Notation and Improvisation by ArizonaPoppy

Despite the slight fall chill in the air, the sun baked through the high windows into the seminar room. Dorthaniel shifted in her seat so the glare wasn’t quite so bad as the the sun’s reflection glinted up into the music department from the silver roof of the physics department below. She glanced around. The dozen or so other students in her Honors Music seminar all held different expressions. Some were gazing rapturously at the slide show of illuminated manuscripts. Gaelgarion next to her was writing furiously in the small spiral notebook he always kept at hand. At the far end of the table, Prestion had fallen asleep. In the corner, Professor Maeginnion stood watch next to his favorite turntable, which filled the room with the strains of a selection from his extensive Second Age music collection. She rolled her shoulders and renewed her focus on the slide show. The subjects of the slides shifted to century-old photos of the excavations of the “lost” island of Númenor, with the obligatory men in pith helmets and women in quaint divided skirts and giant hats with mosquito veils posed on the stubs of the cyclopean masonry. The famous Golden Cache popped into view next: “I have gazed on the face of Tar-Meneldur and found it beautiful,” her lips murmured the old quote of their own accord. 

The record hissed as the needle reached the end of the record, and everyone struggled upright from their reveries. 

“Great! Did everyone like that?” Without even pausing to hear the students’ response, Professor Maeginnion rubbed his hands together and picked up the music line chalk holder. He drew several staves across the chalkboard and turned to the class. “Your homework was to transcribe the neumes from exercise 5-4 in Parrish and realize the figured bass. Let’s see what you all came up with.” 

Dorthaniel sighed and went to the board, her staff paper in hand. She copied the notes from her homework onto the board, finishing by drawing the measure bars in. The chalk clinked as she dropped it in the tray. She headed back to her seat, wiping her dusty fingers on the hem of her burgundy Tamarack Residence College shirt and instantly regretted it. Waiting for the last few to finish up, she contemplated her passage displayed on the board. The four bar phrase was the strangest she had ever seen so far in the class, but she had done the best she could. It just didn’t seem to fit the style of the other pieces of the period. She snuck a peek at everyone else’s realizations. Prestion’s staff had a few notes sprinkled through the main line, but no continuo. Gaelgarion’s was complex, with layered harmonies, rolled chords, and dissonances. He was a music major, so it figured.  

Professor Maeginnion stared thoughtfully at each composition fragment in turn, nodding as he moved down the line. Prestion smiled sheepishly at everyone when his realization came under scrutiny. Prestion’s endearing qualities like his brilliant smile and the dark curls falling over his forehead usually got him out of scrapes like this, but Dorthaniel had no idea how he managed to keep his grade point average high enough to stay in Honors. She was in Honors Rhûnaic with Prestion, too. She supposed he must at least do well on written tests because he always spoke with a thick Laketown drawl. 

“Very good, everyone.” Professor Maeginnion went to the honey-colored spinet piano and propped up a picture of the page from the Codex on the music rack. Not even taking the time to sit down, he hunched over the keyboard with his spindly arms and long fingers and improvised a continuo directly from the page. Dorthaniel squinted and looked at the ceiling as he played. She supposed it kind of sounded similar to what she had written? And wasn’t that the point of realizations, that they were just the Second Age version of jazz charts anyhow? 

From there their teacher spun off into his lecture phase of the class. Today’s topic was the Second Age equivalences of Valar to notes of the musical scale: seven notes for seven Valar, representing the music of Ilúvatar. His lecture veered into a connecting picture of statues on a tympanum in Osgiliath representing the seven classical subjects of knowledge at Second Age universities. She scribbled furiously in her notebook. 

Finally class ended. 

 “Your assignment for next week is to write an essay suggesting the origins of this piece. Why is it so stylistically different from the other pieces in the Codex?” 

As everyone stood to shove their papers and textbook into their backpacks, Gaelgarion called out “Hey everyone, just a quick announcement- I’ll be playing with my band at The Green Drake this weekend. It’d be great if you all came out to support us.” 

Dorthaniel slid between students crowding the hallways of the music building on her way to her molecular biology recitation. She had no idea how she was going to figure this out. She supposed there must be a clue somewhere in something Professor Maeginnion had said somewhere along the line. It was like something out of her favorite book about the kids hiding in the art museum in Osgiliath digging in an eccentric old woman’s file drawers to solve the mystery of a curious painting. 

That evening at dinner, while discussing the day’s events over chicken and rice with her roommate, the idea came to her. Back in their dorm room, she turned on her computer and began typing in her word processor program:

The Codex Cuiviénen was found by Princess Ivriniel of Dol Amroth in a monastery on the Orocarni Pilgrimage route in T.A. 2997. In her own words, she liberated it from an unscrupulous abbot who was using it as a doorstop. She then deposited it in the Archives of Minas Tirith. The princess’s accounts, though, are highly embellished and often unreliable. The Codex contains quires from several time periods bound together into one volume. This essay concerns the vellum quire entitled The Emerwen Aranel Notebook. Most of the pieces appear to be collected exercises for the lute, presumably for the young princess Tar-Ancalimë to practice. (Interestingly, music was a matter for men during that time period, perhaps this was due to her high status?) For the most part, they are typical of the time period and location, but one piece stands out out from the rest stylistically…

Chapter End Notes

The image from the Codex can be found in the Notion Club Challenge for August at http://www.silmarillionwritersguild.org/challenges/bydate.php#2019

It was the notes that drew her there. What kind of music had no words? No one was singing, but yet there it was. Ancalimë looked up at her nurse. Nurse was busy talking to the other adults. Ancalimë looked around the entry hall. Nobody else was paying attention to her. She took a step back as a test. They continued their chatter about the latest news from Emerië. No change.

Ancalimë crept back a little more from the adults. With each step her eyes darted back and forth. Still no sign they noticed. She inched along the wall, facing the adults, until her fingers felt the doorframe. She slipped through.

She was at one end of a long room. Apart from a large stained-glass window at the far end, the room was dimly lit. Ancalimë could just make out colorful tapestries depicting scenes of nature and the First Age on the walls. Large wooden beams disappeared into the darkness overhead. The music seemed to be coming from above. It was clearer here. The notes made a little slap and then rang, filling the hall beyond.

Stealing softly into the hall, carefully placing her feet in the floor rushes so as not to make noise, she sought the source of the music. Turning in a circle, she spied a balcony, with a set of stairs spiralling upward. Ancalimë set her foot on the first step and climbed, her hands tracing along the cool of the stone wall.

Inching along, she reached the top of the stairs. In the loft, a man sat with a large box on his lap that looked like a pear with strings. He was facing partially away from her, reading from a stand lit by candles on either side. Ancalimë held her breath lest she blow the candles out. The man was completely absorbed in the music; he did not see her. His fingers moved back and forth across the strings and the long neck of the box, creating the music. The music was plaintive and slow. It twined around her chest and her ears, making her want to cry.

She leaned forward. The floor board creaked under her foot.

The man looked up. His fingers froze, notes half-plucked.
“Goodness!” he exclaimed, smiling. “It seems there is a mouse in the gallery.”

Should she flee? Her heart hammered in her ears.

“Don’t worry, I’m not upset.” He held his free hand out to her, palm out. He held his other arm still around the box. “I was just practicing for the banquet this evening.”

Ancalimë took a step forward. “What…” She blinked. “What is it?” She pointed to the box in his lap.

The musician looked down and then back up at her. “It’s a lute. Would you like to try?”

“May I?” She raised her eyebrows.

The musician beckoned her forward. She crossed the short distance to where he sat, weaving amongst the empty chairs and music stands.

“Here’s what we’ll do,” the lute player explained. “You strum the strings here.” He pointed to the area over the hole in the lute’s lid. “...and I’ll play the fingerings,” he finished.

Ancalimë hesitated, then resolutely dragged one finger against the gray strings. As they caught on the pad of her finger, they made a rich array of notes that rang through the hall and then died away.

“Good, now keep going like that,” the musician said.

More confident, Ancalimë strummed the strings again, nodding with each pass. The musician’s fingers moved up and down and across the neck playing a simple counting song that she recognized: “One, two, three, fishes in the sea.”

“Four for the seagulls by the shore,” she mouthed in time. She looked up at the musician and smiled.

“Keep going,” he nodded. His eyes were warm.

“Five, six…”

“Ancalimë Emerwen Aranel, come down here right now!”

The musician froze. Her heart fell into her stomach.

Ancalimë looked over the railing. It was Grandmother Almarian. She jumped back into the shadows again.

“I see you up there, where you have no business being. Leave the gallery, and come back down.”

Ancalimë lifted her chin. She looked down her nose, like she had seen her mother do with servants or people beneath their class. “This is not over,” she said, as imperiously as she could.

“Until next time, Mouse,” he whispered.

Chapter End Notes

This chapter was a stand-alone entry in the March 2020 Teitho contest on the prompt of "Rebellion." Thank you to the Teitho voters!