1962
An die Musik
"A person asking to see you, sir. Mr. Gaye."
Otto Egorin nodded. This being his only free afternoon in Foranoy, it was inevitable that some young hopeful would find him out and waste it. He knew from the way his man said "person" that it was no one important. Still, he had been buried so long in managing his wife's concert tour that it was refreshing to receive a postulant of his own. "Show him in," he said, turning again to the letter he was writing, and did not look up till the visitor was well into the room and had had time to be impressed by the large, bald head of Otto Egorin engrossed in writing a letter. That first impression, Otto knew, would keep all but the brashest ones down. This one did not look brash: a short, shabby man leading a small boy by the hand and stammering about the great liberty – valuable time – great privilege – "Well, well," said the impressario, moderately genial, since if not put at ease the timid often wasted more time than the brash, "playing chords since he could sit up, and the Appassionata since he was three? Or do you write your own sonatas, eh, my man?" The child stared at him with cold dark eyes. The man stammered and halted, "I'm very sorry, Mr. Egorin, I wouldn't have – my wife's not well, I take the boy out Sunday afternoons, so she doesn't have to look after him – " It was really painful to see him going red, then pale, then red. "He'll be no trouble," he blundered on.
"What is it about then, Mr. Gaye?" asked Otto rather dryly.
"I write music," Gaye said, and Otto saw then what he had missed in supposing the child to be yet another prodigy: the small roll of music-paper under the visitor's arm.
"All right, good. Let me see it, please," he said, putting out his hand. This was the point he dreaded with the shy ones. But Gaye did not explain for twenty minutes what he had tried to do and why and how, all the time clutching his compositions and sweating. He gave the roll of music to Egorin without a word, and at Egorin's gesture sat down on the stiff hotel sofa, the little boy beside him, both of them nervous, submissive, with their strange, steady, dark eyes. "You see, Mr. Gaye, this is all that matters, after all, eh? This music you bring me. You bring it to me to look at: I want to look at it: so, please excuse me while I do so." It was his usual speech after he had pried the manuscript away from a shy-talkative one. This one merely nodded. "It's four songs and p-part of a Mass," he said in his barely audible voice.
Otto frowned. He had been saying lately that he had had no idea how many idiots wrote songs until he married a singer. The first he glanced at relieved his suspicions, being a duet for tenor and baritone, and he remembered to smooth the frown off his forehead. The last of the four caught his attention, a setting of a Goethe lyric. He moved very slightly as he sat at the desk, a mere twitch towards the piano, instantly repressed. No use raising hopes; to play a note of their stuff was to convince them at once that they were Beethoven and would be produced in the capital by Otto Egorin within the month. But it was a real bit of writing, that tune with the clever, yearning, quiet little accompaniment. He went on to the Mass, or rather three fragments of a Mass, a Kyrie, Benedictus, and Sanctus. The writing was neat, rapid, and crowded; music-paper is not cheap, thought Otto, glancing at his visitor's shoes. At the same time he was hearing a solo tenor voice over a queer racket from organ, trombones, and double-basses, "Benedictus qui venit in nomine Domini" – very queer stuff; but no, there now, just when it's about to drive you mad it all turns to crystal, so simply, so simply you'd swear it was crystal all along. And the tenor, the poor devil singing double-piano way up there, find me the tenor who can do that and fight off the trombones too. The Sanctus: now, splendid, the trumpet, really splendid – Otto looked up. He had been tapping the side of his hand on the desk, nodding, grinning, muttering. That had blown it. "Come here!" he said angrily. "What's your name? What's this?"
"Ladislas Gaye. The – the – That's the second trumpet."
"Why isn't it marked? Here, take it, play it!" They went through the Sanctus five times. "Planh, pla-anh, planh!" Otto blared, a trumpet. "All right! Why do your basses come in there, one-two-three-four-boom in come the basses like elephants, where does that get you?"
"Back to the Sanctus, listen, here's the organ under the tenors," and the piano roared under Gaye's husky tenor, "Sabaoth, then the cellos and the elephants, four, Sanctus! Sanctus! Sanctus!"
He sat back from the piano, Otto took his eyes from the score. The room was silent.
Otto set straight a drooping red rose in the bouquet on the top of the hired piano. "And where do you expect to have this Mass sung?"
The composer was silent.
"Women's chorus. Double men's chorus. Full orchestra; brass choir; organ. Well, well. Let me see those songs again. Is this all you've written of the Mass?"
"The Credo isn't orchestrated yet."
"I suppose you'll throw in double tympani for that? All right, here, where is it, the Goethe. Let me play." He played through the song twice, then sat twiddling out one of the queer half-spoken phrases of the accompaniment. "It's first rate, you know," he said. "Absolutely first rate. What the devil. Are you a pianist? What are you?"
"A clerk."
"A clerk? What kind of clerk? This is your hobby, eh, your amusement in spare time?"
"No, this is … this is what I …"
Otto looked up at the man: short and shabby, white with excitement, inarticulate.
"I want to know something about you, Gaye! You barge in, 'I write music,' you show me a little music, very good. Very good, this song, the Sanctus, the Benedictus too, that's real work, I want to read it again. But I've been shown good writing before. Have you been performed? How old are you?"
"Thirty."
"What else have you written?"
"Nothing else of any size – "
"At thirty? Four songs and half a Mass?"
"I haven't much time to work."
"This is nonsense. Nonsense! You don't write this kind of thing without practice. Where did you study?"
"Here, at the Schola Cantorum – till I was nineteen."
"With whom? Berdicke, Chey?"
"Chey and Mme Veserin."
"Never heard of her. And this is all you'll show me?"