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Authors: David G. Hartwell
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thirty-eight-beat hiatus just before The Nightingale dies? I still need a death song for her. She’s entitled to die with a flourish.” She couldn’t tell him about The Dream
– that she always awoke just before that death song began.
“No matter. You’ll get it eventually. The story’s straight out of Oscar Wilde, isn’t it? As I recall, The Student needs a Red Rose as admission to the dance, but his
garden contains only white roses. A foolish, if sympathetic Nightingale thrusts her heart against a thorn on a white rose stem, and the resultant ill-advised transfusion produces a Red Rose . . .
and a dead Nightingale. Isn’t that about all there is to it?”
“Almost. But I still need The Nightingale’s death song. That’s the whole point of the ballet. In a plotted ballet, every chord has to be fitted to the immediate action, blended
with it, so that it supplements it, explains it, unifies it, and carries the action toward the climax. That death song will make the difference between a good score and a superior one. Don’t
smile. I think some of my individual scores are rather good, though of course I’ve never heard them except on my own piano. But without a proper climax, they’ll remain unintegrated.
They’re all variants of some elusive dominating leitmotiv – some really marvellous theme I haven’t the greatness of soul to grasp. I know it’s something profound and
poignant, like the liebestod theme in Tristan . It probably states a fundamental musical truth, but I don’t think I’ll ever find it. The Nightingale dies with her
secret.”
She paused, opened her lips as though to continue, and then fell moodily silent again. She wanted to go on talking, to lose herself in volubility. But now the reaction of her struggle with the
mirror was setting in, and she was suddenly very tired. Had she ever wanted to cry? Now she thought only of sleep. But a furtive glance at her wrist-watch told her it was barely ten
o’clock.
The man’s craggy eyebrows dropped in an imperceptible frown, faint, yet craftily alert. “Anna, the man who read your Rose score wants to talk to you about staging it for the
Rose Festival – you know, the annual affair in the Via Rosa.”
“I – an unknown – write a Festival ballet?” She added with dry incredulity: “The Ballet Committee is in complete agreement with your friend, of course?”
“He is the Committee.”
“What did you say his name was?”
“I didn’t.”
She peered up at him suspiciously. “I can play games, too. If he’s so anxious to use my music, why doesn’t he come to see me ?”
“He isn’t that anxious.”
“Oh, a big shot, eh?”
“Not exactly. It’s just that he’s fundamentally indifferent toward the things that fundamentally interest him. Anyway, he’s got a complex about the Via Rosa – loves
the district and hates to leave it, even for a few hours.”
She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Will you believe it, I’ve never been there. That’s the rose-walled district where the ars-gratia-artis professionals live, isn’t it?
Sort of a plutocratic Rive Gauche?”
The man exhaled in expansive affection. “That’s the Via, all right. A six-hundred pound chunk of Carrara marble in every garret, resting most likely on the grand piano. Poppa chips
furiously away with an occasional glance at his model, who is momma, posed au naturel .”
Anna watched his eyes grow dreamy as he continued. “Momma is a little restless, having suddenly recalled that the baby’s bottle and that can of caviar should have come out of the
atomic warmer at some nebulous period in the past. Daughter sits before the piano keyboard, surreptitiously switching from Czerny to a torrid little number she’s going to try on the
trap-drummer in Dorran’s Via orchestra. Beneath the piano are the baby and mongrel pup. Despite their tender age, this thing is already in their blood. Or at least, their stomachs, for they
have just finished an
– that she always awoke just before that death song began.
“No matter. You’ll get it eventually. The story’s straight out of Oscar Wilde, isn’t it? As I recall, The Student needs a Red Rose as admission to the dance, but his
garden contains only white roses. A foolish, if sympathetic Nightingale thrusts her heart against a thorn on a white rose stem, and the resultant ill-advised transfusion produces a Red Rose . . .
and a dead Nightingale. Isn’t that about all there is to it?”
“Almost. But I still need The Nightingale’s death song. That’s the whole point of the ballet. In a plotted ballet, every chord has to be fitted to the immediate action, blended
with it, so that it supplements it, explains it, unifies it, and carries the action toward the climax. That death song will make the difference between a good score and a superior one. Don’t
smile. I think some of my individual scores are rather good, though of course I’ve never heard them except on my own piano. But without a proper climax, they’ll remain unintegrated.
They’re all variants of some elusive dominating leitmotiv – some really marvellous theme I haven’t the greatness of soul to grasp. I know it’s something profound and
poignant, like the liebestod theme in Tristan . It probably states a fundamental musical truth, but I don’t think I’ll ever find it. The Nightingale dies with her
secret.”
She paused, opened her lips as though to continue, and then fell moodily silent again. She wanted to go on talking, to lose herself in volubility. But now the reaction of her struggle with the
mirror was setting in, and she was suddenly very tired. Had she ever wanted to cry? Now she thought only of sleep. But a furtive glance at her wrist-watch told her it was barely ten
o’clock.
The man’s craggy eyebrows dropped in an imperceptible frown, faint, yet craftily alert. “Anna, the man who read your Rose score wants to talk to you about staging it for the
Rose Festival – you know, the annual affair in the Via Rosa.”
“I – an unknown – write a Festival ballet?” She added with dry incredulity: “The Ballet Committee is in complete agreement with your friend, of course?”
“He is the Committee.”
“What did you say his name was?”
“I didn’t.”
She peered up at him suspiciously. “I can play games, too. If he’s so anxious to use my music, why doesn’t he come to see me ?”
“He isn’t that anxious.”
“Oh, a big shot, eh?”
“Not exactly. It’s just that he’s fundamentally indifferent toward the things that fundamentally interest him. Anyway, he’s got a complex about the Via Rosa – loves
the district and hates to leave it, even for a few hours.”
She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Will you believe it, I’ve never been there. That’s the rose-walled district where the ars-gratia-artis professionals live, isn’t it?
Sort of a plutocratic Rive Gauche?”
The man exhaled in expansive affection. “That’s the Via, all right. A six-hundred pound chunk of Carrara marble in every garret, resting most likely on the grand piano. Poppa chips
furiously away with an occasional glance at his model, who is momma, posed au naturel .”
Anna watched his eyes grow dreamy as he continued. “Momma is a little restless, having suddenly recalled that the baby’s bottle and that can of caviar should have come out of the
atomic warmer at some nebulous period in the past. Daughter sits before the piano keyboard, surreptitiously switching from Czerny to a torrid little number she’s going to try on the
trap-drummer in Dorran’s Via orchestra. Beneath the piano are the baby and mongrel pup. Despite their tender age, this thing is already in their blood. Or at least, their stomachs, for they
have just finished an
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