The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben: Installment #4

In the previous installment of the "Intermezzo" which begins The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben, Kerr tries to find the room where his pre-concert talk is to be given (why is it always such an up-hill battle to find anyplace at St. Sisyphus Community College?) then recalls his recent visit to the Bavarian Alps, meeting his friend Howard Zenn, and the issue over "Style Wars" at one of those not-quite-new music symposiums he'd attended some time ago (or maybe it was a dream).

(If you're completely lost, you could start at the beginning, with this introductory post, then follow the links into the subsequent installments.)

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-6-

Sitting on my back porch on an autumn-like day during this up-and-down summer, it was a respite from the recent humidity that had been turning the past few mild days into barely tolerable ones. It had annoyed me, being cooped up in the air-conditioning all day long, when the temperatures should have been so pleasant. After a series of storms and heavy rains – a bit too heavy, unfortunately – the weather, as they say, eventually turned "fine." It was pleasant to begin the day watching the birds at my feeder. Looking across the yard sloping toward the woods and the stream behind me, I felt more relaxed than in recent weeks. Not that much had changed since last time except being that much older. But it felt good to sit there with my coffee and my paper. For the moment, everything seemed to be ideal.

Over the years I had let the woods encroach more into my yard, expanding the natural refuge for the local wildlife. This became a buffer between me and the park should anything ever change. Each summer I dreaded hearing news the parkland would be sold or developed. Town spokesmen long described this park as "under-developed." From the back yard, I could ignore the fact I lived in suburbia, the steady noise from the nearby highway aside. Out back, there were deer; out front, RVs shuttled children to soccer practice.

"It's not that it's been easy, you know," a familiar voice was saying, "growing older like this, just sitting around – waiting."

I looked up but couldn't see anyone there, nor anyone in the house.

Was there a call on the answering machine? But I'd missed the ring.

"And what have you been doing with yourself?"

Again, looking around, I wondered who this early visitor was and saw nobody – that is, nothing but a squirrel sitting there.

I recognized Tom Purdue's voice – it's been years since I'd last seen him.

The squirrel sat up, folding his hands across his chest, tilted his head.

"You know," he was saying, as he strutted forward cautiously, his tail scruffy, "maybe you could offer me some sunflower seeds?"

It made me think maybe Tom had died and his soul, transformed into this squirrel, was stopping by to warn me.

"You remember that time we were talking about 'natural talent' after leaving Grimmoire?" He hopped up on the table beside me. Curiously, the squirrel looked a bit like Tom, too, mostly around the eyes.

"Yeah, actually, I do," I said, giving him a bit of my cookie. "It was something we'd both considered a curse."

As a kid, I'd thought it was great, like having a "Celestial Radio" and writing down whatever transmitted into my head.

Tom had the same feeling until reality got in the way of everything.

Of course, for him, much of it had to do with his wife Susan who divorced him after a few years, reluctant to go through life called "Sue Purdue" like some comic book character.

"It wasn't that the radio wasn't transmitting any more," he said, "I just couldn't tune in the right frequency, you know?"

The problem was, with natural talent, you didn't have to work as hard; then came the time it wasn't good enough.

"Suddenly you were 27 but writing no better than a 17-year-old with potential."

It was like you'd suddenly outgrown your prodigyhood and discovered you didn't have a solid technique to build your future on.

"That was a mess," Tom the squirrel said, "when everything fell to pieces. Well, I worked hard – then it happened again."

He shook his head slowly. "That was worse. You got any beer around?"

*-*

Sliding the glass toward her, I asked her, "A little more wine, then?"

Sondra's sudden appearance startled me, especially in Paris. I'd never been to Paris except once briefly as a student eons ago. We'd talked about going there for a honeymoon but settled instead on Florence despite the fact her maternal grandmother was French.

We're sitting at one of those ubiquitous sidewalk cafés enjoying l'heure du goûter – the French equivalent of 'tea' – near the Louvre. Our waitress Lili brought us some mille-feuilles imported from the boulangerie next door.

Sondra looked no different than she had that week we spent having lunch at this trattoria on the Piazza della Signoria or walking toward our hotel past the Casa Bardi where opera was invented. She looked radiant in the Florentine moonlight as we strolled along the Arno: somehow, she hasn't changed very much since then.

As I handed her the wine glass, I noticed wrinkles on my hand and almost wondered aloud how that could be, before seeing the reflection of white hair – mine! – in the window behind her.

"Do you really want to go to the Boboli Gardens again?" she asked. "You seemed so bored there the other day."

It occurred to me, before I could respond, that it wasn't really boredom: how thoroughly old I must seem by comparison. What must she think of me, having let myself fall apart like this?

For a few years, after I'd started teaching at Klaxon University near Doylestown, she still observed her grandmother's l'heure du goûter, home from her job at the town's public library by 4:30 or so. I rarely joined her, given my afternoon seminars, but when I could make it in time, coffee and pastries were rejuvenating.

There was a place in town that opened up that year, "Nadia's Bakery," which specialized in French pastries like those mille-feuilles. Occasionally, I might find a carefully wrapped chocolate Napoleon waiting on my desk.

The diagnosis that winter had been unexpected, already advanced – an ugly word, cancer – not an easy death as she faded away. Holding up the wine glass in my hand, I noticed she was gone. I sat there unable to recall how I'd reacted to her death, then, beyond a depth of numbness lacking in tears.

*-*

Tears were the normal response whenever we managed to outwit what we referred to as 'The Child' that summer in Maine, stuck with a 10-year-old tagging after us three aristocratic high schoolers – cool kids. Rob's parents had ordained that, as the children, we balanced the adult demographic and therefore belonged together as a self-contained unit. Cousin Maurie broke down and cried when we were able to disappear somewhere, leaving him behind, alone in the big house, or out around the island somewhere which was more cruel if not dangerous.

It was difficult to get lost on the island since one could always see where the hill at its heart rose and from there one could easily find the house facing out to sea. Maurie should have been old enough to figure this out, we had decided, but he simply hated that we'd beaten him.

Rob Sullivan's cousin, LauraLynn, called this vacation "the Summer of Jekyll & Hyde-'n'-Seek," considering how Little Maurice could change his personality, switching from the sweetly innocent boy before his mother into a detestable monster. He was determined to ruin the summer for us, claiming we'd ruined him and in the process stunted him for life.

He took to carrying a large stick, too big a walking stick for him, which he would often point at us.

"You will rue the day," he'd whisper, "you cross paths with Maurie Harty!"

Cousin Maurie, as we called him (though I was only Rob's childhood friend), was a short, odious child, ill-tempered and vindictive, who'd grown up into a short, odious adult, even more ill-tempered and vindictive. It didn't take a Sherlock Holmes to deduce, as the years marched on, he would be a thorn in our sides. He'd become, as Rob described him in a letter a few years ago, "five gallons of craziness in a three-gallon bucket." After they'd branched out into their respective careers, Maurie became their strongest competitor.

As a banker, Maurie nearly destroyed Rob's father's company and made it so uncomfortable, LauraLynn retired early from the Harty's corporation. When Rob had been murdered, LauraLynn wondered if Maurie wasn't somehow behind it.

Surprised he'd remember me all these years later, I felt myself cringe when LauraLynn warned me about my impending "Momento Maurie."

*-*

Back and forth, back and forth it went: my mind wouldn't stop racing, like I was trapped inside my own brain – but instead, it was a huge room, circular, dimly lit but weirdly silent. There was no place to hide, no safe place I could run to after having been chased down the rabbit hole. Constantly running from Tom the Squirrel, dreading meeting Cousin Maurie at LauraLynn's wedding, I would suddenly see the memory of Sondra whom I couldn't reach out to or find a way to rescue her.

What kind of parallel universe had I slipped into this time, I wondered? Why could I only remember them in dreams?

"Fine dimension you've gotten yourself into this time, a very fine dimension, indeed!"

Brahms was nattering on about Wagner's endless endlessness before being hooted down by a group calling itself the Harmonic Liberation Front.

Does history repeat in cycles, musical styles moving in waves or never-ending circles, or does it swing infinitely like a pendulum?

"It's like a march – right-brain, left-brain, right-brain, left-brain – the slow march of time."

Everything became very still, suspended, a momentary hiatus between logic and the irrational. (Here comes the pendulum again – I'd better run.)

Charging across a bright open space, I saw a spiraling staircase, a globe of clearest crystal suspended over its bottom step, luminous, as if it could contain everything that ever happened deep inside it.


-7-

Just as I reached to ring the doorbell, the front door screeched open, a low, resonant scrape against the inner soul. "Welcome to Escher House," I told myself as I set down my suitcase. The soft moan that escaped from inside was enough to chill any heart and I nearly stopped, frozen in my tracks. The air I could sense more than feel as it wafted past me was much damper and chillier than I'd expected. It gave me a slight awareness of metaphysical discomfort rather than anything physical.

Before my eyes could begin to focus in the dimness beyond the door, I was aware of the presence of someone who, standing in my way, could so far neither be seen nor heard. The room appeared small, confining – as most vestibules went, it was hardly welcoming – before I realized an old woman stood there.

Her hair was long and care-worn, gray like dull pewter rather than silver, falling lankly about her head to her shoulders and straggly as if I'd awakened her early from a habitual afternoon nap. The face was pale, her expression indicating little curiosity at who I was, her hands clasped unwelcomingly across a thin chest.

"Dour" was a word coming easily to mind as I stood there waiting, my expression hopefully masking any sense of dread.

"You must be our overnight guest," she said without much change. "Come in."

As I reached to pick up my suitcase, she very quietly said something about there being much we needed to discuss which struck me as unlikely and certainly unexpected, not knowing who she was. When I looked up, she had been replaced by an equally dour-looking butler, rather old-fashioned and portly with a condescending smile.

"Welcome to the House of Escher," he said, his voice deep and well-modulated. "You must be Dr. Curr," mispronouncing my name.

"Yes," I stammered, not sure if I should or needed to correct him.

"Uh, the woman who'd been standing here," I continued, "who opened the door...? Who was she – and what happened to her?"

"Woman, sir?" He stopped with a condescending nod. "I saw no woman, here."

He looked at me with a slight bemusement.

"Did you have a pleasant journey, sir – hmm? Not too over-taxing, I trust?"

Looking over my shoulder, I noticed a long line had formed behind me, everyone of them holding suitcases, impatient and annoyed, all eager to get into the house before it started to rain again.

"If you'll excuse me," the butler said, speaking to the people in line, "I need to see to Dr. Curr first."

"But I'm Dr. Curr," someone behind me said, despite looking nothing like me. Several others started arguing they were Dr. Curr.

"No, I'm really Dr. Curr," a buxom woman in a red skirt shouted.

"Well, you can't all be Dr. Curr, now, can you?" the butler intoned, peering down at me with slightly pronounced skepticism. "Do you have any identification, sir, to prove these others are mere imposters?"

"Actually," I said, pulling out my lecture notes with references to my composition, "the name is Kerr – K-E-R-R – rhymes with 'car'?"

"Come this way, then, Dr. Carr," the butler said, archly over-pronouncing my name. The others had vanished into wisps of mist. "My name, should you need it, is Bernard White – I'm on the staff."

Not sure what I was sure of any more, I quietly followed him, still carrying my own suitcase and watching carefully.

There were several turns but we only made left ones, it struck me, before going down steps and through the basement.

Going up flights of steps, then through a window, I was quite lost.

*-*

The side entrance to the recital hall was directly across from the classroom where the school had scheduled the pre-concert talk, though unfortunately neither Beethoven nor Schubert were able to make it (as advertised). As it turned out, not many others were able to make it, either, judging from the attendance, especially among the students. Perhaps those members of the faculty or the foundation's administration I'd met who weren't able to make it to the talk would already be waiting in the auditorium to hear Ericson-Torres play my piece.

And where in all this had my old friend Tom Purdue been? I haven't seen anything of him since I arrived. Despite our proximity, he and I had not seen each other in years. We hadn't even traded telephone calls since I'd left Klaxon several years ago, nothing but a slight handful of occasional e-mails.

There'd been no questions at the end of the talk, an unresponsive group; everyone made a hasty bee-line for the door. Unable to retrieve my CD from the computer, I'd contact someone tomorrow morning. Wandering into the hallway, I noticed everyone had gone off to the right: but didn't this door access the recital hall?

As I opened the door into the auditorium, I wondered who I'd see. It was almost dark: there was nobody there. With fifteen minutes before the concert began, why hadn't they opened the house?

I worked my way through the empty hall, stumbling artlessly over what steps I could barely see in the dim lighting, knocking my shins against what was probably a chair propped against the wall. It occurred to me perhaps I had accidentally wandered into the wrong place, unaware there was another auditorium down the hall.

Just then, a bank of lights over the stage flashed like an explosion, filling the hall with an unbearably gaudy brilliance, as I stumbled from the shock and then collapsed into a handy seat.

Somewhere in the distance, laughter expanding out across the ceiling of the hall as if it would surround me with menace. The doors across the back of the hall opened as if on cue.

One by one, some people began filtering in, including the buxom woman with the red skirt from Escher House – a critic?

*-*

"Over the years, critics have gotten a bad rap from the general populace, too often an easy target, ripe for ridicule," I explained to those stalwart few who'd come out to my pre-concert talk. I then looked around the room sheepishly, asking if anybody was a critic but was met with nothing but stony silence.

"Basically, every time we see, hear or read something and react to it, we become in a sense our own critics, forming our own opinions but rarely getting beyond an initial 'like' or 'dislike.'

"It's more important for a good critic to tie in a work's factual content and relate it to some cultural continuum with whether the composer – and the performer – succeeds in communicating with the audience.

"I will give you some basic factual background – the context – of my piece, leaving you to react as your own critic."

I explained how the commission had come about, the result of a curious coincidence in which I was visiting Howard Zenn the day he received a commission he knew he'd be unable to fulfill.

"He suggested I should write it as a centennial birthday tribute to him and it would be premiered in his honor."

"So instead of a new work by the great Howard Zenn, one of America's leading composers," the know-it-all said, sneering directly at me, "we get sloppy seconds from someone no one's ever heard of?"

It was too difficult to ignore his attitude, his beady eyes penetratingly amplified behind the thick lenses of his horn-rimmed glasses. He had challenged me, expecting a response, though I had to ignore him. Was he the local composer on the faculty who felt overlooked by a commission he felt should've rightly gone to him?

It occurred to me in a searing flash, the headache now more intense, if not Tom Purdue, was this Purdue's son? But I had never known Tom had a son, he'd never mentioned one...

Collecting my thoughts, wishing for a glass of water to calm my nerves and trying not to look directly at him, I continued how this tribute to Zenn influenced the nature of my piece.

"Another influence was Dr. Thomas Purdue, on the faculty here – an old friend..."

That was when I had a startling epiphany!

*-*

When Ericson-Torres mentioned earlier in our brief conversation that afternoon with Dean Wilsher he would need a page-turner for my piece – he preferred the security of having the printed score in front of him – she said she would do her best to find someone despite the fact most students would be going to the dance.

Following a brief pause after the Beethoven, the pianist returned to the stage, acknowledging the rather scant applause, then sat down. A scowl of concentration indicated the seriousness of the moment about to unfold.

The demure young lady who'd hesitantly followed him out at a discreet distance was dressed in pink slacks and matching sneakers and looked for all the world like someone being led to her execution.

She fumbled with the music, spreading it out carefully on the music rack, and barely sat down when the pianist began.

Even if she could read music, it probably would have made no difference: she immediately stood up then sat down again. It was obvious she'd no idea where he was – just like the pianist.

Perhaps he'd told her to turn the page when he nodded his head: unfortunately, he was of the old "duck-and-weave" school-of-playing.

At one point, he knocked her arm away as she tentatively reached forward; during a quiet passage he shouted out, "Now!"

I wouldn't have been surprised had she suddenly run off the stage, screaming.

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

To be continued...

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The usual disclaimer: The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben, which you've no doubt figured out by now, is a work of fiction and as such all the characters (especially their names) and incidents of its story are more or less the product of the author's imagination, sometimes inspired by elements of parody, occasionally by personal experience. Many of the places are real (or real-ish) but not always "realistically used." The town of Marple in Pennsylvania (or rather, Marple Township) does exist though I've never been there and my use of it - aside from being a logical locale for a mystery inspired solely by the association of its name with a character created by Agatha Christie - is entirely fictional. Any similarity between people and places, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, but then, as Klavdia Klangfarben keeps quoting a former professor of hers, "Perception is everything." Yadda yadda yadda.

©2016 by Richard Alan Strawser for Thoughts on a Train

The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben: Installment #3

 

In the previous installment of the Intermezzo that opens The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben, our narrator, Dr. Kerr (to call him a 'hero' might be pushing it a bit), has finally arrived at St. Sisyphus Community College to attend the premiere of his latest composition, a piano piece he calls "Labyrinth." But this is a dream sequence and even the dream is not going well. In fact, giving the pre-concert talk or listening to the music he's composed, you could say it's become a nightmare. Along the way, as one scene modulates into another, he's attending a symposium (or two) where certain composers prove to be an opinionated bunch; and trying to figure out who this old woman is he'd first seen on that interminable bus-ride to Marple who keeps popping up in the oddest places...

(If you've arrived a little late for opening night, you can read the introductory post here and follow the links to enter The Labyrinth there.)

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-4-

The lobby was not only empty but dark – little more than emergency lighting – as if the concert were some other night. Maybe I was here on the wrong day? No, that poster said 'tonight.' In the darkness it was hard to tell: that was the pianist's photo though they'd managed to spell my name wrong. Of course, it was an hour before the program was set to begin so it was still early for the audience. My pre-concert talk started in fifteen minutes, however, and there's nobody here yet. The other problem I noticed was there weren't any signs around to indicate that they were even having a pre-concert talk much less where it was being held or who the speaker would be. Maybe I'd be talking to an empty room, assuming I could find it, or they'd be waiting for me somewhere else.

When I'd met Dean Wilsher after the pianist was rehearsing earlier this afternoon, one of the things I remember her saying was the room's right through those doors to the left of the stage. But the recital hall's doors were both locked, a folding table with a box of programs on it barring the way. Taking a handful of programs from the box, I decided to head down the hallway to the left of the auditorium. Though dimly lit, it should get me to the area behind the stage.

What was I even doing as their guest, walking around here by myself, no one from the school to greet me? Not that I hadn't been used to this, a composer fending for himself. As an introvert who'd rather work on his own than with a committee, shouldn't I be in my element with this? It helps to know the lay of the land, considering I was never good at figuring out directions on my own. Directions were difficult enough to ask for when anybody was around to ask.

Once I noticed the hallway around the auditorium kept leading away from it, I tried imagining some architect's "you-are-here" floor plan, nothing but left turns and dark rooms that were neither classrooms nor offices. Soon, I was in the "Ancient History Department", populated by stoop-shouldered, long-bearded professors, none of them helpful in pointing the way.

That was when I first saw the small sign that said "Pre-Concert Talk," its arrow pointing back the way I'd come, though I'm not sure how I could have missed anything along the way. As I neared the lobby again, minutes later, a dimly lit corridor I'd not seen before veered off to the left. As I walked cautiously toward a lighted room down at the farther end, I noticed a signboard on a music stand. It read:

Meet the Composers – Beethoven, Carr, Schubert
("Well, this should be interesting").

My fellow composers on the program, not surprisingly, had yet to show up – the room was empty except for Sarah Fuller who was busy setting up the computer with its CD player and screen. She explained how the system worked, too rapidly for this Luddite to comprehend, and then turned to leave with her apologies.

Looking quickly around, she explained, "So many things to see to with this event," with a wave of her free hand, the other loaded down with a bureaucrat's burden of folders and loose papers. "Oh, don't be disappointed if there aren't many students here," she continued, "there's a big dance tonight, first of the semester."

The room was a cinder-block cave that might once have been painted pink with chairs more suitable for a middle school. The cover on the piano was still locked and I saw no key.

*-*

By the time I'd discovered what the problem was, the taxi sped away, leaving me no time to check the seat to see if I'd left my suitcase (or more importantly, my notes) behind after such a strange ride that took me – I swear – all over town for a short distance I could have walked.

"It's the one-way streets," the cabby said in a flash of talkativeness, "they all go the wrong way – a philosophical conundrum..." He sounded like he was from Boston, perhaps, most likely a former professor.

The sun was out when I got off the bus the first time but that, I realized, was the wrong stop, though I could see the entrance to the campus off to my right. It had clouded over and threatened to rain the second time I arrived, the entrance now farther off to my left.

Carrying my suitcase and tucking my notes securely back into my coat pocket, I walked up to a rather unremarkable doorway, typically generic like so many academic institutions today, despite housing the arts departments. Red tulips and daffodils, nodding in the breeze, made it even more generic, everything having been designed from a pre-packaged box.

When I got inside and looked around, the hallway was empty of people and reminded me of my old high school. Then I saw an elderly janitor, half asleep, standing beside a potted ficus.

"Oh, I know what you're thinking," he said, leading the way to the recital hall, "how easy to be a janitor – though we prefer the term 'custodial engineer,' ourselves – 'wish I was a janitor.' How much training could it take – right? – keeping everything so clean and healthy-looking? I don't mean book-learning – things you can't teach! Why, it takes a lot more than just swishing some old mop around – tricks-of-the-trade we must pick up, not just dust! Think what the place'd be like without us – a sorry mess, for sure."

He pointed to the lobby and continued walking. "Takes a lot of hard work, late nights especially with a tough stain. Not that anyone would notice unless we weren't doing our job, would they? People think it must be fun – 'Why, I wouldn't want to be paid just to have fun.' Well, here you are..."

*-*

It was an intriguing thought, really, how a child becomes interested in something, deciding what he wants to be, growing up (or she, of course – my male bias showing through, lacking a suitable pronoun): at what point do children of either gender (or gender persuasion, to be correctly politically correct) decide what their futures hold? We talk about child prodigies when it comes to the arts often enough – the market is full of them, these days – but where are the youthful experts when it comes to bureaucrats or janitors?

What would most people do if their children saw a commercial on TV and decided they really wanted to become venture capitalists in their professional lives – or even worse, used car salesmen or politicians? Many have no idea what they want to do for a career until faced with the need to earn a living.

It seems odd society is transfixed by images of children singing and dancing when society doesn't offer them a living wage once these children decide to become singers or dancers in an adult world, or pursue a solo career, play in an orchestra or even compose – good grief, what's more counter-productive than becoming a composer?

As if those who barely have enough talent to succeed realize how much work it'll take to achieve their childhood dreams, do we need another piano-playing janitor bitter over failing to reach a goal?

Of course we do – well, maybe not the bitterness part exactly, but shouldn't everybody play the piano, sing in a choir or have some artistic experience acting in a play or painting the sunset? Experts tell us art helps wire our brains and makes us more sociable but funding for the arts is constantly disappearing. And the only thing that really tells us is, while it's fun, it's not actually necessary, your dreams aren't that important: what you realistically need to have, art aside, is a reliable "Plan B."

Wouldn't it be great if we all had the talent and the self-confidence not to need a "Plan B" behind us, that we could all develop ourselves to find some way of being productive? Since we judge members of society on how productive or unproductive they are, what could be nobler than becoming a janitor?

*-*

Sebastian Crevecoeur stood with me outside my office at the far end of the building that housed Cutler University's music department, a self-consciously modern building which hadn't aged well, lacking dignity and academic charm. Though small, the problem was my office's location next to a small lounge with its loudly clanking candy and soda machines. Barely big enough to hold a cat much less swing one, they then squeezed a small upright piano through the door. I had to crawl over the piano bench just to reach my desk.

Most of the boxes of books I needed were piled in the hallway since there was no room inside to unpack. Any student coming for a consultation would have to lean against the door. Sebastian agreed this was a problem as we walked down to the departmental office, but this was my first year teaching...

The hallway, winding past offices around sharp corners, alternated between darkness or light, and seemed to take forever to get there. The Dean, as it happened, was out to lunch, his secretary told us.

When I asked her to consider my request as politely as I could, she said, "It's already moved – across the hall."

There, between the mail room and a supply closet, was a much more spacious room, my books and piano already installed. In one box, my cat Schroedinger looked dead, then sat up and stretched.


-5-

Threats of winter storms were taken seriously in the Bavarian Alps above Garmisch-Partenkirchen, especially in the chalet where Howard Zenn lived, overlooking the alpine valley between the Zugspitze above and the Loisach River below. He'd recently hired a couple of servants to help look after the place: otherwise, he and his nephew lived there alone. Unless the storms were expected to be really fierce, Zenn was reluctant to leave just because it was going to snow. But come Christmastime, he was more and more concerned about being totally isolated. He decided, given the forecast, it was time to make the seasonal migration to his flat in Munich a little earlier, activating decades-old routines to close up what was originally a 14th Century castle. It was like wrapping everything in sheets on the summer estate to move back into the city house for 'the season.'

Cameron and I had arrived for our visit just a few days before, finding ourselves in the midst of furious packing, several of the smaller rooms already closed off, the library full of boxes. Even though the Munich flat, still a sizable living space, was completely furnished, he still moved a fair amount of stuff. By our second day there, the servants and the movers had put everything on the truck and driven off to Liebigstrasse, leaving Zenn and Will to follow in their private helicopter before the storm.

Zenn apologized to us between the chaos of moving and his need to compose at least a few hours a day, especially with his 100th birthday coming up and new works still to finish. When we set up our trip, he'd planned on staying through Christmas Day, but an ominous weather forecast changed all that. There was considerable snow on the ground after a not unusually difficult storm, but this was one of those "monster storms," the kind American meteorologists loved to scare us with on the evening news.

"Rather than take the train in from Garmisch," Will suggested, "why don't you ride along with Howard and me to Munich? I'll be flying the heli right into the airport – there's plenty of room." We'd be taking a jet directly to London in time for LauraLynn's wedding, assuming the weather didn't get in our way.

One of the leading if less-known American composers of our day, typically more talked about than performed and recorded, Howard Zenn had a penchant for black turtlenecks, bluejeans and usually shabby, brown tweed jackets. An African-American living in Germany since The War, he'd become a successful millionaire more from his investments than from his music. If you didn't recognize him or his voice, you might mistake him for an old retainer, the retired gardener, most likely, but he was one of the more highly regarded "challenging" composers writing today.

Zenn's latest string quartet had only recently been premiered by the Drang Quartet – its American premiere would mark his 100th birthday – but there were still requests coming in to accept commissions for new works.

"And where were any of these," he groaned, "back when I was thirty, longing for recognition after my first major premiere?"

In that day's mail was something from some foundation near where I lived, hoping to commission a brand new piano sonata written for "the brilliant young pianist, Carter Ericson-Torres" whom neither of us knew.

"I'll write them and decline but say you'll write it 'in my honor' – well, if you want to take the commission...?"

Walking into his living room, hoping not to sound too eager or grateful, I swore I saw someone outside the window, a large, bald man in a tuxedo who, in a flash, had disappeared.

Howard immediately set Will to writing the reply – "e-mail, since it'll be quicker" – apologizing for being unable to accept their commission but suggesting they consider a friend of his whom he could highly recommend.

Reading it over for errors, Zenn peered into the computer and then smiled – "you're okay with this, Terry?" – then hit 'send.'

He said I would be doing him a big favor, helping him out, since this way they'll have a new piece rather than him just telling them, "sorry, but I can't quite manage it."

"Besides," Zenn pointed out, typically how his mind worked, "your names are 'near-palindromes' – Carter Ericson-Torres and Terrance Richard Kerr? (close enough)" – as tenuous a way of connecting a composer to a performer as ever.

It would be some pretty big shoes to fill considering their original plan but, hey, a hand-me-down was better than nothing.

After a leisurely lunch of left-over roast lamb, Cameron checked the forecast and noticed the storm's arrival had been moved up: instead of sometime tomorrow afternoon, the front edge might reach Garmisch before midnight.

"Well then," Zenn said, pushing his plate away, "perhaps we'd better leave now?" Cameron and I quickly cleared off the table.

Will, having cleared the flight plan, said we could leave in fifteen minutes since everything was packed and ready to go. Cameron and I helped Zenn with his Scorrevole (*), following him down the hallway.

Zenn rode this scooter (something like a high-end Segway) everywhere around the house, saying it was much better than a wheel-chair. This hallway soon turned into a secret passageway carved deeper into the rock. I tried not to look over my shoulder, thinking we were being followed, but occasionally I kept hearing something behind us.

Before long, it opened into a cavernous room with an immensely high ceiling: there was Will waiting beside a futuristic-looking helicopter! Within a few minutes, we'd climbed inside and settled comfortably into our seats.

The wall in front of us opened to reveal Garmisch-Partenkirchen far below us as the helicopter flew out over the valley. We'd been inside a hangar built deep in the side of a cliff!

Looking back toward the hangar which proceeded to close behind us, I wondered: "Whatever happened to the man in the tux?"

*-*

Sitting around the student lounge at Grimmoire Conservatory, Tom Purdue and I discussed things we'd been told in our weekly lessons by the once-eminent composer Artur Merlynski who had once studied with Nadia Boulanger. During the first semester's lessons, typical of Grimmoire, Merlynski offered some basic information to help us unlock our own creative secrets. This involved a whole different approach to listening to music of any style and getting beyond the "like" or "dislike" reaction, so often the usual approach to hearing a piece for the first time.

Most composition lessons dealt with the abstracts of craft, those regulations of harmony and rules of counterpoint which students must absorb, though of course the real essence of one's creative success isn't academic study: "it's the thing which cannot be explained – nor, alas, can it be taught, that thing which we normally call, simply, talent."

Lessons with Merlynski, by then in his mid-60s, sounded like studies in alchemy passed down from one wizard to the next, a long line of wizards keeping alive the musical mysteries of the past. It wasn't a philosophical constant like a stone but something more fluid, ever-changing, something which we jokingly called "The Composer's Potion."

"It's not," Merlynski said, "merely following the instructions – like cooking with a recipe to concoct, from our own ingredients, a symphony: by understanding how these function, we might create music that lives and breathes."

If we thought of each aspect of what we hear in the music as part of a living person, he said, we could make every aspect of this music work together like a body.

"Melody, then," Merlynski explained, "is like the skin and harmony, like the muscles that support the skin and give it shape. Rhythm is the life's blood of the music, bringing its energy to everything. And form – the structure – is the skeleton, like our bones holding everything up, just as a person stands, walks, and moves."

He told us not to think of one aspect (or "parameter") at a time but all in relation to each other. "What makes the music 'work' isn't a beautiful melody or a chord progression. The muscles couldn't possibly work without the bones. The skin, beautiful or not, is a pile of skin cells without either."

This made the analysis of music, something which I already thought rather gruesome, more like an autopsy done in the morgue, focusing on one particular aspect at a time before coming to some conclusion, painstakingly examining every aspect of the music's body – skin, blood, muscles and bones – not to make too much of the analogy. Yet the result, the coroner's report, might seem as inexplicable as life itself, that the melody worked because of this particular rhythmic pattern here at a specific structural point defined by that harmonic resolution.

It made me laugh sitting there talking about this with Tom – still does – considering the work we'd put into composing something, then a performer brings it to life before it's killed by a critic, and then have some overly scientific theorist lay it out on a slab and unmercifully tear it apart, bit by bit.

"How far back," Tom asked, "do you think we can trace Merlynski's wizardry?"

"You mean like 'The Begats' in the Bible?"

So we went to the library and found the volumes of Grove's Dictionary.

Starting with Merlynski's teacher, Nadia Boulanger, we found she studied with Fauré who studied with Saint-Saëns – so far, all very impressive – then back to Halévy and the great Cherubini, then Sarti, Padre Martini, Perti, Corso, and finally Giacomo Carissimi in the mid-1600s: an unbroken chain going back over 325 years, yet changing with every generation.

*-*

And that was going back almost a hundred years before Johann Sebastian Bach which most people would probably consider overkill, anyway, since who these days, beyond the "experts," cared much about music before Bach? How unlikely was it this would automatically put us on a list of great composers and teachers in some future generation? Most would remember Saint-Saëns' name even if all they knew was 'The Swan,' and musicians might recall Cherubini from history classes, but how many had knowingly heard music by Fromental Halévy or Giuseppe Sarti? It was also unlikely the man who composed the oratorio Jepthe around 1650 – we'd figured out Carissimi would've been our 9x-great-grandteacher – would have any impact on who we were as composers in the 1970s. What amazed us, sitting amidst volumes of Grove's, was the continuity of it, all these centuries of the torch being passed.

Over a few weeks, recently – and I don't attend many organ recitals, now – I'd heard two performances of Bach's 'Gigue' Fugue (that's BWV. 577, for those of you following along in the Big Book) which were so different, it amazed me they were both the same piece – and both performers played all the right notes. Unfortunately, I no longer had any students I could point this out to, unable to use both performances as in-class examples. One was a well-known organist come to town; the other, a local student.

Of course, one friend of mine thought the touring virtuoso was the better of the two but I disagreed with him, remembering what Professor Merlynski told me at that lesson over forty years earlier, thinking that the student had a better grasp on what made it dance and not because his tempo was slightly faster. His performance immediately struck me, as a listener, that he understood how the rhythm, the harmony and the structure worked together, reinforcing our expectations from what Bach had been able to put on paper.

There are two misconceptions that organists must overcome – the instrument (as Stravinsky once complained) "never breathes"; Bach sounds like a sewing-machine – and which can be taken care of by a judicious use of phrasing. Doing it, unfortunately, is easier than explaining it: not everyone hears the difference, plus there are those who simply won't notice.

This brief fugue is essentially not a complicated work despite being intricately complex (the difference between the surface and underlying layers) even if all you do while you're listening is automatically tap your foot. It skips along with its steady rhythmic patterns which make the surface dance while its less obvious structural expectations flow underneath. Tempos aside (the difference between a youthful dancer and someone who's more middle-aged), the manner in which the long melodic note is released gives direction toward the end of the phrase: articulation is energy.

Two of the segments veer off from the home tonic into related keys – not that it matters to the untrained ear – but with no distinction between them, one loses the resolution of returning home. If the performer doesn't have any sense of what is high or low, everything before us becomes merely flat, doesn't it?

Yet despite the bouncing rhythms and the constant increasing and decreasing of textures, independent lines moving in and out of awareness, this little jig's still a fugue, one of music's more fearsomely intellectual terms. We have, on the surface, something we can enjoy without stretching our brains with something intelligent underneath to augment our hearts.

It is how these meet at certain points which makes a performance the sum of its parts or a loose collection: nothing in the recipe tells us how to combine the heart and mind.

*-*

The panel was already underway when I walked past the room's open doors and caught the fractious sounds of an argument which sounded fairly heated as various voices rose to challenge each other simultaneously. I checked the signboard to see if I was at the right place: "Classical vs Romantic: Apollo & Dionysus Meet Again!" It had been scheduled for this cavernous, ornamented space called 'The Cube Room' in this house so evidently inspired by mathematics. There were flashes of gold amidst turquoise and cream upholstery and marble fireplaces.

"His music sounds like trigonometry," one voice bewailed, "mathematics barely disguised as music – nothing but formulas and graphs, dry as dust."

"Sounds like somebody'd gone and died from an extremely nasty case of constipation."

"Better than that gaudy musical harlotry we heard last night – savage, incoherent bellowings. Beauty is no longer admired, only the hideous!"

Apparently we were not going to have any civility in this on-going discussion, judging from the hoots greeting the last speaker who sat down with a glowering expression on his face, contemptuous and dismissive.

"This afternoon's recital included a perfect example of old-fashioned music – Brahms' 'Handel Variations' – that ended with, of all things, a fugue!"

"One sees what may still be done in the old forms when someone comes along who knows how to use them."

"If, for some reason, anyone would want to do that," another one laughed.

The symposium was going along at full tilt, just as Sauerbraten had predicted: "You see why they're calling it 'Style Wars'? It invariably descends to name-calling and arcane partisanship, regardless which generation it is."

Some of those on the panel I recognized – there was Liszt, looking annoyed – but most of them were unknown to me.

"In the past, music was meant to delight people" – Tchaikovsky had started speaking – "but now we're tormented and exhausted by it."

"You should know," someone else sneered. "Your violin concerto stinks in the ear!" It was the very strong stench of a cigar that got my attention when I looked up and saw Johannes Brahms. He smiled at me, nodding, then turned his bulk inquisitively toward the noise.

"Ach, they do go on about this year after year," he said, smiling. "I mean, after all, what's the point – seriously?"

= = = = = = = = = = = = = 

To be continued...

= = = =  = = = = = = = = =

(*) scorrevole: Italian for (as you might guess) "scurry" and a favorite descriptor in Elliott Carter's music. A favorite composer of mine, Carter died shortly before his 104th birthday and was an obvious inspiration for the character of Howard Zenn. Here, scorrevole is used as a brand name for a kind of motorized scooter Zenn uses to get around his chalet. Elevators may have gotten him from floor to floor, but that is all explained in The Lost Chord.

* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * * 

The usual disclaimer: The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben, which you've no doubt figured out by now, is a work of fiction and as such all the characters (especially their names) and incidents of its story are more or less the product of the author's imagination, sometimes inspired by elements of parody, occasionally by personal experience. Many of the places are real (or real-ish) but not always "realistically used." The town of Marple in Pennsylvania (or rather, Marple Township) does exist though I've never been there and my use of it - aside from being a logical locale for a mystery inspired solely by the association of its name with a character created by Agatha Christie - is entirely fictional. Any similarity between people and places, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, but then, as Klavdia Klangfarben keeps quoting a former professor of hers, "Perception is everything." Yadda yadda yadda.

©2016 by Richard Alan Strawser for Thoughts on a Train

The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben: Installment #2

In the first installment of the novel (beginning with its introductory short-story), the narrator, Dr. T. Richard Kerr, has set out on a bus ride to the nearby town of Marple, to attend the world premiere of his new piano piece, "Labyrinth," commissioned by the dePaula Escher Foundation for the pianist Carter Ericson-Torres, at St. Sisyphus Community College. It proves to be a circuitous journey, by swerve of shore, as he recalls attending a composers' symposium with his friend, the late Sebastian Crevecoeur, one which quickly morphs, as happens in dreams, into something else. The Intermezzo: In the House of dePaula Escher continues...
= = = = = = = = = = = = =

-2-

"The whole concept that certain personality traits can be controlled by the left side of the brain or by the right," the tall bearded man seated on the panel explained, peering over his glasses, "is just another way our more modern counterparts have relied on scientific research to explain the workings of the human mind." Noted scholar Ross Erlachen was delivering his paper at the symposium's musicology panel, discussing approaches to creativity in the modern era. Like many new theories, he discovered it was already regarded as hopelessly passé. With his easily recognized pinc-nez, Erlachen was regarded as one of the 19th Century's foremost experts on music in modern times, though, like many, still confused by the newest trends of the New Millennium. "If you were habitually late or preferred to think lying down could make you more of a Romanticist than a Classicist."

Embarrassed chuckles drifted across his audience, amused at such quaint notions that anything so obvious needed scientific research to explain it. It wasn't that his discoveries were anything new but this perspective was intriguing. References to some disembodied muses or which Greek god controlled your creativity aside, was science as good as any other explanation? If you were a neat and orderly person, clearly you're influenced by Apollo: Haydn and Mendelssohn were perfect examples of this. If you're a mess, like Beethoven or Berlioz, then Dionysus ruled your heart.

During the lunch break held on the lawn – a perfect afternoon for it – juggling plates of food served from the buffet, various participants at the symposium quizzed each other about their right- or left-brainèdness. Most of them considered it an amusing diversion like any psychological personality test where you made deductions from seemingly arbitrary questions. For many of these composers, whatever their personality, the fact that modern people were so fascinated by such things was "amusing," but unlike much of today's technology, they didn't see this as particularly useful.

"I can't understand the distinction," one composer I didn't recognize said to another. They were both enjoying something called a hamburger. "You compose the way you do simply because that's the way you are."

"Brahms writes like that because he's a bag of old-fashioned traditions," another quipped. "We, quite naturally, are so far beyond that."

It was fascinating to be here, of course, tagging along with Sebastian Crevecoeur at yet another one of those composers' conferences, only the third time I'd seen him since he died thirty years ago. He had been one of the chief organizers behind this decade's Universal Symposium, quite pleased with how well it was going. Despite that business about crossing over with his Piano Quintet three years ago (*1) – something illegal by Harmonia-IV's standards: what a ruckus! – they allowed him to take over some old English estate for a weekend.

"Sorry I can't tell you anything about it (for security reasons, you understand) but there's been a portal here since 1885 – locked up most of the time, of course – but such an unusual place." We're too close to the back of the house to view the exterior but this great lawn stretched away for acres.

"Well, this is another fine dimension you've gotten me into, Sebastian," I joked. "It was nice of you to invite me" (not like the previous time when instead he lured me into a trap). It's probably for the best the only way I'd remember anything about my earlier visits to Harmonia-IV is in my dreams.

He'd warned me that's how Parallel Universes worked: the memory wears off more or less quickly. "After all, who'd believe you?" Cameron and I had vague recollections of things but nothing that made sense.

Brahms was particularly intrigued by something called "pizza" despite the fact his beard made it difficult for him to handle it.

"How can you eat such a thing without a fork?" he asked Pergolesi.

"It's unlike anything I ever ate, growing up," he laughed, licking his fingers. (Dead at 21, had he ever 'grown up'?)

There was a small group over by the punchbowl I did not recognize whom Sebastian explained were Cannabich, Muffat and Graun, court composers little recognized in our day (the 'university composers' of the past?).

Joined by Johann Nepomuck Sauerbraten, another composer I'd met during my first visit, we talked about how good the attendance was, though I was disappointed my friend Robertson Sullivan, recently deceased, wouldn't be here.

Working in acquisitions at the Harmonian Central Library, Sauerbraten mentioned the Russian files contained over 200 composers just in the K's.

"Well, it's not all Glinka, Rachmaninoff and Shostakovich!" Then he launched into a sparkling rendition of Kurt Weill's tongue-twisting song 'Tchaikovsky' from Lady in the Dark but using only names that began with K. In fact, many of them were present and a few in ear-shot sent up a cheer when they heard their names.

The piano trio, set up under a tent, featured Mendelssohn at the piano, the violinist Joachim with Schoenberg playing the cello (Boccherini, the original cellist, couldn't make it, so Schoenberg agreed to sit in).

"I'm sorry we had to cancel one of the panels today," Sebastian mentioned. "We'd prepared an overview of Elliott Carter's music."

"What happened," I asked, "couldn't they finish it?"

"Carter died last year, remember?"

It turned out on Harmonia-IV, musicologists were no longer interested in dead composers: "Well, he's one of us, now," he explained.

Then I said they should've had someone do a presentation on Howard Zenn who, I told them, turns 100 next year.

I hadn't understood the look Sebastian gave Nepomuck as he changed the subject.

Meanwhile, Brahms was trying to talk Haydn into having a slice of pizza but he declined after not seeing any utensils. Tchaikovsky liked it so much, he thought he just might write another Capriccio.

Sebastian excused himself to go back inside and get the next panel ready. I wandered after him, looking for a bathroom.

*-*

"The second door on the left," he said, finally getting to the hallway, a long corridor lined with several gloomy paintings, which felt, considering the size of the house, it took forever to reach. Without a word, my guide turned and left, disappearing back down the hall, his footsteps muffled by the thick, maroon carpeting.

"The place is full of shadows," I thought as I took the old-fashioned iron key and slipped it into the keyhole. I pushed back the door, heavy and creaking, opening a room equally dark.

It wouldn't surprise me much if someone told me Escher House was haunted and I'd be met by a dank chill. Instead the room, once I turned on the lights, was warm and pleasant. Perhaps spending one night here wouldn't be so bad after all, I thought, the sense of foreboding I'd felt deflating considerably.

A stately four-poster bed stood opposite an ornate stone fireplace and tiled hearth; a large drum table, over by the window with an old-fashioned heirloom oil lamp probably dating back to the Civil War. On the nightstand were two collections of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe and one of the later volumes of Proust. The bed, with its deep red and gold comforter, may be too comfortable, not as firm as I would usually prefer, but once the ordeal of the concert was over, I wouldn't even notice.

When I absent-mindedly began taking my clothes out of the suitcase, it occurred to me I didn't recall packing a red-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt, turquoise burmudas, a red fleece jogging suit or a lime-green thong. In fact, after holding the red fleece jogging suit up to the light, I didn't recall ever owning any of these. Perhaps in my haste, arriving at my destination two hours later than expected, I was more distracted than I had imagined. Had I inadvertently picked up the wrong suitcase? Meanwhile, what happened to mine?

This presented a problem, as I looked deeper hoping to find the suit I was planning on wearing for the concert, the dark blue one with the powder blue shirt and pearl gray tie. I could hardly attend the premiere performance of my "Labyrinth" – speaking of left-brained – dressed like I'd just returned from surfing Waikiki.

Nothing else was in the suitcase – no suit, shirt, no change of underwear, not even my tooth brush and shaving kit. I looked again at the suitcase and, yes, there were my familiar initials. There was hardly time to call up the bus company and see if they'd located another suitcase with the same monogram. Meanwhile, what else to do but hang these things up in the wardrobe so at least they wouldn't be too wrinkled. Maybe, by dinnertime, they'll have transformed themselves back into my suit and shirt.

With a great sigh, I opened up the wardrobe, a large, heavy mahogany case in the one corner behind the door, and carefully took out one of the old wooden hangers for the shirt. When I turned back to hang it up, there stood an old woman, her head slightly tilted and about to speak.

I of course screamed and slammed the door shut with a resounding thud, perfectly ready to rethink this whole 'haunted' thing, before wondering who she was or what she was doing in the wardrobe.

Wasn't it the same old woman who'd seemed so harmless on the bus with her knitting needles and her pink yarn?

Was she some nemesis appearing out of nowhere ready to do me in? Was she trying to warn me about something?

When I opened the wardrobe again and peered inside, she was gone – vanished.

*-*

Unable to believe what I'd seen, I shook my head and looked again, my brow knitted with extreme concentration and disbelief. No, my "Labyrinth" was over, its quiet ending drawing everything to a close. But then the page turner stood up, leaned forward and turned the page as if there were still more to come. She sat back down but the pianist continued sitting there, also not moving, as if, once rested, he'd start playing again. The audience, likewise reluctant to interrupt the silence, also sat unmoving, if unmoved.

Perhaps they felt there would be another movement after a duly thought-cleansing pause, that what they heard was only the first. The program hadn't indicated how many there were and it was a Sonata. Was everyone in the audience sitting there thinking, "Good lord, I wonder how much longer this thing is going to be?"

Ericson-Torres, the pianist, looked down at the floor, then up at the keyboard, with both hands folded meditatively in his lap, before glancing toward the ceiling and looking back down at the keyboard again. No doubt the page turner, continuing to sit there still as a statue, wished she could fade discreetly into the backdrop.

How many composers in the past had suffered bad performances of their music and wished they too could fade discreetly away? My eyes glanced toward the right, then the left: there was no escape.

Finally, the pianist leaned forward and closed the score with a broad gesture, as if to reinforce the piece had ended. But there was no change in the audience which continued to sit there. As the composer, the only one in the hall who knew it was over, I could hardly start the applause myself.

Then Ericson-Torres stood up, picked up the score, tucked it under his arm and bowed, pointing toward where I was sitting. In the silence, I stood and bowed back to him like a pantomime.

It was only then that, one by one, people around me began applauding, never more than merely tentative, realizing what happened, more bemused than liking or disliking my piece, about as non-committal as possible.

But the applause lasted less than the silence, ending as I sat down: people were clearly anxious to begin the intermission.

After I'd been identified as the composer of the music they'd just heard, people around me appeared cautious about making comments and most, it would seem, tried to avoid making eye contact with me, scurrying down the aisles and out toward the lobby as quickly as possible in search of fresh air and possible relief. While most people simply nodded, turning away before feeling compelled to say anything, unsure what they'd say to a live composer, one middle-aged gentleman glowered at me as if I had ruined his life.

Since no one had made any plans to have me hang out in the lobby to greet people from the audience – not that I had any CDs to sell – I wandered around looking lost. Whether it was because of my unusual attire or my deodorant had failed, most people were intent on staying well clear.

I scanned across what might pass for a crowd as nonchalantly as possible hoping to find someone from the pre-concert talk; nor did I see any students who might tell me they felt 'inspired.' Neither could I find any of the administrative types I'd been introduced to: had they all decided against attending the concert?

When I asked one of the ushers if she had seen Dean Wilsher who'd been so pleasant when I'd met her, I was told she probably went to the President's Reception at Escher House.

*-*

"Inspiration," I told them, "is where you find it – or, as my teacher used to say, 'is where it finds you' – and comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes as well as sounds." I mentioned how Messiaen was inspired by birdsong in much of his music, just as Beethoven was in his Pastoral Symphony.

"For instance, when I walked through the Escher House this afternoon," I continued, "the idea behind my piece made more sense," though it occurred to me not everyone here would've been through the house. Images from prints by M. C. Escher presenting all kinds of optical illusions had appeared to me automatically by pure name-association – given the blank stares, I explained the commission from the dePaula Escher Fund. Any further lack of recognition may well have stemmed from the fact apparently no one knew who M. C. Escher was.

Along with my precisely written-up and carefully printed notes for this evening's lecture, I had prepared a CD-Rom with several images, various Escher woodcuts that I had looked at before I'd started any composing. But when I went to operate the classroom's computer to project these images, nothing materialized on the screen, my examples dead-on-arrival. It didn't matter that everything had worked earlier, just before the talk began when someone kindly showed me the set up. Someone explained the computer automatically shuts down at 7:00 – "They must've forgotten that."

The word was "Gedankenblitz," I believe – literally, "thoughts-lightening" – which we'd translated as 'inspiration' from that cryptic inscription on the Beethoven statue (*2) (how suddenly it all came back to me, now, from that earlier summer). And I certainly needed a lightening-storm of inspiration to figure out how to salvage this talk from the agony of defeat.

"But that was usually how inspiration worked, coming out of nowhere," I said, "often a response to necessity, some unforeseen challenge." A composer sets himself an intellectual task then awaits inspiration to solve it.

Perhaps, I hoped, mumbo-jumbo about episodic "moment forms," Knight's Tours, labyrinths, Escher's illusions and how I applied them to musical form was unnecessary to their enjoyment of the piece; the less said, the better.

"Trying to explain genius had little impact on those who couldn't comprehend genius," as Howard Zenn had only recently reminded me.

-3-

These days, people would call it a living room in a modern house but, given Max Pierpont Escher built the house in the 1880s with an eye toward impressing his friends and fellow businessmen, it was still described as the Drawing Room since most of the social functions at the mansion were usually held here. In a house that somehow appeared deceptively small, it was the largest room, stretching along the side perpendicular to the street, and could have been a ballroom had Mr. Escher been interested in dancing. Though not the president's house (that occupied more modest accommodations across the street), anything official with St. Sisyphus was held here, as long as it didn't interfere with the dePaula Escher Foundation's events calendar. In this case, an exception had been made, combining two events in one: the President's Reception and the Foundation's post-concert reception.

The more I'd walked, the longer it took, slowly crossing an empty campus, despite seeing Escher House clearly ahead of me, becoming more distant with every step I took, the house ablaze with light. I was half-heartedly considering bypassing the reception and simply disappearing to my room if I could sneak into the place unobserved.

It seemed like an unassuming back door, perhaps into the kitchen, surprisingly dark, but instead, when I managed to open it, I found myself in a brightly lit room, full of numerous well-dressed people.

Beside the door was the butler who recognized me from my earlier arrival – what was his name, something like Bernard White – and when someone by a punchbowl asked to see some identification, Bernard apologized. "This is Mr. Kerr, tonight's composer," he said with a slightly deferential nod, as if that would explain my unusual clothes.

"Carter has apologized for being unable to attend" – his statement surprised me: I'd hardly expected Jimmy Carter to be present tonight – "but says he has an early plane to catch to his next concert."

Of course, I told myself, Carter Ericson-Torres, the pianist – he gets to skip the ritual but I must suffer his consequences. Well, perhaps I would run into my old friend, Tom Purdue, somewhere here. When I asked Bernard if Tom was in the room, he looked around with a glance: "Not that I can see."

A tall gentleman with a shaved head – something he no doubt hoped would make him look younger than his obvious years – stood with his daughter not far from us, peering around with stylish indifference. Before I could retreat, Bernard introduced me to the college's instructor of Russian literature, Dr. Vivian Darkbloom and his wife, Lola. First of all, it surprised me that a community college like St. Sisyphus would even have an instructor of Russian literature, much less one who'd have a wife young enough to be a freshman.

"Yes," Darkbloom said, "I'd heard there was a recital of some kind tonight, but we'd already been invited here, you see." He looked lazily around the room, then paused. "If you'll excuse me, then?" With that, he took his wife by the hand – "Come, Lolochka, you must meet Sebastian Knight" – leaving me without another word.

"Ah, Mr. Kerr, so glad you could come," the sweetly dripping tones of a familiar voice sounded from somewhere behind me. I turned to face the Director of the dePaula Escher Foundation, Sarah Fuller. "So sorry I couldn't stay to hear your piece: did it go well? Isn't this a wonderful party," she added, beaming.

"I only just got here, myself," I added, "so I really can't say."

"Oh my," she said, glancing at her watch, "it must've gone on forever!"

"Well, the Schubert did run on a bit..."

Before I managed to figure out what not to say about the performance, Ms. Fuller went to see about the refreshments, apologizing for the decrepitude of the cheese tray which had been fairly depleted. The college's president, Roderick Ascher, saw me from the middle of the room and nodded with a raise of his glass. Then I realized, too late, that he must have been acknowledging his assistant, Philip Winthrop, who was standing just behind me: Ascher and I made eye contact, briefly, his expression one of mild confusion.

Between me and the stairs stood numerous people whose names I couldn't remember who'd probably forgotten who I was since dinner, none of whom, as far as I could tell, had attended the recital. I saw the room as a giant chess board on which I had to evade checkmate to carefully plot my escape.

Some man wearing some kind of ecclesiastical garb (was he an Episcopal bishop?) wondered if I had made it to the recital (he, alas, could not), subsequently wondering what I thought of Carter's playing.

"Unbelievable," I said without batting an eye, "the fingers never left the hand."

He nodded, agreeing enthusiastically, sorry he'd missed it.

The Dean of Fine Arts, Madeline Wilsher, came over to me and without apologizing hoped the concert had been well attended.

"The hall was about half full," I guessed, "whether that's good or bad...?"

Dean Wilsher, with a shrug of her shoulders, wandered away toward the punchbowl and I worked a path through the crowd, picking up a drink and a few pastries, always aiming for the doorway. Turning to avoid the black-clad Lila Rook, the Ravensmoore Professor of American Literature, I had a clear view of the staircase. But there was the old woman standing beside a ficus in the corner as if she were hiding from everybody else, yet when she saw me, shot me a warning glance, shaking her head.

After I'd turned back to see Dr. Rook, the old woman had disappeared, a few branches of the ficus wafting lightly.

A young woman who apparently worked for the Foundation was standing beside me.

"Excuse me, but does someone work here who'd look like an old-fashioned librarian?"

"Ms. Escher? No, she died forty years ago...!"

*-*

So close and yet so far, I thought, the goal almost in sight with only one piece left on the program though, being the last of Schubert's sonatas, it won't be over anytime soon. Always a favorite of mine, it amazed me how incredibly Schubert could spin out such "heavenly lengths" in these late pieces. It was hard to believe, only a few months from his 32nd birthday, he was nearing 1,000 works in his catalogue, what he might have accomplished if he'd lived even as long as Beethoven. I carefully turned the program over once more, still amused by seeing Dr. Madeline Wilsher listed as "Dead of Fine Arts" – was that a one-time typo or an unnoticed, self-replicating error in a template? Was it an honest mistake by someone not very observant (another spell-check failure) or something committed on purpose as a joke?

Even though it was, I thought, a small crowd, the audience was reluctant to accept that intermission was at an end even once the lights had been lowered a second time to near darkness. Several couples still stood about talking as the pianist rushed out on stage, flowing with self-confidence, to begin the second half. He glowered indulgently toward the one couple, waiting for them to sit down, emitting occasional coughs until they got the message. Then, silent for several seconds, he stretched his arms forward and finally began.

But it wasn't the last of Schubert's sonatas – the B-flat – he started playing. Had I missed an announcement about a change? This was the G Major, the one before the final set of three. Had he decided at the last minute to play a different sonata instead, thinking this one might make a better match? Maybe someone else had also scheduled the B-flat Sonata for a recent appearance, so they'd asked him to choose something else? Or had he simply forgotten which Schubert sonata he'd programmed for tonight's concert?

This sonata begins with a long-breathed theme (if one can call it that) slowly spinning its way atop simple, sustained chords, the primary difficulty in keeping the duration of chords and pauses under control. Otherwise, there's no sense of tempo and it deteriorates into something more glacial, lacking any blood flowing beneath its dream-like surface.

And that's exactly how Ericson-Torres succeeded in failing, completely disregarding the printed music and making a complete shambles of Schubert's intentions. Ignorant of the underlying architecture, he destroyed the balance from which it grew. Musicians use something called rubato (*3) in 'phrasing' the music, helping it to breathe, but it's an innate understanding of the style. Here, stretching the sustained chords out even longer – 'feeling' them rather than counting – and rushing the connective tissue of 8th notes, it was a boat lurching rather than rocking, cut adrift by unknown forces.

Schubert is not a flashy composer, rarely writing for virtuosos out to impress, his roots classical even under its romantic surface, and this sonata in particular is one of the most introverted he composed. Also one of his longest, it is certainly one of the most subtle (especially in that deceptive labyrinth of a finale).

It soon became clear there were other issues – the plague of memory slips – forgetting where thematic expansion or modulations led him, forever returning to the beginning or some similar place hoping to find himself. He had wandered into a fun-house maze full of distorting mirrors, ever-repeating infinities, with no sense of time, direction or conclusion.

Instead of Schubert, intentions aside, it became a minimalist's hour-long deconstruction of Schubert though that was (mercifully) only the first movement. Yet the audience rose with applause and cheers, calling it "Breathtaking!" and "Awesome!"

*-*

As I was telling those few who'd bothered to attend my pre-concert talk, how composers create each piece is something personal, not only specifically personal to each individual composer but often to each piece, how often many pieces that composers set about writing take on the nature of a challenge in search of a solution. Considering the modern assembly line, listeners imagine there's a one-size-fits-all approach to creativity, boiling everything down to a few industrial procedures, how what inspires one composition will probably inspire another in a similar way.

Even so, since Beethoven might work on several pieces at the same time, we're amazed to discover how each one's different despite a certain level of obvious common denominators like basic harmony and form. Yet within the sense of how harmony works or what particular forms imply, there's surprising variety in how he realizes them.

Some seem to spring from completely unrelated worlds, different realities, moods or scopes, whether it has any bearing on real life, writing his exuberant 2nd Symphony in Heiligenstadt while experiencing severe symptoms of deafness. What else was he writing that same time, before he wrote his 'Testament' – the Tempest Sonata and the Op.30 Violin Sonatas...

What about the tempestuous A Minor piano sonata Mozart composed in Paris, that disastrous trip in which his mother died suddenly: what if it had already been written a month before she became ill?

"Form, how a composer handled his musical content," I said, "was only a guideline to a composer like Bach or Mozart, since the standard text-book definitions in form and harmony came after the fact: some enterprising theorist might examine a whole bunch of things called 'sonatas' to figure out what most composers considered a 'sonata.' While some composers stuck with one standard operating procedure they discovered worked successfully, others explored the infinite possibilities it opened up and still others decided to push the boundaries as far as they could.

"Otherwise, if every composer maintained the status quo and kept to the rules, it would be easy to plug different combinations of these same twelve notes into set patterns of melody, harmony and form. It would be the musical equivalent of 'paint-by-numbers,' programming a computer with rules that would develop some kind of artificial intelligence."

There was one dour-looking, middle-aged man in the back row who scowled at practically everything I said, working desperately to control himself from arguing every statement I made, whether it was fact or opinion. If I said something sufficiently right-brained to be entirely intuitive, he would grimace; something left-brained and factual, he would still grimace. If nothing else, was he disagreeing with me that I could use both intuitive and factual statements in the same talk? Or because I was being inconsistent by being neither one nor the other?

Aware of a suddenly rising headache on the right side of my head, I stood aside, momentarily distracted by the pain, wishing I'd brought along a glass of water, flustered at losing my place. The room had become full of my shaggy-haired, dissenting know-it-all duplicated en masse, all peering at me from behind horn-rimmed glasses.

While headaches were nothing new to me, most often the result of stress, this one, given its suddenness, caught me off-guard, thinking how my last doctor's visit revealed my blood pressure was uncomfortably high. How does one tell the difference between what might be just another headache or the possibility I was having a stroke?

"Where was I," I wondered, paging through my carefully written notes, hopelessly lost. Already behind schedule, I had ten minutes left. Had I talked about the different ways people listen to a new piece?

*-*

In the background, I heard my own voice, either from earlier tonight or years ago when I was teaching in college, describing how an untrained, casual listener might hear music differently than a musician, and how a performer would listen to it differently than a composer would, especially the one who wrote that particular piece.

"The average listener listens for a general response – 'is this something I like?' – while the performer may focus on interpretive details. The composer tends to listen more technically, or how performers express composers' intentions.

"Composers today have no more an idea what Beethoven had in mind than you might know what I had in mind: it's how the performer succeeds in communicating between the composer and the listener.

"It's like hearing Shakespeare performed by one actor in one production, then hearing those lines with another actor in another production."

One composer may listen more to how another composer has put something together – the use of form, a modulation, the transformation of a set of pitches – like a painter appreciating another painter's brush strokes. The average listener takes in the whole painting, discovering the details only gradually, but a composer often hears the details first.

"A composer's detailed program notes explaining the techniques behind his writing the piece may only be of interest to other composers: you don't need to know how computers work just to surf the web."

Here I was, listening to a piece I'd written not too long ago – I'd begun working on it maybe last year – but had to check the program to make sure this was my piece, aside from the fact someone, presumably the pianist, retitled it Piano Sonata, "Labyrinth," when I had never called it a sonata.

The tempo was wrong and the pulse inconsistent, the dynamic range too narrow; too many notes were not the right notes. Plus the man clearly could not find a beat in a bushel basket.

I found myself sweating as this disaster over which I'd lost control unfolded, becoming more unrecognizable the more he continued playing. He'd placed the climaxes at the wrong places, completely ignoring the harmonic tension.

Sitting there with my fists clenched, I barely breathed, trying not to scream. This was how listeners would judge my work?

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

To be continued...

(*1) Piano Quintet three years ago: at the core of the first novel, The Doomsday Symphony, in which Dr. Kerr discovers a previously unknown work composed by his late friend in which the manuscript was dated long after he had died; Harmonia-IV is the famous parallel universe where dead composers continue to compose new works.
(*2) Beethoven statue: at the core of the second novel, The Lost Chord, regarding a coded message inscribed on the base of a small statue of Beethoven that would eventually lead them to the grave (but not the identity) of the Immortal Belovèd whom Beethoven regarded as his inspiration. 
(*3) rubato: basically, an interpretive technique where time (tempo) can be stretched to create an emotive response to a melodic line or within the anticipation of the harmonic direction

* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * *

The usual disclaimer: The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben, which you've no doubt figured out by now, is a work of fiction and as such all the characters (especially their names) and incidents of its story are more or less the product of the author's imagination, sometimes inspired by elements of parody and others by actual experience. Many of the places are real (or real-ish) but not always "realistically used." The town of Marple in Pennsylvania (or rather, Marple Township) does exist though I've never been there and my use of it - aside from being a logical locale for a mystery inspired solely by the association of its name with a character by Agatha Christie - is entirely fictional. Any similarity between people and places, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, but then, as Klavdia Klangfarben keeps quoting a former professor of hers, "Perception is everything." Yadda yadda yadda.

©2016 by Richard Alan Strawser for Thoughts on a Train.

The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben: Installment #1

Welcome to the first installment of The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben!

You can read the "introduction," here, to find out what to expect with this third (and therefore presumably final) novel of the "Klangfarben Trilogy." Subsequent installments will be posted at Thoughts on a Train on Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings throughout the summer until the end of August.

Many novels, thrillers or otherwise, begin with prologues. This one begins with a seemingly self-standing short story which not only recalls characters and episodes from the previous two novels in the Trilogy, The Doomsday Symphony and The Lost Chord, it also looks forward not just to The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben but even to the next novel, In Search of Tom Purdue (which I'm currently working on - will it become the fourth in the Trilogy? Hmmm...).

Essentially, we'll enter the Labyrinth through a visit to the House of dePaula Escher.

* * ** *** ***** ******** ***** *** ** * * 

INTERMEZZO: IN THE HOUSE OF dePAULA ESCHER
by Richard Alan Strawser

-1-

As my friend Howard Zenn always said – re-reading his letter reminded me – "one might as well start at the beginning, even if it's not always a straight line from there to the end" (that's from the letter I'd received over a year ago in early September, not the one that arrived this past week). Zenn, who would soon face his 100th birthday, having survived our "summer adventure", was looking forward to writing several new pieces, feeling healthy and fully capable of being around to celebrate his own centenary. In the process of meeting the demand for a number of celebratory concerts – more in Europe than in America, of course – he received more requests to compose new works than he could possibly handle. In fact, he said he had barely finished a new string quartet in time for his friends in the Drang Quartet.

Since many people, he complained, wanted to have "a piece of Howard Zenn" even if it was something they'd rarely program, he had to draw the line limiting commissions to old and loyal friends, performers or presenters who had over his long career as a "not-always-famous composer" championed his music and premiered his latest works. He had his nephew (who was actually the son of his late lover) craft an apology that he'd had so many commissions, being an old man, unfortunately he'd be unable to fulfill their request.

One of these well-meaning presenters asked for a new sonata for one of their pianists, an offer he couldn't consider seriously, a rather substantial work that would be far too time consuming for him, and he hoped they might consider asking me to write something for them "dedicated to Howard Zenn on his 100th Birthday." It gave him the idea of "farming out" the commissions he couldn't accept to other composer-friends as another level of celebration. And this one, he thought, was an obvious if humorous natural for me.

And so he set me up with a group previously unknown to me – The dePaula Escher Foundation – through a near-by college located in a suburb of Philadelphia not very far from where I lived. They'd wanted Zenn to compose a new piano sonata for Ms. Escher's grandson, Carter Ericson-Torres – mirroring my name, Terrence Richard Kerr.

Maybe I should go all the way back to the beginning and complain about the name my parents saddled me with, a tribute to each of their fathers who'd died before I was born. Professionally I go by Dr. T. Richard Kerr, most people calling me "Richard." My oldest and closest friends call me Terry. It seemed a natural, once I went into music, to be named after the term ricercar, from the Italian, "to seek," and it sounded better to my ear than being called Terrance R. Kerr.

Perhaps my sense of curiosity – always looking up anything I didn't already know – led me into the field of music history. When I'd started composing, each new piece was like looking for a solution. Even if there weren't a mystery to solve, invariably one always found me: eventually, I became known as a "musical detective."

It's not that it became an alternative career (complete with a deer-stalker hat) but it enlivened many an otherwise boring summer especially after I quit teaching and was then laid-off from the arts magazine where I had managed to build a reputation as a local music "personality" writing articles about various aspects of classical music.

Some of my more academic former colleagues accused me of "dumbing down" while my editor, Misha Goss, considered me too high-brow, though fans thought I managed to explain some of music's mysteries for them.

I completed writing my "Labyrinth" for Mr. Ericson-Torres a month ahead of schedule and had sent it off full of anticipation, wondering whether he would hate the thing or find it impossible to play, but beyond acknowledging he'd received the piece and pronouncing it to be "difficult," he said nothing more to me about it. Along with a couple e-mails about how the piece was put together and what "inspired" it, offering him some interpretive suggestions, I proposed making arrangements to come hear the piece whenever he was ready.

In time, other projects and the occasional performance took my mind off his excuses about being busy performing mostly in Europe, how when he returned to the States he would get back in touch. Then I received a letter from the dePaula Escher Foundation about the premiere that scheduled me to give a pre-concert talk.

Finally, the day arrived for my trip to St. Sisyphus Community College in Marple, PA, where the premiere would take place, an "on-the-road preview" before Carnegie Hall which would be the "official" world premiere. The location had been chosen because Ms. Escher had lived there for years and remained a major benefactor of the college.

Mr. Ericson-Torres whom I had yet to meet – he'd just arrived from Paris – suggested I come to his rehearsal that afternoon. From there, we'd go to the dinner being held at his grandmother's house.

Cameron Pierce, who was both friend and assistant, couldn't come to the concert – something about a big exam the next morning – so I was, for all intents and purposes, on my own this time and so took extra care writing my notes, refreshing myself about the piece, and packing what I'd need in my suitcase.

I could've taken the train but found the bus a more direct route, since I hated driving even short distances myself, eliminating the likelihood I would no doubt become hopelessly lost and inevitably late.

Not habitually an organized person (except when composing), I'd made a detailed list from doing laundry to printing out my talk, packing the night before, even picking up my bus ticket days in advance.

Considering I'd been an "absent-minded professor" as a teaching assistant in graduate school, this trip was going to be a challenge.

The President of the college, Dr. Roderick Ascher, had invited me to be a guest of the Fund, even if only to avoid the long late-night drive back home, by staying at their headquarters (even though they operated most of their business from an office in Manhattan), the Escher House on the edge of campus. A private mansion in the grand old style and long a Marple landmark, the house had been donated to the college and served as a kind of museum and social center for community-related events. It would spare me the ordeal of booking rooms at a local motel and meant I could probably walk across campus rather than contend with cabs or being dependent on someone for a ride. It had turned into a fine autumn day, pleasantly mild despite the forecast, and that much I was looking forward to.

It's not that I wasn't looking forward to hearing the performance, after all, the end goal of a long year's work – what composer in his right mind didn't want to hear his own music? It's just I was nervous, thinking about it, not having heard how it was going until the day of the concert. But people assured me that Ericson-Torres was a fine pianist, well-known in Europe, even if it was obvious from his web-site with all its up-to-date technology he didn't play a lot of new music.

Not one to do much traveling, I'd planned to go to London for LauraLynn's wedding before Christmas (arriving on Beethoven's birthday!); the year before had seen trips to Bavaria involving Rob's opera at Schweinwald. How could I know, going to see Rob at Benninghurst, the writer's colony, that would've been the last time we'd meet? And now Zenn, in his latest letter – he never was one for e-mail – suggested, since I was going to be in London, why not come out a little further and visit him in Garmisch-Partenkirchen?

No, for me these days, especially since Sondra died and I've officially retired, even a trip into Philadelphia was an adventure, a challenge just getting to the airport much less getting on a plane. But I could take the train into the city for an evening concert, then spend the night sleeping on Cameron's couch.

While I admit the whole process of Ericson-Torres' commission took me by surprise not to mention the ease with which I sat down and wrote a very complex piece in so short a time, it was also something of a surprise to discover an old friend whom I hadn't seen in years lived in Marple. It turns out he also had retired prematurely but apparently due to illness (though nothing I could find on-line mentioned what), continuing to teach part-time at St. Sisyphus as an adjunct professor of music.

Tom Purdue and I were students at Grimmoire where we both studied with Artur Merlynski who was already close to retirement. We had a lot in common back then and spent hours "talking shop." But over the years, going our separate ways, I'd lost track of Tom, only once in a while seeing his name.

So the day of the concert came and here I was, as nervous as if I were playing the piece myself (my work as the composer was long finished: it's the performer's responsibility, now). But if I wasn't careful, without Cameron looking after me (I'm so helpless), I might forget something important – and then what?

Getting on the bus, I checked my script and the score – both affirmative; all the clothes I needed were neatly packed. Asking the driver about stopping in Marple, I sat back ready to begin.

*-*

After a slight delay as an old woman, having arrived barely in time, settled in with a suitcase and her knitting, the bus pulled away from the terminal in downtown Doylestown and headed south. I once again checked my pockets and with a great sigh of relief realized my score and notes were still there. I figured, since Marple is to the south and then a little west, given an estimated distance at around thirty-five miles, this should take maybe forty minutes or so, then, according to Crowe's Law (*). That would depend on variables like traffic and how many stops there were, how much time we spent at each one and also any number of other things that could happen along the way. But yes, regardless, it should get me to Marple in plenty of time to find my way around the college's campus.

The schedule sent to me by Sarah Fuller at the dePaula Escher Foundation wasn't very complicated for one day's single event, involving only a dinner before my talk and a reception after the concert. My talk before the concert would take place in one of the class-rooms down the hall from the auditorium's main lobby. I would check in at the Escher House then walk around the campus to the music department's building and recital hall. According to an on-line map, it's practically next door to the Escher House.

My mind soon began to wander as the familiar suburban landscape flashed by – store fronts and parking lots, houses and driveways – and the clicking of knitting needles lulled me into a sense of contentedness. There was a middle-aged man who didn't look quite honest sitting opposite me, reading Charles Rosen's book about the classical style. We drove past one of those new mega-churches, signs advertising a barbershop quartet, which had nothing to do with yesterday's news – a possible meeting arranged between Pope Francis I and Britain's Prince of Wales...

Though I had already received my payment for "Labyrinth" from the Escher Foundation, I caught a glimpse (in my mind's eye) that the composer's name on this evening's program wasn't mine but dePaula Escher's. Had I missed something in the contract's details (had I even signed one?) before dismissing it as paranoia about identity theft?

It reminded me of a story a friend told me once, long ago, how she had gone to visit her brother who still lived in the family's country house not very far from Dresden, the first time in several years they'd seen each other since the war, the letters between them few and far between. She was surprised to discover that her brother, a rather limited amateur musician, suddenly developed a previously unrealized talent for composing and in fact had already published quite a few pieces of considerable advancement.

"When I arrived that afternoon," she said, "I heard someone playing the piano in the family room and went to investigate but instead of my brother, I found a girl dressed as a maid. She quickly got up, apologized, then said she would go fetch 'Master Charles' and moments later my brother entered the room.

"'Franny,' he'd said, greeting me warmly, rather embarrassed, as if I'd caught him doing something I'm sure Mother would not approve. He had not changed greatly over the years beyond becoming a successful composer. 'I see you've already met Amalie – my maid,' he added with a nod as the girl curtsied and closed the door."

Something jolted me into consciousness, a sign to Maple Glen which seemed out-of-the-way, prompting me to ask the driver about Marple.

"Don't worry," the bus driver told me, "Maple or Marple, we'll get there..."

Francine resumed the circuitous story of her visit (as she gradually unfolded it) though I was less than interested in what she said her brother wore than in what music he'd been suddenly composing. This was only one of the many topics she seemed vaguely curious about; moreso the relationship between Charles and his maid. Not that she could do much about it, Charles being her older brother – she was only the baby sister, after all. Since he had inherited the estate years ago, she would only be meddling.

When she asked him to play some of his recent compositions for her, Charles excused himself by saying his abilities at the piano, never very adequate, never advanced as much as his creative mind. But when she realized the maid was able to play them from memory, she began to comprehend her brother's sudden blossoming.

"If the girl had composed this music, which I was convinced she had," Francine confided to me with a cautious smile, "she must have given it to him willingly – and along with what else?" She seemed to think an affair with a maid was morally more repugnant than his profiting by stealing her creative identity.

When she confronted her brother with her concerns, he broke down and confessed: he was only helping get her music published. Only a maid, she would never be taken seriously by the music-loving public.

Francine could understand the temptation to do this, as innocent as it sounded, especially since he could pay off his debts. Was Amalie so naive just to be grateful her music was in print?

Of course, all this struck me as idiotic since I had worked all my life trying to get my compositions published. And now she's telling me her brother made a fortune out of nowhere and had become a successful and famous composer, while my music barely made enough money to buy groceries for a month?

I found myself hardly able to listen anymore, everything had become so far-fetched, and I thought she was making it up, but then she said something about the maid "dying of a broken heart."

It turned out her brother had trouble explaining to his friends and publisher why he could no longer compose any music.

*-*

Too many composers, myself included, didn't need any excuses when having difficulties composing. "Writer's block affects composers as well as writers. The fear for any artist,” Sebastian said, "is 'will that creativity eventually resume?' Painters, choreographers, architects, even those working in offices considered to be 'idea people' – it's the same for anyone who is creative."

"Young artists paint their portraits in quick, bright strokes," one older composer quipped, "with shades of the immortal, invincible and immune. We draw our inspiration from a never-ending well, a fountain that always flows."

"There comes a time, sooner than later – right? – maybe we hit a wall," another of Sebastian's colleagues added, then he laughed. "The well runs dry or it's momentarily low; new ideas are suddenly reluctant."

"Yes, that first moment we realize perhaps we're all closer to death, now, thinking 'maybe we're not so immune, after all.'"

Lunch felt more like a bit of hazing, the senior composers telling the New Guy horror stories of what's to come, like old age with its debilitating illnesses and the deterioration of the spirit. Sebastian Crevecoeur took me to this Composers' Symposium held at a college in Pennsylvania where I'd met several of his friends.

"It seemed a good idea," he apologized, "taking along a fresh-minted doctorate like yourself to meet other composers teaching in Academia." (I had only recently started teaching at Cutler where I'd first met him.)

The two older composers had names I didn't recognize – and still can't remember them, even now – with compositions I had never heard. One of them had a string quartet played at the symposium that evening. The only thing I could say about it was that it sounded like it had been written by a disappointed composer. In those days, few composers were famous enough to be a composer exclusively, without some university position to earn a living, but many I'd met there were clearly frustrated by their lack of success.

"The American university," Sebastian said, "was like the aristocratic court of Haydn's day, giving composers a place to write and perform – like many of those courts, it offers little fame beyond those ivy-covered towers. Academic composers," he explained, "relegated to a limbo where creativity is only part-time often long to escape from their parallel universes."

One session we attended was on the "importance of the university composer in the training of future generations," influencing young composers not yet advanced enough to enter the conservatories to study with "big-name" composers. This imposing panel was made up almost entirely of staunch New England serialists with the exception of one Copland-imitator from Indiana.

"The university is, of course, the training ground for future artists," they argued, "as well as future scientists and English teachers, and as such it's the front line in the continuity of American music."

The Coplandesque composer argued the teacher's job was to expose the student to as many styles of music and lead him – adding with a deferential nod to the woman on the panel, "or her" – to select what was the most logical expression of his natural musical voice and decide on any specialization in graduate school.

"Of course," a colleague continued as if indulging a country cousin, "the purpose of an undergraduate composition course on any campus is to instill the basics as they do in English, learning the grammar, since a future author doesn't spring from the cradle automatically writing like Faulkner or Henry James."

"...or Hemingway," Dr. Indiana countered.

Another argument followed the line of "Instilling the Craft," learning old-fashioned skills – especially in harmony and counterpoint – but in new ways; others argued for a free-range concept that let the teacher rein it in.

There was a smaller panel after lunch that proved to be quite interesting, mostly younger composers – those still in their twenties – who of course were looked upon with mild suspicion by their older colleagues. These, Sebastian pointed out, were probably this conference's answer to the "Young Turks," slightly more disheveled with an arrogance about them. His two friends thought this might prove entertaining, having some fun with them and watching them self-destruct in their own high-mindedness, before Sebastian reminded them in their day, once, they'd been considered Young Turks.

Their concern, judging from the panel's lack of clear definition of any topic, was to cover something overlooked in composition curricula at whatever level you cared to discuss, undergraduate or graduate, university or conservatory. I thought this could have included the psychology of creativity or dealing with issues like style-change transitions or creative mid-life crises.

For them, this overlooked and all-important topic which no self-respecting artist should ignore was, simply, popularity and how to achieve it, especially considering if composing music today meant doing anything to attain financial success. We all knew how Mozart struggled with finances and Schubert died in poverty: how could we today avoid the same pitfalls?

This seemed to be rather dangerous territory they were embarking on, I thought, the idea popularity not only counted for something but that it counted for something quite important, indeed substantial, in reaching success.

"Yes, Schubert made a meager living off those countless dances he published for amateur pianists (perhaps his main source of income), and Beethoven wrote Wellington's Victory, cashing in on the mania over 'current events.' But this had died over the past century, this ability to be flexible, just as composers lost touch with being performers."

But some on the panel argued the extreme: if it wasn't popular, it had no business in the business of art. Even this "business of art" was enough to make certain traditionalists walk out.

"Modern composers are losing the pulse of the audience they are writing for."

"That's the old argument about shoes or Shakespeare!"

"If you put quotes from Shakespeare on shoe boxes, you could have both!"

"So, who is their sponsoring organization," Sebastian asked.

Looking at the program, I said "some music licensing group calling itself... SHMRG?"

*-*

"But it didn't really help Schubert, did it," Cameron countered, "this so-called 'cross-over'? Or Mozart, for that matter, don't you think?"

I didn't understand what his point was, about this issue called "selling out."

"Well, you said they earned some money writing dances for the popular market, but didn't they both still die in poverty?"

It was an old argument that writing music to appeal more directly to the crowd was a sin, I told him, but composers in the old days did it as a matter of course.

Even Shostakovich wrote his music to appease the Communist Party so he could write his more 'artistic' symphonies and string quartets.

"But the problem is," Cameron pointed out, "detractors say this cheapened his Art."

Yet people record and enjoy listening to those dances by Schubert and Mozart, saying "Ah, what gems!" – it's all very unfair.

Cameron had been helping out as my assistant most of the past year since we'd met that summer at Crevecoeur's farm. Once, he acted as my driver since I hated driving in New York. Friends of mine were performing a string quartet program at Alice Tully Hall and invited me to do a pre-concert talk. Their program could hardly be considered a "sell-out" in any number of ways, all music usually describe as "difficult" and "uncompromising," Henri Dutilleux's Ainsi la nuit and Carter's First surrounding a quartet of mine.

For some reason, even though we were going to this concert and it was an important New York premiere for me – significant for my career, such as it was – he was dressed rather casually. A red and yellow Hawaiian shirt with bright turquoise Bermuda shorts and sandals seemed a bit out of place in December. As I told him, I was all for breaking down those stuffy barriers that alienated young people from going to concerts, but this went beyond being a little casual: he just shrugged his shoulders.

If I'd gone to a rock concert with him and Dylan and wore my tuxedo, sat there with my arms folded and shooshing everybody dancing and talking around me, I'd be considered a freak. That's not how you were expected to behave, not at a rock concert, but every group has its set of conformities.

The snow on the streets had become swirls of leaves along the road: different time, different place, back on the bus. It felt like an hour had gone by and we still weren't there. The bus driver looked up in the mirror and announced the next stop – Ardmore, only about six miles northeast of Marple. The old woman started putting away her knitting and gathered up her suitcase, looking eagerly out the window, checking her watch. Checking mine, I noticed ninety minutes had gone by since we'd left Doylestown.

As the woman stood up, a bit wobbly for having sat so long, I reached forward to help with her bag as the bus slowly pulled to the curb and came to a stop.

She gave me a look I didn't understand but before she could speak, the driver was helping her off the bus.

Cameron continued navigating through evening traffic on Broadway, heading north past Lincoln Center to our designated parking garage behind Alice Tully when he asked me one more time about the directions I'd given him.

"Which side is the garage entrance on...?"

"Left..."

"I turn left, here?"

"Right!"

And so he turned right.

"What're you doing?"

“It's a one-way street,” he said. It would take forever to work our way over to Amsterdam and 65th Street, now.

I saw the left-turn sign for Marple ahead.

The bus driver turned right...

= = = = = = = = = = = = =

To be continued...
= = = = = = = = = = = = =

(*) Crowe's Law - the relationship of the shortest distance between two places "as the crow flies" compared to the actual distance between two places "when the crow has to walk, rolling a flat tire."

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The usual disclaimer: The Labyrinth of Klavdia Klangfarben is, if you haven't figured it out, a work of fiction and as such all the characters (especially their names) and incidents of its story are more or less the product of the author's imagination, sometimes inspired by elements of parody. Many of the places are real (or real-ish) but not always "realistically used." The town of Marple in Pennsylvania (or rather, Marple Township) does exist though I've never been there and my use of it - aside from being a logical locale for a mystery inspired solely by the association of its name with a character created by Agatha Christie - is entirely fictional. Any similarity between people and places, living or dead, is entirely coincidental, but then, as Klavdia Klangfarben keeps quoting a former professor of hers, "Perception is everything." Yadda yadda yadda.

©2016 by Richard Alan Strawser for Thoughts on a Train