The Eight - Quatre (Philidor's Tale Continued)

(Page 170) My work came to the attention of the German mathematician Euler. He’d read of my blindfold play in the French Dictionnaire published by Diderot, and he persuaded Frederick the Great to invite me to his court. The court of Frederick the Great was held at Potsdam in a large, stark hall, glittering with lamplight but barren of the artistic wonders one finds at other European courts. Indeed, Frederick was a warrior, preferring the company of other soldiers to courtiers, artists, and women. It was said he slept upon a hard wooden pallet and kept his dogs beside him at all times. The evening of my appearance, Kapellmeister Bach of Leipzig had arrived with his son Wilhelm, having journeyed there to visit another son, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, harpsichordist to King Frederick. The king himself had written eight bars of a canon and had requested the elder Bach to improvise upon this theme. The old composer, I was told, had a knack for such things. He’d already developed canons with his own name and the name of Jesus Christ buried within the harmonies in mathematical notation. He’d invented inverse counterpoints of great complexity, where the harmony was a mirror image of the melody. Euler added the suggestion that the old kapellmeister invent a variation that reflected within its structure "the Infinite" – that is to say, God in all His manifestations. The king seemed pleased by this, but I felt certain Bach would demur. As a composer myself, I can tell you it’s no small chore to embroider upon another’s music. I once had to compose an opera upon themes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a philosopher with a tin ear. But to hide a secret puzzle of this nature within the music…well, it seemed impossible. To my surprise, the kapellmeister hobbled his short, square body to the keyboard. His massive head was covered in a fat, ill-fitting wig. His foreboding eyebrows, grizzled with gray, were like eagles’ wings. He had a severe nose, heavy jaw, and a perpetual scowl etched into his hard features that suggested a contentious nature. Euler whispered to me that the elder Bach did not care much for "command performances" and would doubtless make a joke at the king’s expense. Bending his shaggy head over the keys, he began to play a beautiful and haunting melody that seemed to rise endlessly like a graceful bird. It was a sort of fugue, and as I listened to the mysterious complexities, I realized at once what he’s accomplished. Through a means unclear to me, each stanza of the melody began in one harmonic key but ended one key higher, until at the end of six repetitions of the king’s initial theme, he’d ended in the key where he’d begun. Yet the transition or where it occurred, or how, was imperceptible to me. It was a work of magic, like the transmutation of base metals into gold. Through its clever construction, I could see that it would go endlessly higher into infinity until the notes, like the music of the spheres, could only be heard by angels. "Magnificent!" murmured the king when Bach slowly ended his play. He nodded to the few generals and soldiers who sat on wooden chairs in the sparsely furnished hall. "What is the structure called?" I asked Bach. "I call it Ricercar," the old man said, his dour expression unaltered by the beauty of the music he’d wrought. "In Italian, it means ‘to seek.’ It’s a very old form of music, no longer in fashion." As he said this he looked wryly at his son Carl Philipp, who was known for writing "popular" music. Picking up the king’s manuscript, Bach scrawled across the top the word Ricercar, the letters widely spaced. He turned each letter into a Latin word, so that it read "Regis Iussu Cantio Et Reliqua Canonica Arte Resoluta." Roughly, this means a song issuing from the king, the remaining resolved through the air of the canon. A canon is a musical structure where each part comes in one measure after the last but repeats the entire melody in overlappin fashion. It gives the appearance of going on forever. Then Bach scribbled two Latin phrases in the margin of the music. When translated they read: As the Notes increase, the King’s Fortune increases. As the Modulation ascends, the King’s Glory ascends.