The Prepared Piano by Jonathan Gibbs

(This story features in Lunate vol. 1)

Good evening. And likewise. Please, take a seat. I won’t get up.

What fine hands you have. I had hands like that once, I’m sure.

I’m very well, thank you. I’m being well looked after. But help yourself to whatever they have there. A drink, a piece of fruit. No, no thank you.

Yes, let’s.

They settle themselves. The journalist switches on his recording device and puts it on the low table between them.

I’m very happy to be back at the Hall. I like Michael very much, and I admire hugely what he has done here. When I think of the performances I have witnessed in that room, it is… well, it’s an honour to be asked, and a privilege to join the celebration of this splendid occasion. Of course, it’s the room that commends itself. There is something so severe about it, but so generous, too. Like a Chiavari chair, that forces you to sit up good and straight. And something about the wall panelling—its treatment? its provenance?—that I find conducive. Conducive is not the word. Propitious. Not quite that either.

Perhaps, yes.

The seventh or eighth time, I think. Eighth, perhaps. Sandy will know.

How kind of you to say so. It is rare I remember a particular performance. One will fix itself in the memory on occasion, some incidental reason, or an especially gaudy flourish of Sandy’s, but in general the energy expended erases the act as it occurs. By the time I have found my way out of the labyrinth, I have forgotten its design and construction, the materials from which it is built.

Well, if you say so. You would have to ask Michael about that. I certainly don’t consider what I do to be so very…

I’m sure you didn’t. No, not at all. Of course. Please.

The prepared piano, then. I would introduce it thus:

The piano, though a late addition to the ranks of instrumentation, has become through its very ubiquity inaudible. Its compendiousness, its facility at mimicking the entire orchestra, in part and in whole, ends up by painting it white on the ear. It enters into the general tinnitus of contemporary life. Likewise, the repertoire. Composers have devolved to pieces, pieces to melodies, to tunes. Even Beethoven cannot want us to listen to Für Elise another single solitary further time. Enough.

The prepared piano militates against this dilution and erasure. It makes you hear the piano again, and by making you hear it, it allows you to listen to it. You will know, I’m sure, its particular history, through John Cage back to Henry Cowell. The insertion of foreign bodies into the strings to change the tone and timbre. My sole innovation, apart perhaps from the licence I have inspired in Sandy, is to have side-stepped the usual practice of writing for the prepared piano, and instead to have applied the instrument and its rigours to the standard repertoire.

By definition it must be new every time. There is no communication between Sandy and myself before a recital. Of course, some items give themselves away, some materials. Paper, felt, knives, nuts and bolts. Sandpaper. Sand. I lean in to the keyboard, I listen, but I am listening to the tone produced, not to the item that has effected the change. It is not a parlour game.

The point is, I do not know before I walk onstage what preparation awaits me. I programme my concerts as seriously as any other performer. Do I rehearse? Ha, well I rehearse a little. I am not the most prepared pianist. Remember that I played these pieces—intact, as intended—for years; for years I played them. They are imprinted in the very whorls of my fingerprints.

She holds up her hands to show the fingers. The tendons of the wrists taut as lute strings.

Think of it. It is not the piece itself I have to play, but the spirit of the piece. Let my peers find a new interpretation of this or that sonata. Let them play Rach Three a whole four seconds faster than last year’s prodigy. Let them take the Hungarian Rhapsody to new heights of synapse-frying intricacy and attack. All this I have left behind.

There are a number of instruments that we have, in storage. Again, ask Sandy for the exact number. Some of the old ones, yes, are in a very bad way. The knives, power tools, the wire, acid. Barbed wire. Glue. Sandy is a genius, of course.

No one. No one. He insists on it. He treats the instruments like a trainer treats his prize Arabians. I wouldn’t be surprised if he doesn’t talk to them. Occasionally one of them, alas, must be put down. So be it. Nothing lives forever. But it can be wonderful, that slow walk out onto the stage, the view of familiar contours, the moment of recognition. I don’t doubt but that Sandy and Jacqueline will have chosen for me a suitable partner tonight, for this evening of evenings...

The artist is wearing a sleeveless black velvet gown. Her hair is already done: lifted, intricately fixed, and sprayed. It is perhaps for that reason that she holds herself so still, though perhaps not for that reason only. Threads of white and grey run through the twists and turns of hair, complementing her diamond earrings and her necklace. The make-up, up close, is almost macabre, but it is calibrated for the stage, not the intimacy of the green room.

It is a special evening, yes. For the Hall, and for me. It marks, I suppose, a peak in my career—no, don’t use that! Not a peak. There is more to discover. On and up I go! Sandy is my Sherpa. He carries my baggage, and prepares my route, and throws rocks at me as I climb, bless him, whipping me over ever more perilous bridges and passes.

No, that I will leave as a surprise for you. I’ll say this much: Beethoven does feature. Let us say I have set myself a challenge. Even on its own terms it is a monumental piece.

She sings a few bars—bu-dum, bu-dum-da-da-dum dum—perhaps inviting the journalist to recognise it. He smiles as if he does.

But I will be playing against memory, against time, ageing, ambition, as well as against the piano.

If you like, yes. Against Sandy.

I see it like this: I set out to play the programmed pieces. That is my job, and I take it seriously. The piano—the preparation—prevents me. It prevents the too-easy playing of a too-well-known piece. It does so on behalf of—for the benefit of—the audience, me, all of us, you. The composer, even. It forbids certain notes, queries others, applies strictures and stipulations to whole runs of notes, octaves, passages of the keyboard. I am like a piano tuner, attempting to bring the instrument to some form of consonance. My job is to find my way around the obstacles and impediments, over the bridges and passes and trapdoors and ambushes. I improvise solutions to problems set me by Sandy.

And by Beethoven, yes.

Actually no, and that’s a very good question, because if Sandy knew what I was going to play that would allow too easy a sabotage. It would be like knowing precisely where on the bridge to place the explosives. Not that you’re trying to take down the whole bridge, of course. You’re trying to blow up the old bridge into a new and more interesting bridge.

I must play my way through the piece—towards the piece—the piece that I can’t play as I should, for its booby-traps: the clothes pegs, the credit cards, train tickets, the money, paper and coin. The dirt, the glitter. Oh, it can be messy. Poker chips. Condoms, chewing gum.

Ah, here is Sandy. Come in, Sandy, and meet Tomas. Tomas, Sandy.

I trust Sandy implicitly. Ours is a working relationship the like of which. Part dresser, part dramaturg.

Is it done, Sandy?

Sandy says that it is done.

Sandy, the darling, protects me from mere virtuosity.

The artist waggles her fingers in the air, implying perhaps that technical accomplishment is a frippery she has put behind her, beyond which she has evolved.

Sandy sets the terms by which I must negotiate with the instrument, but once I walk on stage, once I sit down, once I start to play, the struggle is all mine. I raise my hands over the keyboard, I have no idea what I will find when I bring them down. I must uncover the piece as I play it. Oh, I’m sure he’ll be happy to talk to you about it, once we’re done here. After all, in a way I’m playing for him, isn’t that right, Sandy?

Sandy, dear, come here and peel me a kiwi.

There is a knock at the door, a brief ostinato. A tall woman enters. This is Jacqueline, the artist’s manager. She is followed by Michael, the artistic director of the concert hall. The audience is now starting to go into the auditorium, they say, and the artist should be allowed to do her final preparations. The journalist retrieves his recording device and thanks the artist for her time. They shake hands. Her hand is limp, the fingers extremely long and slightly gnarled. There is no jewellery on the fingers or arms. She says she hopes he will enjoy the performance. He says he is sure he will.

***

The journalist, Tomas, goes out into the corridor, followed by Sandy, who turns and closes the door behind him, watching through the gap as he narrows it.

Then he turns to Tomas. He wears a collarless shirt and a buttoned woollen waistcoat, and carries a leather satchel over his shoulder. His hair sticks close to his scalp, and you can see where it is receding, the hairline peeling back on each side.

‘Are you happy to have a quick chat, then?’

‘Of course.’

‘I appreciate it. How long have we got, do you think?’

‘Fifteen minutes or so, I’d say. Shall we get a drink at the bar?’

They descend by the back stairs, and find their way to the Hall bar, which is raucous with civilised noise. Some people are drifting towards the foyer that divides the bar and the auditorium, others are moving towards the bar for more drinks, and others yet are standing in groups, roaring away. There are famous faces. An author, two theatre actors, a conductor, other musicians, more than one politician, all mixed into the cognoscenti that frequent the Hall and that, tonight, have turned out especially smartly. The artist’s name is audible here and there, like a phrase passed lightly around the orchestra, a leitmotif.

One or two people recognise Sandy as they move through the crowd. They touch him on the arm, lean to whisper, share a joke, pat him on the shoulder. One of the servers directs them to the far end of the bar to take their order. A red wine for Tomas, a vodka and tonic for Sandy.

Tomas’s voice recorder is in his jacket pocket, but it’s too noisy to use it in here. They are pressed close together at the bar, and Tomas wonders if he can smell anything on Sandy that will give a clue to this evening’s preparations. Glue or acid or whatever else it was she said. Condoms?

‘So,’ he says. ‘I know we’ve only got a few minutes, but it would be really useful for me to hear a bit about your side of the process. I’m guessing some of it is, I don’t know… a trade secret.’ He smiles, encouragingly.

Sandy returns the smile.

‘So, let’s start with how long you have been doing this… this rather odd job?’

‘Of course. Five, six years now.’

Tomas holds back, knowing not to jump straight in with another question.

Sandy continues:

‘I was already a fan, back when she played it straight. She was just… wonderful. The most expressive, the most committed performer. Debussy, the Preludes, Mendelssohn, the Beethoven sonatas. Liszt, of course. She had fluency, but also muscle. She was vicious, but serenely so. I must have seen maybe forty concerts over two years, practically everything she did, in Europe at least.’

‘You trained as a musician, yourself?’

‘Yes. Piano also. I was… fine. Conservatoire standard. But you know…’ A flap of the hand.

‘Was that a disappointment?’

‘A relief, as much as anything. I was happy to be able to watch her, to see the music enacted, without having to deal with ambition, or envy. I am glad to say I am not blessed with an ego. It’s the music I care about.’

‘Tell me about the preparation, then. How it started.’

‘She used to do it herself, an occasional thing. Cage’s Sonatas and Interludes. Henry Cowell. It was something she was interested in. I had met her after a performance and we got talking about the mechanics of it. She had used in-house technicians for that particular show, but she wasn’t happy with what they’d come up with. I offered to help.

‘The first time we did it unilaterally, or in anger as we used to say, i.e. using preparations for a programme of standard pieces, was at the Avignon Festival, in 2013. Since then, as you know, well...’ He makes a broad gesture, taking in the room they’re in, the Hall, the evening itself.

‘Absolutely. And how would you describe your working relationship? I mean, it must be unorthodox. What was it she said? Part dresser, part dramaturg.’

There is a bell, and an announcement. The performance will commence in five minutes. Please take your seats. The drift towards the auditorium is building. Drinks are finished, or poured into plastic glasses. There are air kisses and promises to catch up later.

‘Working relationship.’

‘Yes.’

Sandy swirls the ice in his drink.

‘How about: she is an absolute grade one fucking bitch.’

Tomas can’t help but laugh, but the laugh gets caught up with the wine he has just drunk, and turns into a cough. It takes him a moment to compose himself.

‘Wow,’ he says. ‘I mean, that’s not what I was expecting.’

He tries to fix how Sandy had spoken the words. Vicious, and… what was it he’d said? Serene.

‘You’ve just spent half an hour with her,’ says Sandy. ‘What do you think?’

‘Well, she’s got an ego, but who hasn’t, in her position? But she’s earned it, I suppose? She had only good things to say about you.’ Tomas can feel the recorder in his jacket pocket, the weight of it. ‘A bitch, though. In what way?’

‘Let’s not go into that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Oh because she is the great amalgamated and undifferentiated cliché of the sacred monster. She was a great pianist, a great pianist, but she got lazy. Now she hides behind this… gimmick.’ Tomas glances around them. He doesn’t think anyone can hear what Sandy is saying. He isn’t deliberately speaking loudly, but he’s not speaking particularly quietly, either. ‘She thinks she’s an iconoclast, but the only thing she’s destroying is her own legacy. For years I’ve tried to wake her up, make her see what it is she’s doing, make it impossible for her to do it. I’ve tried and tried, pitching more and more appalling tacky objects into her blessed pianos. Just chucking stuff in, trying to stop her, to block her up. Sometimes the inside of one of them is like a skip, and still she plays it. She thinks she’s doing something special, something important, and she hypnotised them into thinking she’s doing it too.’ A nod towards the auditorium. ‘They’re applauding themselves for merely recognising the piece that’s being butchered on stage, live, in front of their eyes. For god’s sake, it takes work to listen to music, as well as to play it.’

‘But, surely…’

‘Oh I know. Believe me, I know…’ He drinks, and then drinks again, putting away most of the contents of his glass.

‘Well, yes,’ says Tomas. ‘Exactly. If you feel like that—why do you do it?’

‘How about: I don’t.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I don’t. This is it.’

‘You’re… what?’

‘I’m bowing out.’

‘Now? Today?’

‘Yes.’

Tomas looks towards the door. ‘Does she know this?’

‘She will soon.’

‘How do you mean?’

The three minute bell. The bar staff collecting glasses. Sandy puts his glass on the counter and pats Tomas on the arm.

‘Enjoy,’ he says.

‘Wait. You’re not coming in.’

‘No.’

‘No, wait. I don’t understand.’

Sandy lifts his bag onto his shoulder. ‘I’m done. She can find someone else to play her little games with. You could do it. Chuck a few nails and ping pong balls in the top of the lid. Bring up some spit and gob it in. Toss one off. Take a dump right in the top of it, whatever. She’ll go right ahead and play it. It’s demeaning. To me, to her. To this place.’

The ushers are coming round the room now, nudging the stragglers towards the doors.

‘Look, Sandy, if you’re really not going in. So I’m clear. This is your last… your last performance, collaboration, whatever.’ Sandy nods. ‘You’re quitting. And she… doesn’t know?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you’ve chosen this evening, this evening, to spring this on her. Here, at the Hall, this week, of all weeks. So what…’ An usher is hovering. They are the only people still in the bar. ‘What have you done in there? Is there anything…’ He gives a shake of his head, he can’t find the words to ask what he wants to know. ‘I mean, she said she’s playing Beethoven. Something she hasn’t played in years, she said. Something monumental.’

He’s caught short by Sandy’s laugh. Sandy passes a hand over his slicked-down hair.

‘Oh my god,’ he says.

‘Gentlemen, Mr Theobald.’ It’s the usher, at their elbow.

‘Don’t worry, Paulie. We’re done.’ To Tomas: ‘She’ll be playing the Hammerklavier. Jesus, I almost want to stay, now. And of course she’s not practised it.’

Tomas shakes his head.

Sandy takes Tomas by the arm and pushes him gently in the direction of the auditorium.

‘Go, go. You’ll be late.’

Tomas goes, but turns, he has to. ‘Look, Sandy,’ he says. ‘Just tell me. What’s in the piano?’

He has his notebook out. Will he be able to guess, if he doesn’t tell him? Will he be able to get up on stage afterwards and look?

He’s at the door to the foyer. The lights in the auditorium dim and the scattered talk dips to a hush. The usher’s hand is on his arm. He needs to go in. Sandy’s standing at the bar, satchel over shoulder.

‘Sandy,’ Tomas says. It’s a plea.

‘Nothing,’ says Sandy. ‘Nothing’s in the piano.’

‘Nothing.’

‘Nothing at all.’

And Sandy takes his hands from his pockets and wiggles his fingers in the air. The wiggling fingers turn to a wave, a gesture of dismissal, of release, and the usher practically drags Tomas across the foyer and into the auditorium.

He enters the room just as it erupts into loud, heartfelt applause. People rise to their feet. The artist has emerged from the wings and is walking across the stage. The usher takes Tomas down the aisle at the side of the room, both of them in an awkward half-crouch, almost running. As they reach the front Tomas sees his seat – the two empty seats – at the near end of the row, and sits down.

When she gets to the piano the artist turns and acknowledges the audience. She gives a modest dip of the head, and then lifts her gaze, directing it imperiously towards the rear of the stalls. The whoops and cheers give her the time for a lightning survey of the room, which ends on the corner seats where Tomas is sitting, and Sandy should be. Could it be that her smile wavers, briefly? He’s not sure. In any case, she collects herself, scoops out her gown to the side and takes her place on her stool. The noise abates. The shush and mutter of five hundred people eagerly taking their seats. Tomas puts his bag on the empty seat next to him. The person sitting on the next seat along gives him a look, almost of affront, as if to accuse him personally of this travesty: an unoccupied seat, tonight of all nights. Tomas gives a grimace of apology.

They both turn to face the stage.

The artist is sitting with her hands in her lap, her head tilted downwards. After a long moment and then another long moment she raises her hands and holds them over the piano keyboard. They hover there, as if she is holding something at bay, or as if she is trying to draw something out of the instrument, some power or benediction or licence, and then her back straightens and her head lifts and with an exhalation almost of relief she brings her hands crashing irrevocably down.

*****

Jonathan Gibbs is the author of two novels, Randall, or The Painted Grape (Galley Beggar) and The Large Door (Boiler House), and a book-length poem, Spring Journal, written on Twitter during the 2020 lockdown and published the same year by CB Editions. His short stories have been anthologised in Best British Short Stories 2014 and 2015, and shortlisted for The White Review and Sunday Times Audible Short Story Prizes. He teaches Creative Writing at City, University of London, and curates the short story project A Personal Anthology.

Twitter: @Tiny_Camels