The score

After the concert, during which the six musicians had worked from scores made, not from staves and notes, but arrangements of colour in a precise, timed sequence, the viola player forestalled the usual expressions of sympathy and surprise when we learned that he was completely colour-blind – and therefore, had needed to have his score marked over in pencil – by telling us that he could see many more shades of grey than those of us who weren’t colour-blind. Very obviously, I realised, we would never get to appreciate this fact.