Cécile, I hope you’ll hear what I’m saying—
September 1783, Taskin and I carried a fortepiano through the gold gates of the Palace of Versailles. On the patterned black and white slabs of the marble court — Louis XVI, not yet thirty, in a wide, ostrich-feathered tricorn, cream culottes, and jacket. Marie in pale blue. Courtiers flanked the royals at a distance, in their finest stockings and wigs, ribbons and lace. Taskin and I set our instrument to the cobbles near the gates and waited.
Buoyed by hot air and tethered under grey clouds: an immense balloon of sky-coloured taffeta. Roped to the base of the cloth, a basket held a sheep called Montauciel, a duck, and a common red-and-green rooster. The Montgolfier brothers, who had built the aerostat, conferred at the balloon’s anchor. A sign from the monarch and the anchor released — the basket raised the animals. You, Cécile, soprano in the Opéra Royal, paused at the edge of the courtyard mid-fitting — everyone had stopped what they were doing and come from the palace to watch. Court astronomers and artisans clenched their hands, the Enfants de France kept still in the grip of their new governess, and the King and Queen — all faces lifted.
Cécile — or should I use your full name? Anne-Antoinette-Cécile Clavel, known as the soprano and diva Madame Saint-Huberty — you wore canary and amber stripes, and in memory, at least, outshone the Queen. Though no one looked at either of you — the Montgolfier aerostat strained under the clouds. The rooster crowed. The tailor, kneeling at your hem, let the pins fall from his mouth, and the young dauphin of France retrieved them.
After the balloon flew and sheep, duck, and cock became the first living beasts carried into the air (they were the first to crash as well, after the rope broke and the brothers chased the aerostat’s flight over the palace) Taskin and I picked up our fortepiano and followed you from the courtyard to the Opéra Royal. The largest theatre in Europe — another marvel of engineering and decorative refinement — it could seat an audience of over a thousand in its stacked galleries. The seats were empty when we arrived, with only set workers and a few members of the pit orchestra rehearsing. Above us, mirrors created an illusion of depth and reflected the warm light of the chandeliers. Woodwork, embellished with gilded fleurs-de-lys and wreaths of leaves, ornamented every surface. On the ceiling, Apollo prepared crowns in a pale sky, and a winged horse reared behind him.
Taskin and I set the fortepiano on stage; I raised the instrument’s lid. Your tailor, Cécile, went for the hem of your gown with his pins, and you ran your fingers over the ivory and ebony keys, brushed the Val di Fiemme spruce that composed the soundboard.
“Gravicembalo col piano e forte,” Taskin said. “A fortepiano, not a harpsichord. A new design. String sets replace plucked quill — hammers instead of plectra — and, as you can see, we coated the exterior with gold. Moulding, stand, corner rails, and box. A perfectly leafed and brushed rosette.” He pointed to the carved lattice that shielded the sound hole under the wire strings. “Burnished flutes on the legs and at the base of each foot add elegance.”
You played a chord. “Tobias,” you said to me. “You’ve gilded a lily. I adore it. It may stay.”
A lily—
Did I read too much into your praise, Cécile? Neither of us was that young — and you, already twenty-seven with one annulled marriage, supported yourself as courtesan. I loved you, you must have known that. Taskin and I both loved you. I suppose all your patrons loved you.
The tailor manoeuvered you to a mirror and bowed. “Voilà.”
You turned sideways, looking at yourself, and tugged at the breast of the gown. “Taskin, Tobias — you know this opera?” you asked. “Iphigénie en Aulide? Do you think the ancient Greeks wore panniers and corsets?” You waved aside an exasperated look from the tailor, the set builders, and said, “A redesign. A change in costume. Something plainer. Let that shock them.”
Have I told you, Cécile, how Taskin and I became friends? Instrument making via a heritage of cabinetry — my father, an ébéniste from the Low Country along the Rhine, sold oak tables, jewellery caskets veneered with tortoiseshell, gilt copper, and pewter. On the death of François-Étienne Blanchet II, my father had me decorate and gift an armoire to the family. Seeing the quality of our marquetry, Taskin — the new master of Blanchet Harpsichords — took me on as craftsman.
The Blanchets were instrument makers to the King, and with Taskin I was honoured to detail the soundboards and cases of clavichords and harpsichords (and later fortepianos) for the French court and the Institut National de Musique. Printed paper overlay, ebony naturals, Chinoiserie, silver gilt rails and moulding, elaborate painted landscapes — on such instruments Claude Balbastre and Armand-Louis Couperin, grandson of Couperin le Grand, composed their works.
You remember Paris. Mid-century, during the rush of sciences, arts, and industry, it was the innovative that rose. A new steam pump drew drinkable water from the Seine, street lamps lit the larger roads, Cassini de Thury mapped the topography of Paris, and the Observatoire de Paris mapped the distant planets. In music, the Viennese fortepiano was our turning point. We gutted and converted harpsichords from quill and plectra to soft leather hammers, heads that struck the string with varied force and allowed for change in volume. With Taskin, I built the best.
Although, these days — you would have to hurry if you wanted to view the instruments now, as in this new era France raises an Emperor and it’s rumoured the Conservatoire de Musique burns their keyboards for heat.
We might have continued to build the best—
What is progress, anyway? Why the human need to cleave a path into the future?
Almost ten years after the Montgolfier brothers flew their first aerostat, after Taskin and I presented you with our best work, we three — Taskin, you, myself — we were all in Paris. You had followed the royal opera, which had followed the royal family in fleeing Versailles — there had been a scarcity of bread, ransacking, violence, and the crowds had besieged the palace and pressed their demands upon the King—
Cécile, I find every draft of this letter riddled with excuses. I scrap the composition and rewrite. I start again. I keep getting it wrong. This time, let me just admit the friendship: Charles-Henri Sanson, headsman to the King, and later to the French Republic. Sanson and I met when Taskin, refusing to visit the headsman’s house to repair a harpsichord, sent me.
Sanson — executioner of France, red tunic and hood, the blood on his hands, the blood in his heritage. Infamous for his lack of hesitation and his precision with the sword. The condemned could expect a solid death from Sanson, so solid a death it was rumoured he enjoyed the work. But Cécile, he also played music and studied medicine — he could take a cadaver and give you the history of the man’s life through the injuries. His wife served pot pie and his sons had wit.
Sanson and I played music. I visited his home, and had him come to mine. How could I turn away his friendship? His requests? I was curious — as was Sanson; he requested to see the latest instruments built by me and Taskin at the shop.
The Blanchet shop in Paris — a mess: sheets of cypress clamped into shape on moulds (the bent sides of harpsichord and fortepiano cases); workbenches full of rosettes and cornices; crates of pins and leather and kapsels (forked ribbons of brass that would hold hammer-shanks on newer models). Long-toothed keys waited — aligned, sanded, and numbered — to be painted and installed. Nests of wire — spools of flattened gold tape, buckets of bleached cattle bones, sliced sections of ivory, paint, and soundboards illuminated with flowers and inscriptions (the ever popular dvm vixi tacvi mortva dulce cano — In Life I Was Silent, In Death I Sweetly Sing). Sawdust, locks, and other hardware, custom conductor’s batons, and, on that late evening, a fire in the woodstove, two glasses of wine, Sanson, and myself.