Crotchet Kennedy and the High Note by George Anderson

  If you put his skull to your ear you will hear an echo of the music Crotchet Kennedy had in his head.

  It seeps symphonies like distant breakers from a seashell. The eye-sockets are best. The ear-holes poor. The nasal gap can be good on a damp day. The music sounds tinny and far away of course, but Crotchet heard it in its full richness when he was alive.

  He was always musical, with a haunting voice, perfect pitch and an easy way with most instruments. Even before the war he could sit in silence and follow all the parts of a symphonic score, imagining the big sound in his head.

  But as the Germans' Prisoner of War, and starved of instruments, Crotchet retreated with his imagined music until it became as real as if the musicians were playing around him.

  The music came whenever he called it - normally when he had a score before him. A sympathetic guard provided him with manuscripts from time to time - by Schubert, Beethoven, and Wagner - and the sound would swell in Crotchet's head as his eyes danced across the pages.

  The music was no less welcome when it started to come unbidden.  No longer restricted to pieces he had a score for, his repertoire became dazzling, with every day a fresh and unexpected joy appearing from the works of Bach, Brahms, Haydn or Vivaldi.

  Then came compositions he did not recognise. Realising these may be his own creations, Crotchet scribbled furiously on any scrap he could lay hands on, to get all the parts down.

  By the time the War was over he had begun to hear music which stretched what was possible by human players on real instruments. Keyboard runs and chords beyond any pianist or piano. Cello passages which dipped below and soared above the range of the instrument - but did not sound like violin or bass. After he was demobbed and back home on the islands he  heard instruments he did not recognise at all. He couldn't imagine what manner of many-valved brass affair or exotic percussion contraption might be involved.

  Then one day the particularly violent third movement of a hugely inventive symphony culminated in a searing high A.

  The note played in his head without variation for five years. His wife, Breve, heard it whine like an irritating insect while he slept beside her.

  At first he tried to take control and impose a new tune, but regardless of what manuscript he looked at, what he sang or played, the A note filled his head to the exclusion of all else. He began talking in a monotone of it, although a couple of octaves down from the one in his head as it was not in his range.

  After the first five years there were occasions when it throbbed a bit. "A little vibrato," he thought, relieved by the variation.

  He began to look for and sometimes find satisfaction in the quality of the sound.

  "This is the ultimate in musicality," he told himself. "I have exhausted the banalities of melody and harmony, and can appreciate the full simplicity of a single note. Explore. Know intimately. This is the ultimate music and I am blessed to hear it."

  But one morning in the sixth year, as Crotchet stirred his tea, the sound deviated slightly from A for the first time. It was a sudden tiny jump to just sharp of the correct pitch.

  "An interesting dissonance," he thought. "The music is keeping me on my toes. Its depth and subtlety are breathtaking."

  If the note was off then Crotchet's perfect sense of pitch was not, and after a month of this it was beginning to put his teeth on edge.

  "Ah but it's a challenging piece. Only someone as cultivated as you could appreciate it," he consoled himself.

  "It cocks a snook at the cliche of pitch."

  After a further three weeks he detected a very gradual falling of the note.

  "A timely resolution" he though, anticipating the return to concert pitch which he could tell he was about a third of the way to achieving, and couldn't help but admire the artistry of whatever force was creating the music.

   But three days later, when the note was on the point of returning to a perfect A, there was silence for the first time since it had started.

  Crotchet held his breath, wondering if the piece had come to an end, torn between relief and regret. But after a little over a minute the note resumed just below the true pitch and continued falling until it was stolidly flat of the ideal.

  And there it stayed.

  Crotchet began to fear he was being taunted rather than challenged.

  In desperation he began singing dissonant harmonies to the note, wondering if it would  feel shame and right itself in line with the music around it. It didn't. So he tried to coax it with lengthy bass obligatos that at every bar lead the way back to concert pitch. The note remained flat.

  He tried to sing the note itself, even though it was impossibly high for a woman let alone a man to reach. His voice box twisted and desiccated with the effort until he could hardly speak - only croak further attempts that fell just shy. But he became convinced that if he could sing it, he could somehow neutralize it.

  Eventually his voice began getting higher, and to his relief the note itself began falling every so slightly towards G sharp. It now looked distinctly possible that the two might eventually meet.

  Nobody knows if they did. Breve found him dead in his chair. There was a smile on his face, and his hands were red raw, as if from clapping too long and too hard. And by the time he had been buried in the holy lair, his skull dug up and placed in the ossuary where people could pick it up and listen, the music was pleasant again.