O Magnum Mysterium

As I do every Tuesday night, I am attending rehearsal before I go to work. There is nothing out of the ordinary about this evening; the mean girl with the bassoon is wearing her habitual scowl, the new woman in the percussion section is looking at me as if she knows me. I am coveting the forlorn contrabass clarinet; I still want to steal it. There is a parliament of brass snails lining up on my right and I grin at David holding his French horn, this ritual a sheepish reminder that we slept together ten years ago. I look back to ensure that my head is well out of the range of the first trombonist's seventh position; I am safe again. I warm up my horn as I always do: two Bb flat scales up, thirty-second notes; I linger on the high Bb, slur to the high D, then terrify the inferiors in my section by holding and sustaining the E above, letting my euphonium pretend to be spying on the low brass from the impossible heights of its upper register.

We raise our instruments. A bleak, effeminate man comes to the podium and starts to conduct an insipid work that he commissioned to memorialize the birth of his grandson. His lisp betrays his true erotic leanings and I note that his accomplishment of progeny seems as improbable as the juxtaposition of euphoniums and guns.

I despise him immediately. My eyes blink at the bass clefs on my sheet music and transform them into rattlesnakes. They slide off my stand and wriggle towards him. I command them to bite him, but he lifts his hands and they curl back into flaccid symbols of deepness on the pages before me.

He begins to conduct. He gyrates, unleashing sibilance. He fattens before my eyes. The measures stretch and wrap themselves around me and suck away my breath. My mouthpiece is now attached to a large, diseased organ and tar drips from it as I blow. His antiseptic baton burrows into me, fluorescent light soaks into the holes it leaves and cracks my flesh. Snow begins to fall inside the clarinets and their reedy gusts erase my face.

The final chord chars me. I flail and escape from his threatening jingle.

Before me now comes a giant man holding an unremarkable plastic stick. He is Peter, our real conductor. The end of rehearsal is approaching and he has come to direct our other pieces. We plod through the Holzt Suite in Eb (I have a solo, I play it beautifully). Peter looks at me and approves. He is markedly different from the closeted blob who preceded him to the podium. His passion and his kindness are commensurate with his size; there is anguish and sorrow and mirth in his face that derives from the music we are playing. I know that when the alto saxophones begin to caress the tragedy of a minor second in a chord, Peter's eyes will register the pain that this sound conveys. He tells us to place Morten Lauridsen's "O Magnum Mysterium" on our stands, a piece originally written for chorus now transcribed for wind ensemble. Having just heard this work performed over Christmas by the Atlanta Gay Men's Chorus, I begin to doubt that any combination of woodwinds and brass can wring the utter mourning from speckled pieces of paper that a group of human voices can.

But this is Peter, who channels goodness and beauty with his wand...and I am drawn into the majesty of the work. I clutch my euphonium tighter, loving it. My metal horn pours warm, mellow sound into Peter's spell and I let the notes wash out my soul. The minor seconds come and defeat my attempts at atheism. Peter holds the last fermata as if it were a jewel plucked from the crown of God and the harmony causes a brief shimmering in the air, an aperture through which I glimpse something truly holy. Its splendor shocks me and I gather myself long enough to pack up my horn and travel to my truck.

I load my instrument into the passenger seat and lay my head on the steering wheel. Tears begin to pour out of my eyes and leak into the ignition. They pool on the floorboards and wet my socks. The brine swells inside the compartment and I notice strands of olives and seaweed growing through my legs. The truck starts and begins to tunnel through the limbs of the pecan trees above me in the parking lot. I pause to wipe my eyes and the motor dies; I think immediately of the great mystery and the lingering noises of my ensemble and the engine roars to life again. I cannot steer, I am crowded by the hurricanes and the tiny islands. A tsunami issues from the air conditioning vents; its waves crest at my throat and paint my cheeks with sharks and starfish. They envelop me and we pray together. We rise and arrive at a gloaming; I hear a hymn of chromatics in which color and sound converge. God resplendent before me, I park my truck and rest.