Even unto Death: Improvisation, Edging, and Enframement

Abstract

I begin to play. I take my first two notes on open string almost as if they were a transition from tuning into music. As I play the first few slow notes I hear from different points of the dark hall the indrawn breath of startled recognition. After my four lonely bars, Piers joins me, then Billy, and then Helen. We are playing the first contrapuntus of Bach's Art of Fugue. We play almost without vibrato taking open strings whereever they fall naturally, even if it means our phrases do not exactly replicate one another. We play with such intensity, such calm that I never imagined we could either feel or create. As I move to the tiny quaver, the miniscule quibble of a note that has been the source of all my anxiety, Helen who has a rest here turns her head slightly and looks at me. I can tell that she is smiling. It is the F below middle C. I have had to tune my lowest string down a tone in order to be able to play it. We play in an energized trance. These four and a half minutes could be as many hours or seconds. We are one with each other, with the world and with that long dis-