think anybody at all remembered me. It happens, you know. They tell you that you are immortal, that you’ll never be forgotten, and now, who remembers Deller? Or my son? Or both of us together, since we often sang together….”

“Oh dear,” said Lady, “is it really starting? And who might these dellers be?”

“Not dellers, Dellers. And they have every reason to be a bit miffed. Alfred was the father, and Mark was the son…but they both were countertenors, which at the time was a bit of an eye opener.”

“Countertenor?”

“It’s a man who is singing in the traditional female vocal range. And please, don’t get me started on whether it’s falsetto or not. You never, ever want to get into vocal production, because singers have the weirdest ideas about what it is, or what it isn’t. Somebody or other—Renée Fleming, I think, but anyway, somebody famous—seriously thinks that to produce a beautiful, pianissimo high note, you have to pitch the note through the tiny little indentation of the nose as it curves towards the cheek. Physiologically impossible, of course, but who cares? However she does it, or thinks she does it, well it’s glorious. And of course, could I do it?”

“Am I, or am I not, to be allowed to speak?” Said the querulous Deller. “I have been, after all, dragged from the dead. Though I must say, I was hardly the only male alto around: in fact, it was often said that if they had allowed women in the cathedral choirs, there would have been no male altos. But as it was, there were many of us….”

“So there were,” I said. “But you were one of the trailblazers, weren’t you? And now, we have people like David Daniels and Philippe Jaroussky, but you were standing out there, quite alone, and doing your thing….”

“The Deller Consort,” said Deller, “we were pioneers in the early music field.”

“You were,” I said, and thought, but did not say, that his voice had been sadly surpassed by our current generation of countertenors. “Well, shall we listen to something? How about ‘She Moved Through the Fair?’ It has to be one of the most haunting songs in the world. And then, what about some Vaughan-Williams? It doesn’t seem right to slight poor Vaughan-Williams, who did so much to save and preserve English folksong. Though really, I think I’d do ‘Silent Noon,’ since it’s so beautiful, and such a good interpretation of the text of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. And then, of course, we’d have to do “Orpheus with his Lute…”

“What? I thought it was just five minutes a day! Three songs? That’s already 15 minutes!”

“Bother,” I said, “I knew this project was unfeasible from the start. Well, have another glass of wine. Oh, and I suppose I should pour another two for you?”

There was no response, as the music soared, but at the end, Deller and Vaughan Williams had finished their cups.