La Mystère Tisné VII

So, we were working on this opera about Franz Liszt, on his last night at the Altenburg.  Liszt is all packed and ready to leave...but he is visited (or imagines that he is visited by....) his friend Hector Berlioz.  Berlioz, at the time that Liszt left the Altenburg, thought himself a middle-aged failure.  Everything that he had done, to that point, had been a complete fiasco.  I include the saxophone in that lot, which, inspite of being the most romantic of all instruments, was a complete failure because intrigues against its inventor.  I take full responsibility for the subject matter here:  I've always been obsessed with the near-failures.  I mean, the guys who play jazz saxophone have figured it out enough to get the Girl in the end...but we "classical saxophone" nerds:  we're just complete freaks of nature.  We should not exist, and yet we do.  So, you get Liszt being driven out by the bourgois of Weimar, and Berlioz who is completely washed up in his fifties...and with that loser instrument, the saxophone, in the pit.  I mean, it's a "loser" orgasm right there?

That was my take on all of this:  but not Antoine's.  Antoine loved Liszt. I never once heard him play the piano.  But he told me that he played some Liszt every morning.  And he really, really wanted to write ths piece.  Especially since he had come to know the brilliant libretto of Pierre Dubranquez.   The roles of Liszt and Berlioz were spoken. but the eternal trio of Marguerite, Faust and Mephistopheles were sung.   He wanted to write this piece.  Not only that, he needed to write this piece, because it was an expression of returning to a tradition:  of music that was simply about what he really wanted to express, at the core of his being.  Of finally not worrying about what people were going to think and writing the music he wanted to write.

And at the same time, here I was copying "Offertorum pour Chartres".   We had to start rehearsals in the Spring of 1998, because of everyone's schedules.  And so here I was trying to get this work copied for performance.  And, with Finale 2000, it was just wasn't an easy task.  Because with every note, there was both a dynamic and an articulation.  Yet, it was quite clear to me that this wasn't what was really going on musically  "Offertorium pour Chartres" was a five-movement portrait of Chartres Cathedral.  But down at the micro level, I had to say that getting this work into publishable shape was not a great pleasure.  When you copy the work of another composer, you have to enter the emotional and intellectual space of that person....and you know exactly is going on.  And with our phone calls several times a day, I almost daily pointed out the contradictions between the musical notation and the gestures indicated in the music itself.  I know that Antoine was aware of this, because he told me so.  He apoligized for it, saying that it was too late for him to do otherwise.  I told him that it wasn't so important, since nobody could really follow all of the indications marked in his scores.  I couldn't fault him, since I had seen this before, in the works of both Clostre and Brenet.  Okay, there is such a thing as precise notation..and then there is what we shall call "too much information".  And these composers who were from the Paris conservatory after WWII had been trained to completely control everything.  They couldn't help it.  If you follow what they have to say, there is indeed music contained within this thought.  But you have to REALLY work to get there.

And sometimes I had to call Antoine during the morning. I know that this was when he usually composed.  But, sometimes, and more and more frequently, when I called, he just wasn't there.  It wasn't just that he was in "composer" mode, it was that he was in another state completely.  He was writing something and there was nothing else.  Sometimes, he understood it was me.  Sometimes not and I called him later and it was fine.  But there was a definite panic.  Something had to be done before a certain time.  So, here I was, his publisher, and we were working on the materials for "Offertorium pour Chartres"  Rehearsals had to begin sooner, rather than later.  So, they did.

But sometimes when I called Antoine in the morning to ask about notes or something else, it just wasn't that he wasn't there: it was that he was so much there that there was nothing to be done.   I have never seen his papers, so I have no idea what what going on here;...But there was a point where he was in another place and no one could reach him.  Even I, I couldn't go there.   He was so wrapped up in the act of writing music.  I've wondered since if he was trying to write himself out of his health condition, as if by magic. 

And sometime during this same time, Antoine asked me for a rendez-vous to get an important new score  We meet at "Le Cavalier Bleu" across from the Centre Pompidou.  The score is a new multi-movement piece for "beginning pianists".  It's not true.  It is not a Suite for beginning pianists.  It is a piece that seeks to not embarrass people who know how to play the piano, but which seeks to express Antoine's love for the piano itself.  The piece is called "Les Contes de le Lune Bleue".  it is supposedly a "pedagogical work".  Antoine told me this, but I did not believe him.  I understand that he was hiding behind this term of "teaching" piece to do what he really wants to do.  Yes, they are not difficult to play.  None of these pieces are more difficult than  the Sonatas of Mozart and Haydn.  That's beside the point.  This is about an intersection of writing useful music and enjoying playing the piano!

And one day around the end of February, Antoine and I had a meeting to work on the opera.  I am to arrive at 16h30 at Chatelet. And I arrive at 16h30 on the dot.  To find Antoine completely red and beside himself with anger.  "You were supposed to be here an hour before!"  I showed him my diary with the time marked in red and said "after all of the time that we've worked together, do you think that I would just leave you here for an hour alone like that?".  After calming him down, we had our meeting and I got him back on the metro, or so I  thought.

The next morning, the telephone rang: "Hello, this is Antoine Tisné.  I'm in the hospital.  You won't believe it, but I fell asleep in the metro.  AND the policeman who found me thought that I was DRUNK!".  So, we sidestep aside the whole experience....but what does Antoine really want?  He wants five notebooks similar to those used by children for solfège classes.  And he wants them today, so I get dressed and go buy these kinds of notebooks.

So, here we were in March, Antoine had gotten out of the hospital  Adn we were due to begin the first rehearsals for "Offertorium"....and here I had copied this incredibly complex score....and Antoine wasn't interested in that;  he was only interested in the gestures and characterizations  of the music itself.  And so we had our rehearsal, in a conservatory somewhere in the southern suburbs of Paris.  Antoine needed to hear this piece.  And here we had this incredibly complex score....and the composer said NOT ONE WORD about the notes nor about the rhythms.    It wasn't that he didn't care: he did.  But all of that was beside the point.  There was the gestures that needed to be made;  That's all he wanted.  The rest:  well, let the chips fall where they may. 


From March to May, there was a series of hospitals.  Jean-Thierry went sometimes without me.  I went without him. In Antoine's hospital room, I met people who I had never seen before including the painter Nicole Proop  who had painted the painting which inspired "De la Nuit à L'Aurore.".  I quite liked her....because it was clear that she loved Antoine.  I'm sorry that we only met in this context.   At one point, Antoine was in a rest home.  It was clear that this was quite serious...yet, nobody talked about death or anything like that.  Antoine was charmed by the ladies who he met at tea.  He wore his brown suit and his blue tie. And we all had coffee at his rest home.

And finally he got better. Better enough to get back to composing. And so I met him at his clinic in the 14th.  He gave me a sheet of music paper  And on this sheet of paper was a series of three duos, for flutes, for trumpets and for violins.  Plus a piece for solo flute  The Five pieces in medieval modes. Antoine gave me those pieces in his pajamas, in a hospital bed.  They are in an extremely simple style, deceptively simple.  But they are the kind of concentrated focused writing that only older composers can do.  When Thérèse Brenet gave me "A Thing of Beauty...", I saw this kind of barren, yet focued writing.  Was it the influence of late Liszt that allowed Antoine to get to this place?  Was it a distilled concentration of style by giong back to simple textures after writing so much highly structured music?  I like the second hypothesis the best, myself.  These short, simple pieces are inhibited by a kind of luminous energy which is very difficult to generate even by the most talented of composers.

Later, we worked on corrections for other pieces.   One day, we were working on correction on the Seven "Petites preludes" for organ. And we got to the end of the last prelude   There was a B natural in the pedal.  And there was a C major chord in both hands.   And Antoine looked at me.  And he said "What would it change if this B natural became a C?".  And I said "that's not for me to decide.  but if that 's what you want, so be it"    So, we changed that. 

So, here we were.  I copied things as fast as I could.  And then we did corrections.  In the meantime, there was the "time of Cherries" in France.  At the beginning of May, 1998, Antoine asked me to bring him cherries.  I watched him eat them.  We had never talked about death.  It wasn't even a possibility, even though I knew that this was the final outcome.  It was the unspoken truth between us. 

When I couldn't see Antoine, Jean-Thierry went to visit him....and he has another set of secrets.  It is  not  for me to reveal these. 

All I  can say is that at the end of May of 1998, Antoine could not keep up appearances  And so one week, in the middle of a visit, in which we were trying to pretend that it was completely normal business, he griped my hand.  He looked at me as no one has ever looked at me, before or since, and he said "You are an angel who has been sent to save me".  He fixed me in the eye and said "you will come back tomorrow at 4 o' clock.  You will NOT be late".  And I said that I would.

So, the next day, at EXACTLY the hour which Antoine had given me, the elevator doors opened.   And not only only here I was, but here was Antoine, not in his pajamas but in his gray suit, with his blue tie.  With his hair slicked back perfectly.  And he lead me not back to his hospital room, but to another room next door.  In this room, there were two chairs and a table.  On the table was a piece of paper and an envelope.  And nothing else  Antoine said "I have a mission of confidence to give you" and he asked me to sit in one of the chairs   He signed the letter and asked me to read it.  I did....and then I looked at him with a questioning gaze.  He told me that I should keep this letter...that at some point people would read it and would understand the meaning.  I said that I would.  He put the letter in the envelope and handed it to me.  He lead me back to the elevator.  We shook hands.  The elevator doors closed.  My last view of Antoine was upright in a suit, completely as I had always known him  He did this for me....and I know what it cost him.  But this is how he choose to say goodbye, on his terms.

I never saw him again.

I called Niemann over the remaining weeks, giving him news to pass onto Antoine.   Until the date when we were supposed to go to Poitiers to record "Musiques Pour Un Espaces Sacré".  And so I called and Niemann told me that Antoine had said "it's about time!  At last they've gotten to that".  So, there was nothing more for me to do.  Just to wait until the end.  So, here we were in Poitiers;  set to record the first recording on the organ that Jean-Thierry's brother had restored......and finally, it couldn't be done, for technical reasons.....So we all went back to Jean-Thierry's sister's house, Mouton, tired and depressed that this project was not going to work out....and there was André, Jean-Thierry's brother-in-law, who had a message for me....Antoine had died that day 

That night, in the West wing of the house, there was a huge thunderstorm. As I lay aware watching the lightning and hearing the wind blow through the open windows, I wondered if this had anything to do with Antoine's death.