Talking with my
friend Tony
Tenore during the rehearsal break the other week, he was bemoaning the
awful
ringtones we're bombarded with from all sides these days. Having just
acquired
one of those fancy mobiles that take MP3 files as ringtones, he was
looking for
something a bit better than the average. I ventured, "I'd thought of
using a
few snatches of recorded blackbird song when I get a new phone. The Mog
should
get used to it after a while." "Not a bad idea" he conceded, "but you
might
miss it if you were outside. I was thinking more along classical lines.
What
would you suggest?" Having won the complete Beethoven string quartets
on eBay a
few months ago for only £12, my first thought was those three
anguished notes
from the finale of Op 135, beneath which the composer wrote "Must it
be?"
Perhaps that would do for calls from one's accountant. Tony pondered.
"Hmmm…"
he said, as he ran it through in his mind. "Yes, but the trouble is,
the
quality of reproduction of most mobiles is worse than a 1960's tranny."
Funny,
that, I mused. A '60's tranny contained maybe 6 to 8 transistors in
little tin
cans. (I bought a transistor to play with when I was about 13, for 6s
8d I
think.) Some mobiles today probably contain 100 million times as many,
etched
onto their silicon chips. There's progress for you. But we digress. "If
you
can't abide the quality of reproduction" I protested, "you'd be better
off
sticking to an old-fashioned 'ring-ring'". "But don't you see?" he
retorted.
"There’s one thing that even the worst mobile can reproduce with almost
perfect
fidelity!" "No!" I avowed. "But of course!" he declared triumphantly.
"Silence!!"
The
implications of this astounding insight
gradually sank in. Remember that fascinating evening last term when
Joseph
Phibbs described how all music comes out of the silence that precedes
it,
making the silence itself a part of the music? Remember our Messiah
last year,
and Andrew’s 10-months'-pregnant pause before the final Amen? (The
choir were
at their best - no chattering, no esss-ing, no mobiles going off…) The
rests in
a piece of music can be the most exciting bits. "How about the pause,
like a
thousand years compressed into a moment, just before Gerontius gets his
glimpse
of God?" suggested Tony. "Brilliant" I replied, "but too short for a
ringtone...
Ah, but do you know Beethoven Op 18 No 1?" (I was back on the
string quartets.) "The coda to the Adagio contains 6 whole metronomic
beats of
silence, repeated three times over. It's incredible." "Perfect!"
exclaimed
Tony, and he proceeded to conduct 6 beats of silence in the air - a
more
faithful rendition of Beethoven have I never heard - before pressing
the green
button on his mobile. (There was no one on the line. He looked at his
phone
with a puzzled expression.)
Just
then we were interrupted by the bell sounding
the end of the break, so we returned to our places.
I
had occasion to ring Tony later in the week.
He didn't answer. Can't think why.
©Philip
Le Riche, 2006
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