The multiple meanings of the word “note” are themselves noteworthy, especially given that NicheMTL habitually subtitles these articles, “notes on” this or “notes on” that — not least including this latest note, which is self-reflexively subtitled: “notes on notes.”

First, there are literal notes, to which the subtitle refers. The written word is defined as a note. Notes scribbled in class. Notes stuck to the fridge, or the calendar. Notes in passing. The subtext of using “notes” as opposed to, say, an essay or a report, is its fleet-footedness and improvisatory character, like notes jotted during a lecture, or in a police interrogation. Quickly, efficiently.

Then, there are musical notes. These notes are also written forms — that is, notational — which are audible and understood to us as discrete sounds, the note of middle C, or G#, for instance. We conventionally speak of these notes as sitting on a chromatic scale of twelve distinct units, the notes on a piano, the notes upon which the vast majority of Western music is composed.

Notes describe smell and taste, too. Coffee, for example, is often thought to exhibit a “note” of chocolate, or vice versa. Certain flavourful notes, just like certain audible notes, complement each other, and others seem dissonant. We never know, however, which notes are going to taste or smell pleasant, or harmonize, until we put them together in resonance with one another.

This presupposes the singularity of notes. We think of notes — whether olfactory, flavourful, audible, or legible — as individual units of dimension, infinitely divisible, but irreducible, beyond being constituent of more notes.

A note scrawled on a blackboard has a definite quantity of information, just as a piano note corresponds to a definite musical frequency. Yet, as isolated as notes appear, we only define them in relation to other notes, one note in opposition, or conjunction, or relation to another. Therefore, no one note ever exists alone, a reassuring thought in a world comprised of seemingly solitary, remote parts.

I started thinking again about notes this past week, during the first of two sold-out Alexandra Stréliski concerts at Place des arts, a flawless performance at which there seemed to be no false notes. But what is that anyway — one false note? How can any note be considered wrong?

There are eighty-eight notes on a traditional piano keyboard. That is, eighty-eight keyboard keys which trigger one of twelve notes across a little more than seven octaves.

Obviously, there are no wrong notes on a piano. It depends upon the song. Although some notes are far more frequently used than others. The extreme notes, resting at the ends of the spectrum, are played only seldom and very deliberately. We have modified standard pitches over the years as well, tuning slightly upwards over time.

The scientific measurement of a note is one hertz, equal to its wavelength per second. In other words, a note depends upon its place in space and time, like a pyramid of cards, supporting and warping itself simultaneously.

In fact, infinite notes must exist, because there is always another note between notes. This is not the case, however, with linguistic notes. There is a finite number of letters in the alphabet. An exact number of words in a language. And yet, the combinations are endless.

Pleasant combinations of musical notes are what we call chords. So, it was apt that Stréliski invoked a “crack in everything”, the famous quote by Leonard Cohen, another noteworthy Montreal artist who filled the same auditorium with pleasant notes. In his most well-known song, “Hallelujah,” Cohen sings of a “secret chord that David played, that pleased the Lord.”

What does this mean?

David was the harpist introduced in the Book of Samuel, who banished King Saul’s supposedly evil spirits during spells that we might today consider on a sliding scale in severity, from panic attacks, to epileptic seizures, to paranoiac fits.

Something about the melody of David’s harp managed to calm the king’s disturbed mind. Just as something about the combination of Cohen’s words has struck a profound chord in millions of people, comforting troubled souls in troubled times. Just as Stréliski’s notes struck a chord last Wednesday night for thousands of fortunate Montrealers who were in the same place, on the same wavelength, at the same time.

The Book of Revelation is the ultimate of the Bible’s “notes,” so to speak, which describes in allegorical language the world’s destruction and redemption. It, too, is a combination of notes that inspires and terrifies its readers.

In Chapter 14, the text tells of a “new song” that redeemed people sing, which precedes the end of God’s wrath on Earth. I could not help but hear this new song in every note of Stréliski’s performance, in each chord that cleansed the air and saturated it with such pleasant sounds that for one moment it seemed as if peace on the planet was possible, within reach, that all it would take was the right combination of notes, of words, hammered out from a keyboard, revealing the secret chord that might deliver us from evil forever.

I wrote about the centrality of the keyboard to Western music in my book, Mad Skills, coining the term “Claviocentrism” to define the phenomenon. Why we have chosen the piano and its particular frequencies to gather ‘round is arbitrary, mysterious, but nonetheless real. For reasons unknown, or unexplainable, we resound most with the piano, an instrument with a remarkably limited number of notes that it can reproduce. But their combinations are familiar and novel all at once. We recognize them, and yet they delight us every time.

There is no such thing as a dishonest note. And nothing false about any individual frequency. We merely have to strike the correct chords.

There is no such thing as a wicked word. And nothing false about any literary unit. We merely have to find the right combination of them, the precise notes, the hidden hallelujah chorus.◼︎