"Old Songs and Memories of Fathers Are Important": Music and Memory in Tigana

This is an undergraduate paper by Claire Fried Huffaker written for a course taken at the University of Calgary.

Music and memory are inescapable in Guy Gavriel Kay's novel Tigana. In some scenes they are linked, while in others they function alone. How characters respond to these two connected ideas is central to their fate at the end of the novel. By tying music and memory so closely to the characters, Kay stresses the need for harmony, for passion to be tempered by reason, and for purpose to be softened by compassion. Only those characters who achieve a balance between music and memory survive.

From the prologue to the epilogue, music is present. One of the often-used motifs is that of the trillia, the song bird that heralds most major events in the novel. Beyond this, music serves a number of functions. It is a shared medium, drawing people together across societal and national boundaries. Ordinary citizen and nobles, merchants and priests, all are moved by the beauty and the familiar message of the mourning rites sung for Duke Sandre (48). Music also provides escape and an outlet for overwhelming emotions. Devin wonders if anyone else understands how important music is to Alessan, noting that when the Prince set down his pipes he was "laying down his release, taking up his burdens again" (507). Finally, in Kay's world, songs are the oral histories of the various city-states. They record great deeds and preserve cultural characteristics. Whether reminding Senzians of their Ducal past (709) or Certandans of their ancient feuds with the Quileians (347), music puts words to memories.

The positive force of music can be twisted when isolated from memory. Some characters manage to immunize themselves against everything but the sound and the song. "It's just a performance," Eghano states. "We do what we always do. We make music. We move on" (48). For the people of Astibar, during the three nights of the Festival of the Vines, the singing and dancing allows them "to pretend it was sensuous, decadent Senzio" (63). The memories the music invokes are not true ones, because they feign a connection to a culture that is not theirs and thus provide only a temporary escape from their daily lives.

Erlein shows most clearly how corrosive it can be to sever words from their context. The Senzian wizard-turned-harpist hides from the Tyrants, forever living in fear that they will uncover who and what he really is. He no longer listens to what he plays. To do so risks accepting the truth about how he and his countrymen have abdicated their freedom. "Cloaked in bitterness and shadows of night," (339) Erlein does not even acknowledge Alessan's grief-inspired gift of Senzio's music. By acting of his own will to save Catriana, he begins again to rejoin his music with its meaning. Alessan acknowledges this by returning the wizard's freedom.

As harmful as it is to separate music from the memories which underpin it, cutting memory off from the compassion, solace, and shared nature of music may be even more destructive. Of the various characters consumed by their memories, Catriana is the least damaged. She, at least, has some musical outlet, although it does not come easily to her and she has to "concentrate" (34) when she sings. She envies Devin the gift of music she knows she lacks. What she does have is the burning desire to make amends for her family's failure to protect Tigana. Her father escaped before the cataclysmic last battle; she cannot rest until she fixes that betrayal. Her obsession with this memory leads her to take repeated risks in the name of "redress" (684), until the only solution she sees possible is her death. When Erlein rescues her, and she finally understands that her value to others, particularly Alessan, is not based on the past, then music becomes a true and accepted part of her. "It seemed to Catriana in that moment as if that newborn trialla in her soul began to sing" (703).

Baerd and his sister are both driven by what Dianora calls the "twin snakes of memory and hatred" (634). Their memories consume them, leaving little room for anything but the past. Certainly there is no space for music. Baerd honestly cannot understand Alessan's need to play his instrument. With limited outlets for their emotions, trapped as they are in a time of waiting, they can find no solace for the images and emotions that consume them.

Baerd is "defined by his need for solitude and the silent play of memory" (599). His single-minded concentration on the past causes him to roam alone at night, "reaching out or back or inward all the time towards a release that was ever and again denied" (382). Three things save him in the end: his relationship with Alessan, his conviction of the rightness of their actions, and the battle on Ember Night in Certando. When he fights and, most importantly, understands the nature of what he fights, he begins to be healed. Finding Elena is part of the healing, as she finally gives him an alternative to the memories of his sister. While Baerd never does turn to music, he does find art. In a direct connection to his father, he looks forward to a future spent working with stone as he rebuilds the cities of Tigana.

Dianora is driven by the same memories as Baerd, but she lacks even his incomplete outlets. Sequestered in a harem, cut off from everything but a world revolving around Brandin (the very source of her torment), she is being torn apart. Only her memories and her enemy exist for her. Brandin's actions and her reactions effectively have severed all music from her life, even the simple songs of the triallas. Unable to join the two irreconcilable parts of her life, Dianora finally comes to believe that "hers was not a life meant to be made whole" (617). Her death is inevitable because the unrelenting memory of all she has done and seen in her life cannot allow her to live.

Dianora's death is the tragedy of the victim caught in the middle and unable to escape. Brandin's death is his own doing. He chooses to elevate memory at the cost of music. He has turned his back on the songs of his own country, and on his own history, by his decision to remain in Chiara until the last Tiganan is gone. This has placed Ygrath in a tenuous position. Brandin had not intended to divorce himself from his kingdom, or its music, but that is the result of his actions. In the novel, the only time Ygrathans make music is in the military camp on the eve of the final battle at the Deisa River.

More serious, because it is deliberate, is his revenge on Tigana. In the name of his son, in the memory of his son, he murders Tigana's music. It is not an accident that a poet and a harpist attempt to assassinate him. Isolla brands his actions unnatural and warns him "there is a price to be paid" (252). The link between music and memory, and the destructive consequences of dividing the two, is clearly made by Kay. Rhun, acting for the Brandin, hacks feverishly at the Ygrathan harpist's dead body. "'Music! Stevan! Music! Stevan!'" Rhun shouted obsessively, and with each slurred, ferocious articulation of the word, his slender, jeweled court sword went up and down ... 'Music,' Rhun said one last time, softly, with unexpected clarity" (256).

Only Devin and Alessan combine the passion and expression of music with the purpose and meaning of memory. The young singer best illustrates the symbiotic relationship between music and memory. "Memory was a talisman and word for him, gateway and hearth. It was pride and love, shelter from lost: for if something could be remembered it was not wholly lost" (112). And when he learns of Avalle of the Towers, his birthplace, "there was music in Devin's mind again, with that name" (115). Too young to remember the fall of Tigana, but old enough to be a part of it, Devin links the remaining generations, just as he links music and memory.

Alessan is the embodiment of the two ideals. Both memory and music are a part of him, to his soul. Because of the music he is able to see more than just his own loss. Music has led him across the breadth of the Palm and given him an understanding of the people. Their songs have taught him their history, their strengths, and their weaknesses. These insights have bred compassion. As for memory, he is memory to the remaining Tiganans. He is their only hope, and it is for them and his father and the people who died at the Deisa River that he pursues freedom. Memory gives him purpose. Alessan acknowledges these two strains in Rovigo's home when offers a toast "to memory" and "to music" (144). The memory of Tigana is a blade to his soul (152), but music is a balm.

Just as music and memory are joined, so are the ideas they represent connected to a broader theme of Tigana. By focusing on their combined importance, Kay brings emphasis to the notion of the whole being as important as the one. Alessan's struggle to defeat Brandin evolves into an effort to unify the people of the Palm. As the fist gains strength through the clenching of its individual fingers, so to does the battle against the Tyrants gain strength when city-states no longer are pitted against each other.

In the final battle to win sole control of the Palm, the metaphor of music and memory plays out on a grand scale. Alberico has neither music nor memory. His territory is mocked for its lack of culture (10). Brandin assails him for lacking true purpose. "He wants the Emperor's Tiara, everyone knows it, but he doesn't want if for anything. He only wants" (714). As a leader, Alberico fights only for himself and, therefore, is doomed to fail.

Brandin has memory, but no music. In seeking to preserve the memory of his son's death with the destruction of the memory of Tigana, he perpetuates an unnatural act. When he finally understands the need to integrate the Palm into one new nation, his actions come too late. Brandin cannot, and would not, change the past. Thus his past, with the return of memory and free will to Valentin, defeats him.

Only Alessan combines the soul and compassion of music with the memories of all the people of the Palm. He has learned that just as music and memory must be shared if they are to be a positive force, so must freedom. Because of this understanding, he is worthy of victory. At the end of the novel, Alessan succeeds because he is the one who truly can lead the way into a better future.

Works Cited

Kay, Guy Gavriel. Tigana. Toronto, ON: Penguin Group, 2005