"Wasn't that a smooth insertion?"
We erupt in helpless laughter, some of us bellowing, howling, and doubled over. This is Annie Fuchs' Music History course, and she's an idiot. She's been trying for several lessons to involve us in the intricacies of the tropes and neumes of ancient music. She began the semester with Gregorian chant. She touched on the birth of notation. Now she's trying to show us how into the plainchant more complexities were introduced by the "insertion" of tropes. I recall this without consulting Palisca, so her teaching cannot have been totally futile. Describing her as an idiot is unfair. She was nervous and inept. Her nervousness made her dangerous with a tone arm. She'd try to get the record on the turntable just where she thought it should go, and instead of a zen release, she'd hold on too long, shaking like a leaf, and the thing would go skirting across the sea of vinyl. We'd hear the screech of damaged LP and titter. When her malapropisms resulted in a corker of a closing line, we were thralls to the 'found' stand up comedy. We eventually laughed the poor woman to tears, and she quit. I was in the Dean's office over this. That's not my purpose in relating this aspect of the Boston Tales.
I mentioned that Justin Van Dyke, the genius boy accompanist (he was older than the rest of us by a year or so, but was always young looking, strong and tall), was my classmate. When we first spoke, it was of this class that we spoke. The topic was the time I went out on a limb with Ms. Fuchs over the actual function of the comic finale in the Opera Buffa. Trying to piece my argument together now after all of these years is tricky. For starters, the Opera Buffa is a comic form. Nobody dies, nobody moves, nobody gets hurt. There is a lot of singing over top of one another in these finales; each character, usually about four (a quartet), has their bit to sing, and each bit is usually at odds both as plot element and musical element to the others'. To burlesque it, without the music: one character is singing 'I love you with all my heart, with all my heart,' while opposite another sings, 'it's you that I can't stand, can't stand.' Then, added to this disjointed duet, a tenor in a ton of velvet will chime in, 'the marriage bells are ringing, sweetly chiming on this morning.' Finally, just when this side splitting dysfunction has gone on long enough, from a balcony above the other three, a moving couch with a heaving bosom will chime in, 'sister, sister you are silly, silly sister, silly sister.' It's always a glorious weave of voices, designed to end the scene with discombobulation, and it's often called the 'confusion finale.'
I'm staring at Annie Fuch's test paper. It's multiple choice. "The comic finale in an Opera Buffa a), brings the dramatic action to a close, b), has no effect on the action, c), is designed to make the audience laugh, d), carries the dramatic action forward." I'm thinking, ok, what the hell is the psychology here? Any of these answers are technically correct. The question boils down to asking us to deliver some poorly understood (by Annie) idea that we were instructed to read in Palisca. I did not really read Palisca. (I found the textbook dry as a dust storm in Scottsdale.) I was going to have to take a crack at it with my own wits. My reasoning may have been as follows: The comic finale in the Opera Buffa brings the dramatic action forward to a close. The finale, obviously ends the scene, and as it's the Buffa, it is meant to make the audience laugh ruefully at the folly of the characters onstage. A deeper analysis might be expressed by the notion that the 'finale does not effect the action,' since, in the finale, the action, having been served to this point of climax by alternating aria and recitative, comes to a total standstill. It's in the recitatives that the action is really moved forward, since it is in these secco passages we learn what's what in the plot. All we, as audience members, can do is laugh and applaud. That was my reasoned thinking; but that would not serve where only one answer, allegedly the correct answer, was permitted. In exasperation I decided that 'does nothing to effect the action' was Annie's attempt at a joke. 'Makes the audience laugh,' well, that was too painfully obvious. It came down to 'moves forward or brings to close.' For the life of me, I couldn't choose. I rather suspected (as was correct) that she wanted 'move the action forward.' Instead, fuming at the foolishness of all of this, I circled both a and d. I appended a note to my paper: "the comic finale (d) carries the dramatic action forward (a) to a close!!! What a bogus question, Ms. Fuchs!"
The papers were handed out. This, if you're paying close attention, was very late in the semester. The opera buffa was well downstream of mediaeval chant. By this time, Annie's attendance had fallen way off. It might have gotten so bad that we were down to a quartet, not including Fuchs. One thing is certain, Van Dyke was present. He was stroking his chin, with a wry smile as I launched my objection out loud.
"Yes Calbraith?"
"I notice you took points off for my answer about the comic finale."
She comes over to me and take my paper in hand.
"Yes, what you wrote is clever, except for insulting my question, but I wanted (d) carries the dramatic action forward."
"You may have wanted that, but that's not correct."
"Did you read the textbook?"
"I've heard Rossini. They have already all made up their own foolish minds by the time they get to the finale. They just sing all over each other."
"But it's too obvious that the action comes to a close! It's the finale! Why would I want the obvious answer?"
"I don't know. Why would you?"
"I didn't!"
And now, a third voice enters the conversation. It's Entwhistle, the bassoon.
"I also fell into that trap. I picked (a). I want to change my mind."
I frame my entire argument in bold strokes.
"No matter what answer you picked, they're all in some way true."
I rise from my seat and begin to sing in my best buffa style, shaky baritone all the way:
"It brings the opera to a close, to a close. It might be plain for all to see, but it is true, it is true."
Not to be outdone, Entwhistle is up too.
"He's got a point, a brilliant point, we'll rock this joint, rock this joint."
The third and final classmate, a mousy woman in Music Education cannot resist now stepping way out of character. Like a Quaker Meeting, she feels she has a killer line and she gets up to join us in improvised (but quite competent, as I recall) song.
"A, B, C, D, any answer works for me!"
Annie Fuchs, purple faced and eyes brimming with tears of frustration throws my test paper to the floor. Had she been made of different stuff, she might have joined us, making a quartet mocking her multiple choice question. Instead, she brought the buffa scene to a close.
"You horrid children!" She was screaming, spitting mad, and crying. Her sobs punctuated each word before she flew out of the room and clattered down the hall to the Dean's office:
"I. Give. Up! You all can go to hell!"
We stood in the classroom in silence for a moment. We could hear Annie crying all the way down the hall. The big oak doors to Dean Streator's office slammed shut. The other two filed out, shrugging, embarrassed. This left me alone with Van Dyke, who had not moved a muscle during this entire abbreviated lesson. I sat back down in my seat, my face red with emotion. Van Dyke was still sitting with his right hand stroking his chin and he still had the same wry smirk. Now, he turned slowly in his seat to face me.
"I have to say that that was the most buffa thing I've ever seen."
He let a beat go by. I went to pick my test paper off the floor.
"Thanks, I think."
Such was my wan reply to this half-assed compliment.
"I've listened to all the bullshit you've had to say this semester, and I've thought, 'who IS this asshole?'"
I'm sitting back on my chair blinking at this slap in the face.
Van Dyke gets up and heads for the door. I follow him out. The sobs in the Deans office have abated by now. Out in the hall, I stand in Justin's tall shadow, looking up slightly to see if he has any more to say to me. He does.
"You know, this won't end here. You're fucked."
He was both right and wrong. I was summoned to the Dean's office by means of note in cubby hole mailbox. In his office, Dean Streator had Annie Fuchs sitting in one of his high-backed chairs and I felt my bowels turn to liquid.
"Have a seat, Cal."
I sat.
"I suppose you know what this is about."
"Yes, sir, I have an idea."
"I think you owe Ms. Fuchs an apology."
"I reckon I do."
I do my best to look Annie in her big brown eyes (she's not an unattractive older woman, I could see doing the nasty with Annie. Annie fucks...), and make this apology really work theatrically. I figure it's my one chance to avoid expulsion or something.
"I'm very sorry, Professor Fuchs."
Now Annie clears her throat. (Perhaps she, with her intuition at full, picked up my hint of desire.)
"Now, Cal, I thought it over and I decided that you were quite right. However, the disrespect was bad. Intolerable. But your point about the comic finale was really pretty good."
(Pretty good?)
"Is that all, Professor?"
Harry Streator looks a bit worried. He must be wondering where this is going. So do I.
"Well, I want Cal to know that there are no hard feelings. I also wish him all the best in his education. He's... You're (she turns back to me) a very bright young man. I got home and discussed the whole thing with my husband, who is, I have to say, a much more accomplished musicologist than I am (husband...damn). I tried to remember that improvised finale you three were singing. I explained it as well as I could to Tom, that's my husband..."
"Ms. Fuchs..." (Both Streator and I, in unison.)
"No wait. We both broke up laughing over it. It was the funniest darn thing! Really very funny. I guess I over-reacted. I realized, both me and Tom, my husband, that you were quite right. It WAS a stupid question..."
"Annie!" (Streator barks.)
"...I just have to finish, Harry. My husband told me that he thought you all understood the Buffa perfectly, and that you had the comic finale pegged as well as any little Mozarts. He said 'you must have taught them something.' He meant me, that I had taught you something. He said that 'I was going to make it as a teacher, because I'd gotten the Buffa across so well.'"
The next time I had the courage to go to Music History, the class had been taken over by a faggot Art History teacher from Boston College. He ditched music and taught us about Titian and egg tempera. That was all fine by me. It wasn't the last time I was to be hauled before Harry Streator on charges of inappropriate conduct. In the end, though, I got Harry's number big time.
