TO BEGIN with, let us come to an agreement on what it means to be out of tune (vocally out of tune, that is—to simplify the discussion which, in any case, might hold for any kind of dissonance). To be out of tune does not apply, as is commonly believed, to someone who reproduces by singing, whistling or humming a song or musical phrase in an inexact fashion, departing more or less from the original score: at the most one could accuse such a person of a meager musical memory. Nor—I’ll go so far as to say—does it apply to someone who, by his faulty reproduction, offends against the norms which by tradition and general consent regulate the relationships between sounds or groups of sounds. (Modern music could offer comfort to such a person!) To be out of tune applies only to those who each time that they repeat a song, repeat it always differently and always offend the above-mentioned norms and never (except by some inexplicable accident) adhere to the original score, it being understood, of course, that they are not aware of it and on the contrary are firmly convinced each time that they are reproducing the score to the letter. In short, to be out of tune consists precisely in the inability to have any sort of relationship with the score, or to establish a steady point of reference in the great tossing sea of sounds.
These introductory remarks were necessary for the exposition of the following case which, I believe, is unique in the story of relationships between people.
There was a certain man in our town (I shall call him Giovanni) who lived only for music. Especially for lyric or operatic music or whatever you wish to call it. It was also claimed that he was endowed with a singularly melodious and robust voice, and he himself said that he devoted all of his time to singing. It was claimed, I repeat, since Giovanni, who was rich and completely independent, not only didn’t make the slightest effort to have a public career, but did nothing to share his precious gift with anyone else. Indeed, not even his friends had ever heard him sing. But, in recompense, everyone had heard him in the opera houses, learnedly discussing the capacity of one singer or another as well as this or that note and how it had been delivered.
I had not always known Giovanni well, but gradually we became more and more friendly and so, one fine day, yielding to my reiterated insistence, he decided to grant me a concert in his house, which I had not yet been to. When I arrived there I quickly understood the reason for his constant reserve, as the reader will also immediately understand.
Giovanni had a wife, whom I now saw, a woman of great beauty and suavity. She was, so it seemed, very devoted to him. Blonde and very young, indeed almost a girl, and from a family which was without a doubt at least as noble as his own.
After having taken our places in the drawing room where the grand piano was located, Giovanni asked me to select a few from among the many arias—all from very well known operas—which he felt he knew best. So I selected some of those which were most familiar to me, in order to appreciate his art more fully, and then Giovanni, with his wife accompanying him, began to sing.
I was dumbfounded, unable at first to believe my own ears. In the exordium (it was the popular recitative from Aida which begins with the words Se quel guerriero io fossi . . .) I did not recognize a single note, nor could I grasp a single consecutive bar. Now, don’t misunderstand me: it was not a matter here of the common off-key singing, ranging from a quarter to half a tone, to which amateur singers and people singing on the street have more or less accustomed us. It was a real jamboree of capriciously clashing sounds, which, believe me, not only had no relation whatsoever to the score but also did not bear the slightest relation to each other.
I had no reason to think that my memory of the tune had failed me, and besides, the accompaniment was there and must have meant something. I could do nothing but hope that my friend was following his personal counterpoint and that this would eventually establish a firm relationship between the notes of the score and those emitted by him. Alas, I soon realized that any given note of the score was always matched by a different note in the singing. And even calling them notes is a bit too much: they were something intermediate or adulterated which cannot be found in nature, that is, on the keyboard. Even if I had wished to judge those bellows as something entirely independent from the score—as an original composition or improvisation—I would have been immediately undeceived by a resumption of the melody (let us call it that), when from those lips, prettily pursed and almost smiling, issued sounds which were not only discordant and lacerating but brand-new. Giovanni’s voice in itself was not at all harsh or insipid; and yet, used so badly, it could not help but be disagreeable.
After the first piece Giovanni absently asked me for my opinion and before I could reply he had started another, then a third, a fourth. . . . I had to be careful to hide my reactions since, as he sang, he kept looking at me.
At last, to bring their hospitable courtesy to a worthy close, he asked his wife to perform a few duets with him, including some ensemble singing, and she graciously consented. And here a new, unimaginable surprise awaited me, indeed the greatest surprise of the evening. It is hardly a matter for wonder, it is even completely natural that a person who sings out of tune, if he has no way of checking on himself, does not know that he is singing out of tune. But what follows is truly a matter for amazement.
I must explain that, during the entire exhibition, I had assiduously observed the young wife’s face, trying to determine what she thought of all this, and all that I had seen was the rapt expression with which she continued to gaze at her husband. This, however, did not seem to imply a definite opinion. Now, as soon as she opened her mouth, I immediately realized that she sang as much out of tune as he did. And that wasn’t all—and this is the astounding part—she sang out of tune precisely and identically in his fashion, as if to his direction, according to his inspiration, his mode, no matter how varying and momentary. I am at a loss to add anything else.
If I had needed proof, I would have been supplied with incontrovertible evidence by the “duo” of this first duet, and then by the others which followed. Well, he who wishes to refer back to the introductory remarks which I have set at the beginning of this story, will easily understand that two people who sing out of tune cannot, by definition, sing together, except by mere chance and for a single note, at least a single note at a time. Yet these two unfailingly agreed on each and every note, or whatever you might call them, and they sang entire pieces with such moving accord in their out-of-tuneness that I, amazed, consternated, dejected, let my shapely ears be lacerated almost willingly, meanwhile abandoning myself to philosophical reflections, half bitter, half comforting.
I can imagine the objection that will be raised. Could it not have been that although she was aware of how matters stood, out of an excess of devotion and so as not to hurt her husband, the woman was trying not to disillusion him and was making an effort to follow him in his distortions, proving by this that she possessed an especially subtle ear? But, leaving aside my presence, which would have frustrated such a plan, who, even among the most expert of singers, could have succeeded in reproducing the sounds emitted by Giovanni, which, as I have already said, bore no relation at all to the universally known notes and, during their emission, were continually different and varied? Besides, the seriousness and gravity with which she went about her singing was by no means ambiguous.
When all had ended, the moment came to express my opinion, and this time Giovanni stared straight in my face so that I would be forced to reveal my innermost feelings. Shifting nervously, as on a bed of thorns, how I managed I don’t quite know, but I proferred the conventional compliments and got out of that house as fast as I could. He, however, was not deceived by my gracious words, for afterwards he barely answered my greeting, thus showing that he was not even touched by doubts as to the excellence of his art. Then we lost sight of each other altogether.
That evening, as I was going home, I brooded over the obscure designs of nature’s cruelty which instills in one person a vivid passion for the things which he cannot do, while it fills another with dislike for those things he can do very well, and so on. Yet nature is also benevolent, because with one hand it gives back that which it has taken with the other (though one does not see why it took it away in the first place). After all, weren’t those two perfectly happy? Of their incapacity, nearly segregated from the world as they were, they had not the slightest suspicion and thus could, with the purest bliss, far from any menace, give themselves up to their passion—so true is it that our real abilities do not at all make up the substance of our existence. And one would have to prove that theirs was indeed an incapacity in the absolute sense. So I came to the definite conclusion that they were not only not humiliated but rather openly favored by fate—with which I was therefore for the moment reconciled.
However, this thread of thoughts then lacked an end which fell into my hands recently although I had lost all memory of Giovanni and everything connected with him. I heard that his young wife had suddenly died: she had burst a vein in her breast while singing. So Giovanni has in his turn been plunged into the gloomiest grief. And while waiting to tie together these far-reaching reflections, nothing remains for us but to adopt the explanation of the poet: Giovanni can quite well say of himself and his Annabel Lee:
“But we loved with a love that was more than love—
I and my Annabel Lee—
With a love that the winged seraphs in Heaven
Coveted her and me.
And this was the reason that, long ago,
In this kingdom by the sea,
A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling
My beautiful Annabel Lee. . . .”
Let us hope that he may at least find the consolation—for some persons insufficient—that is mentioned further on in the poem.
Translated by Raymond Rosenthal