Featured Article » Continuing Serials

Euterpe, Episode 4

Written by Enrico Toro and David Carrico

 

To Father Thomas Fitzherbert SJ,

Illustrissimus Collegium Anglicanum

Roma

From Maestro Giacomo Carissimi,

Grantville, USE

Second day of January, in our Lord's year 1634.

Dear and illustrious Father,

Today I finally sit down to write to you. This is the first letter I write in three months and I apologize for that. I hope that you find my English improved over the last one.

In your last missive you were complaining about my silence, and in my defense I can only say that I have been swept away by the current events and I have not been able to focus my mind enough to describe with coherence what happened here in Grantville since October.

When I last wrote you from this town I was living in the New United States, part of the Confederated Principalities of Europe. Now I am living in the State of Thuringia, part of the United States of Europe and I did not move a mile from where I was the last time my quill wrote the words I sent across the Alps.

This change in names is not a whimsical thing, but an apt metaphor of the many transformations this land and, even if in a much more minor way, your friend Giacomo are going through.

In my last letter I wrote you about the battle of Wismar, and, being a person who prides himself of knowing the events happening in this world (the latest news the Americans would say) you certainly are well informed about it: a small group of people from Grantville and a down-timer stopped the Danish invasion force with an even smaller loss of life.

This would have been cause for celebration in any other place in the world I know of, and the victory was certainly celebrated in Grantville, but with a deep feeling of sadness underneath.

Compared to the rest of the population in Germany the up-timers are a small group and all the events since the Ring of Fire strengthened the bonds among them. The same Hans Richter was a special down-timer for many Americans. He was one of the first Germans welcomed here and many members of his family married into American families. He also had an American fiancée, the daughter of that Moor physician that is revolutionizing medical practices.

Mr. Richter was considered the best of both worlds. His heroic actions during the battle gained him a very high place in the Pantheon of heroes of this new nation.

I believe that the powers of the League of Ostend have made a serious mistake beginning this war. I am sure they were convinced that the sooner they begun the less the USE would have been prepared to put up an effective resistance, but they didn't consider a crucial factor, something I see everyday here in Grantville and I hear about in the rest of the USE territories. For the Americans and the Germans this war is different. This war has become a personal thing.

In our time we fight wars because our sovereigns want it. We, as subjects, simply obey even if we don't understand the reasons behind that war. Even if the war may have serious consequences for any population the population itself is not involved in the decision making process. Wars, like plagues, simply happen and we simply try to make the best of it. Well, it is not the same here.

The Americans and the Germans are not building a state or a league, they are building a Nation. A place that everyone, from Prime Minister Mike Stearns to the most humble of citizens, can call home. And when a nation goes to war, when citizens cross arms with subjects, subjects don't stand a chance.

In the Other Time Line it happened already once. At the end of the eighteen century, armies from half Europe declared war and invaded republican France. At the cry of "Ça ira," and, later, under the guide of one the most brilliant military minds, these ragtag citizen armies flooded Europe defeating any sovereign's army that dared confront them.

Only when the French betrayed their ideals and from liberators became conquerors were they defeated after long and bloody wars. At the end, it was the same ideal of nation that they exported all over the continent that defeated them.

Many people even here believe that it will be the superior weapons and all the other devices from the future that will help in the war. I think that if this war will be won by the USE it will be thanks to the ideals that this new nation represents. I know perfectly well how these ideals can be stirring and how easy it is to fall prey of their allure.

There is only so much that a soldier of Richelieu and Olivares might do; they kill because they are trained and paid to do so, but how much are they ready to die for their kings? The soldiers of the USE will fight for their families, their homes, their rights; and Wismar has already demonstrated to the world how much they are willing to pay for what they do believe is right.

Everyone seems involved in the war, even when they are not directly getting ready to fight. The tension that was looming over this town the days before the war was magically transformed in a strong wish to get over with the war as soon as possible. These people want to win, because they have no other choice. It means survival of their way of life and it means survival of all they believe in. This clear determination is not only present in the eyes of those young men and women that are enrolling in the armed forces, but in those of civilians of every age and faith.

At the end I am happy to know that the Holy Father decided to remain neutral.

Nevertheless I am afraid that, no matter how big his admiration for the Re D'Oro is, he won't be happy when he will know that I gave my contribution to fight this war. I did it in the only way I know about, with well-written musical notes. I can only hope that, upon my eventual return in Rome, I shall not find myself hanged and quartered on Ponte degli Angeli.

It all started in church, at Saint Mary's. I told you in my last letter how I am enjoying the time I spend there. Even if there is a service in Latin for us down-timers, I still find strange the up-time Catholic liturgy. It's simpler, shorter, with the priest facing an audience that is much more involved in the rites. It's the concept of democracy applied to the Mass. Where first only the priest was the link between the Creator and the community, now it is the whole community that celebrates the communion with Christ. It's fascinating, even if it lacks the mystery and the charm of our liturgy.

It was after one of those services, a few days after the battle, that Father Kircher gave me the idea for a composition. I remember we were busy talking and gossiping about natural philosophy and politics. I was explaining how belittling I found that Cardanus would be remembered in the future more for his accomplishments in mechanics than for his mathematical works and Father Kircher was trying to convince me that Valeriano Castiglione, the author of the "Statista Regnante," was destined to become the principal apologist of the League of Ostend.

As is his usual practice, the Jesuit abruptly changed topics and asked me "So, Maestro, I've heard you are going to perform a piece of Palestrina for the concert?"

"Yes we will, the Kyrie from the Missae Papae Marcelli, just before the Händel piece."

"Was it hard to talk the choir into singing a polyphonic piece?"

"Well, it was easier than to convince them to play Monteverdi's Stella Maris hymn," I replied to him, "but once I found the violin and viola players I needed even that went smoothly. Besides Mrs. Bartolli has been a real help in putting Brian Grady by my side."

"Who is going to play?"

"Two Germans from Franz Sylwester's group of friends. They are Protestants, but I think this climate of religious toleration has perhaps soothed their hot reformist spirit. Or perhaps they simply wish a chance to play here in Grantville. Or perhaps it is because they are friends. It is no matter; I asked them and they accepted."

"Where did you find the scores?" Here the wily Jesuit began to lead me down his path.

"Nowhere. Or from my mind, I should say. I learned at heart both pieces while I was still a music student in Tivoli, and I never forgot them. I think Monteverdi's Vespers are the highest expression of musica sacra written so far this century. I wrote them out from memory, making some simple arrangements for the choir. I have very little doubt that the performance will be spectacular." I confess to feeling a bit smug at that moment.

"Will we have the pleasure to listen to a Carissimi too?" he asked with a perfect Jesuit innuendo.

"Not yet, dear Father. I wish I could, but with all the things I am learning I think my art is going through a severe reshuffling. I am not sure at the moment there is enough of it left to compose something." Too late I saw his trap. I tried to turn from it, but you know how Jesuits are.

"Oh, come now," he said with a very paternal tone. "Don't tell me you haven't composed anything since you arrived here!"

"Well, I wrote some small things, but they are mainly exercises to become familiar with the piano, small variations hardly worth the name composition." As a small fish, I tried to wriggle free, but he, the master fisherman, had hooked me very well.

"Too bad, Giacomo, because I think everybody would be happy if you composed something for the concert. And, you know, it would give prestige to the church."

"Father, Saint Mary's is the only parish in the entire Christian world that can perform pieces from Händel and Liszt in the same concert. You need me for prestige?" Now he was teasing me, I think.

"Well, Giacomo, you are alive and a member of the community, even if a late admission. These other composers instead are not part of this universe, they are memory. In my opinion all their music, no matter how beautiful, is not worth a single note of what you, and other people living here and now, may write."

"I don't think I understand, Father" Truly, I did not understand this from him.

"What I mean is that many of the things that came with the Ring of Fire are good and useful, but this is not twentieth-century America or Germany. It is something new, and the Americans, with all their mighty knowledge, need us down-timers. We cannot stop creating or exploring just because scholars or musicians in a future that will never exist have already said and written so much. If we do, we will become just like those philosophers who consider wrong anything written in contrast with the words of Aristotle. Or those painters that copied Raphael and Titian over and over again."

He took a long breath and continued, "This Mozart, this Bach may be giants, but we cannot just learn how to play their music and then do it over and over again. Their work may influence us, change the way we write our music, give us more opportunities and more paths to explore, but we must move on. It is from people like you that the future generations will find inspiration. You and the other musicians in this town are the torch bearers for the future, not Mr. Beethoven. The Eroica makes more sense with a Napoleon in the world's history. When the time is right, we will compose our own."

Now, as the Grantvillers say, he had me. I succumbed to his lure. "I think I now understand what you mean. Our music, even if not so inspired or majestic as the music of the future is connected to our lives, to our experiences, our reality like no music from the future can be."

"Exactly! And I believe that now more than ever they need something to encourage and inspire them through the incoming war. You can do this better than Chopin, Giacomo, because you know their fears, you have counted their tears, and shared your bread and salt with them. You can touch their souls like no one-day-may-be-born-composer can." The net closed. Good man that he is, Father, he did not grin in triumph over me.

"I may agree to that, but the hard truth is that I still don't have anything in my hands and time runs." My final feeble attempt to evade the net.

"Let's make a deal then. I have thought about a little poem of my own and I will finish it in ten days. I will give it to you if you promise me you will try hard, very hard to come up with the music for it. Would you agree to these terms? Make it great, Giacomo!"

"Yes, I think I can try."

I was well and truly caught. Father A was kind enough not to exult over me. He simply smiled and poured more wine in my cup.

So after that long conversation, and the challenge that ended it, another chapter of my American life began.

Ten days later I had in my hands the wonderful and moving words of the "Jammern Für Einen Gefallenen Adler" or "Lament for a Fallen Eagle." Carissimi the scholar had become again Carissimi the composer—but such a different Carissimi it was from even a year before.

I knew that Father Athanasius was renowned for his erudition, so I was not so surprised that the Lament was using the same metre of Horace's "Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori." The fact that he managed to transpose in German the same rhythm and pathos of the Latin words was already a big accomplishment, but he went beyond that. Father Athanasius Kircher SJ sure knows his Aristotle.

When I read it to Elizabeth, that is, Mrs. Jordan, she was clearly stunned. It took her a while to say: "I was sure this was going to be a patriotic song, and honestly I was afraid it could be obnoxious, pompous and uselessly rhetoric as many patriotic songs are. I was expecting to read about the Fatherland or German Youth, all those words that give us up-timers a chill along the spine when we hear them. It's part of our experience, our conditioning I believe. But I was mistaken, there is nothing Nazi in these lyrics. That priest has managed to express sadness, mourning, and loss while, at the same time, he has been able to write a call of arms for the new nation. Nevertheless, this not a song to the glories of war, it's a tribute to human drama and courage, to the pride of doing your duty up to the very end. This poem is so rich in humanity, such sadness yet pervaded with hope."

Then she added, using that delicious smile of hers, "It's beautiful, Giacomo, so true, and you, Jude, are going to make it better, I am sure."

This name Jude is one she often calls me. She says it is from some obscure up-time rock and roll song.

So it was now my turn to get the work done and have something finished soon. Despite my assurance to Father A, I could not stop feeling it like a too heavy burden for my shoulders.

When a composer wants to write a piece of music for a text he needs to know such a text precisely. The construction and the meter of the poem must be perfectly clear to you. To do that I always used to carry the poem with me. Recite it in my head and out loud, paying close attention to any detail, the rhythm, the pauses, the cadences. After a while those written words become music; the letters notes; the phrases themes.

That moment is what I learned to call inspiration. For me it is a dream-like state where ideas flow freely from inside you to the paper. It's a mystical trance that I believe is not so very different from those that touched one of the great mystics like John of the Cross. It is a moment when the spark of divinity that dwells in each of us glows brighter; a moment of perfect harmony with the Almighty. Prayer made with notes.

If inspiration is the base of successful composing, it is by no means all there is to it. One needs craftsmanship. A good balance between rhythm, melody and harmony requires a strenuous mathematical exercise. There are rules that help you put all the parts together and one has to follow them. Genial minds invent new rules and adapt their music to them; they are the Fibonacci, the Pythagoras of the musical world. My conundrum was being stuck between two sets of rules: the one set by the men of my time and the many, disaccording ones set in . . . not the future, but certainly a future.

An average composer writes approximately two minutes of music per day. Monteverdi and other great minds can write four minutes a day. My speed increased during the years with the strengthening of my musical muscles. Before my trip to Grantville I could write three minutes a day.

But that, again as the Grantvillers would say, was then, and this was now. (They have very many sayings, you see.) A week was passed since I had the lyrics and I had written nothing. Or better, I had a growing amount of crumpled music sheets on the wooden floor of my room. I had wasted at least a florin's worth of paper, to no avail. I swung like a pendulum between mania and depression, at one end scribbling like a madman, only to call it all vanity and smoke like the Preacher and hurl it away. In my rare lucid moments, it would sometimes occur to me that this wastage of paper could make a pauper of me.

Surely it did not help living so close to a music instrument shop where people worked until nightfall or after; or having to go to teach in class everyday, or having decided to not use ornaments for this kind of composition. The up-time performers would not understand it and down-time German performers may be confused by them, for standard forms are different depending on what side of the Alps you are. But always I felt I could have done better, and the more the time passed, the closer my deadline became, the more frustrated I became.

Fortunately, Girolamo became again my deus ex machina. One day I could not stand anymore the noises coming from the garage, and I went downstairs shouting to Girolamo and his apprentices to stop doing all that noise, that I was working too and I was fed up to listen to their saws, hammers, planers. Girolamo didn't say anything; he just walked out of the place. I saw him coming back half an hour later. He entered my room, and began to collect my paper, my quills and ink and the other tools I used to write without a word. He ignored me until he had them all in a package, then he turned to me and said, "Signora Elizabeth's husband is out of town for one week and she agreed to host you every day after school until you have finished writing. You may stay as late as you want, so she says."

"But," I started.

"No buts, Giacomo," he interrupted me. "You are not the only one who wants this thing done. I know it's not proper, but I think nobody in town and probably in the whole world believes you would harass her. So put your doublet and coat on and go to her. She told me she is glad to help."

"I can't . . ." I tried to say again

"Listen to me, you asino cocciuto." Here he grabbed me by the shoulder and shook me till my eyeballs rattled in my head. "I know as well as you that the Muse is a very jealous and finicky entity. If you want to enjoy her embrace you must show you are worthy of it. If you keep on sitting there, holding a grudge against the rest of the world, you will never do anything. So go affanculo somewhere else, but do not stay here in this room" He concluded, shouting and pointing at the door with his forefinger.

His will overpowered my reluctance, and so to Elizabeth's I went. I admit that it was not proper, but by then I was desperate, willing to do even this if it open the door to the Muse.

Signora Elizabeth was waiting for me on the porch of her house. She was sitting on the swinger, sipping coffee from a large cup with a quilt on her shoulders against the chills of this German fall, so much deeper than we know in Rome. I did not know what to say. I was feeling very, very stupid but at least my rage had cooled down. The months we spent working close together weren't spent in vain because she knew she had to break the ice someway.

"Girolamo told me you haven't eaten anything in two days. Please, come inside, I have plenty of leftovers to warm up." At the mention of food my stomach entered the scene with a theatrical growl, and laughing we went inside.

It was definitely a hearty meal that Elizabeth offered me. Sitting down with her, an opera playing on CD in the background, engaging in small talks about everything but music greatly helped in relaxing me. I felt all the tension accumulated in the last few days melt down and dissipate like late snow to a springtime sun.

The last thing I remember is falling asleep.

When I woke up it was dark, I was laying under a quilt on the comfortable piece of furniture the Americans call a sofa. My shoes were on the floor and I remember that the first thought that came on my head was to look at my feet to make sure there weren't holes in my stockings.

I stood up, watched the living room clock whose arms indicated it was an hour before dawn and I suddenly realized that there was something in my head that was begging to come out. For the first time I had a theme.

My composer training took command. There was a moment where I was frantic, but then I saw the package Girolamo had made, and before I realized it I was sitting at a table writing down music without any particular effort.

One of the rules that I abide to is to never begin working out a composition before the outline of the whole thing has taken definite form. When I started writing it became clear that the whole outline was there, waiting for the speed of my hands to put it down on paper.

When Elizabeth and her children Daniel and Leah woke up they found me scribing with fury on the kitchen dining table.

Even if little Leah knew me well, seeing me so abruptly invading her house must have scared her young soul because she started crying. Her cry made me realize I wasn't alone anymore.

"I am sorry I scared the children, Elizabeth," I apologized. "I didn't expect you to be up so early on a Saturday."

"Oh no, Giacomo, don't worry. It was just the surprise that startled them. If you had kids you'd know they decide when it's time to wake up. You remember Mr. Giacomo, don't you, Leah? Say hello to him."

"Good morning, Mr. Giacomo," the child said with a sleepy voice.

"Good morning to you, gnappetta," I answered using the Roman nickname I gave her when I first became acquainted with her.

She giggled. "That means little one in Roman dialect, Momma," she said. I love the way she giggles when I call her so.

"Mr. Giacomo is here to write a wonderful music, and from what I see he has already begun. He is going to be our guest this day, and we all are going to help him."

"Elizabeth I don't want to be of any disturbance to you and your family. I can go back home, it's not a big deal." I began to gather my things, trying to think where I could take myself to resume the work.

"Do you think I want to lose the occasion to assist a master when he is composing?" she asked. "I have already talked to my neighbor and she will baby sit the kids until dinner. Until then Giacomo, I am all yours."

I think she realized what she just said a moment too late, when we both started blushing.

"Well," I said, trying to get a hold on myself, "let me prepare breakfast while you and i bambini get ready. If my life as bachelor taught me something is how to cook a good meal." I stepped to the stove. "Eggs and bacon?" I kept on hoping that my blabbering helped to ease our embarrassment. "Do you know that eggs were Dante's favorite food?"

After breakfast Daniel and Leah left and we went to work. We made a good team, to use another of those American expressions.

We worked frantically, without a break. I have hardly ever before felt such a creative energy vibrating and such a synchrony with another human being.

We examined my ideas beginning with the vocal theme, then bass theme and the other instrumental parts. I walked in circles around the room dictating the notes as they came in my mind; Elizabeth was sitting on the piano writing the notes, then singing or playing them on the piano.

I could see clearly in mind the three music great factors, melody, rhythm and harmony, combined in a single creation. Slowly the pauses, the rhythm and the counterpoints began to take shape.

Even the adagio, perhaps the part I found most difficult to compose, was written quickly and without too much revision. Finally, bar, after bar, passage after passage, movement after movement, the main motive was complete.

I stopped walking around the living room, turned toward Elizabeth and said, "That's it. It's done, we don't need more. Sure, there are still subsidiary motives to be added and the lines for the single instruments to be written, but what we did has something miraculous in it. Do you realize that in just nine hours we wrote over ten minutes of music?"

Elizabeth stood up and answered while handing me the music sheets, "Well, that's great, Giacomo! I don't know about you, but I am a wreck. I have almost no voice left, and my fingers hurt, but hey, I can't say it wasn't worth it!"

It was dark outside and, looking at the clock (another marvel of technical art that anywhere else would get you burned on a stake), she realized that her children would come back shortly.

She invited me to stay and eat dinner with them. I looked a last time at the sheets of music I was holding in my hands and reluctantly I lifted my eyes from them and I smiled at Elizabeth.

"Madonna, being weary and in pain is the price that those who spread harmony in the world must pay. But I believe it's a small toll compared to the joys it brings. But at least I can alleviate the pain of domestic chores and invite you and your children to dine out. Besides I am anxious to discover if this music is really worth to be played in public. I suggest we play it to Maestro Zenti and see his reactions. He may be our . . . how do call it? He may be our guinea pork."

"Speaking about pork; I would not mind a huge pizza with sausage and mushrooms, I am hungry. Why don't you go pick up Maestro Zenti while I order one? Delivery in one hour!"

I followed her plan and I was back in less than an hour with an extremely curious Girolamo and a bottle of the best wine we had at home to celebrate. Once our hunger was finally calmed by a gargantuan American version of the Neapolitan dish, and with the children in bed, Elizabeth finally performed the Lament for our one man audience.

It was the simpler version of the Lament for a Fallen Eagle in five actions for orchestra, choir and soloist voice, just the piano and Elizabeth's voice. Nevertheless I saw Girolamo, whose knowledge of German was as bad as of English, sincerely moved.

At the end of the performance he got off the couch, bowed to us, stood up again and looked at us in silence. His forehead was frowned and his gaze lost. I knew, for having done it so many times myself, that he was trying to find the right words in a foreign language.

"Mrs. Elizabeth, Giacomo; I believe that many years from now scholars will study the records about this evening, and they will make of today a far more epic day because nothing else will make justice to what I heard sung tonight."

He kept on paying us compliments for the rest ...