FICTIONS: The Devil Went Down…
Patrick Hew
Hell to a violinist is the ticking of a metronome, the robotic, relentless and remorseless tick, beating out the time, beating the soul out of the music. And in every tick of the metronome, you can hear The Devil. Practising.
* * *
Left hand up, muscles neutral with the elbow tucked in, thumb low on the neck of the violin, open to see-imagine a little smiley face there (or draw one in). Right hand, Be One With The Bow feeling it in the fingertips near the first joints, the little finger firm but not locked in counterbalance, the bow completing the O-ring of middle finger and thumb. Bring the bow to the violin; lead the motion from the elbow, the wrist and arm in fluid response, shoulder blades soft-no tension, no worries. Internally count-feel-”one and two and three and four and …”, the bow now descending soft, soft, softly …
The ribbon kissed onto the open G and D strings, then rolled over to B-flat and G on the pulse-”one”-completing the opening chord of the Adagio in G-minor from Sonata No 1 by Johann Sebastian Bach. Left hand into vibrato, right arm “pour” for weight, not push, to sing not grit–”two”-sustain the sound; you could pin someone to the floor by pushing down on them, but it was easier to just sit on them and let gravity do the work-”three”-tail the B-flat off to just the top G, reverse the bow stroke into the descending G-minor scale-”four”.
“Hearing the first G minor chord immediately brings in the memory of the entire piece,” was how the historical notes to the Tognetti recording put it, even if first-position E-string made for a technically treacherous start. Phrase into the scale, fingers marking out the rhythm, take particular care with the final G; third finger on the D-string, this note is the harmonic anchor for the next chord. First finger on the G-string for A and the second on the A-string for C, generate the suspension.
Right fingers flexing like bristles on a paintbrush, arm reversing its arc like a ball at its zenith, into the next down stroke. Bow hair in clean, flush contact, near perpendicular to the string axis. Visual and tactile alignment-check-at the wrong angle, the string would push the bow towards bridge or fingerboard. Flow into the chord.
The A-G minor 7th was fine. Roll into the G-C perfect 4th … wrong. The C was close, but so is a drop of water hanging off a rock at the Victoria Falls. The mismatch in frequencies and resonances accumulated, the dissonance cutting until …
“Gaah!” Adrian let the bow fall through, aborting the sound.
Emily grinned cheekily. “You’re getting there. The first chord was clean, though you can let it ring more.”
“Barely made it past the first bar. At this rate, …” It’d been ten, maybe twelve seconds. Time passes slowly when measured in hemidemisemiquavers.
“Again,” said Emily.
Adrian went again, making somewhat more progress on this attempt. He’d found that if he could get the first four bars of the Adagio okay, then the rest would settle in. Maybe.
Afterwards, while packing up, Emily commented, “You’re improving. Every time I see you, you’re doing something different, taken on a little more.”
“Yeah, well I won’t be giving up my day job anytime soon,” said Adrian.
“That would be a good idea,” Emily agreed.
“See ya,” he said, as he ambled out to the car.
Adrian Stewart was reasonably confident that he wouldn’t be giving up his day job anytime soon. Okay, so the GFC had made things at AusDeutsche Ventures a bit tougher. But he was still better at doing that then he was at producing music by scraping horse hair across steel-and-cat-gut strung across a box of wood.
Not for lack of trying though. Fourteen months playing open strings, up and down up and down over and over, paralleling sessions with a physiotherapist and an Alexander Technique teacher to retrain his posture and bow motion, finding a happy medium between slouched like wet spaghetti and tensed like an ADFA cadet at attention on parade holding back diarrhoea. The worse had been a two month period a year before, a progression from “Bring this along ready for next week” to “Slow metronome practice” to “Open strings practice” to “Learn to stand correctly” … and then building back up again. Training in so that, when practice was over and it was time to play, it would all be there, at your fingertips; literally in the fingertips. That’s when the music really starts. And that’s about when it took over-when you’d be playing the music back in your head and can feel it in the muscles, and think, “Stop, try again, that shift was too far.”
The Canberra evening made for quiet roads (detractors said that Canberra made for quiet evenings). “Woke up with hangover. Must go rockclimbing. While towing the Queen Mary.”-that was the description given to one of the extreme-sports types at work, the one who’d presented a cogent and considered argument for legalised performance-enhancing drugs within professional sport. Adrian didn’t agree, but he did have to think why … and why not musicians for that matter? So there had to be limits, but … who knows, maybe he might just sign any reasonable contract with …
A figure loomed out of the darkness, immediately ahead. Adrian slammed on the brakes, his left foot sinking into the floor with juddering vibration as the anti-skid brakes kicked in. His world froze, fully occupied, closer closer closer closer stop!… within sneezing range.
“Hello Adrian.”
“Bloody Hell!”
“Well, if you’re going to call, you could at least be polite about it.”
Adrian got out of the car. Since his mind had decided to outsource higher cognition to a cabbage, his brain had plenty of spare capacity to note this was the point on the Tuggeranong Parkway where motorists were warned to Beware Of Kangaroos On Skis, the last bit being due to some helpful duct tape markup. He looked blankly: absence of skis, absence of tail, Not A Kangaroo On Skis. Call? Think back to … Sibelius on pseudoephedrine? A non-obvious alliteration, but no. Wind forward.
“You’re …”, Adrian didn’t finish.
“That’s right,” affirmed The Devil.
Adrian had heard at least two songs about this general scenario. One song, a tribute by a pair of guitarists, was woven from solid gold with a driving beat and emphatic lyrics. The other was the bane of violinists for, while popular with folk and country music audiences for seeming to sound pretty tough, it was actually only a moderate workout for a half-decent classical violinist, assuming that said half-decent classical violinist actually got around to learning it. Most didn’t, or hadn’t. Adrian included.
Oops.
“So what’s the deal?” asked Adrian. “I sign away my immortal soul, and you make me into the Greatest Violinist Of All Time?” He frowned. “I can’t see you getting too many takers. Not every violinist is that hardcore.”
“You might be surprised,” said The Devil. “You might be very surprised indeed.”
“You mean …?” The Devil smiled.
“Surely not …?” The Devil grinned.
“What about …?” The Devil winced.
“No deal,” said Adrian. “I’m not out to be the best, I just want to play the music the way it deserves to be played.”
“No. But this isn’t about being the best compared to everyone else,” said The Devil. “This is about being the best that you can be.”
“A protection racket, then,” observed Adrian.
“Let’s just say that it’s a club. A very exclusive club.” The Devil’s expression was smug. “There are lots of little things that will stop you from being as good as you can be. Things about the world. Things about the people around you. Things about yourself. Sign a contract with me, and I’ll see to it-personally see to it-that these little … impediments … are smoothed away.
And you don’t have to sign away your immortal soul. Just put it up as … collateral. When it’s time, you’ll play for me. If you’re good enough, you get your soul back. Otherwise, you’re mine, for the rest of eternity.”
“My immortal soul up as collateral,” echoed Adrian, flatly.
“Your immortal soul up as collateral. Or the souls of anybody else whom you can … introduce … to the instrument.”
“What is this, Amway?” Adrian frowned again.
“No, nothing to do with me,” replied The Devil serenely. “But surely you’ll have wondered just how and why violin teaching is so centred on classical excellence; why violin students are channelled towards being violin virtuoso supremo; why violinists are so focussed and, frankly, so frickin’ up themselves.” The Devil punched out the last words, agitation entering his voice. Then, regaining control, “You think that all those teachers are doing it out of the kindness of their hearts? Or that, maybe, they’ve got debts to pay?”
Adrian could almost see the PowerPoint slide, the pyramid scheme with The Devil laughing over all of them, all the way down to … him. Calmly, “I think this is where I’m supposed to say something like `I’ll see you in Hell before I sign.’”. He paused. “As a business model, it has merit. But I’ll see you in Hell before I sign.”
“That can be arranged,” replied The Devil. “But you’ll have worked out that you’re already slated to go there, if you want to keep getting better. Sign up with me, and you’ll have a fighting chance to play your way out.” The Devil grinned evilly. “If you’re good enough, that is. Maybe you’ll be good enough to clear your slate, without having to take on more … equity.”
Adrian’s face was grim, his voice a monotone. “Show me the contract.”
* * *
To play solo, with orchestra, in concert-even professional musicians rarely got to perform solo; except for the very very very best, an entire career might pass with solo opportunities counted on one hand. Oh, he’d worked to get it: the AMusA, playing Vivaldi, Mozart, Brahms and Prokofiev, and then the LMusA, playing Bach, Bruch, Saint-Saëns and Gershwin. And he might go on to learn the Dvorák, Brahms, Tchaikowsky, Sibelius or even (Heaven help him) one of the Paganinis, but they’d most probably be for himself only. It had been an agonizing choice to turn down the Beethoven, Bruch or Mendelssohn for tonight, but if this was as good as it was going to get, he knew his choice. It was right. Zone in.
Llewellyn Hall wasn’t far to go, but in the cold and foggy night it seemed … further. As the figure loomed out of the darkness, Adrian pulled over and parked.
“Good evening, ‘officer’.” It might have just been another ‘Random’ Breath Test.
“Time to play up,” punned The Devil.
“Time to lose my immortal soul,” Adrian deadpanned. He climbed out, retrieved his violin, and then reached into his kit bag for the contract that he’d signed not all that long ago. (Heaven help him? Hell already had.)
A park bench top wasn’t exactly a Green Room, but it would suffice. Shoulder rest clipped on, check that it snugs in place. He’d fitted new strings about a fortnight before, playing them daily to break them in like a set of new boots. The bow, tensioned up just so; he’d resined it after his final practice today. The strings had been cleaned with methylated spirits, but needed resin on them to ring properly-well, the coating would just be a little thicker now.
Check posture, bring the violin up and start tuning. The Devil looked on impatiently-”Come on, it’s a violin, not a harp!”-but Adrian ignored him, dialling in the perfect 5ths as he worked the open strings. Emily had told him of someone on National Orchestra Camp (“Band Camp. Hyuk hyuk. Band Camp.”) who’d started every morning by playing long, open strings. Emily suggested that it was a daily warm-up. Adrian thought that it was to freak out the opposition.
Move into scales and exercises, feel the ridging of the strings as the fingers land just so, and the notes forming melodies and harmonies just right, pitch and rhythm check while centred and comfortable and at ease and always, always, always, the clean contact between string and bow.
“Okay,” said Adrian. “So what now.”
The Devil’s face was diabolic. “Just follow my lead.”
In one orchestra Adrian had played with, violinists were rotated weekly into the seat next to the concertmaster. It was a good way to get a closer feel for what was happening up front. It was also a good way for the concertmaster to scrutinise you, to see if you’d been practising. Practise …
“Wait a minute. What about music?”
“Dots? You want dots?” The face changed from diabolic to feral.
“You said the best violinist that I could be. Sightreading is part of the skill set,” said Adrian.
“But you don’t perform with the music in front of you,” riposted The Devil.
“No, not solo I don’t,” agreed Adrian. “Fair enough.”
Session Bar rules, then. Play the tune if you know it, jam with it if you don’t. The Legend Of The Three AM Session: A room of musicians, all zoned in, all playing together. Suzuki School, two dozen violinists, playing the Bach Double, a dozen on each part. Jazz on a Sunday arvo.
But it kinda helps if you know the music beforehand.
The Devil started off with scales, parodying Adrian’s earlier warmup. Adrian followed, staying in synch, even as far as the three-octave E-flat melodic minor in semiquavers at crochet equals 120. Scraping in by fingernails, a real issue for violinists-they have to keep theirs clipped back.
“You sadistic … E-flat minor’s for pianists, not violinists, there’s no open strings to check against,” complained Adrian, only half-jokingly.
“Tchaikowsky 1812 Overture, Allegro giusto,” came the humourless reply. “Evidently we need to look at your orchestra repertoire.”
There’s actually a remarkable moment in the “1812″, when the violins emerge from the orchestral melée in a keening cry. For Adrian, that one second in the music was the true essence of “teamwork”, his violin ringing out in unison with every other onstage, an instant of perfect knowledge that he could be the best he was, and part of a greater whole. (The Cheshire grin came later, as Llewellyn Hall resonated to the accompanying firepower supplied by Questacon’s Excited Particles. Nobody is uncheered by a balloon, particularly when filled with hydrogen and ignited by a sparkler.)
But the reverse … it starts in the stomach, the helplessness. When the music is new and you haven’t had time to learn it properly, or it’s beyond your current skill or training. You do your best, valiantly, because you want to be in there, but you’re not, that the others might want to bring you along but ultimately it’s you on your violin, and that maybe no-one notices but you do. Keep up, make up, fake up, drop out … walk away entirely.
This had happened once in rehearsals-a complete mental blank on sight-reading a Haydn symphony had left him in the curious position of being back-seat driven by his section. And the Mahler 6th had left him a bit burned, gloriously rich and thematic music, but without the time and skill to learn to play it well, the only option was frustrating hours of learning to play it badly.
But follow the lead, because that’s what you do in orchestra. Beethoven’s 7th, 1st movement, to be played rhythmically. The Dvorak 7th, 4th movement, stupidly high altitude and then break into the refrain on tempo. The Mendelssohn Reformation Symphony, 1st movement, all those arpeggios and diminished sevenths in quaver runs that still defied Adrian’s control. More excerpts, totally unknown to Adrian-a grand education by immersion.
“Well, if you’re deficient in your orchestra playing, let’s hear what you can do otherwise,” said The Devil. “Bach.”
And so Adrian was back to the beginning, with the Bach Adagio in G-minor. The opening G-minor chord was as ringing and capturing as he’d ever played it, and proceeded from there with stately grace, the final G-minor chord tailing off to nothing while staying at full body all the way.
“Not bad,” opined The Devil. Then he played it, and Adrian wept internally when he realised that he never wanted to hear the Adagio again, unless it was like the performance he had just witnessed.
It went on. The Fuga following on from the Adagio. Kreisler’s Praeludium and Allegro, Elgar’s Chanson de Matin and Chanson de Nuit, not difficult technically, but to make them musical … That cursed Kreutzer Study No 2, an exercise in articulation and accuracy turned into a work of art. The Spring Sonata by Beethoven, its sweetness a ghastly juxtaposition to its performer. Mozart too, of course, with Mozart the space shouts out your screeches. On and on, Adrian played as he never had and, perhaps, never would again, only to have The Devil reply in spades. All too soon, Adrian had to stop, and could only listen to the music being played into the cold night, tearing out his soul, the soul that he’d gladly sell if it meant that he could play the music like that, play the music as it should be played. And when The Devil finally finished, with the Caprice No 13 in B-flat major, Opus 1 by Paganini, Adrian couldn’t tell whether the sound of laughter was from the violin, or was The Devil’s Laughter indeed.
“You play well,” declared The Devil, with an expression that defined the term “pool shark”. “But I suspect, not enough.” He flipped open the contract to the ledger page, near the back.
“Oh dear, not enough. I hope you’ve been taking teaching lessons, ’cause you’ve got a debt to clear.”
Adrian stood quietly, downcast, staring at the ground. Then habit took over, and he straightened up.
He shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said quietly.
“Your immortal soul instead?”. A pool shark smelling fear in the water.
Adrian shook his head again. “I wasn’t playing to beat you. I wasn’t playing to clear me. I was playing to clear those who taught me.”
He raised his head and looked at The Devil levelly. “Emily’s clear.”
“That’s nothing to do with …”
“Emily. Is. Clear.”
They stared at each other, as time stopped. Then The Devil turned magnaminious.
“Very well. Emily is clear.”
“And so are the others. All of them.”
“Oh really?”
“Yes really.” Adrian waggled the fingers on his left hand reflexively, then brushed them lightly across the strings two at a time, A-E, D-A, G-D, the “approved” way to check that a violin was in tune without disrupting orchestra rehearsals. “Take a look at the introductions count.”
The Devil flipped to the last page, where very small print stretched on, and on, and on …
“But how … you couldn’t possibly have … how did so many people take up … ?”
Adrian was packing his violin away. It was almost ritualistic, the way the body seated into its padded cushion in the case; the bow, hair loosened, clipped into the lid; the shoulder rest tucked in near the neck; the dust veil laid over the top. Made in Korea-they did good industrial design.
As he zippered up the case cover, he spoke in light corporate null-speak. “The AusDeutsche Art-Technology Investment Fund has done exceptionally well. Since its initiation, unit NAVs have consistently exceeded sector and competitor benchmarks by over 40 percent.”
He faced The Devil. “We seeded technologies that could leverage uptake of the arts. For musicians, we have audio analysis software from cetacean oceanography and military spin-offs; musical composition and theory support; video motion analysis from the sports industry and a whole raft of other apps. Oh, and Guitar Hero of course.”
Adrian thought for a bit. “One of our seeds is going IPO next month. You could probably still get a prospectus, but I doubt that Australian Corporations Law will allow you to invest.
“With our reachback to expertise in digital media and the Internet, we applied our proprietary expertise in auto-emergent marketing and C-cubing-that’s Complex Community Convergence-to generate vertical synergies from the garage and underground music scene, through mass-market entertainment and education and onto high-performance training. In the coming quarter, we’re predicting new opportunities for the E=MC-cubed model, particularly in the PacRim where …”
“Stop! This is all gobbledegook! Speak plainly!”
Adrian gave The Devil the pitying look a Click-and-Go child reserves for one with the misfortune to have been born before the 1990s. “Building market share. In the space of 30 years, computers went from being mysterious beige boxes for geeks, to funky gadgets with geekiness being cool. We’ve turned esoteric communications protocols into dinnertime conversation. Doing the same for classical music ought to be a light workout.”
A quick grin, a bit sheepish. “I couldn’t wait for electroneural therapy or subliminal bodysonics to boost my precision, and metronome practice is still metronome practice.” His face turned a whimsy, “Though on the modern electronic ones, you can get a really cool party trick by setting it to crochet equals 144 on voice count: one-i-an-a one-i-an-a one-i-an-a one-i-an-a one-i-an-a …” grooving to the head-bang pulse.
“Anyway, we sponsored music that kids would naturally want to jam to, and still get practice value from. Linkin Park, Muse … the music has really awkward keys like F-sharp and C-sharp minor, so you have to really concentrate to get the pitch just right, and keeping in time with them is as disciplined as any metronome.” He paused. “You can thank your buddy for the success of that venture.”
“What? Who?” Now The Devil was really perplexed.
Adrian snapped the latch shut on his violin case. “Well, you don’t talk to your Amway guy, and if music is stovepiped in the real world, then why the hell not in, err, Hell? ‘The Devil of Heavy Metal Bands’,” he finished sarcastically, groping inside a pocket on the outside of his violin case and pulling out a business card. “Here, got a mate at Accenture, he can set you up with an integrated enterprise knowledge management system. Won’t charge an arm and a leg for it either. Well, not much. Maybe only part of your leg. The foot perhaps. The underside of it. Ka-ching.”
The Devil (of Violinists) regained some of his composure. “I still own you.”
“And I own you,” he shot back, then nodded to another shadow emerging from the fog. “You know, I know, and he,” pointing to The Devil of Investment Bankers, “knows that my people are the voting majority of your … equity.”
Adrian walked back to his car, and stashed his gear behind the driver’s seat. He faced the Devil of Violinists squarely. “Make waves, and they’ll go have plenty of fun doing other things. Work with me … maybe you’ll get to meet them one day, those that do want to contract for the step up.”
Eyes thinned. “You’d better be ready for them though. ’cause they’ll be bloody good.”
To the Devil of Investment Bankers, “And as for you-We’re square. AusDeutsche implements industry best-practice for ethical investment, so no double-dipping.”
The car’s engine started on the first ignition. “If you’ll excuse me, I have a performance to prep for.” A serene expression on his face, “I’m playing the Wieniawski. It’s the piece that my first teacher debuted on. And it’ll be my concerto tonight.”
Adrian looked hard at the Devil of Violinists, as if daring him to comment. Then he grinned, and waved in derisive salute. “Gotta go. Gonna go have a fiddle,” he wisecracked, driving off.
The Devil of Investment Bankers came to stand alongside The Devil of Violinists, as they watched the car roll away into the Canberra night.
“Arrogant snot. We’ll be seeing him again,” said The Devil of Investment Bankers.
The Devil of Violinists snorted grimly. “What, as musical director at the Last Trump?”
“An uncomfortable likelihood, certainly,” added The Angel of Harpists.
* * *
Hell to a violinist is the ticking of a metronome, the robotic, relentless and remorseless tick, beating out the time, beating the soul out of the music. And in every tick of the metronome, you can hear The Devil. Practising.
—/—
Copyright © Patrick Hew 2009
About the story: My thanks to Lily Chrywenstrom and the Canberra Science Fiction Guild crit circle for the coaching and encouragement to see this story through into print. I’ve learned a lot, and it’s been fun.
Dr Patrick Hew plays violin, is a former triathlete, and currently has a day job researching future concepts for the Australian Defence Force. He was previously published in Fables & Reflections, and lives in Canberra with his wonderful wife Clare.
