An Unfinished Score (18 page)

Twenty-eight

The composers are housed in a large hotel. They are six, if Suzanne counts herself and Alex as one. She feels dwarfed by the huge lobby but even more so by the other aspirants. One of the young men wears a Hawaiian shirt and an eagerness for friendship, but most are reserved. Two—one man and one woman—seem frankly hostile. Suzanne remembers the competitiveness from Curtis and from her summer at Marlboro, but it was friendlier there. Even Anthony knocked off with only a comment or two, not actually wanting others to fail but only himself to succeed.

Or maybe it only seemed friendlier, given her naïveté and the more youthful stakes. Maybe she just didn’t know enough to feel threatened or to wield her own knife. Occasionally Ben was accused of a cutthroat attitude, but she understood immediately that this was a misreading. There was a confidence there, verging on arrogance, and a disdain for laziness and shortcuts of any kind. And aloofness always. But no malice. He could be fairly accused of ignoring other people, of failing to notice them, of frowning openly at their musical tastes, but not of wishing anyone else failure or harm. Even before she knew much about him, she could feel that there was no aggression. He never schemed. And even now, when she has learned that so much about him is not what she thought, she knows she was right about that. He is not a mean person.

What she does know now that she didn’t know when she was a student is that some people are indeed mean, with no compassion. Perhaps they are the least dangerous of all people, the least likely to hurt you, because you know they would if they could. That’s what she thinks when she meets Lisa-Natasha and Eric. Though she doesn’t think they are a romantic pair, and maybe not even allies, they are sticking together for now, and Suzanne thinks of them as joined, as male and female halves of the same taut ambition. They even look alike in their dark skinny jeans, black shirts, and streaky hair, with their fast-moving eyes, with their speedy assessments and dismissals of the people they introduce themselves to, never shaking hands or asking much.

“Not Lisa. Not Natasha. Lisa-Natasha,” the female one says, and Suzanne whispers, “Got it.”

But other composers’ attitudes aren’t at issue, not really. Suzanne is not here to make friends, if she could even remember how to go about it or figure out whom to trust. She is here to finish whatever it is that Olivia started. She has come for the learning and the work. Perhaps she is here to become, at last, a composer. Mostly, though, she has come to Minneapolis to have the concerto worked on and performed. She has come to hear what it sounds like and to have her farewell from Alex.

Her relationship with Alex was an education in how to compartmentalize her emotions, her thoughts, parts of herself. Even so, she is surprised at how easily she sets aside Ben and Petra. For the first time she understands Ben’s ability to work in the days after she lost the baby. She wasn’t able to play, not even a little, for several weeks, and his capacity to overlook her pain and write music made him seem monstrous and her feel weak.
And to overlook his own pain
, she realizes for the first time. Now maybe she sees: he wasn’t ready to think about it, and he knew it wasn’t going away. Why not work?

She studies her itinerary in her large room, and for a moment she feels as though Alex is in the bathroom or has run down to the lobby for aspirin or a newspaper—as though he will be right back. No, she reminds herself sternly, but then she thinks,
He is here in the music
. There is comfort in this thinking, but it’s not mere comfort. She believes it.

The itinerary names the work: Viola Concerto, composed by Alexander Elling and Suzanne Sullivan. They are united on the page even if they are divided by life. Her hands shake, and she lowers the paper to the bed to read the five-day schedule of meetings, panels, critique sessions, lectures, readings, rehearsals, and, finally, the Friday-night public performance of the six works.

It is late when she turns her lights off, and she sleeps the deep sleep available to her only when she is both alone and very tired. If she dreams, she does not remember her dreams, and so upon waking she thinks instead of the Chicago dream of being trapped inside the moist head of another person, attempting an escape that may be futile. She comforts herself again, telling herself that it is Alex’s head she has been inside, inside his music and his mind, and so no escape is necessary. She feels oddly confident about the concerto itself: she has solved it, and the result is both daring and beautiful.

Showered and dressed, Suzanne finds her way to the continental breakfast set out in one of the hotel’s conference rooms. As she serves herself coffee, weak orange juice, and an oblong wheat roll, she greets the other five composers. Again Lisa-Natasha and Eric respond icily, turning their heads slightly away as they speak to her and saying something mildly clever. She wants to assure them that she is no threat at all. The friendliest of the bunch wears another Hawaiian shirt, this one even brighter than yesterday’s. “Bruce,” he says, shaking left hands with her as his right balances a plate holding his breakfast and a steaming mug.

“I know,” she says. “I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you play.”

She overhears Lisa-Natasha say to Eric, “It’s easy for him not to care. He’s already concertmaster in Baltimore. This is a second career for him, and he doesn’t need to succeed. That one, yes, her, she’s also a performer.” Suzanne smiles at Lisa-Natasha, almost impressed that she didn’t whisper.

She also exchanges names with a slightly ghoulish-looking young man with a British accent—Paul—and a haler, tall guy who introduces himself as Greg. She has read the short biographies provided by each, but Greg Michael Simon is someone she has heard of before. She cannot remember if Ben mentioned him with admiration or disdain; she will know for sure when she hears his composition, which the program bills simply as a short symphony for small orchestra.

Given the unusual provenance of the concerto—“the tragic circumstances of its collaborative nature” is how Olivia phrased it—special permission has been granted for Olivia to shadow Suzanne.

Making the emotional literal
. Olivia is at her side by the time she sits to eat. In black pants and a tee-shirt-styled sweater, Olivia looks slightly more casual than she did in Chicago, though she is as collected as ever with her hair smoothed back and her earlobes dotted with silver knots. The sweater that looks easy on first glance is, on a closer look, make of good thin wool.

The composers sip their beverages and eat their breakfasts at the large round table, and soon a second table fills with the week’s instructors and lead musicians, some of whom nod to them and some of whom ignore them altogether and instead catch up with each other. The conductor stands at a lectern and taps the microphone. He holds himself tall and speaks with confidence, as did Alex, as do most conductors, who have sought front and center and are accustomed to being watched. He’s younger, though, and takes up more space. Alex was already trim when Suzanne met him, and his response to aging was to lose more weight, not realizing that it made him seem not younger but rather a tad more frail—something she never told him.

“Your week will be a microcosm of the real orchestral world,” this conductor tells them. “It just gets worse from here.” He holds open his palm and sweeps his arm to indicate the outside world.

Only Suzanne and Bruce, the two participants who have played in professional orchestras, do not laugh.

The lovely red-haired Minneapolis concertmaster stands next at the podium. She will be the one to go over all the violin parts in all six scores. “Remember, we want to play what you want us to play, but musicians also care about sounding good. Most of us are cooperative, but we want to sound good, and we get tired. Remember that if you find a musician difficult, it’s either because he’s tired or because you’re not making him sound good.”

Their workdays are to last twelve hours. The most important part of Suzanne’s first day will be her afternoon meeting with the principal viola player. She has also asked for another breakout session with the violist together with the cellist and double-reed section that will make a fugue of the solo, but that will not happen until day three. Today is only the viola.

First are the morning meetings, which Olivia tells Suzanne she will skip. “I’ve had enough of the business of music to last my life. You have no idea what it means to be a conductor’s wife.” It’s such an obvious dig to take, and delivered so smugly, that Suzanne wonders if she has overestimated Olivia, if her revenge can be that pedestrian.

Suzanne’s first meeting is with one of the orchestra librarians to discuss any errata. She doesn’t have many, just a few accidentals carrying over octaves, but they need to be made on fifty parts. The librarian takes the news easily. “Not even close to bad,” he tells her. “You’re careful in your work, clearly.”

She has never thought of herself this way, yet nods. “I suppose I am.”

Following that meeting is a grant-writing workshop for the whole group. Suzanne takes notes, thinking that the person who should be attending is Ben, who works intensely hard on his music but has never been interested enough in the business to give himself a real chance. “We’re not filmmakers; we can write music without money,” he sometimes says, as though music is something that can live on paper when it is not played, performed, recorded in forms that others listen to.

Olivia finds Suzanne at lunch, which is held in a private room of the hotel’s restaurant. They eat to the sounds of a live saxophone player who plays not classical music but jazz standards with a few popular songs tossed in.

“Someone’s idea of texture,” Eric says.

“I think the change of tone is a good idea,” says Greg.

Bruce nods his agreement. “I’m actually studying jazz more and more. It was completely missing from my training.”

“That’s because you’re a violinist,” Lisa-Natasha says with salad in her mouth.

“As opposed to brass?” Bruce asks, looking genuinely confused.

Lisa-Natasha swallows the salad, then waits another moment. “As opposed to a composer.”

Greg glares at her. Bruce simply whispers, “Ouch.”

“We have a session,” Olivia says, scooting back her chair. “Suzanne?”

Suzanne rises and follows her to the lobby, where they are greeted by the driver who will take them to the university music school. On the way Olivia says, “We’re required to use the orchestra musicians, but at the real premiere you will be the soloist, of course.” It had crossed Suzanne’s mind to request to play, not because she wants to but simply because she
can
play the piece, which is not something that will come readily to anyone who gets less time with the music. Or cares less about it. But her
not
wanting to won out, as did her desire to participate as a composer, to hear her music played rather than to be heard playing.

The practice room looks like every practice room Suzanne has ever known, with the superficial exceptions of the black-and-white-striped floor and one wall painted red behind the large green chalkboard. The viola player is a young man who is immensely talented and has worked on the music in advance. Still he stumbles on the technical difficulty, particularly during the second movement’s most difficult passages.

Suzanne says what she can say: “I understand.” She adds, “If we need to, we can amend the music in a few places to make it more natural for you. But give it one more try as is, okay?”

He looks lovely when he plays. His dark, longish hair is mostly straight, but a few locks curl over his forehead, a flourish over his wire-framed glasses. Though he is thin, he owns a wiry strength, and there is a great smoothness to the movements of his bow arm. Nothing flashy, just pure competence and an obvious love for the viola.

It hits her, watching him, that the solo isn’t merely a part but a role, and one intended for a female player. It’s not a thought she likes—that music can be male or female. It took anonymous auditions behind opaque screens before the musical powers would accept that women have the lung capacity to play brass, and, still, after so much time, the hiring of female conductors is protested by whole orchestras, including the female musicians.

But the truth of the matter here is not self-loathing but something simple: Alex wrote the music for a woman to play. He wrote it for her to play. She looks back at Olivia, who sits behind her, eyes closed as she listens. It doesn’t matter, Suzanne decides; the piece has to stand on its own. Whatever Alex’s late conversion to program music was about, the music has to work without the story.

At the end of the day she is so tired that she skips the dinner and sinks into another night of sleep with no dreams, waking sprawled diagonally on the huge bed. In her prewaking moments she imagines a warmth next to her before she shakes off the sleep.

Day two is more business. At breakfast the conductor tells them, “I know all you can probably think about is your music. We put this stuff first so you can move on to that but also because it’s in many ways the most important thing you will take away from this week. I cannot emphasize that enough.”

Today
business
means a seminar with one of the orchestra’s artistic planners, a good-looking woman, perhaps in her early thirties, groomed and dressed for the corporate world. “My title says
artistic
, but it’s really about the planning, and the planning is about the money. In many ways I have the best job of all because I get to make the ideas and dreams of the conductor, the music director, the concertmaster, and so on, a reality.” She dims the light and uses PowerPoint to tell them about working with unions, about the relative virtues of renting versus owning everything from a building to flower vases, about production costs and the least painful ways to slim down orchestration if your budget won’t stretch to match your vision, about new marketing. Suzanne is surprised by the small nuts and bolts: from the risks of cost-tiered seating to labor costs on different days of the week, at different times of day.