THE MAGIC FLUTE
Opera/Singspiel by Mozart and Schikaneder; soloists, English Baroque Soloists and Monteverdi Choir, directed by John Eliot Gardiner. Rehearsals and staged performances in Parma, and then several other European cities, 1995. (Archiv recording.)

157 thirteen-letter anagrams, at the latest count—I made it 158 in 1995, perhaps I included the title (The Magic Flute is of course an anagram of The Magic Flute—I would have said an isogram, or an autogram, or even a tautogram, but these words are all taken for something slightly different—so I’ll go for a pleonogram ), interlarded with 16 of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart—twenty-one letters, grouped as 1-2-3-4-3-2-1, and picked out in red; preceded by their parallel ‘story’ giving as close an account (sticking slavishly to the anagram text) as I could manage of what might be supposed to be going on, as follows:

It had been, lucky me, a wonderful meal: Prosciutto di Parma, with fresh green figs, rucola salad. Just at the finish, though, something seemed to go wrong: I asked for a coffee, and was met by a stony-faced silence, the ass—great, I thought. You do something so well, and then you wreck it by a small idiocy at the end. It was the same with the digestif I tried to order—thinking to please by asking for that Duchess of a liquor they make on the coast across from Capri—which received a frankly rude “What?” in reply. That was enough: I told the chap to clear off. I was still smoking inside, of course, and as happens, another diner observed my mood and tried to cheer me up with gastronomic small-talk. I thought him rather like a household ferret, but he asked a curious question “D’you think he ever worked for Cahiers du Cinéma?”—which set me thinking. Imagine this film scenario:

DAYLIGHT SMOKE
In a certain country, gastropods are brought as offerings (let’s say, Trojan snails): it appears there’s a war on, and the anti-haemorrhagic qualities of figs are in demand. The inhabitants subsist, amid gastric suffering, on the odd mollusc, superannuated Oriental fruit, even deep slices from their own calves. They feel their own facial bones poking through (it’s easy to show this, and it’ll have an impressive effect), and to pass the time race the only thing left which (presumably) is not edible, a local flightless bird. (This is also very picturesque, as a sort of parasite on this bird’s fruit-eating parts is the salamander, or baby newt Gila monster, a lizard without vocal chords which features in runic mysteries. I’m wondering if there’s something about this in The White Goddess, and if so, was Robert Graves making it up?) There’s a backdrop of the Three Kings by a star of the Venetian C15 school, that’s fine, if somewhat immediate in its brutal realism… A contrasting scene is set in the leafy self-catering avenues of southwest London, where a Jewish patriarch is walking his dog: a clubbable, diplomatic man and a talented animal. The link between these two extremes is a scurrilous publication of the sort you wouldn’t be seen extracting from your own letterbox, which deals in (again extreme) totemic obsessions involving girls, guilt, glamour, gore and galactic glory—

I’m just fantasising, without great success, about how the breaking of the sound barrier can take its place in this yarn, when my interlocutor disturbs me again, now changing his tack:
   “I’m thinking it’s the cook who should be cut in pieces… You do receive some money, you know, for Euro-movies.”
I reply that I’m glad to hear it, appropriately in German (which is also intended to deter him from further conversation, but in vain: …)
   “What about capturing the start of the Open Championships? You could have a side from the opera, they love golf, then there’s people smoking, plenty of incidents – ” I interrupt this nonsense by inquiring if he’d like nutmeg, but he refuses violently and reckons rather that lilies are best to banish the odour of seafood. Almost too late, I realise that under cover of this table-talk he is surreptitiously removing my artificial limb…

* * *

It’s international conductor time, and someone has the gall to stop Riccardo Muti, to correct a (simple, diatonic enough) motif. A Japanese executive objects on the grounds of Muti’s grandeur, at which a German ripostes by asking with evident scorn whether you would entrust the peak of intellectual art to a twilit dreamer: to which the conclusive reply is that Muti turns canonic imitation into a thing of liquid beauty. The metronome meanwhile marches on. Sudden strife in the brass section: Jeffrey Tate, whose turn it is, is unhappy, but a suggestion that the players felt even more estranged from Zubin Mehta only brings a sharp rebuke, and instructions that if they don’t like the Méhul passage which seems weirdly prescient of Beethoven’s Fifth, they don’t play it.

Do you think that’s right? While I’m contemplating it, the image of a little salamander snout pops beaming into my mind as I turn on the tap—a tap of which I remember now I swore I’d replace the washer… Why do I always feel so bad about such small failures? Why not come out and say, no, I’ve had enough of pan-Europeanism, I like my souvenir of Scotland. Furthermore, it’s official now that you can’t believe anything they say: there’s a song about Tarzan, that apart from being a bit short in the brain department he was actually a carnivorous predator—or, a mythological snake-haired fiend, or – a shenior shivil shervant of the shixtiesh * (a.k.a. a former editor of ‘The Times’)!

Phew. Quite enough of that. But then a whole pile of people turned up, whose names are self-explanatory (he says going on to explain them, as in ‘I hardly need say…’): a prairie millionaire, an Israeli ditto who’s made his killing in fish oil and is intent on founding a dynasty; the late Timothy Leach; a representative of an English recording company (the only one who’s not permitted to arrive by taxi, with resulting pedal angst, he’ll always remember this day), a Euro-censor, and not quite an honest one at that; two women of whom the second is—what? you? look, can I, hang on—and a born-again pop-star.

Naturally, there’s a call for light, to which the enigmatic reply seems to recall an exchange from The Magic Flute. Well: let there be light, then. This however doesn’t please a chess expert who amongst other signs of irritation lights up (sic) for four minutes and thirty-three seconds, impassively. You got out fast, but I felt as if embedded in glue and got stuck (though with my money) in a throng from which the only escape was to play my magic glockenspiel—in whatever key came to hand—

– and it worked! But even then, being under the weather, my maxillary workings told me I needed a tisane, if a tacky enough one could be found. The Boss asks if I want milk—with a tisane?? Bah, I round on him, wondering if he continues to have interests in American military dependencies, at which he tells me to – leave off. He implies I’m small, too, which irks, I’m just slightly built, but still I make to placate him with a present of an English renaissance instrument, embracing a Welsh friend to celebrate this outbreak of reconciliation. Hah! all the Boss can do is to tell me to pick up a nasty illness, the brute. Even now, I mollify him: introduce, with sycophantic adulation, a German girl. True to form, he insults her immediately, asking her an unlikely question about Belgian football—but Ute’s a match for him, with her knowledge of London equivalents. Naturally this rebounds against me , I’m accused of stealing the theorbo I bought for him, damn it, and am asked to procure a less challenging woman.

I can’t do this, you miserable German person, I’ve only one leg for a start. My luck, if that’s what it is, is in, this time, in that Helmut is distracted (you may have noticed this propensity) on to another tack: he sees there is an American veterans’ baseball game on TV. (This is one of his recurring obsessions.) I tease him by saying playfully that a certain distinguished British philosopher was also a US infantryman; but for once Helmut is not taken in, perhaps because his stomach has more urgent calls on his attention—now he wants ewe’s milk cheese. Really, will this never end? One solution, arguably, is to call in a heavyweight but lighthearted Belgian-Ceylonese-Breton wrestler (frightened of nothing except spiders, hence his nickname Muffet), whose but moderately loud voice announces the octave firebrand which breaks through the hefty trellis decorating this scene, and thus introduces –

(in an undertone, please,
                                             like a somnolent guard-dog)

– Lazy days in Cyprus, a honeymoon couple discovering Indo-Portuguese culture and dancing innocently into the bewitched apocalyptic sunset…

* * *

The river of forgetfulness runs through Cambridge, as you, old fruit, must know, having picked up enough tabs there. Stick to engraving, Dark Lady.

Alf is asking the President of Poland to bring a barrel for his French co-pilot, but Wałesa is at the back of the plane, and suggests Alf try instead, why not, a Fabergé jewel—as well as giving him his cue to start skydiving. Ah, crazy great West Country turnips, that sums up the enchantment of Cambridge days! But even an inhabitant of Paradise had to admire the way the Chinese could synthesize two quite distinct sports in one computer programme, at the same time recounting every last detail of an unedifying modern military campaign in the style of a spiritual. (The original ‘naming of the beasts’ in Eden had a more charmingly reticent, throaty quality).

Alec is no more, alas, but another philosopher can be found to fill the gap. Fichte was a man, which is important, but Hegel was a feline in disguise, which made him fit only to instruct clever asses, and play (very well, admittedly) on children’s slides, if one can tell after so many years have elapsed. I’d rather he’d have got the creator of M. Hulot’s Holiday to work on a remake of La Grande Bouffe –

Why’s everything gone terribly quiet all of a sudden? Welch’ furchtbare Stille! **

– but the Melbourne newspapers called the project off, preferring some totally spurious local paparazzi farce called, I think, ‘Newt Dundee’, involving a Scottish idiot astounding everybody, chewing straws, and dancing his balls off in a cloud of smoke. Ah, Margaret, surely you knew that a crowd of South American football administrators (we call them the Ferret Fanciers, but don’t let on) are going back to the land? Yes, to the Portuguese horse-breeding centre Muge, where they serve fish soup every day and wear braided Hebridean headgear.

   “Are you cigarette monitor? You know mucus build-up goes a horrible colour…”
It’s enough to make one, as an urban guerrilla, want to scratch below the surface of this sweet, playful Zauberflöte. Were you, Amadeus, really a demented music-loving aristocrat who commissioned your own works, thought it would be a laugh to dance with a keeper of the portal, jive with Mephistopheles himself…?

Would you compare this with Graham Greene’s Vienna? God forbid. Would you entrust the mission to an American who refuses to believe his emblematic eagle is bald, and forgets to look at t’ petrol gauge?—but I’d better be quiet. It’s just another flight.

BUT it’s different in summer, when you want to spread your wings and mount to the treetops, make a(n-H-) bomb from your in ( off)-sur (shore )-ance tragacanth/okra policy. Or, follow the example of Joseph Beuys, saved from perishing (in the) cold by being wrapped in felt and fat—we who live in more humid climes can hardly appreciate such extreme needs, but raise our glasses all the same.

For we all suffer from the cold. For, truism as it may be, we can be protected by a present of a nest-egg, a lucky jewel (this could also read, ‘thing of value’, it could be, thus, a musical instrument of rare quality, a flute for example), especially if given to you personally by a freedom-fighter. Where the highest church spire in the world reaches octagonally (Ulm = elm = Ely?) to the sky , a cross-section might tell you that in 1500 AD, this was but a caper, a chamois’ vortex; and that here too your man Sarastro casts his labyrinthine lettery spell.

* * *

TAG, LICHT—FUMÉE
Ham, fig, lettuce—I felt much gâté.
   “Café?” Mute. Light, tight mule-face; cute.
   “Malt.” If he get Malfi, gut.
   “Chè?”
   “Leg it!” Fume. Chat:
   “Ultimate chef! Glug…” Tame fitch! “ ’E taught EEC film?” Lumache, gift, etc. Emulate fight: heal cut fig met. Get ache if tum lug clam, if teeth fug matt lichee, cut leg (ham), tief. Teeth, gum, facile gulf, thematic éclat, emu fight—cute glam if the emu fig chattel fetch mute Gila eft—Thule magic. Thule game, fictif? The mage-cult—Cima, fleet thug—felt gut. Micah, E. Cheam gîte luft—“Agile mut—fetch!” – fit chum, legate. “Geh, mutt!” Facile! Ult. fétiche mag (e.g. tu fetch mail), female chit tug echt guilt. Fame? Fame! Glitch—tué!! Tué, acme, flight! Mach 1 Flug et – et…
   “Mutilate chef… Get aught, EC film.”
   “Ach, gut.”
   “Film tee, ‘Flute’ team, cig—hazardous game, golf.”
   “Want mace?”
   “Filth. Muget fumigate the clam.”
   “Leg thief!”

– CUT –

FUGAL THEME
Tic.
   “Halt, Muti – GFECE…”
   “Muti g‘l’eat chef!”
   “Ha? Fuge mit Celt?”
   “He melt fuga!”
Tic. Cue metal fight: Tate, chief, glum; cite Mehta gulf –
   “Calm huge fit! Et tacet Méhul, if G-G-C thema futile.” Ethical? Eft mug light me faucet—facet hem guilt. Guilt? Face them! Glut EEC faith, me Leith mug.
Fact: ‘Tarzan’s gaga, mum’, flow ode—a wolf? Tarzan? Medusa?? MOGG!

– CUT –

Agh. Me, I left. Mitchel A. Gufet, Chaim T. Gefült (Gulf Cham tête) I, Tim Leach (feu), G.T. Futt (Gimel)—ache, feet, caul might time fate gulch—Emil Guthaft, EC cheat (“Get film ‘U’!”), Thea, Meg (tu!), Cliff—“Luce !”—“– tätig?” Hm. Fiat luce. The GM Michael Tuft, e.g., fumeth, lit Cage (he flegmatic). Tu fleet; I’m caught, gum feet, I latch fee (tight maul)—C chime E FLAT –
   “Gut, magic.” Flu, teeth felt each gum, it mulch ‘tea!’ if get matt glue.
Chief: “Tee? Milch? Gut fate.” Ich: “Left Guam?”
   “Guam? Flee, titch.”
Ému, light: “Facet gift: Cheam lute.” Melt ice, hug Taf.
   “Get Thai flu, mec.” Thug.
   “Calif, meet Ute.”
   “Camel! Fight Liège fut-match?”
   “Fulham.”
   “Get cité! Mac, lute-thief, get Mica.”
Heft, lug: lame. Cute fight, Helmut Git-face.
   “Teufel! GI match.” (Helmut GI facet.)
   “T.E. Hulme GI—fact.” Emit laugh, etc.
   “Fie! Fetta, milch!” Gag, hit, elect Muffet, huge Tamil-cum-Celt, the gai Flem (if huge).
   “Acht”—eight—“flame—cut huge lattice” ( mf—hemi-flat, e.g….)

– CUT –

GROWL, MAN, DOZE
Famagusta: “Emma, Goan rugs!” Fado?”
   “Waltz?”
Waltz, Magus of Armagedon.

* * *

LETHE? CAM?
Tu, fig, feel chit gamut. Etch glue, Fatima.
   “Get Michel fût, Lech!”
   “I’m aft—get, uh, multi-facet egg, Alf. ’Chute time!”

Lethe magic fut a mad fatso mangl-wurzel, o! Sumo golf Wang art amazed Adam: ‘De Gulf War A to Z Song.’ (‘A to Zed’ Adam sang—low, gruff…)

   “Alec!”
   “Tué! might Hume…?”
   “Legit?”
   “Fact. Fichte male – ”
   “ – Gut. Hegel?”
   “Mufti cat.”
   “Teach mule gift, lift chute game—time gulf? Teach Tati ‘Le Mug Chef’ film – ”

– HUGE TACET –

‘The Age’ cut film: Wagga zoom lens fraud, Tam O’Douglas (fart), amaze, gnaw, fume, a gonad orgasm waltz. Tut, Meg, Chile FA (Fitch™ League) face tilth. Muge, täglich fumet, Gaelic hem-tuft helmet.
   “I/c fag, tu? Flegm hue…”
Città flea might cute flute game itch. O Mozart! a mad Walsegg? (fun—Armed Man walz, Faust go-go…)
   “Lime?”
   “Faugh!” (etc.)
   “Tuft eagle, Mitch? MITCH—T’ FUELAGE!”
Mute. “Ach, fliegt.”

Été macht flug if huge elm—(aitch) ’uge theft claim—mucilage theft?? – felt heat. Mug, i/c the fug climate, lift them.

Ague. Cliché, fat gem, tu Che amulet gift, Ulm eight-facet:

A fat Magus’ long word maze.