Green Glowing Skull. Gavin Corbett

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СКАЧАТЬ sharpen the ventricular mechanism. Correct unhinging of the mandible was practised, with particular regard to coordination with lip shapes. Awareness, on singing of the brighter ‘ee’ and the duller ‘ah’, of the muscles that closed the entrance to the smelling bulb in the upper nose would burn a nerve pathway to allow the voluntary control of these muscles. These muscles could then be brought into play for tonal manufacture, along with the muscles of the throat.

      ‘The face is a mask for the purposes of singing,’ said Denny. ‘It is one of our key resonators. The mask has to grow so that it reaches behind the ears. Then it will have the maximum opening.’

      To improve suppleness of the ribs, the men vigorously beat imaginary timpani with their fists while singing in the middle voice for thirty seconds at walking tempo.

      ‘Let’s be wary at all times, men, of the Bs, Ds and hard Gs, and I am not here talking about musical notes. I am talking about consonants. Firm closure of the glottis could kill stone dead the vibrations of the vocal cords.’

      Strength was built in the omohyoideus muscle by saying the word ‘omohyoideus’ one hundred times at an increasing pace. A strong omohyoideus was needed to keep the larynx lashed to the backbone during singing of the A-range of vowels.

      All exercises were ultimately assumed to give native vowel sounds the best possible chance.

      ‘The special character of our songs is held in the vowels. You see, men, in music there is a unique set of Irish vowels. They are rounded like the English vowels but their articulation must never result in the sacrifice of the R sound. The R must, at the very least, be trilled. Our Irish vowels will be found by knowing and practising the Italian, English, French, American and German vowels. They lie somewhere among all of those.’

      During exercises a set of charts was tacked to the wall depicting the anatomy of the structures under improvement. These charts were huge powdery things, variegated with minute creases, which had to be unfurled with great care. Denny had taken them from Italy with him. They had originated at the medical school in Bologna. The larynx looked an immensely complex piece of machinery in the charts. The ribcage was simple, stark and frightening. Awareness of these structures would lead, the thinking went, to more nerve pathways.

      A formula for sublimation was written on a sheet of paper and also stuck to the wall. It was never mentioned. It read:

      100 JOULES OF ONANISTIC FERVOUR = 100 JOULES OF RELIGIOUS ZEAL = JUST AS EASILY 100 JOULES OF ARTISTIC PASSION

      ***

      ‘Tell me more about Denny’s time in Milan with Maestro Tosi,’ Rickard said to Clive one Thursday evening ahead of rehearsals. They had met outside the clubhouse and were now – having been delivered by the uptown subway – waiting for a crosstown bus to Morningside Heights and Denny’s apartment. A smell of caramelisation on the air – a uniquely New York feature of the colder months – tortured them both.

      Clive said, ‘It was a period so brief and embarrassing in Denny’s life and career that it rarely comes up, and I’m surprised that it ever does.’

      Rickard said, ‘I’m ashamed to say that I hadn’t heard of Denny before.’

      ‘I’m not surprised that you hadn’t. This was a star that burnt brightly and went out quickly. But a source of historic light.’

      ‘I see it,’ said Rickard. ‘I see it. It beams through the universe.’

      Clive stood stolid, beaky in profile, looking up the avenue at the crest of the hill against the fading pearl of the sky and at the approaching cells of headlights. Rickard was suddenly embarrassed at his own open enthusiasm. An icy cold wind blew through the cross-street. He pinched at his dripping nose.

      ‘Nineteen … when was it?’ said Clive. ‘Early fifties. I was a young lady in Heet. (Heet is the name of a townland.) My parents left me one night with my brother on our own to go to a concert in Bundoran. I believe it was for the opening of a ballroom. Denny Logan was giving the concert. I did not know this at the time. Only later, after I’d met Denny, and I wrote to my mother, did I know this, did I know anything about Denny. I’m afraid that Denny’s time in the limelight had passed me by entirely. He was one of a crop of young Irish tenors in his day, one of the best, so it was said of him. There was no shortage of tenor singers or concerts in those days. For a very brief time. Before the girls’ attention moved elsewhere, on to the rock and roll and what have you. Then the tenor voices were forgotten, and with them Denny Logan. You young people would find it hard to believe that tenors were ever a popular success. I found it hard to believe. But the girls went crazy for the tenor voices, they came with flowers to the concerts. The singers used to hand out photographs of themselves in the carte style, and they looked all blushered up in them, bruised below the eyebrows, and flushed in the cheeks. My mother brought home Denny’s that night, and posted it, later, to me here in New York. I could not understand the magnetism, but I understand it now I do. You bring me out you do.’

      Clive took a long pause.

      ‘You do, you do. You bring me out in Donegal you do. I have not spoken like that in a long time. Must be that you’re Irish. I do not like it.’

      ‘I see it too,’ said Rickard. ‘That magnetism, despite certain masking features. But I don’t hear …’

      He checked himself.

      ‘The voice?’ said Clive.

      ‘I don’t mean to be so plain but it’s quite …’

      ‘Monotonous,’ they said together.

      ‘Yes,’ said Clive, looking at his feet. ‘It is sadly limited.’

      ‘So what happened to that voice in the meantime?’

      Clive leaned back against the glass of the bus shelter, then stood forward again.

      ‘I don’t know. But I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he had accidentally or purposely disturbed in some way a fairy mound. Bad consequences are known to result from such an action.’

      ***

      Within a few weeks of rehearsals Denny, Clive and Rickard had a core of fifteen songs for their set and a repertoire that extended to three dozen more. They were satisfied at last that their voices achieved harmony: Denny steadfastly held the middle; Rickard cleaved to and weaved around him; Clive skirted the top. They had a name for their trio too: the Free ’n’ Easy Tones. It was of course Denny’s name. It was not a traditional-sounding name, he conceded, but it had a spunk and a jizz about it that might catch the eye of modern audiences.

      Rickard was excited about the idea of performing and making money out of it, but he couldn’t help wondering if Denny’s expectations of how their music would be received in the modern city were unrealistic. Did this residual affection that Denny insisted New Yorkers had for Irish tenor singing carry to the young people? It was hard to imagine, and New York was a young city. The young people seemed always busy and sometimes angry and interested only in young music and fashions. The boys were feminised yet somehow thrusting, like wicked regime-favoured women of mercy-free places of the East. The girls were not people Rickard could imagine in the nursing profession (apart from the girls he saw on the streets in medical scrubs, and there were many of these girls). All the young people were in thrall to the great technology cult, Puffball Computers. In every coffee shop they were bent behind the orbs of the hoods of their Puffball machines; if they were to lift their heads at all it was only for an incoming young acquaintance who they СКАЧАТЬ