There has been a murder at the Maison de la radio in a musical instrument.
– That’s it.
– By the way, there was a mistake. You wrote “in a musical instrument”, you should have written “with a musical instrument”.
No, that was it. In a musical instrument.
The above was translated dialogue from the television show, “Astrid,” available on PBS. When I was in California in December, my friend Joan Ishibashi told me the series has an episode about a pipe organ. As soon as I returned home, I started watching the show and was hooked after the first episode in the first season. The pipe organ episode is the fourth in the second season.
Astrid is French detective show whose protagonist, played by French-Norwegian actor, Sara Mortensen, is a woman on the autism spectrum whose incredible memory is key to solving crimes with police captain, Raphaëlle Coste, played by Lola Dewaere. The crimes are complex, the dialogue is engaging, and the stories most interesting. My particular interest in the show is that whenever Astrid is pondering possible solutions to the problem at hand, she usually plays Bach!
Here’s a synopsis of the plot: In a large auditorium a young woman called Pauline Fauvelle is practising on a concert organ – it’s Bach’s Toccata and Fugue, BWV 565. She seems to be on her own. During the practice she notices that one of the notes doesn’t play properly, so she goes to investigate. As she goes, she encounters a man whom she knows, called Jacques Leibnitz; he looks unwell and she asks if he is all right. He says he is just coming back from his inspection. The woman goes to the swell box where the pipe system is located, and as she does so we notice that there is a peephole in the otherwise-enclosed chamber, giving a view of the console at which she plays. Suddenly sees the body of a man, Hugo, lying amongst the pipes.
A synopsis of the entire episode may be found here.
This particular episode tries to explain a lot of musical terms, and the writers try to use laymen’s terms to explain the organ, which are sometimes laughable or even wrong!
In an organ, every note has a pipe. If a note from the console does not come out, then the answer
lies into the keyboard, where all the mouthpieces are. [This is just plain wrong! The “mouthpieces” are in the pipework.]
I’m practicing a complex Bach recital. Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor. It’s the most popular organ piece in the world. It demands a lot of work. [The Toccata and Fugue is the most well-known, for sure, but in all honesty, it’s a piece I give my beginners to play!]
It is the person supplying the wind to the corresponding set of pipes of the instrument by manipulating the bellows. [This was the dialogue when Bénédicte Grélin, the registrant, introduces herself to the police captain, Raphaëlle, and Astrid. A registrant is a person who pulls the stops, not someone who manipulates the bellows!]
At one point in the show, I got really excited because I recognized the particular edition of Bach that was held by the organist—the Marcel Dupré edition! It was the very first edition of Bach my teacher, Norman Söreng Wright, had me purchase—since he had been a student of Dupré for six years!
Nowadays, these editions are considered overly-edited, and Dupré added many slurs where none existed in Bach’s original manuscripts. Dupré told me that he had his students add in all the fingerings — he did not do those himself. These days, serious students use “urtext” editions — music that is free of editors’ markings.
In the television episode, the cause of death turned out to be an infrasound generator which emitted a low-pitched sound whenever a “fermata” was played. As Chris Jenkins writes in his review of this episode: The mechanics of his case struck us a bit unlikely – where did Bénédicte learn to make an infrasound emitter? How did she know about Leibnitz’s particular heart device? – but it all rattles along harmoniously enough, and we all learn something useful along the way – like, don’t sit too close to the organ at a Bach recital.
Hahaha!