This critic went to the Old Willow on Tuesday to watch some goslings honk, and intends to be honest about that. The annual spring recital drew perhaps forty waterfowl, four dragonflies, and one coot. The coot, it should be recorded, arrived for the seeds and stayed for the duration. This critic noted the fact and approved of it.
The programme came from the Reed-Bed Subcommittee on Cultural Matters, a body whose existence this gazette had until Tuesday declined to take seriously. Eleven short pieces, all of them in honks of varying pitch and length, were announced by the Clerk in the minutes before the first one:
- Overture: A Short Statement (attr. the smallest gosling)
- Three Thoughts on a Dandelion Seed
- Impression of a Reed in Wind
- Song for a Heel, Remembered
- Interval (brief, accidental)
- A Suite for Wading, in Four Movements
- Short Honk, Shorter Honk, Honk of Some Length
- Air for a Passing Swan
- Meditation upon the Hour Before Dinner
- Finale: Everyone
- An Encore, Unplanned
The overture, credited with great ceremony to the smallest gosling, ran well past its advertised length and stalled once, when the performer appeared to lose her place. She found it. The piece resumed in a slightly different key. This critic holds that all openers should begin exactly so.
Three Thoughts on a Dandelion Seed was the early standout, its second thought in particular, which arrived after a silence the performer held a beat longer than seemed safe and which the entire second row received with a kind of respectful preening. Impression of a Reed in Wind was sincere and could have used a longer wind. Song for a Heel, Remembered, topical given the week and freighted with more feeling than a heel has any business carrying, was performed by a gosling known in private circles as Hettie. She was given a length of pondweed afterward and ate it where she stood.
Then the interval. It was occasioned by a heron, which arrived unbidden at the edge of the programme and stood there. The Clerk rose, the heron withdrew, and the interval was declared, after the fact, intentional. A second heron, possibly the same heron, kept its distance for the rest of the evening. The Clerk has asked this gazette not to speculate, and on this one occasion this gazette will oblige.
The Suite for Wading held the finest close-voiced honking this critic has heard all season. Short Honk, Shorter Honk, Honk of Some Length was an essay in form, in its title and its execution alike. Only one piece suffered, and through no fault of the performers. No swan passed during Air for a Passing Swan. This rather altered the effect, and there was nothing anyone could do about it.
Finale: Everyone was fine, and loud. A reviewer at the lily pads filed the identical phrase without consultation, which this paper takes as a mark of unanimity rather than of laziness. The encore was demanded by the coot in a manner that allowed no refusal. It began as one sustained honk. The honk was joined, by no agency this critic could trace, by every performer and most of the audience. The programme will likely record the result as “Crescendo.” This critic has no better word for it.
After, the ensemble took its pondweed and conferred with the Clerk about next year. The bill is already rumoured to hold something longer: a piece for two honkers in close harmony. The Clerk could not confirm it, having drifted off mid-sentence.
This critic arrived expecting form. He left having met the art, and is still slightly surprised by it. “I came for the politeness,” he would tell you, if pressed, “and the politeness was the least of it.”