One night, memory was silent. Music sought another way.
by Marialuisa Veneziano
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🎧 MUSIC FOR LETTURE – Pérotin — Viderunt♪
Before entering the monastery, press play (click on the black arrow to open listening)
These voices belong to a Middle Ages following that of Guido d’Arezzo, but they tell what his intuition would contribute to making it possible: a music capable of being entrusted to writing, passing through time and becoming increasingly complex without losing its memory.
During reading, he listens to the song as if it were a construction that slowly arises over an ancient voice.
One track first.
Then other voices.
Then a whole space that takes shape.
A music can survive only when it finds a way to be remembered.
Press play. Then enter the monastery.
The first melody disappeared during the Vespers.
No one noticed.
Fra Martino had sung those words for almost forty years and, when his voice suddenly stopped in his throat, the confreres thought of a cough, a distraction, perhaps at the age, which has the bad taste to present themselves in the moments when we would rather ignore it.
Martino started again.
The first syllable was secure.
The second one, too.
Then nothing.
Quiet.
The elder lifted his eyes.
The monks held.
Fra Martino tried again.
The melody didn't come.
That was crazy.
He knew the words.
He even remembered where the song went up.
And yet the next note was gone.
Don't forget.
Shoot.
Like a door that you know has existed all your life and that, returning to look for it, you find yourself replaced by a wall.
The prior mentioned another monk.
He did.
He stopped at the same point.
A third attempted.
Nothing.
Someone opened the antiphonary.
Above the words were the usual signs: small strokes, curves, accents, those neumes that for generations helped the memory of the singers.
Fra Martino fixed them for a long time.
He knew the voice had to rise.
Then get off.
Then bend.
Where?
How much?
On what height?
The page recalled the gesture of melody.
Don't put it on.
It was the first time that in the monastery of Pomposa someone was afraid of a song.
Pomposa lived with memory.
The monks recalled psalms, antiphon, hymns, responses, sequences.
The melodies passed from one mouth to another as the fire of a candle that lit another without losing its flame.
Fra Martino was the most famous of all.
— Burn the books. — He said sometimes. — The song is here.
And he touched his forehead.
Then the chest.
— And here.
That was a nice sentence.
The beautiful phrases have a flaw: men easily end up believing them true only because they sound good.
Among the few who were not entirely convinced was Guido.
Young, stubborn, curious and afflicted by that kind of intelligence that makes it difficult to accept an answer simply because everyone accepted it before us.
He said nothing that night.
He looked at Martino.
I looked at the page.
And above all, he looked at that small empty space where a note should have been found.
The song did not return the next day.
Not the next one.
Three days later another disappeared.
Then a response.
Then the conclusion of a psalm.
Then a hymn that everyone knew from childhood.
The phenomenon became so frequent that it was necessary to find a name.
Men often do this with what they fear: if they cannot dominate him, at least they baptize him.
They called him. the Ladro dei Canti.
Soon the Thief acquired habits, intentions and even a character.
There were those who swore they had heard steps in the library.
Those who claimed that the melodies disappeared only on moonless nights.
Who saw a window open.
Those who remembered very well that they had a closed view.
The prior ordered the antiphonaries to be kept under key.
The next morning another melody disappeared.
It was then that Guido said:
— It's not in books that you have to look for the thief.
Fra Martino looked at him badly.
— Where?
Guido opened the antiphonary.
He pointed out the neumes.
— Here.
— In the signs?
— In what signs do not say.
The prior, Father Ademaro, warned him to continue.
— These signs help us because we already know the song — He explained Guido. — They remind us if the voice goes up or down. But if memory disappears, they don't tell us exactly where to go.
Martino got stiff.
— Memory doesn't disappear.
Guido looked at him.
The old man immediately understood the involuntary cruelty of the sentence.
Nobody said anything else.
That night Guido took a piece of parchment.
He drew a line.
Then another.
Then another.
He put a mark on the first.
He looked at him.
He canceled it.
He started again.
At midnight the lines were four.
Next he had a monochrome.
It made the rope vibrate.
He listened.
He wrote.
He erased.
He was still trying.
Fra Michele found it like this.
— The prior forbid you to continue.
Guido didn't lift his head.
— In fact, I am trying to continue with great discretion.
Michele looked at the page.
— What are they?
— Strange.
— They look like lines.
— All roads, seen from far enough, seem rows.
Michele sighed.
— Where do they take?
Guido gave him the sheet.
— Sing it.
— I don't know this melody.
— Exactly.
Michele fixed it.
— You want me to sing something I've never heard.
— Yes.
— Reading it.
— Yes.
— Four lines.
— Yes.
Michael observed it for a long time.
— If I fail, at least promise me you'll admit you're crazy.
— If you fail, I'll change the system.
This response worried Michael much more than madness.
He tried.
He dismissed.
Guido stopped him.
Repeat.
He still dismissed.
At the fourth time Michael lost his patience.
At the fifth he found the first interval.
At the end of the sixth.
They remained real.
The melody was simple.
Nothing extraordinary.
And yet, in that room, something had just happened that neither of us would have forgotten.
A man sang a music he never heard.
He had not taught her a voice.
He taught her a page.
Guido took the parchment with both hands.
— It works.
Michael did not answer.
— It works.
This time Michele smiled.
— Then we're in trouble.
The problem of new ideas is not that they are always wrong.
It's just, sometimes, they're just as uncomfortable as possible.
When Father Ademaro saw the parchments, he did not cry.
Worse.
He kept them silent.
— You want to put music in lines.
— I want to give you a precise place.
— Music does not need a place.
— Until someone remembers her.
The priore fixed it.
Guido continued.
— Father, we believe that singing lives in books. But books, without memory, are not enough.
— And you think you can do better than generations of monks?
— No.
Guido pointed the lines.
— I think we can leave who comes after something more than we have received.
That was a respectful answer.
This did not prevent the priory from prohibiting him from continuing.
Guido obeyed for two days.
The third one discovered the names.
The hymn was the one dedicated to Saint John the Baptist.
He sang it slowly.
The phrases went up one after another.
Ut queant laxis...
Resonare fibris...
Mira gestorum...
Famuli tuarum...
Only chickens...
Labii reatum...
He stopped.
He looked at the initials.
UT.
RE.
MI.
FA.
SOL.
LA.
You're syllable.
Six steps.
Six points to which to cling when memory hesitated.
Michael entered and found Guido writing those big names.
— What are you doing?
— I'm giving a name to the sounds.
Michele burst out laughing.
— Sounds do not need a name.
Guido lifted his eyes.
— You wouldn't even need it if nobody ever called you.
Michele stopped laughing.
The day after the parchment was on the table of the priore.
— You gave names to the notes.
— Sillabe.
— Names.
— If you prefer.
Ademaro got up.
— You put them in line first. Now you beat them. What's next?
Guido hesitated.
— Maybe we can teach them faster.
— I'm not joking.
— Me neither.
The prior beat a hand on the table.
— Sacred music does not belong to you.
— I know.
— Then stop treating her like you can do it again.
Guido became pale.
— Because it doesn't belong to me, I can't accept that he dies with whom he knows.
Silence changed.
It was no longer a discussion.
He had become something more dangerous.
Ademaro directed the scrolls.
— You want to close the song in these signs.
Guido took the sheet.
— A cage is to prevent something from going away.
He put it on the table.
— These lines do the opposite.
The prior did not speak.
— I'm not imprisoning music.
Guido looked at the four lines.
— I'm building a road.
He was forbidden access to the library.
The scrolls were confiscated.
For weeks the monastery apparently returned to normal.
Only the Choir of Songs did not respect the prohibition.
He continued his work.
A melody.
Then another.
The monks departed for distant abbeys, seeking men who remembered what was lost in Pomposa.
But they often came back with different versions.
A singer swore that a sentence went up.
Another one remembered her descendant.
Both were ready to swear before the altar.
Memory began not only to forget.
He started making up.
Then came the eve of the great celebration.
They would have attended guests, pilgrims, ecclesiastics.
For weeks the solemn chant was prepared.
Fra Martino sent him one last time.
First sentence.
Second.
Third.
The fourth one stopped.
The choir tried to continue.
No one did.
Martino left.
Nothing.
Michael provided.
Nothing.
The song was almost entirely vanished.
They opened the book.
The signs were there.
Perfect.
Needless.
A knight was sent to a nearby monastery.
It started to rain.
The river grew.
The knight returned.
The road was impractical.
The next day, in front of hundreds of people, the monastery had to sing a music that no one remembered.
The thief had chosen the best time.
It was Fra Martino to say:
— Call Guido.
Father Ademaro raised his eyes.
The old man did not lower them.
— Call him.
Guido arrived shortly after.
He saw the book open.
He asked no questions.
— I can try.
Ademaro opened a closet.
Inside there were all his scrolls.
Guido looked at him.
The prior said only:
— I didn't burn them.
It was, in the language of Ademaro, almost a declaration of affection.
They worked all night.
There were no miracles.
There were mistakes.
Debates.
Contradictory memories.
Candles consumed.
Ink spilled.
Fra Martino remembered a cadence.
Michele a fragment.
Another confrere claimed the opposite.
Guido listened.
He tried on the monochrome.
Compared.
He wrote.
He erased.
When the melody finally seemed recomposed, he called six novices.
Martin protested.
— They don't know her.
— That's why they need it.
Guido put before them the new parchment.
— No one will sing the song.
The young people looked at each other.
— You'll read it.
They started.
They begged.
I repeat.
Guido indicated:
— Ut.
Then:
— King.
— Mi.
The voices fixed.
A sentence.
Then two.
Then three.
And, a little by little, in the hall sounded that song that none of those boys had ever heard before.
Fra Martino sat down.
Michele stopped smiling.
Ademaro looked at parchments as one looks at something that forces us to give up an opinion that we were very fond of.
But the last sentence was still missing.
On the old manuscript the margin was ruined.
Signs didn't read.
Nobody remembered.
Out the sky began to clear.
— It's over. — said Ademaro.
— No.
Fra Martino had spoken.
Close your eyes.
He sang the previous sentence.
Once.
Two.
Then slowly:
— Fa...
Guido turned.
Martino filmed.
— Sol...
He trembled his voice.
— La.
And suddenly the conclusion came back.
Not all together.
One fragment after another.
The memory of man and the new system of Guido met halfway.
The melody reappears.
Guido wrote it.
This time no one should have relied on the memory of one man.
In the morning the monastery sang.
The guests listened.
No one knew that, a few hours before, that music had risked disappearing.
Someone praised the beauty of the choir.
A dignitary fell asleep during the longer psalm and eventually declared that it was deeply moved.
History, as you can see, also has a sense of humor.
Guido didn't sing.
He listened.
The voices of the novices rose together with those of the old monks.
And then he realized that true wonder was not saving that song.
It was finding a way for a man to teach something. even to someone who would never meet.
When Guido left Pomposa, Father Ademaro returned his sack with all the scrolls.
— I thought they were confiscated.
— They were.
— What now?
— Now I'm a problem I prefer to rely on others.
Guido smiled.
The prior is not.
Then he took one of the pages.
— I was afraid that by writing music, you would have ended up believing you had it.
Guido was silent.
— Maybe. — Ademaro continued — I didn't realize you can write something for the opposite reason.
— What?
The priore gave him the parchment.
— Why stop belonging only to us.
In Arezzo, time later, some boys received leaves with lines, signs and syllables.
They didn't know those songs.
Guido didn't send them.
He only pointed out.
Ut.
King.
Mi.
Fa.
Sol.
La.
The voices left uncertain.
Then they found the road.
And so music learned something that until then had entrusted almost only to the memory of men:
how to cross time without asking for permission to death.
THE MORAL
Guido did not try to imprison music on paper.
He tried to stop her from dying with whom he remembered.
Because to keep something really does not mean to hold it for us, but to give it a form that can reach those who will come after.
Memory is precious, but fragile. Knowledge becomes inheritance only when we know how to transmit it.
That's why those lines weren't a cage.
They were a bridge.
And perhaps it also applies to what each of us receives in life:
He is not entrusted to us to end up with us, but so that through us he may continue the journey.
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