The Great Passion by James Runcie

Author:James Runcie
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781635570694
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2021-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

14

On the twenty-second of September, Anna Magdalena suggested a trip to gather mushrooms in the forest to celebrate her twenty-fifth birthday. As the family seldom went out together to anything other than church, she thought that this would be a good way of getting her husband away from the house and stopping him working. At the moment, he only spoke to them during meals and music lessons, and it was about time they behaved ‘like normal people’.

She said I was welcome to join them. I could accompany Emanuel, keep an eye on the wayward Bernard and, if Catharina got bored, I could join her in a little butterfly collecting. I wondered whether she was only inviting me to come because I was in the room when she had the idea, but Catharina assured me that they were so used to me by now that my company ‘didn’t make much difference’. I was not sure whether to be pleased by her remark or not, but Emanuel smiled and told me that I should regard being teased as a compliment.

It took a long time to get everyone ready. There was the usual fuss about shoes, coats, gloves and forgetting things, as well as arguments about who should carry what, and how much food and drink everyone might need for the trip. The Cantor grew impatient, telling us that if we continued to dawdle we would have to leave for home as soon as we got there. His wife responded by saying that if he was in one of his moods we would go without him.

‘Very good. I can work on.’

‘No, no, no. You don’t escape from us that easily.’

There was still a full green on the trees, and the sunlight in the hollows and clearings offered a welcome sense of adventure. The children ran ahead of the adults, laughing and free, eager to get away from the restrictions of home.We could hear distant birdsong, of thrush and blackbird, musicians of the air, and the ground was so soft with moss that, for a moment, I wondered what it might be like to go barefooted.

The Cantor called out, ‘Good day, EVERYONE,’ and we waited for the returning echo for which the forest was famous.

‘Day … day … day … one … one … one.’

There were distant repeating replies, with other children running and shouting out so much that it was hard to tell the original cry from the response. He sang, ‘Where are you?’ and the children spread out and replied, ‘I am here … here … here … ’

Even on an outing such as this, the Cantor was determined to put the time to good use. He considered it too idle to stop work entirely and simply enjoy himself. He suggested we try a little something from Monteverdi, a section from his Vespers that I had never heard before. He stationed us all in different positions and taught us to use the echo to learn a little more about antiphony, singing out:

‘Audi coelum, verba mea, plena

desiderio et perfusa gaudio.

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