A Longer, Deeper Look
Jeremy Cooper, Discord
Fitzcarraldo Editions, 248pp, £14.99, ISBN 9781804272268
reviewed by Thomas Chadwick
Definitions of the word discord normally offer two meanings: the first, a general one that describes a difference or clash of opinions; the second, more specific, names a tension or clash between musical notes. In both, discord sits in assumed opposition to harmony, defined as agreement, be that between people or notes: harmony, good; discord, bad.
Within music, though, the terms meaning is not as simple as dictionary definitions suggest. Most music makes some use of discord to build tension ahead of a harmonious resolution in much the same way that novelists use pitfalls to support the conventions of a heroic narrative. Discord becomes a temporary state of strife from which the listener — or reader — can only hope to emerge, in theory the richer for it. So far, so Last Night of the Proms.
Yet, throw into the mix the fact that intervals in Eastern and Western musical traditions are distinct; that the appreciation of the relationship between intervals varies throughout history and across cultures; that much contemporary classical music, if not defined by, is at least interested in an exploration of the power of dissonance; and our understanding of harmony becomes culturally specific and discord becomes subjective. Rather than the undesirable, opposite of harmony, discord becomes a key device in any exploration of the structure and value of art.
Readers of Jeremy Cooper’s novel, Discord, can assume that the work is alive to the complexities of discord in both music and life. The novel follows a short collaboration between Rebekah Rosen, a composer, and Evie Bennett, a saxophonist, as they prepare a commissioned piece for the BBC’s proms. Both inhabit the world of contemporary classical music, albeit from different vantage points: Rebekah — older, jaded, lives in Devon — switched to composition due to a dread of playing in public; Evie — younger, exuberant, lives in Vauxhall — performs in football boots on borrowed instruments. These different vantage points set up a tension between the two characters that plays out in the novel’s narrative structure: each interaction that takes place in the course of the collaboration is told twice, once from each perspective, before a single, combined, chapter, marks the performance of Distant Voices, the piece they ultimately produce.
Amidst these parallel narratives the reader navigates the conflicts and contradictions between the two. Throughout the novel Evie is unconvinced by Rebekah’s indecision and anxiety; ‘good things blossom’, she notes ‘on commitment and energy’. Yet Evie does not break off the collaboration and finds small details in their interactions that challenge her views of the older woman, such as Rebekah’s interest in Chinese folk music or an anecdote about the Vespa Rebekah rode as a teenager. Rebekah, meanwhile, is immediately drawn to Evie — almost reaching out to stop her leaving at their first meeting — even if this affection doesn’t always reflect in her rude or secretive behaviour.
As the novel develops there are hints of common ground around which the two characters — and the collaboration — might coalesce. Both have lost fathers, both are at a turning point in their romantic relationships, both were given sewing kits by their mothers before attending the Royal College of music. The structure of the narrative, though, means that while the reader may be aware of the potential within the collaboration, for the characters such deeper connections are invariably missed: locked in their parallel perspectives, the novel seems not to allow them to cross.
Just as the two narratives fail to find a point at which to meet, for much — if not all of the novel — emotional and musical resolution proves elusive. During rehearsals for the final performance Evie tries to take Rebekah to lunch at the Magazine, the restaurant in the extension to the Serpentine gallery designed by Zaha Hadid. Rebekah has voiced her love of contemporary architecture throughout their interactions and Evie’s selection of the Hadid designed gallery is explicitly intended as an ‘architectural treat’. Rather than go for lunch, though, Rebekah explains that she doesn’t like Hadid – ‘too aeronautical for me. Too trendy, you could say . . . not my taste’. Evie is left confused, but later we learn that the real reason for Rebekah’s rejection of Hadid is not to do with the building but how Hadid’s career stands in contrast to Rebekah’s own: 'instead of a builder of eternal monuments she was the cautious, distracted, painfully indecisive composer of a handful of minor pieces of music.’
Even with the composition on the verge of performance, the characters struggle to communicate what they want to say. At times the novel seems to lose interest in the collaboration altogether. Both Rebekah and Evie appear in pursuit of something far beyond the thin boundaries of a new piece of music. Some of this is the basic fabric of daily life — partners, parents, children (or refusal of them) — but perhaps what Rebekah and Evie share is a deep curiosity that drives them to always take a longer, deeper look, before they carry on.
Discord is the fourth novel published by Cooper since he won the Fitzcarraldo novel prize in 2018 for Ash Before Oak. While each in its own way distinct the four novels share a preoccupation with the lived experience of art. Discord adds another discipline, music, to the previous novels focus on writing (Ash Before Oak), visual art (Bolt from the Blue), and film (Brian). An artistic life is commonly used as a shorthand for a set of aesthetic choices that frame a material existence: modernist furniture, well brewed coffee, neat rows of books; Cooper’s novels remind us that an artistic life is all about practice, a way of living: observation, questions, uncertainty.
As a material existence, an artistic life offers little more than the aesthetic trappings of bourgeois security; but as a practice, an artistic life is one of risk, chance, missed opportunities, discordant notes. The lived experience of art is a life where not everything comes off. The risk isn’t a failure in the corporate sense (poor sales, falling visitors, low EBITDA) so much as the failure by absence: even with all this effort it might be that nothing happens at all. The success of the public performance that frames the novel’s trajectory and marks its climax, stands alongside the narrative of a more complex artistic journey for both characters that asks whether success and failure are even the right weights with which to balance the value of artistic practice.
Within music, though, the terms meaning is not as simple as dictionary definitions suggest. Most music makes some use of discord to build tension ahead of a harmonious resolution in much the same way that novelists use pitfalls to support the conventions of a heroic narrative. Discord becomes a temporary state of strife from which the listener — or reader — can only hope to emerge, in theory the richer for it. So far, so Last Night of the Proms.
Yet, throw into the mix the fact that intervals in Eastern and Western musical traditions are distinct; that the appreciation of the relationship between intervals varies throughout history and across cultures; that much contemporary classical music, if not defined by, is at least interested in an exploration of the power of dissonance; and our understanding of harmony becomes culturally specific and discord becomes subjective. Rather than the undesirable, opposite of harmony, discord becomes a key device in any exploration of the structure and value of art.
Readers of Jeremy Cooper’s novel, Discord, can assume that the work is alive to the complexities of discord in both music and life. The novel follows a short collaboration between Rebekah Rosen, a composer, and Evie Bennett, a saxophonist, as they prepare a commissioned piece for the BBC’s proms. Both inhabit the world of contemporary classical music, albeit from different vantage points: Rebekah — older, jaded, lives in Devon — switched to composition due to a dread of playing in public; Evie — younger, exuberant, lives in Vauxhall — performs in football boots on borrowed instruments. These different vantage points set up a tension between the two characters that plays out in the novel’s narrative structure: each interaction that takes place in the course of the collaboration is told twice, once from each perspective, before a single, combined, chapter, marks the performance of Distant Voices, the piece they ultimately produce.
Amidst these parallel narratives the reader navigates the conflicts and contradictions between the two. Throughout the novel Evie is unconvinced by Rebekah’s indecision and anxiety; ‘good things blossom’, she notes ‘on commitment and energy’. Yet Evie does not break off the collaboration and finds small details in their interactions that challenge her views of the older woman, such as Rebekah’s interest in Chinese folk music or an anecdote about the Vespa Rebekah rode as a teenager. Rebekah, meanwhile, is immediately drawn to Evie — almost reaching out to stop her leaving at their first meeting — even if this affection doesn’t always reflect in her rude or secretive behaviour.
As the novel develops there are hints of common ground around which the two characters — and the collaboration — might coalesce. Both have lost fathers, both are at a turning point in their romantic relationships, both were given sewing kits by their mothers before attending the Royal College of music. The structure of the narrative, though, means that while the reader may be aware of the potential within the collaboration, for the characters such deeper connections are invariably missed: locked in their parallel perspectives, the novel seems not to allow them to cross.
Just as the two narratives fail to find a point at which to meet, for much — if not all of the novel — emotional and musical resolution proves elusive. During rehearsals for the final performance Evie tries to take Rebekah to lunch at the Magazine, the restaurant in the extension to the Serpentine gallery designed by Zaha Hadid. Rebekah has voiced her love of contemporary architecture throughout their interactions and Evie’s selection of the Hadid designed gallery is explicitly intended as an ‘architectural treat’. Rather than go for lunch, though, Rebekah explains that she doesn’t like Hadid – ‘too aeronautical for me. Too trendy, you could say . . . not my taste’. Evie is left confused, but later we learn that the real reason for Rebekah’s rejection of Hadid is not to do with the building but how Hadid’s career stands in contrast to Rebekah’s own: 'instead of a builder of eternal monuments she was the cautious, distracted, painfully indecisive composer of a handful of minor pieces of music.’
Even with the composition on the verge of performance, the characters struggle to communicate what they want to say. At times the novel seems to lose interest in the collaboration altogether. Both Rebekah and Evie appear in pursuit of something far beyond the thin boundaries of a new piece of music. Some of this is the basic fabric of daily life — partners, parents, children (or refusal of them) — but perhaps what Rebekah and Evie share is a deep curiosity that drives them to always take a longer, deeper look, before they carry on.
Discord is the fourth novel published by Cooper since he won the Fitzcarraldo novel prize in 2018 for Ash Before Oak. While each in its own way distinct the four novels share a preoccupation with the lived experience of art. Discord adds another discipline, music, to the previous novels focus on writing (Ash Before Oak), visual art (Bolt from the Blue), and film (Brian). An artistic life is commonly used as a shorthand for a set of aesthetic choices that frame a material existence: modernist furniture, well brewed coffee, neat rows of books; Cooper’s novels remind us that an artistic life is all about practice, a way of living: observation, questions, uncertainty.
As a material existence, an artistic life offers little more than the aesthetic trappings of bourgeois security; but as a practice, an artistic life is one of risk, chance, missed opportunities, discordant notes. The lived experience of art is a life where not everything comes off. The risk isn’t a failure in the corporate sense (poor sales, falling visitors, low EBITDA) so much as the failure by absence: even with all this effort it might be that nothing happens at all. The success of the public performance that frames the novel’s trajectory and marks its climax, stands alongside the narrative of a more complex artistic journey for both characters that asks whether success and failure are even the right weights with which to balance the value of artistic practice.