Mark thought that he was going to be able to have a quiet
coffee in the student cafeteria, but this ambition was not going to be
fulfilled today. The coffee was managed perfectly adequately, but his peaceful
solitude disappeared when three other students slipped into the other spaces at
his table.
“Hello” said the student sitting opposite him. “You’re just
the guy we need to talk to”.
“I am?” asked a somewhat surprised Mark.
“Let me introduce myself”, said the student. “My name’s
Luke, and I’m a second-year Music student. This here is my friend and fellow
Music student John, and sitting next to you is Matthew, who is a post-grad in
the Music Department.
“Nice to meet you,”, said Mark. “But why do you need to talk
to me? I’m a final-year student in the Philosophy Department – I know precious
little about Music.”
“We saw you last night in the student bar”, said John. “You
must have had a few before we arrived, because otherwise you would never have
attempted that karaoke number you did. You remember, surely?”
Mark felt himself going red with embarrassment. How could he
have forgotten? Nobody expects much quality from a pub karaoke session, but his
effort had been what the word dire was invented for.
“Your problem”, said Luke, “was that you started in the
wrong key, and an octave too high, and found yourself in the stratosphere when
you reached the point of no return.”
“So you’ve come here today to rub my nose in it, have you?”
said Mark, who was getting annoyed and starting to stand up.
“No, no – far from it”, said Luke, waving him back down
again. “We liked what we heard – in a strange kind of way – and that’s why we
want to talk to you.”
“The first thing we did after we heard your performance was
find out who you were”, said John. “And we couldn’t believe our luck when
someone told us that your name was Mark.”
“You see,” said Luke, “the three of us have wanted for some
time to form a singing quartet that we could call The Gospellers. We had
Matthew, Luke and John – but were only lacking a Mark. And now we’ve found you
– if you’ll join us, that is.”
“But I’m a lousy singer – as you’ve just reminded me”, said
Mark.
“But your falsetto range has definite promise,” said John.
“And that’s what we’re missing.”
“Let me explain,” said Luke. “Apart from the appropriate
names, the three of us all have different singing voices. I’m a bass, John is a
baritone and Matthew is a tenor. We only need one more male voice to complete
the set”.
“Which is?”
“Countertenor, otherwise known as the male alto, singing an
octave higher that the normal tenor range. Back in the day they used to
castrate boys so that their voices wouldn’t break, but that custom is no longer
practiced.
“I’m glad to hear it”, said Mark.
“However,” Luke continued, “Some men have a natural countertenor
voice, and others can be trained in the falsetto range to produce something
that it is nearly as good.”
“And we reckon that you could be just such a person”, said
John. “With the proper training, you could be the fourth Gospeller and we could
give concerts round the University and anywhere else if we wanted to.”
“Singing what?” Mark asked.
“Our own arrangements”, said Luke. “Madrigals, folk songs,
religious stuff, that kind of thing.”
“But what about the training?”
“That’s where Matthew comes in”, said Luke. “He’s a
professional voice trainer who worked with dozens of singers before joining the
University and now he does the same here. What do you reckon, Matthew?”
"It’ll be a challenge”, said Matthew, “But I reckon it might
work.”
So that is precisely what happened. Mark had twice-weekly
sessions with Matthew for the next six weeks, after which the new Gospeller –
thought not quite the finished article - was reckoned to be good enough to be
let loose on an audience
When the four of them next got together, Matthew had news
for them.
“We’re going to give an end-of-term concert”, he said. “Just
to the Music Department. We’ll do a set of madrigals for the main part, but the
conclusion is all yours, Mark.”
“What do you mean”?” Mark asked.
“I want to perform the Professor’s own arrangement of The Lark
Ascending, by Vaughan Williams. He’s set it for countertenor voice and small
orchestra, and it’ll be a real showstopper if you get it right. Are you up for
it?”
Given that Mark had no real idea of what was involved, he
agreed on the spot.
Rehearsals for the concert went really well, although as the
concert date approached, Mark became increasingly worried that he wouldn’t be
up to the job. For one thing, he had no real musical knowledge and he would be
performing in front of an audience of musical experts.
And then there was the little problem of being able to
conclude the concert by singing a piece arranged by the Head of the Department,
in his presence, and producing a final sustained top note that was as high as
any male singer – trained or not – could be expected to reach. During
rehearsals he was sometimes able to get it right, but by no means always.
On the night of the concert, Matthew took Mark to one side
to give him some final advice.
"I’ll be conducting this piece”, be said, “So you’ll need to
keep the final note going for as long as my baton stays raised. Take a good
deep breath before the final rising sequence and then keep the last note as
steady as you possibly can. The volume is not so important, but the purity of
the note most certainly is.”
Mark had this in mind all through the concert, which went
very well with the audience clearly enjoying what they heard. The final piece
was then announced. Matthew took to the podium and the other Gospellers, whose
work was now done, sat in seats in the front row of the audience.
Fortunately, the Music Professor’s vocal arrangement of The
Lark Ascending was not quite as intricate as the original violin version, being
considerably shorter and with far fewer twiddly bits. However, that did not
mean that it was not a very tricky piece to perform. As it proceeded, Mark was
fully aware that without Matthew’s excellent training none of this would have
been possible.
The climax of the work was approaching. Mark became acutely
aware that every eye in the audience was on him and his old self-consciousness
returned. He blushed as each moment passed and the notes got progressively
higher.
And now here it was – the final sequence. He took the deep
breath that Matthew had advised before allowing the “lark” to reach its final
height. He watch the tip of Matthew’s baton more like a hawk than a lark, but
he also became aware of something happening in the audience just behind
Matthew. His fellow Gospellers appeared to be mouthing something, and it looked
for all the world that what they were mouthing were numbers.
And it was not just the Gospellers. All the audience members
were counting in rhythm. Despite continuing to sustain his final top C, Mark
could definitely hear “six, seven, eight, nine”.
And then they all shouted “ten”, at which the baton dropped,
and Mark felt like doing so as well. There was wild applause and cheering and
everyone rushed up to Mark to congratulate him. The happiest person in the room
appeared to be Matthew, who was also being mobbed by his fellow students.
“What was all that ‘eight, nine, ten’ stuff about?” a
puzzled Mark asked John and Luke.
“I supposed we’d better come clean”, Luke said. “My name is
not Luke, it’s Dave. John is Peter and Matthew is Alec. The whole Department
were in on this, including the staff. We all knew that Alec was good, but the
Professor, having written his Lark Ascending arrangement, bet Alec that he
couldn’t produce – from scratch – a proper “count to tenner” for the final
note.
“We all reckon that Alec – thanks to you – has
won his bet and he owes you drinks for a month!” 
