It is exactly the kind of charming anecdote that might have made it into one of David Barber’s whimsical retellings of music history – if it had happened to a Baroque composer instead of to Mr. Barber, Mus’80.
In 1985, Mr. Barber, then a 26-year-old copy editor at the Kingston Whig-Standard, convinced Anthony Burgess, Nobel Prize-nominated British author (A Clockwork Orange) and prolific composer, to write a preface for his book Bach, Beethoven And The Boys: Music History As It Ought To Be Taught. It was the second in a series of music-history romps by Mr. Barber that continue to charm musicians and music lovers around the world.
The story begins during Barber’s first year as a voice student at ʹ’s. On the recommendation of an English-department teaching assistant, 19-year-old Mr. Barber read the Burgess novel Nothing Like the Sun, a fictional account of Shakespeare’s love life, and became an instant fan. He did have one quibble, however.
“There’s a throwaway line that Burgess puts in: ‘The madrigalist sings of a silver swan,’” Mr. Barber says. He knew that “perhaps the only madrigal in English about a silver swan” was published by Orlando Gibbons in 1601, two years after the events Mr. Burgess imagined.
“So, full of piss and vinegar and youthful bravado,” says Mr. Barber, “I wrote a letter to Mr. Burgess, care of (his publisher),” praising the author but gently inquiring about the apparent anachronism. Mr. Burgess, to Mr. Barber’s delight, wrote back, claiming archly that he had “some other madrigal in mind,” and included a quatrain that Mr. Barber assumes the author made up on the spot. “The swan shone silver on the golden Thames,” it begins.
Mr. Barber immediately set the quatrain to music in the style of a 16th-century madrigal, sent it back to Burgess – but heard nothing in reply.
Three years later, Mr. Barber attended a lecture by Mr. Burgess at McMaster University. Afterwards, the author told Mr. Barber that not only did he recall their correspondence and the musical setting for his quatrain, but that he had composed a thank-you piece, “which was sitting on his piano back home.” Mr. Barber says he chose to believe that.
Having already sent Mr. Burgess his first published book, when Bach, Beethoven and the Boys was near publication, Mr. Barber risked sending the manuscript to Mr. Burgess with the audacious suggestion he might like to write a preface. Mr. Barber was bowled over when a wry, hand-typed preface arrived without comment or cover letter.
Since then, Mr. Barber’s waggish musical histories, including When the Fat Lady Sings and Getting a Handel on Messiah have attracted forewords by such musical luminaries as Yehudi Menuhin, Trevor Pinnock and Maureen Forrester (“each big name helped get others along the way”), but Mr. Barber says it is that first generous and unexpected offering by an eccentric British polymath that resonates most profoundly.
“Burgess was the first,” he says. “And still the one I’m most proud of.”
