The Courage Consort by Michel Faber Read Free Book Online Page A

the score at every small distraction—like Gina leaving the house, for example. He watched her through the sparkly clean windows as she loaded her equipment into her car, and his cue to sing the words of the Creator God went by unnoticed.
    Politely hostile words between Julian and Roger were mercifully interrupted by another phone call. It was a journalist from a Luxembourg newspaper, trying to find a story in the Benelux Contemporary Music Festival.
    Those members of the Consort who were not Roger Courage sat idle while Roger handled the enquiries, the first of which was evidently why Pino Fugazza's piece was called
Partitum Mutante.
This was one of many questions that Catherine had never thought to ask Roger, so she made the effort to listen to his reply.

    'Well, my Italian is pretty rudimentary,' he purred into the mouthpiece, implying quite the opposite, 'but I gather the title isn't Italian as such, or even Latin. It's more a sort of multilayered pun on lots of things. There's a play on
partita,
of course, in the sense of a musical suite, as well as some reference to
partum,
in the sense of birth.
Mutante
then suggests mutant birth, or a mutant musical form…'
    Catherine's attention wandered to the forest outside. A deer was grazing right near the window. It was really awfully nice out there, seen from indoors. She must go walking in the woods more often, face her fears, not be such a baby.
    'I do think it's awfully important to give performers of newly commissioned music adequate rehearsal time,' Roger was saying to the journalist from Luxembourg. 'Too often when you go to a première of a contemporary vocal work, you're hearing singers flying by the seat of their pants, so to speak, on a piece they've only just learnt. There hasn't been time to master it fully, to capture the nuances and inflections. You have to remember that when a traditional vocal group does Handel's
Messiah
or some such chestnut, they can virtually sing it in their sleep. What we, in the Courage Consort, are trying to do with
Partitum Mutante
here in this splendid château is learn it to the point when we can sing it in our sleep. That's when the real work can begin.'
    Moments later, when Roger was off the phone and sitting down with his fellow Consort members, Catherine said, 'I thought it meant underpants.'
    Dagmar chuckled throatily, a release of tension. Roger looked at his wife as if he had every expectation that she would resume making sense very soon, if he only stared hard enough into her eyes.

    'Mutante,'
Catherine explained. 'I could've sworn it meant underpants.'
    'I'm sure it's to do with mutation, dear,' Roger warned her mildly, rolling his eyes from side to side to remind her they were not alone in their apartment now. But she was not to be brushed off like that. She had been to Italy only last year, singing Dowland and Byrd. En route, she'd done a bit of shopping in Rome, thrilled and terrified to be off Roger's leash for an hour.
    'I remember when I was in Rome,' she said, 'I needed some briefs. I was in a big department store and I didn't know how to ask. Obviously I couldn't show them my knickers, could I? So I looked up underpants in a guide book. I'm sure it said
mutante.
' She laughed, a little embarrassed. 'That's the sort of thing I do remember.'
    Roger smirked wearily.
    'On that note,' he said, 'coffee, anyone?'
    When they were all sitting together again, Roger informed them that Pino Fugazza himself would be paying a visit to them tomorrow, to see—or rather hear—how they were progressing with his masterpiece. What needed to be discussed before then, obviously, was which parts of
Partitum Mutante
they needed to rehearse most intensively, in order to make the best possible impression on the composer.
    It was a tense discussion, at least among those of the Consort who had an opinion on the matter. Julian felt the tenor-rich passages were most underdeveloped, while Dagmar was sure that the contralto and