Symphony of Secrets, page 2
“We found something that requires someone with a specific skill set. And of course I thought immediately of you.”
“Okay,” he said, thrilled to help. “Can you email it over? I can look right now. What is it?”
“I’d rather discuss this in person, if you have the inclination. There’s also a nondisclosure agreement that we’d need you to sign.”
“A nondisclosure agreement?” Bern repeated. His brain was churning. “What did you find?”
“Again, I’d—”
“Are you here?” he asked. “In Charlottesville?”
“No,” she said, “I was rather hoping I could lure you up to our offices.” He could hear her smile. “We’re on the top floor of the Foundation, as you may remember. Quite near Juilliard.”
She wasn’t going to tell him what they’d found, that much was clear. But he wanted more information. He tried a different tactic. “What kind of skill set are you looking for?”
“Partially it’s your work on the Rings Quintet,” she said slowly. “And you probably know more about Frederic Delaney than almost everyone. Including me, and I’m related to him.” Again, he could hear that smile through the telephone.
“Let me look at my schedule.” He checked his calendar. “I could possibly fly up Friday afternoon, if I can get a flight out. I’m teaching all this week. But this feels like quite a haul for some documentation. Are you sure you can’t just scan it and send it to me via email? I’m happy to sign your nondisclosure electronically.”
“We’d rather show you. We haven’t allowed scans yet of the—of the—documents.”
Something about the way she hesitated over that last word sent Bern’s head spinning. What kind of document would she be reluctant to scan? Was it so fragile?
“You must have found something really special,” he said. A diary? Delaney had kept no journals, although he did use an office calendar that he never fully updated. Could it be a letter discussing the genesis of the Quintet? That would be life changing—Delaney had rarely mentioned his inspirations for the opera cycle, which was why Jacques Simon had created the annotated Quintet in the first place: all those painstaking scholarly attributions for all of Delaney’s musical influences had taken them eight years to compile.
Another pause. “It is. It’s—” She didn’t finish the sentence.
“Did you find an undiscovered piece of music?”
One of Delaney’s compositions turned up now and then. The most recent time one was found and played—the Domino Winds overture—the New York Philharmonic had premiered to a packed auditorium and received a seven-minute standing ovation, and the audience had shouted, “Again! Again! Again!” until the Philharmonic encored the overture, in true Delaney fashion.
“I really can’t discuss it over the phone,” she said.
So it was an undiscovered piece of music. It had to be.
Of course.
He said slowly: “You found it, didn’t you?”
“I beg your pardon? We—”
“You found it. You found a piece of RED. You found the original. How much? The overture? An aria?”
A very long pause, during which Bern tried to assess what it would mean, finding even a page of the original RED. His head swam.
“Bern, please. I—I think this would be better discussed in person, in the proper setting,” she said, stumbling over her words, sounding on edge. “Can you be here once you’re done teaching for the week?”
“Just tell me this. How much did you find? Is it more than a page? Do you have a whole act?”
“Bern, I—”
Her hesitation was enough. “I’ll be there tonight,” he said. Before Mallory could respond, he was already on his laptop, emailing the head of the Music Department to say that due to an emergency he would need to cancel all his classes for the rest of the week—could a graduate student take over?
“That’s wonderful news,” Mallory said. “We’ll send our plane to pick you up. When can you be ready?”
It was actually happening. A piece of RED—the elusive, mysterious, impossible RED—had been found.
And out of everyone on the planet, Bern himself—a poor bologna-sandwich-eating kid with a beat-up French horn—was going to actually see it. Be one of the very first people to touch it, to decipher Frederic Delaney’s distinctive handwriting.
“Give me an hour,” he said.
2
Olympic Glory
Bern
On the Delaney Foundation’s private plane, Bern kept glancing down at his pin-striped shirt—he was glad now that he’d ironed it—and pinching the armrest in the glove-leather recliner that cradled him. His parents had had a La-Z-Boy with a wooden paddle that broke after a couple of years, leaving a jagged spear on one side; that was his only experience with a recliner. This one, caramel colored, was softer than a baseball glove, conforming to him. It looked like it would be more appropriate in a British pub than an airplane. The flight attendant asked if he wanted wine, champagne, or a cocktail, and he shook his head, asked for seltzer water. He wished he could iron his jeans.
In the meantime, he spent the flight to New York City reviewing everything he could on his laptop—but he knew it all, since he’d spent eight years living with it.
In 1920, the first year the Olympics were held after World War I, the modern Olympic flag debuted. On a white background, the five interlocking rings symbolized the world’s five continents united by the Olympics: blue for Europe, yellow for Asia, black for Africa, green for Oceania, and red for the Americas. A young Frederic Delaney, whose immensely popular, singable music had already outsold that of all other contemporary composers, had been tapped to write five operas, one for each colored ring.
Over the next sixteen years, Delaney worked on the Five Rings of Olympia, an ode to the energy and passion of a new world, celebrating the rebirth of hope after the Great War. In the first opera, the Olympic torch disappears. The swiftest, most decorated runner of the five continents must hunt it down. Throughout each opera, Mikhail—his nationality is never specified—journeys around the globe to retrieve the lost torch. Along the way he battles demonic monsters and accomplishes herculean tasks: in BLUE, he rescues the lost princess; in YELLOW, he performs sacrifices to find the true path to the torch; in BLACK, he outsmarts the trickster spider god; in GREEN, he overcomes the Pacific Islands’ mythical sea monsters; and then, finally, in RED, he recovers the torch.
In 1921, the first opera, The Theft of Europa: The Blue Ring of Olympia, created a major sensation. Opera had never been so popular, so accessible, so beautiful. New fashions based on the characters’ costumes sprang up worldwide, and the melodies and arias were reworked into popular ballads and classical adaptations. Three operas followed over the next five years: The Asian Prophesy (YELLOW, 1923), The Dark African Heart (BLACK, 1924, and a nod to Joseph Conrad), Ocean Odyssey (GREEN, 1926). Today, when the operas were performed for modern audiences, a note in the playbill discussed the use of colors to represent various nationalities: what was acceptable in the 1920s is no longer tolerable. But Delaney’s music remained as compelling as ever—transcending race, color, and creed.
Everything was on track to perform the full Quintet in the days leading up to the Olympic Games in 1928, once the final opera had been finished.
That final opera, Triumph of the Americas: The Red Ring of Olympia, would be an ode to Americas’ first peoples, as well as to the immigrants who came after, and who lent their stories and their music to North, Central, and South Americas. It would utilize grand swaths of folk, jazz, Latin, Indigenous, and other musical elements to tell how Mikhail finally recovers the Olympic torch.
In multiple interviews, Frederic Delaney promised that, true to its name, the opera’s debut would indeed be a triumph. Opening night was eagerly, even hysterically, anticipated. Tickets sold out immediately, and throngs filled the sidewalks outside the theater, many dressed as their favorite characters. Everyone wanted to know what happened to Mikhail and how he recovered the torch; but even more, they wanted to hear Delaney’s new music. For the past decade, Delaney’s affection for Black culture and Black music had helped bring together people of all colors and nationalities. RED was reputed to provide an entirely new means of integrating classical, jazz, blues, and folk.
The year 1927 came and went, and no RED. Slowly word began to leak out that Delaney had lost the only full copy of the opera. How was this possible? Opera scores were enormous, thick volumes written on large sheets of foolscap. This wasn’t a folded napkin abandoned in a trouser pocket.
No sketches. No documentation. Delaney was a bit like Mozart, scribing a first draft, copying it almost verbatim into the final, and destroying the original. He’d lost the only draft of RED.
Some people accused him of never writing a note; they said he was too burned-out or drugged up.
Delaney’s story continued to shift: He’d left it on a train or in a taxi. It had been lost in a fire. A rival stole it. Bern and Julie used to joke that Delaney should have named his dog Figaro after eating and farting out an entire opera.
The lost opera became both a cause célèbre and a joke. In 1931, a radio play with a detective purporting to hunt down the errant pages ran for eight months. As lost as a Delaney opera found its way into the lexicon. Doing a Delaney became common parlance for losing something or for, eventually, just a boneheaded move.
But the bottom line was that RED had disappeared, probably in early 1926. Delaney spent the next ten years laboriously rewriting RED from memory. He finished it in late 1935.
In 1936, the Rings Quintet of Olympia was to be staged for the first time all together at the Olympic Games in Berlin, but Delaney prohibited the performance. Like many in the international community, he refused to further Hitler’s propaganda machine and did not want his Rings to be seen as endorsing the Nazi regime. Plus his Rings would have too closely mimicked Wagner’s own Ring cycle; Hitler loved him some Wagner.
So, instead, on July 15, 1936, and running for the next five consecutive nights, the Rings debuted at the Met in New York City. Tickets were the most difficult to procure for any concert in recent memory. Thousands of people attended the weeklong celebration. Millions more listened over the radio. Everything culminated in the grand debut of Triumph of the Americas: The Red Ring of Olympia.
It was to be Frederic Delaney’s glorious victory, his retribution for all the mockery, for all the petty insults.
Instead, RED fizzled.
The story was strong. Mikhail recovered the torch and all was well. But the music was not what Delaney had promised. Instead of invention, there was repetition. Instead of synthesis and heartrending melodies, there were hackneyed tunes.
The morning after RED’s premiere, the critics were vicious.
Frederic Delaney’s valet found him on a couch in his living room. He’d killed himself with a mixture of pills and alcohol. He left no suicide note.
* * *
—
The plane touched down, and there was no security, just a few steps across the tarmac to the terminal’s glass doors. A man in a black suit and a chauffeur’s cap met him inside and escorted him to a town car. Now Bern really wished he’d re-ironed his pants.
Throughout the drive into the city, he tried to imagine what this discovery would mean—to him and to the world. Finding some evidence of the original RED could be life changing. It might transform how Delaney was studied, played, immortalized. Despite Delaney’s triumphs, primarily for the Quintet and for his earlier work, Delaney had died a laughingstock. “Repugnant and uninspired,” the critics had called him and his later compositions. “A hack who should just brick himself up with his money and never come out again.” Only the Delaney Foundation, created a few years before his death, redeemed his image and transformed him into the beloved composer the world knew him as today.
But what if this piece of RED was all Delaney had promised it would be? What if it truly was a work of genius?
Bern might have the opportunity to correct history—to give back to Delaney a little of what Delaney’s Foundation had given Bern. Perhaps Bern could be part of the team that would fully and finally restore Delaney to the pinnacle of American composers. Where he truly belonged.
In Midtown Manhattan, a block west of Juilliard and Lincoln Center, lettering a foot high spelled out The Delaney Foundation on a cream-colored modern building. Sliding glass doors sighed open on Bern’s approach, and his footsteps rang out in the vast lobby. Over the past dozen years, he’d been here several times—for performances, events, cocktail parties.
Some evidence of the original RED was inside. His chance to set the record straight was inside.
The doors closed behind him.
Five minutes later Bern was being ushered into the presence of Mallory Delaney Roberts, Frederic Delaney’s great-niece and one of only two surviving members of the Delaney family. He’d met her a handful of times. Thank goodness he’d re-ironed his shirt—even if it was now covered by his best sweater-vest and a blazer. And his pants didn’t look too bad, he told himself.
He wanted to bow, or to salute. What was appropriate in the presence of American royalty? Licking her hand?
Before he had the chance to make a fool out of himself, she was coming around her desk to clasp his hand with both of hers. Instead of her trademark pearls, she wore only a silver chain and small silver earrings. Her hair seemed darker than he remembered, an oily jet-black, as if she’d coated it with shoe polish. Her yellow skirt and matching yellow blazer with a very white blouse seemed to beam at him almost as much as her smile. “Bern, so wonderful to see you again. Thank you so much for coming,” she said.
“Thank you for asking me,” he said, returning her handshake. “I can’t believe I’m actually here again.”
“You’re always welcome,” she said. “We really appreciate you dropping everything for this.”
A bookcase took up an entire wall, packed with reference works about Frederic Delaney. With some satisfaction, he noted a first edition of the five-volume The Rings of Olympus, Annotated Version, by Jacques Simon, Kevin Bernard Hendricks, and Julie Ertl.
“Of course,” he said. “We are talking about RED, right? How much of it did you find?”
She laughed again. “Eager as ever, I see. Let me introduce you to Stanford Whitman, our chief in-house counsel.”
He’d barely noticed the stocky bald man in the gray suit sitting in an armchair near the desk, but now shook his hand as well.
“Nice to meet you,” Bern said. “Can I see it now?”
Whitman gestured to the desk behind them, where lay a few printed sheets titled Confidentiality and Nondisclosure Agreement. Bern signed both copies without reading. He folded one copy and put it in his pocket. “Okay, now where is it?” he repeated.
“I’ll need your cell phone, please,” Whitman said, shrugging. “Just temporarily.”
“So I don’t take secret pictures?” He wasn’t sure whether to be insulted or amused.
“Don’t be offended,” Mallory said, laying a hand on his arm. “It’s policy. No phones. We don’t even have ours.”
Bern handed over his phone, which Whitman carried out of the room.
When he’d gone, Bern said, “I’ve been going over and over this and what it could possibly be. What did you find? Is it a piece from RED? The original RED? Is it in his own handwriting? I’d recognize it anywhere.”
“You really don’t disappoint,” Mallory said, her eyes alight. “I can see we made the right call.” She slipped out of her office, Bern at her heels. Whitman met them in the hall, and the three of them trooped down to a door. She unlocked it—a dead bolt and a fingerprint reader—and led them into a windowless office that looked like it could have been in any upscale hotel: impersonal but comfortable. A desk with a monitor hulked on one side; on the other, a cream-colored couch and three beige chairs huddled around a narrow glass coffee table. She gestured for him to take a seat on the couch; she sat across from him, and Whitman hovered over her shoulder.
“If this is what I think it is,” Bern said, “I’m glad I’m sitting down.”
She didn’t answer, gesturing with her chin to Whitman, and eyed a file cabinet next to the desk. Wordless, he took two strides to the cabinet, pressed his thumb against a keypad on one side.
“That sure is a lot of security for one piece of music,” Bern said, trying for humor. Neither of them laughed.
A moment later Whitman turned, holding a thick sheaf of bound papers.
“No way,” Bern said steadily, eyes on the manuscript. He tried to breathe. The pages enveloped his vision: ten inches wide and fourteen inches long, bright white, a huge manuscript. “Don’t tell me you found all of it? You found RED. The whole thing.”
“Yes,” Mallory said.
Whitman handed him the bound folio. Bern hesitated a second before he could curl his fingers around it. It was heavy, and somehow warmer than he’d expected.
Original RED: DO NOT PHOTOCOPY OR DISTRIBUTE. Copy #3 emblazoned the top of every page, with a Confidential watermark in the middle. The paper was white, fresh. This was a scanned copy.
He opened it at random: Delaney’s unmistakable handwriting, musical notation, and lyrics—And here I sing with thee, swift of feet I am, returning like a rising tide to…—and an oboe and violin duet soaring over a cello and bassoon accompaniment. It was evocative of the version that Bern knew of RED, but this version was very different: the melody, the rhythm, the instrumentation. He remembered an awkward trombone solo in this passage and had actually wondered why Delaney stuffed a trombone in to represent Mikhail here, of all places. “I can’t believe this,” he said, and realized that he’d repeated the phrase several times already. He turned to the next page.
