A Son of the Rock

Illustrated by John Sibbald. Serpent’s Tail, 2004, 210 p, including 14 p Notes about the composers and philosophers. Plus vi p of Acknowledgements and lists of contents and illustrations.

This is a collection of 26 short stories, none of which is longer then twelve pages and even that includes one of the illustrations. Their tenses shift from past to present and back again. Trappings of the present day irrupt into the past or vice versa, modern day phenomena like pizza deliveries precede composing by candlelight with quill pens. Within the context, though, it all makes a surreal heightened sense. Unlike a lot of Scottish fiction the writing is laced with humour. Seventeen of the stories are listed under the heading “The lives,” four under, “The letters,” three are “The thoughts,” and, finally, one is “The last word.”

All of it is delightful stuff.

The lives:-
Sheep being scarce in Venice would-be priest Antonio Vivaldi – familiar with McDonald’s, TV and spaghetti westerns – tries to sleep by counting cardinals jumping off the papal balcony, one of whom brings to him both God and music via the number 3. 500 concerti later Vivaldi tries to go on holiday but is caught up in a war. A later incarnation learns to walk on water by channelling his anger at a Stravinsky comment that he always writes the same concerto.
In the glass box of her marriage Alma Mahler writes down the notes of the string quartet she is composing only for them to disappear from the paper as soon as she’s finished. Bach, who in his youth had aspired to be a professional footballer until a retired player suggested his true vocation, struggles to respond to the deluge of parcels he receives following the publication of an article titled ‘If Only Bach Had a computer’ in the previous month’s Digital Digest. Beethoven anticipates the benefits due to flow to him from a pyramid scheme while striding the mean streets of Edinburgh till he comes to “the Zone-of-Everything-and-Nothingness” that is South Bridge, which always defeats him. A Hamburg perpetually mist-bound and stuck at 4.45 in the afternoon due to the composer’s previous failures waits for Brahms to complete his first symphony: a fantastic interlude brings resolution. Antonin Dvořák finds his knowledge of Science Fiction and fairy-tale useful while stalking the Bohemian wilds for musical inspiration. Fresh from an invitation onto The Jerry Springer Show, Haydn hears a voice telling him just how many trios he still has to compose. Enthused by a cable channel film noir series, Mozart decides on a new career as a private investigator in a story which also features him bicycling through the air like the ident scene at the start of a Dreamworks^© film. Schubert glides through the streets of 1828 Vienna on his skateboard before being given a magic business card. In a manifestation which may be an indication of Schumann’s state of mind Liepzig morphs its architecture daily: then he takes the underground to Herr Wieck’s flat where he meets Clara. An aged Sibelius is in his last hours invited to join the circus by three clowns. Richard Strauss and Amenhotep IV share their dreams of finessing Nazi racial policies and building pyramids respectively. Tchaikovsky laments the madness of his marriage as he considers a last ballet. Georg Telemann writes his best-selling concertos amongst the mountain of mail order goods he has requested (or not) while his agent adopts his identity. One of the Mighty Handful of Russian composers who form a five-a-side football team conceives the idea of introducing passing to their game; their results get worse.

The letters:-
Composer Q makes a compact with the Mr Sinclair who turns up at his door: thereafter the music flows and Q’s domestic life becomes blissful. There is a catch of course. Composer X’s career creating music for films has given him all the trappings of success – girls, glamour and real estate. He flees the Calvinistic persecutions of messages in the Edinburgh sky to Tenerife only to find the stars have rearranged themselves into a message in Spanish. Composer Y labours under the affliction of coming between “the celebrated X and the no less renowned Z” (perhaps due to his fondness for the double-bass) till one day the world pauses and the sky becomes a Tiepolo-style ceiling of angels; suddenly he is in constant demand. Composer Z gazes from his window into the vista beyond the end of the alphabet through the large plate-glass window installed for just that purpose. In one universe the glass becomes insubstantial and he is pulled through. (This story contains a comparison between Scottish midges and the dead in Hades – both are summoned by human blood.)

The thoughts:-
A drunken David Hume cosies up to a woman “who had come so close to freezing to death on the pavement outside the Caledonian Hotel she had never warmed up again” before he is, in a phrase which could summarise this whole book, “stranded in this makeshift world put together from the sweepings of history.” Nietzsche tries to break free from monetisation at the hands of his University by keeping chickens. Seneca settles on Edinburgh’s Southside as the perfect place to prove Stoicism firmly as number one of all the world’s philosophies. Socrates attends the opening of Greece’s first supermarket, ‘Zealous Hellas’.

The last word:-
On her death bed Nadia Boulanger is visited by other female composers – her sister Lili, Hildegard von Bingen, Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann.

Pedant’s corner:- “Time interval later” and “within seconds” count; substantial – a few had gone by before I noticed the prevalence but they soon become extremely intrusive. Otherwise; crochets (crotchets,) manoeuvering (manoeuvring,) vermillions (vermilions,) “a set of garden furniture say with no memory of ever having ordered them” (ordered it,) extendible” (extendable,) the text implies the great Real Madrid team of 1959 had invented the passing game (they didn’t. It was the mighty Sons of the Rock in the 1880s/90s who did that,) “Puskas, Di Stefano, Santa Maria … [were] … to secure the European Cup for Real Madrid three years in a row” (Real won that cup five years in a row, the first five of its existence; those three players may not have been present for all five, of course.) “A few second’s later” (seconds,) “duvetted by straw and feathers” (should the spelling be ‘duveted’?) An unindented paragraph, Socrates’ (Socrates’s.)