((:):)::

It went sort of like this. At the count of two, ten asounders led by the eldritch priest began intoning a thoroughly notated melody that ended up adopting—when accurately rendered—the feel of a more or less loosely rubatoïd endeavor. The way it disingenuously presented itself as an aimless reverie while being exactingly notated effortlessly tripped a line of fanciful speculation. Perhaps it was a ruse, akin to those byzantine “transcriptions” (or recodings) of Romantic music which quantize the rhythmic fluidity typical of an expansive interpretation to the nearest intelligible (just noticeable) division. (Dynamic gradients and accentuation schemas were also subject to such rationalization.) Accordingly, if every notational detail is punctiliously respected, a fully expressive performance magically materializes. Such transposition remaindered bizarre potentials. X recalled Artur Schnabel’s annotation of the late Beethoven Piano Sonatas which imposed a convoluted layer of tempo fluctuations altogether absent from the urtext, in sympathy with a particular epochal disposition. An infinite regress type of logic prevailed, wherein a performer committed to the capricious pianist’s revisionism would at once have to reconcile the original notation with this added layer, while inescapably adding a third constraint layer reflective of the discrete historical period in which this re-revisionism is taking place. And so forth.

Anyway, at this point in the ritual, a striking metamorphosis began taking hold. We had been at it for a while, and adherence to the melody had remained fairly strict but for the occasional wrong note impelled by misreading or confusion as to whether a pitch was natural, sharpened or flattened. Understandably, the perfunctory briefing induced a cautionary chill, which had mandated an orthodox approach. Now entrances were perceivably sloppy, but no longer from carelessness. The priest’s invocation was beginning to take effect, not by dint of instructional fidelity, but as fallout from the very materiality of the piece itself, its languorous pacing and unilinear idée fixe. The staggered impulses seemed destined to slough off what was becoming an uncomfortable inertia.

Something distinctly evil was transpiring.