A Month of Music, Day 6

“It’s probably time to tell the truth,” I said to Lady, “which is that a surprising number of composers were seriously fucked-up. In fact, none of the goings-on (or the going-ons, whichever it may be) of the popular music crowd are very impressive. Jimmy Hendrix? Madonna? Virtually every composer puts them to shame. Schumann, of course, is one the worst: he threw himself into the Rhine, had to be rescued by fishermen, and died in the madhouse. Oh, and they wouldn’t let him see his wife, Clara, until two days before he died. And he had been languishing there for two years!”

“Horrors,” said Lady, “syphilis, I presume?”

“Probably,” I said, “but who knows? There’s also Schubert, who almost definitely did have syphilis, and who may have been gay. There’s Beethoven, who used to play in bawdy houses as an adolescent, to scrape up money. Probably necessary, since Beethoven’s father was a drunk, as well as abusive—and we all know what a toll that takes on disposable income! Bach, of course, looks normal enough, but he must have had a hell of a life. Lost his mother when he was nine, and then his father the next year. Then he gets sent off to live with his oldest brother, and who knows how that went? Got into duels, got thrown in jail for a month, lost his first wife and over half of his kids. No, it must have been a hell of a life, and there he is, churning out one masterpiece after another.”

“Well, surely there has to be some composer who isn’t completely cracked,” said Lady.

“Well, if anybody can make the claim, it’s probably Mendelssohn,” I told her. “He came from a privileged background, but that has its own challenges. There was this whole thing about his religion: he was of Jewish background, but his parents didn’t circumcise him, and in fact baptized him as a Christian in the Reformed Church. So nobody quite knows what that’s all about.”

“Reformed Church?” asked Lady.

“Oh, I used to know,” I told her. “It doesn’t much matter. Anyway, he had success and was—supposedly—‘equable,’ as Wikipedia put it. But then the article goes on to say that he once had a fit of furor, and had to be spoken to sharply by his father. Oh, and then they put him to bed for 12 hours….”

“Well, well…”

“Anyway, Mendelssohn never made it into his 40’s,” I told her. “And in some bizarre way, we still don’t quite know what to do with him. His music—isn’t it just a bit too pleasing? A bit too conventional? And yet, when I heard his last string quartet, I couldn’t believe it was Mendelssohn…”

“Hmm, so there was something more there?”

“Remember how I said that coming from privilege bears its own challenges? Well, if it was bad for Mendelssohn, just imagine how bad it was for Mendelssohn!”

“Ummmm…Marc?”

“Well, there was Felix, whom everybody knows, and then there was Fanny, whom few people know. And the confusion wasn’t helped by the fact when some of her songs were published, it was under the name of her brother. She only performed once in public, even though knowledgeable listeners thought she was as good a pianist as her brother. And the only thing she seems to have published—without consulting her brother—was a collection of songs.”

“Well, what’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, until you realize that her brother was composing oratorios. Massive works for full chorus and orchestra. So a collection of songs—especially since they were published on different colored paper and illustrated by her husband…. Well, it’s all just a bit too ladylike.”

“Well, I see your point….”

“It’s odd, when you think about it. Here’s what her father wrote to her: Music will perhaps become his [i.e. Felix's] profession, while for you it can and must be only an ornament.”

“Thanks, Dad!”

“I know. But has anyone ever explored why there are so many fabulous female pianists? And have been for centuries? Fanny’s mother, by the way, was a student of a student of Johann Sebastian Bach. So all of this veneration of Felix for having ‘championed’ Bach…well, we know where that came from!”

“Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Every well-bred house had a piano, and ladies were expected to be able to play. So inevitably, the piano became the instrument of choice. Can you imagine a female French horn player in the 19^th century?”

“You’re probably right,” I told her. “But there’s something infinitely sad about Fanny. You know, Clara Schumann may have had, in some respects, a better life. They two women were both great pianists, and also composers. But Clara was a child prodigy, and actually was the breadwinner, especially when Robert was ill. Both women were composers, as well. But here’s Wikipedia quoting Robert Schumann:

Clara has composed a series of small pieces, which show a musical and tender ingenuity such as she has never attained before. But to have children, and a husband who is always living in the realm of imagination, does not go together with composing. She cannot work at it regularly, and I am often disturbed to think how many profound ideas are lost because she cannot work them out.

“Not disturbed enough to get a job at Burger King, and let her get on with composing?”

“Nope—poor Clara had to take charge of the home and be the breadwinner. And her career, by the way, spanned 61 years. And she died forty years after her husband. Poor dear, she didn’t have much of a life. Hard to know which of the ladies—who must have known each other—had a harder life…”

“Well, who’s to say? But my vote, somehow, is with Fanny,” said Lady.

“It’s ironic,” I told her. “You know, I listened today to the piano sonata that Fanny wrote, and that everybody thought was really by Felix, because it was so ‘masculine.’ And I was able to post it onto Facebook, but somehow I can’t post it on the blog. And nothing I could find of Clara Schumann would play on YouTube. I kept on getting error messages. But then, the string quartet of Felix Mendelssohn—which he wrote in honor of his sister—well, that plays just fine! So I’m going to leave the space where the piano sonata should be blank. But you can click on it here, and for the next 28 days listen to it. It’s sort of melancholy, you know. Two great women, two great composers, and still…well, still struggling to be recognized.”

“It’s not ‘sort of melancholy,’” said Lady. “Here’s what it is…

…tragic!”   

   

   

A Month of Music, Day 5

“I am,” I told her, “excessively busy. So don’t even bother asking me to be in my blog today….”

“What!” cried Lady. “I don’t want to be in your stupid blog. And you’re no more busy than usual!”

“Well, it feels like I am,” I told her. “After all, I’m personally in charge, now, of some 400 years of musical history, and what happens if I flub it up?”

“Is there any reason to think you might?”

“I feel that I have to do something about the Grosse Fugue, and that has me completely stopped.”

“And what’s wrong with the Grosse Fugue?”

“Well, you know that Beethoven went deaf, right?”

“Well, we all know that!”

“So the deafer he got, the weirder his music got. And finally, he wrote a string quartet, and one of the movements was this fugue. And since the internet is shunning this table, I can’t get the full story, but it went something like this: everybody hated it. So Beethoven wrote another movement, to replace, and that was nice. But then he turned around and published the fugue as a stand alone piece. And now, most people who play the quartet use the original, with the fugue. But you also very frequently hear the fugue all by itself. So it’s definitely a Catch-22.”

“Is it that bad?”

“Frankly, yes. It’s extremely dissonant, extremely complex, and—unfortunately—an absolute masterpiece. It’s a sort of musical psychosis. It’s something that only Hannibal Lector could like. It is, in fact, absolutely fascinating, in a thoroughly repellent way. Music for Auschwitz? This would be the top hit!”

“Well, skip it, then….”

“I’m considering it,” I told her. “And then again, some part of me needs to incorporate it. After all, not all music needs to be beautiful, as odd as that sounds. And the Grosse Fugue is sort of like a hurricane, but instead of rain, you have razor blades. Or maybe it’s what a string quartet would sound like, if you replaced the instrument with jackals.”

“Wonderful,” said Lady. “Wow—this blog post will set the world on fire….”

“Well, I just listened to it again,” I told her. “And the good news is that it’s only fifteen minutes.”

“And the bad news?”

“It feels like fifteen hours….”

“It can’t be that bad…”

“I should probably listen to it once a day for a month or so, and then I’d get it,” I told her. “Here’s the deal. A regular fugue will have one theme, which will be passed around like a Frisbee among the players. But when the player doesn’t have the theme—or the Frisbee—then he or she plays some music that is related to the theme. But Beethoven decided to go one better—which is why he created a double fugue. So now we have two fugues going on at the same time.”

“Oh, dear….”

“It’s easy to understand if you listen to Ernst Toch’s Geographical Fugue,” I told her. “And of course you’ll never hear the word ‘Trinidad’ without smiling. Anyway, the fugue, and especially a double fugue, is really cerebral music. And even though we think of Beethoven as a passionate composer, he was quite cerebral in his way. As well, of course, as psychopathic….”

“Still don’t think you should include it,” said Lady. “Who needs ugly music?”

“It was an ugly time of my life,” I told her. “Remember? Maybe pain is a kind of fugue. After all, the same themes kept recurring, day after day and week after week. I was lying in bed, and dreading the moment when I had to turn. Or I was taking pain medicines—though never, thank God, opiates—and feeling a slight bit of relief. Each day was essentially the same, with only minor variations.”

“I remember seeing you during those days,” said Lady. “You looked haunted, and you moved like an old man. You could tell how much it hurt….”

“It was the endless repetition,” I told her. “Do you remember how Santana was feeding me papaya smoothies? He had just taken over the café, and I could see in his face the worry. So I kept on coming into the café, and he must have known that I was a regular. So each day, he’d make me a smoothie, which I didn’t much like. But there it was—if it really could help, who was I to say no? Oh, and most of the time he didn’t charge me.”

“Well, what went around came around,” said Lady. “Because now the café is packed….”

“The worst day came,” I told her, “at pretty much the end of the experience. Because even though I didn’t need surgery, well, I wasn’t sure. I knew that if the pain continued, somebody at some point would suggest it. And of course, if it’s a choice between constant pain and getting relief through surgery, I’d have to do it. So one day Craig came in, and said something like, ‘Well, they tell me you’re going to have surgery,’ and I lost it. So there I was, sobbing in the Sala Poética and that’s when David found me….”

David—a guy from Mexico who is, in fact, stuck in Mexico. And nobody knows when he will get out or get back. But there he was, and there I was, and suddenly I was sobbing in his arms and telling him my entire life story.

All right—not the entire story. Just, in fact, the painful stuff, which in the mood I was in was pretty much everything.

“Pain is so exhausting,” said Lady.

“So I’m sobbing away, and telling David that my whole life has been pain, pain, pain and nothing but pain, pain pain. And it started when I was a kid…”

“Well, at least you didn’t go back to harsh fetal environments,” said Lady. “Or did you?”

“I was a weird kid, and most it was because I was gay. Except that I didn’t know I was gay, because nobody talked about being gay. So it was confusing. And then I hated sports but loved music, so I got to be a cellist. And then that got all cocked up, because I had a big issue with one of my teachers….”

“Dear me, you were going far back.”

“I had a unified theory of my life, which actually was very simple. The theme, it turned out, was pain, since that’s what I encountered at every turn. So I was explaining that to David, and crying, and lying on David’s lap—as much as a 6 foot three inch man can lie in a five foot something guy’s lap. But it didn’t much matter,  because I was completely incoherent, and all David could do was sit there and stroke my head. Oh, and say, ‘yes, yes,’ or ‘no, no,’ or whatever it was he said.”

“Oh dear….”

“OK—so it wasn’t quite in the job description, but at least Nico came by and saw that I was in complete meltdown. Which was nice, since David was supposed to be making the little houses for you to paint. But there I was, so what could Nico or David do? And then, of course, I progressed into my college years, and guess what?”

“Let me guess,” said Lady, “it wouldn’t—just possibly—involve more pain?”

“You’re startlingly perceptive,” I told her. “One might even say sagacious. Yes, I detailed all of the pain, the loneliness, the uncertainty of coming out in the early to mid 70’s. I did everything but tell him about hanging out in the sixth floor men’s room of Memorial Library….”

“Is this information I really need to have?”

“Well, I’m sobbing away, and then I start to shake, and I realize that I’m starting a panic attack. So that’s just wonderful, since I now have covered absolutely every angle. Physically, I’m a complete wreck. Emotionally, I’m in a total free fall. Socially…”

“So then this beautiful little kid comes in—you know, the one who thought he was straight, but everybody knew he was gay?”

“Well, we didn’t really know,” said Lady. “Although nobody would have fainted away with surprise if it had turned out that he was. And whatever happened to him, by the way? Did he go into the Marines after all?”

“Well, we never saw him again, after that day. Which somehow doesn’t surprise me. Anyway, David turned me over to the beautiful gay / non-gay guy, and that was just terrific, since I was in a full-blown panic, and could tell the new guy all about my life, from the beginning! And by the way, did I mention….”

“Pain,” said Lady. “Yes, perhaps you did….”

“So we’re back to my childhood days, and the beautiful man is stroking me just like David. And though David is OK-looking…”

“Dear me,” said Lady, “and you were lying on the couches in the Sala?”

“Nothing happened,” I told her. “It isn’t that kind of a story. But then, guess what?”

“The beautiful man had to go into the Marines?”

“Or somewhere. So I’m still crying and explaining to people that my life—have I told you this?”

“And this was in working hours?”

“Of course! Look—what do people expect in a poetry work area? Normal, well-adjusted people? Of course not. You know, what Jill Johnston used to call nice normal fucked-up people. Poets, in short….”

“So what happened?”

“Well, the Marine or the pre-Marine or maybe the proto-Marine had somewhere else to go, and it was at that point that I decided I was hungry. So since the neo-Marine was clearly about to bolt, I went into the café, and asked for Santana. And he, bless his heart, knew just what to do!”

“Let me guess…”

“Yup, he put me at the very back of the café, where I was away from anyone else. And then he gave me the smoothie with about three tablespoons of sugar in it.”

“Wonderful,” said Lady, “a sugar-fueled emotional breakdown.”

“Oh, and he offered to drive me to the hospital, if I needed it. Which I probably did, but certainly didn’t want. Anyway, I ate and my sugar rebounded, and then guess what?”

“This story cannot go on….”

“It does. Because now my stomach erupted, which wasn’t surprising, since I hadn’t taken my acid reducer. So I’m in a panic, my blood sugar is iffy, my stomach is revolting—in every sense of the word—and I have to go to the pharmacy. But how can I? Remember the panic attack? Remember that I’m crying and shaking? So then I realize: I need Klonopin! And that’s when I look around, and I see Carlos!”

Carlos—the pirate poet. When the poetry is slow, he dresses up as a pirate, and gets people to give him money in exchange for a photo. And this money-making enterprise attracted the evil and small mind of a ranger up at the fort. So Carlos got arrested, and ended up in the hoosegow, still clad in his pirate outfit. It completely startled all of the drunks….

Anyway, Carlos and I head for the pharmacy, where we can get the acid reducer but not the Klonopin. So that’s when I decided to take Benadryl, instead, to see if it would at least make me sleepy.

“And did it?”

“Sort of,” I told her. “At least it took the edge off the panic. Anyway…”

“Yes?”

“The Beethoven stays.”

After all, it was exactly how I felt that day….

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….)