I read in Gabriel Josipovici's wonderful novel Infinity: The Story of a Moment about a piece composed by the fictional hero of the book Tancredo Pavone called Six Sixty-Six. I had to play it when I read about it. All I had to go on is the description in the book.
Here is what Josipovici wrote:
There was no information about the pitch of the single note, how fast to repeat it, and with what volume and touch. I chose C because the composer Giacinto Scelsi (which Josipovici mentions on the final page of the book, is the real life model for Pavone) in his own writings mentions a time at a Swiss clinic when he played repeated notes on the pianos there, and in describing that incident he wrote C... C... D... D...When I came back from Nepal, he said, I sat down at the piano in my house and I played the same note over and over again, hour after hour,and day after day, just as I had done in Switzerland, But the difference was this, Massimo, he said to me. I no longer felt this to be an admission of defeat. On the contrary, he said, I understood it was a sign of triumph, I played that one note and as I played I listened. I listened and I understood. At that moment a new kind of music was born. The first piece I called Six Sixty-Six. Six Sixty-Six. The same note struck in the same way on the piano six hundred and sixty-six times. It was beautiful, Massimo, he said. Its beauty was an otherworldly beauty. It would either drive you mad or draw you into another dimension. When it was performed later, by Pollini at Dartington, and then at Bergenz, the audience rioted, and walked out. Cage said to me: This is a piece I would like to have written if only I had thought of it. But he was wrong. He could never have written it. I was fond of Cage, he said, he had in inkling of the way of the Buddha, but fatally contaminated by American New Ageism. He never understood my music. If he had written Six Sixty-Six he would have been content with the idea, he would have been indifferent to the sound. Whereas I was not interested in the idea, he said, I was interested in the sound.
Infinity: The Story of a Moment
Here is a video with Scelsi's music and quotes from him.
I counted from 1 to 666 as I played, which I found fully occupied that everyday part of the mind where the inner voice usually witters on.
The tempo slows as the piece proceeds, which was not intentional, I wasn't using any particular method to check how fast I was playing, and it simply drifted. I think the slower pace near the end suits the piece better, and if I do a second performance I would start slower.
Infinity: The Story of a Moment is available now in paperback and ebook formats.
"The piano is not an instrument for young ladies Massimo, he said, it is an instrument for gorillas. Only a gorilla has the strength to attack the piano as it should be attacked, only a gorilla has the uninhibited energy to challenge the piano as it should be challenged."
Thus Tancredo Pavone, the wealthy and eccentric Sicilian nobleman and avant-garde composer, as recounted by his former manservant in the course of the single extensive interview which is this book. But as Massimo recalls what his master told him about his colourful life in Monte Carlo in the twenties, in Vienna studying with a pupil of Schoenberg's in the thirties, in post-war Paris and in Nepal where he underwent the revelation which fuelled his later music, and repeats Pavone’s often outrageous opinions about everything under the sun, from the current state of civilisation to the inner life of each note, from why beautiful women are always unhappy to the vanity of his fellow composers, it becomes comically clear that not only does Pavone not always distinguish between memory and fantasy, but that Massimo does not always understand what it is he is repeating. Yet what ultimately emerges is the picture of a moving relationship between two people from very different walks of life, and, above all, the fact that behind Pavone's outrageousness and eccentricity lies a wounded and vulnerable man of profound integrity, for whom living and making music were always one.
Special offer: until Friday 26th April, get 25% off the paperback of Infinity when you use the offer code "EXPERIMENT" (case-sensitive) at the checkout. Includes free UK delivery.
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