Cooking With Fernet Branca by James Hamilton-Paterson Page B

American money it may be that even Piero is obliged to compromise his artistic scruples in order to earn his crust. As I said before, we’ll see, even as I dread anew to think what would happen if Father could see too. A glance at virtually any page of this script would confirm his worstsuspicions. Opening it at random to prove to myself that I’m not just being rhetorical I find on page 63 that Carla, one of the young girls in the Green commune, is victimized by the others for being ‘saintly’. They force her – good God! I must have missed this the first time around – to put a cigarette in her, well, private part and learn muscular control in order to smoke it. Such are the bored games of spoiled youth in postmodern Europe, apparently. Father would simply not believe his own precious elder daughter was setting that little scene to music for a living.
    Despite all this, I’m working well. Evidently my creative unconscious is relatively unaffected by my innate moralism. I have composed little tunes for three of the main characters and special sounds for the other two. I still hear it all in my head, of course, and write it down as a score in the traditional way. How else is an orchestra to perform it? But now I can play it on a keyboard connected to this computer they’ve sent me, thanks to something called MIDI. Simone tells me in heavily accented English that this stands for ‘Musical Instrument Digital Interface’. The information leaves me strangely unmoved, as do the various opaque phrases that litter the immense and unreadable user’s manual: ‘layer mode’, ‘split mode’, ‘voice selector’, ‘velocity curve’, ‘panel voice’ and the rest. They haunt the pages but not me. I simply told Simone I wanted to produce a disc of synthesized sounds that I could e-mail to Piero from time to time. But what about playback? he asked. What about experimenting with various combinations of sound, bringing out particular instruments, etc? I said I could do all that in my head, but I don’t think he believed me and loaded a computer program called Sibelius which he claims is what most professionals use. I learned what to press and wrote it all down so even I can understand it. This method has worked fine so far but I’m under strict orders to call him day or night if I get stuck. We’re both servants of the great Pacini and must allow nothing to stand in the way of my drafting the bulk of the score in the next three weeks. IfSchumann could compose and short-score his substantial Mass in C minor in only nine days, I think I can manage some repetitious film music in twenty-one.
    The kitchen now presents an odd sight. It offers a bizarre juxtaposition of ancient and modern – or poet and peasant, come to that. I had to buy another table for the new electronic keyboard, which incidentally has a horrid spongy feel not a bit like the positive, alive feel of a real piano like my beloved Petrof. The two massive speakers have gradually concealed themselves shyly beneath laundry like hunted fauns trying to blend into a landscape. One can listen to this system through headphones, of course, but now and then I take pleasure in playing things aloud and must admit it’s quite fun experimenting with combinations of sound. The imagination is not infallible and welcomes an occasional rest, and even I was unprepared for the effect of playing the gigue from Bach’s G major French Suite on bagpipes and bongos. It’s a tribute to the world’s greatest composer that although it sounded frightful it still made musical sense. In some ways it’s a remarkable machine; and while I can see it will never supplant the way I have always worked, I should be sad never again to have one in the house. In the meantime poor Petrof is getting less of my attention. I’ve had him since childhood and he’s the only stick of furniture I bothered to bring with me from home, so I can’t believe he’s feeling seriously upstaged. He’s the