On a High Note by Bangalore’s Paul Fernandes and Peter Colaco, is 192 pages of a tongue-in-cheek parody, on western classical music.

From the ‘Overture’, which is the first chapter, right through to ‘Fine’, the final comical ending, On a High Note is a roller coaster ride for the eye and the funny bone, through the lens of music.

Bangalore has a strong colonial legacy of western classical music and Paul Fernandes and Peter Colaco plumb those musical depths to bring us, by their own admission— “a slightly inebriated introduction to western classical music.”

Peter Colaco is a perfect foil to Paul Fernandes’ cartooning genius. In this book Paul Fernandes is the star, with every page a paean to his comic genius.  On a High Note, is another great exposition of the powerful partnership between the duo.

Both have previously collaborated in another popular book, Bangalore: A Century of Tales from City and Cantonment, which was a display of Bangalore as they lived through its evolution in the last 50 years.

Talking to Paul about the origins of the book he says, “It started of with my sister Evie asking me to do some drawings for her music room in school— to interest and entertain her young students. It’s a subject of great interest to me, and soon I had a thick sketch book, overflowing at the brim with musical drawings and illustrations. It grew to be tangled, wild, overgrown and intriguing like the floor of a deep, dark forest. Peter carefully untangled and replanted these ideas into well planned fields with names— ‘The Beginner’s Guide’, ‘Performer’s Guide’, ‘Conductor’s Guide’ etc— pretty much as you see in the book now.”

In On a High Note, ‘Overture’ and ‘Beginners guide’, brought back my memories of learning the theory of western classical music in Loreto Convent, Shillong, under my personal “Fingerwhacker”,— a nun in a starched habit.

Teaching children

Explanations like what a ‘bar’ in music is, as against the parallel drawn of crochets and minims hanging out in a bar sipping drinks, would be an infinitely easier way to teach children the theory of music! So much more exciting, than the old fashioned method of poring over clean sheets of manuscript paper, with sharpened pencils and the hush of a ticking clock, in the school music rooms. Paul’s illustration of a ‘rest’ in a rocking chair or that a semibreve resembles a ducks egg, are similes a child could imbibe in a trice.        

Paul’s cartoons of explaining rhythm and pulse, in chapters three and four, would definitely invigorate boring theory classes. Music teachers with a sense of humour, would find teaching their wards the intricacies of understanding what Andante or Sforzando (or my absolute favourites)— Veloce and Animato means, a breeze with this book.

Music lessons are meant to be fun and what better way than throwing in Paul’s understanding of musical dynamics, to get a student chuckling and remembering his theory with ease.

Chapter five and the pages are filled with Paul’s delightfully wry sense of humour, about the ‘biodiversity’ of music, across the globe. And for those of us who do know a bit of music, the ‘rearrangement of all time classics’ in chapter seven, is a showcase of the pairs’ remarkable brilliance.             

The book is a great coffee table must-have for anyone who is a lover of western classical music. And, by the way, this is a book which even those with no musical background could enjoy.