In War Times by Kathleen Ann Goonan Page B

sure that this moment would always remain a high-water mark in his life.
    Without a word they headed for the neon blur of a coffee shop. After hanging up their snow-encrusted coats and stomping off their boots, they slid into a booth. The place smelled of burnt coffee.
    “What the hell would you call that?” asked Sam, after they’d sat silently for a few moments at the marred linoleum-topped table.
    “Parker told us. Music. Just music.”
    “Gillespie called it modern music, didn’t he?”
    Wink grinned. “It’s modern, all right. Modern, right out of this world. Bird said something about ‘making it new.’”
    “Making it new. Yeah. Needs to be done. Jazz was stultifying. So they’re doing it. But how?”
    “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out.” Wink leaned forward on his elbows and stared at the tabletop.
    The waitress slid a napkin, spoon, and coffee cup beneath his nose. “You want the coffee on your head or in the cup?”
    Wink leaned back and allowed her to pour steaming coffee into his cup as he rubbed bloodshot eyes. “They’re using two different scales.”
    Two different scales. Two coinciding events, which come from their own pasts, share a few beats of unison, and then diverge into their own futures . It sounded a lot like Hadntz’s model of time, if Sam’s interpretation was correct.
    “Decided?” The waitress tapped her pencil against her pad.
    “Well, look—honey, can I borrow that pencil?” Wink took it from her hand. “Thanks.”
    “Anything else?” she asked drily.
    “The forty-nine-cent special,” said Sam.
    Wink nodded. “Me too.”
    The waitress left.
    “Okay.” Wink wrote the notes of the scale of C major on a napkin—C, D, E, F, G, A, B. “You got these notes and everybody thinks of them in terms of a scale. They’re uniform notes, the same frequencies—”
    “The same chromatic event—”
    “Yeah. But in a different scale, in a different setting, so to speak, a chromatic event can take on a different meaning. A different color. I mean, like in the scale of C, G is your fifth—the fifth note from C.”
    “Yeah.”
    “So if you flatten the G, it’s the same distance from both C’s. It’s called a trichord.” He drew a line between the F and the G and labeled it G-flat.
    Sam visualized the black and white keys of the piano, heard them in his head. “Okay.”
    “So think of the scale of G-flat.” He wrote on the napkin, G b , B b , C, D, E, F…
    “Well…”
    “Here.” Wink shucked his cornet from the cloth bag and played the scale of C major. “Now, G-flat. Now, the entire thirteen tones.” He gave them a quick run-through. The notes reverberated in the small room, hanging in the air for a second before fading.
    “It sounds…Asian.”
    “It’s the chromatic scale. Bird mentioned Stravinsky. His compositions use chromatic scales.” Wink put his trumpet to his lips and took a deep breath.
    “Put that away, mister,” said the waitress, sliding their plates in front of them. “You’re disturbing the customers.”
    “That bum?” asked Wink, nodding at a scruffy man bent over a cup of coffee at the lunch counter.
    “It bothers the cook.”
    “Genius at work,” said Wink, but he bagged the cornet. “Do you hear it now?”
    Sam nodded. “A scale frames a note—frames a chord. Gives it a certain sound. A certain feel. A certain resolution .”
    “Right. And?”
    “You frame the same note with a different scale, it’s like…seeing the same thing from a different perspective.”
    Wink nodded. “It’s like you’re setting the notes free. It still makes musical sense, but in a whole new way. You’re hearing every note in a whole new light. Other composers besides Stravinsky have done it. Not often, though. I’ve never heard it in jazz. These eggs are cold. Waitress!”
    “They were hot when I brought them,” she said from a stool at the lunch counter, and continued to page through the newspaper.
    “So you’re really