The development of the classical repertoire, and the music publishing industry that burgeoned and profited from it, depended on notation. Improvisation disappeared from performance, replaced by literal adherence to the music as written. My piano transcription of Brubeck’s Time Out recording exemplified the attempt to commodify a type of performance—specifically designed for spontaneous creativity—that was anathema to full notation. The twentieth-century amateur could be forgiven for considering the written music as Scripture, as if from the beginning there had been the Notes.
Judging the Jazz Instrumental competition was a conductor best known for leading the TV studio orchestra in a daytime variety show. The Maestro was a short man with a bowl-cut carpet of black hair and an impassive expression.
Having grown out of the habit of wearing pants, I performed ‘Blue Rondo à la Turk’ in a flared forest-green skirt with a wide self-belt, paired with an apricot-coloured short-sleeved fitted cotton top. What can I say? It was the 1980s.
‘Her performance…was a startling one; the forte pedal was held down throughout; the big chords were crashed and banged with all the strength a pair of twelve-year-old arms could put into them; and wrong notes were freely scattered. Still, rhythm and melody were well marked, and there was no mistaking the agility of the small fingers.’
This vivid description is not of me but of Laura Rambotham, Henry Handel Richardson’s schoolgirl heroine from her 1910 novel, The Getting of Wisdom. Laura is giving a spirited rendition of a difficult work by Thalberg, Mozart’s contemporary, for her humourless headmistress—a fictional equivalent of my equally humourless Maestro. But the physical effort Laura puts into the Thalberg reminds me of the energy it took me to perform the Brubeck, with its chord clusters and its rapid switches between time signatures.
With my bare arms flailing and my heels tapping, I gradually formed the impression, however, that my enjoyment at playing ‘Blue Rondo’ was a lot greater than my audience’s pleasure in listening to it. I’m not sure what specifically gave me that idea; such thoughts run on the intangible currents between performer and audience. And it was difficult to know what precisely the problem could be, let alone how I could do anything to fix it. Was it that the piece was unknown to the audience and therefore faced invisible resistance? Was the composition too strange with its abrupt rhythmic changes? Too Turkish-sounding—whatever that meant? Or was it simply too contemporary by eisteddfod standards, at only twenty-five or so years old at the time?
Perhaps I should have selected a Gershwin or Duke Ellington number with more whiskers on it, as several other competitors had. After I finished, as I smiled and bowed and left the stage, I wondered why it never occurred to me to do something straightforward.
Returning to my seat, I noticed the Maestro staring at me with a puzzled look. I hoped he was impressed with my choice of material. No other competitor had selected such a rhythmically complicated work.
So as the Maestro handed out the awards and I remained empty-handed, I was more than a little disappointed. In fact I was dumbfounded: I may not have been the people’s choice, but I couldn’t imagine how I had failed to persuade him. Laura Rambotham had felt proud of how she’d played the Thalberg, but later found herself accused of a ‘gross impertinence, in profaning the ears’ of the other guests, and learned that she should have played Mozart instead.
As I stood to collect my things, the Maestro appeared beside me with my Jazz Masters: Dave Brubeck book. At the sight of Brubeck beaming from the cover, my hopes lifted. In my defeat I had forgotten to retrieve it. Perhaps the judge would utter some terse words of encouragement.
‘I must tell you that you had the rhythm of that piece all wrong,’ he said, lips pursed, as he handed me the book. ‘I just thought I should let you know.’
Laura Rambotham herself could not have been more surprised. Had the Maestro not once heard Time Out? It was quite possible I hadn’t played ‘Blue Rondo’ as well as I thought I had, but rhythmically I had played it like Brubeck does on his own recording. I could accept an adjudicator not caring for my playing—that had largely been the story of my eisteddfod career. But it was on Brubeck’s behalf that I was outraged. For once I didn’t blame myself for my failure: I diagnosed the Maestro with a severe case of arrhythmia.
12
ALICE PLAYED ONE NOTE AT A time on the church piano, the first of each broken chord the choir sang arpeggio. Their voices, ascending in unison then falling as they returned to the home note, had the comforting roll of water lapping the shore. For three years now she had led the choir’s midweek rehearsals and warm-ups on Sundays before the service.
From her first solo soprano part at a Sunday service, Alice’s clear articulation and honeyed tone had lifted the whole choir out of what a few newer members might have characterised as complacency. Despite his frail appearance, old Mr Somerville’s ears were still as sharp as those of the youngest tenor in his charge. He made a point of complimenting Alice in front of the choir after that service, and his brief encouragement lit a fire beneath her vocal ambitions. She had been surprised by her confidence in singing in front of an audience, the way that she felt uninhibited and utterly herself. More so than she did almost anywhere except whispering with Nance in their room before they fell asleep each night. On a stage she was Alice May Morrison Taylor, the pious young woman with the bell-like soprano voice, who loved her family
