As a Freshman student in Composition, I was required to perform in an ensemble. I didn't play an instrument other than piano, so I was signed up for the Conservatory Chorus. This turned out to be a favorite two odd hours weekly. The reasons for my enjoyment shifted over time, but the foundation was the entertainment factor provided by the conductor. It was led by a man we all parodied in our respect. He was an exotic fellow, an Eastern European. I don't recall the exact nationality. I want to say Romanian. It was something clearly provincial in the Eastern Bloc. He had an accent as thick as the Maine fog, and a funny way with English. He conducted rehearsals sitting in a swivel chair, a glorified bar stool on steroids. His name was Zoltan Eminescu, but we always referred to him as simply Zoltan.
To sing in Zoltan's chorus was to be in the middle of the general student population. To make the orchestra, either you had to play a rare instrument on the order of a double reed, or you had to survive the competition of the auditions. This was true of all of the Conservatory ensembles with the exception of the Chorus. The Chorus was the great catch-all. As I stood in the baritone section of the chorus, I was surrounded by others that had in some way, and for some reason, failed to get into a more exclusive ensemble. They were a rowdy lot. It took Zoltan's force of personality to keep a lid on it. Sometimes, though, the eccentricity of Zoltan's speech would bring the whole house down.
From the get-go, Zoltan's chorus had a learning curve. We rehearsed everything in what is called 'fixed do.' A word about Solfège. (I've mentioned it before, I think, but only as a course title. Now I need to offer a detail or two for the layman.) In languages other than English, the names of the notes are the syllables Do, Re, Mi, Fa, Sol, La and Si. What? No 'Tea, a drink with jam and bread?' No 'Ti.' As it turns out, the other, more involved system of Solfeggio requires an understanding of (and also, the existence of) a tonal center. Is it possible to really get this across to the layman without destroying the flow of my tale? A scale is a pattern of intervals arranged in a linear way. Up and down the scales we go. If we change the pattern of intervals, we change the flavor of the scale. We might transpose a scale, that is to say, start it out on a different pitch. We will play that pattern starting with, and ending with that pitch. Each place in the scale is called a scale degree. These degrees have names, of course. Everything in the language of music has some sort of name in some arcane foreign language. The 'fixed do' simply names the pitch. The 'moveable do' names the scale degrees. In later life, I learned that the choice was ethnic, but Zoltan had a rationale for using the fixed do that he had learned as a child that had nothing to do with ethnicity or habit.
"We use the so-called 'fixed do' solfeggio. We do this so that when we sing new music, that doesn't use the usual scales, we don't go crazy."
Titters at the pronunciation of 'crazy.' From behind me in the basses I hear,
"Crazy, Boris. Crazy." (That's 'boddiss', as in 'boddiss bad-enough.')
Zoltan ignores all chatter, always. he turns to the sandy-haired boy at the piano.
"Please, an 'a'."
The note sounds, and Zoltan sings in his nasty tenor:
"La, Si, Do, Re, Me, Fa, Sol, Laaaa. So there, you see. I don't sing, 'la, si, do-sharp, re, me, fa-sharp, sol-sharp, laaaa!"
We're soaking in this shit in Sight-Singing (called Ear-Training in the catalogue). If not for that, and walking around practicing singing scales and arpeggios like this, I might have died in Zoltan's Chorus. Instead, I learned. I got to like it, and used it all my life.
We sang all sorts of stuff. We sang chorales by Bach just to get the collective hang of the solfeggio. Mostly, though, we worked towards the performances that occurred twice a year near Semester's end. That first Semester of Freshman year, we sang a piece that Zoltan termed an example of "American Impressionism." My impression of it was not favorable. It was home-grown swill by some husband of some member of the staff, possibly the Receptionist, which flaccid harmonies, long droning passages, occasional clusters, aggregations of noise, and very little rhythmic interest. We put our 'fixed do' to a test. Other composers in the row behind me, the very ones I would later run headlong into as they outshone me and humiliated me, groaned audibly as Zoltan made us go over this or that lame bit again and again.
"I know that this is difficult. But we have to be a little correct, because Mr. Minor is going to be hearing this work for the first time. It very important...
Long pause for emphasis.
"...that composer hear...actually, the sound."
From behind:
"Veddy impotent. This is 'minor' international incident."
Zoltan then whipped through the pitches of a strident chord, singing in his oboe bleat the syllables in rapid fire. He turned to Ben, at the piano. (Ben, a Smith student, like me.)
"Play."
"Play what?"
"The chord. Measure 62."
"My part?"
"No, play theirs!"
"Uh, open score. Let me figure it out..."
"Listen to me. I sing. Bottom up... Re, Do-sharp, Fa, Si!"
From the piano, the chord sounds. Zoltan lifts his arm, and we sing.
"Yes! That's much better. Now, from 55!"
And so it went.
Bit by bit, a lexicon of Zoltanisms built up.
"Ear is for hearing, not ear ring."
"Keep up speed in tunnel, this is not time for energy crisis!"
"Allegro is fast, andante is 'half-assed.'"
"When you come in room, you sit down, zoom!"
"Come now, come just like cream!"
"You need coffee break so soon?"
"Girls, girls, what you been? Out sucking around?"
And, the one that really stopped rehearsal cold, because you can't sing and laugh at the same time,
"What? You all a bunch of skin-beaters?"
At length, before the concert we got to meet the diminutive composer, Minor. He appeared in the door when rehearsal of his drool was underway, and stayed as Zoltan yelled the syllables to another knotty chord over our horrible din. I saw him standing there, and only because I had not been there, in that awkward position myself yet, did I not feel sympathy. After a few more blasts and drones, Zoltan noticed the wan, thin man with his briefcase held in front of his pelvis.
"Come, come!"
In the fellow shuffled.
"What do you think."
"It sounds...good. It's coming together."
"My friends, let's start from the beginning and let Mr. Minor hear his piece."
He listened to us with his head down, his death grip on his briefcase never relaxing.
"Well. Any remarks for us?"
"Well, in general, it's very good. I think tuning is sometimes a problem. Especially in the long tones, as at (looking over Zoltan's desk at the open score) 34, through maybe...49."
From beside me:
"Do I hear 69, 69 anybody?"
Minor listened to us only for a few more minutes. At the next break, he bolted. Zoltan made a speech.
"It is very difficult to be composer. We encourage new music by performing it. It is not easy, and we may not like it or agree with it, but it is this that makes music a living language. Not a dead language. It is important for composers to hear, to have the opportunity to find out if the notes mean what they think. The great composers had orchestras and choruses and worked for Kings in the Courts of Europe, where they heard their music all the time. This is not possible now. Every time the Symphony sits down, sixty-odd men and women must be paid. No one can afford this kind of training. So. We importantly offer this opportunity here, and in our schools all over. it is very very important to the survival of music, culture, our musical culture. So I thank you all for your hard work. You make lots of jokes, but I know that is because the music is not easy, and it sounds unlike that you are familiar. You good kids, all of you. You will never forget this time."
There was a silence after this speech. Zoltan rarely went on so long. He was clearly dismayed at how short Minor's appearance had been. He knew that we had fairly represented the piece. Zoltan had a great ear. I always wondered about his sensibilities about new music. He chose pieces by locals, yes, but he had better locals to choose from. We never did any Randall Thompson or Daniel Pinkham, both New Englanders of some accomplishment. Yet I was persuaded, perhaps by this speech, that he would be worth a private lesson in composition. I asked him after rehearsal one evening if I might stop by with a violin and piano piece I'd been working on. I knew that he taught fiddle. Perhaps he would give me pointers.
That day came within the week. Zoltan was very accessible, and flattered to be consulted.
"Come in, my boy, come in!"
He had a huge corner studio. It smelled of cigar. It was full of piano and he had his fiddle in hand.
"Sit at piano, and give me my part."
I sat and played. he came in right on time and sawed away expertly. He let me get several pages in before he stopped.
"Calbraith, I have to stop you here. This is awkward and not, how to tell it, worth the effort. I can show you an easier way."
(He pronounced my name 'Calbrait.') I watched as he penciled in some notes, rearranging my voicing.
"See, there it is. You get the sound with half the work."
"Thanks so much, Professor Eminescu. That is solid practical advice. Just exactly what I was after."
"You're welcome. I bet you wonder what I think, yes?"
"Of course."
"I won't tell you. I think you have great talent, but you have much to learn. You are composing very well, I think, but you must find your own voice. Beethoven is long dead, and you can't touch him now."
"I've heard that before."
"Yes? Well, now you've heard it again, from me!"
The concert at which this Minor "Mass" was sung took place before the Christmas break. It proved an odd way to pass the week of Beethoven's birthday. (Sixteenth of December.) When we got into the theater and rehearsed with the orchestra, I realized how wise Zoltan Eminescu had been about the need for composers to gain experience with the actual forces in actual halls. The orchestral writing (as if I knew what that term implied at that point) was very muddy. The piano playing those clusters and aggregates of pitch had given us our pitches and then gotten out of the way by virtue of tonal decay. The orchestra just kept making the racket and our parts became easier in one way: we could always hear our pitches. For the most part, though, since the orchestra often doubled our parts and thus was in the same register and in the way, we felt drowned out. We yelled our way through that "Mass," and in the end, were beaten. Eminescu kept asking for less volume from the strings with his palm flat and pushing at the imaginary surface below. There were consultations with Minor the mouse about muting the brass. Mutes were employed. I kept hearing people around me mutter ugly things like, "mass of crap."
We got all suited up, dolled up, in our tuxes and dresses. We shuffled out onto the risers. There was tepid applause from out in the dim house. The orchestra was acknowledged by Eminescu. They rose from their chairs in the pit. More tepid clapping. The concert master played his "a." All we like sheep play our pitch and tune our fiddles, flutes and clarinets and brass following suit. Then the hush. Zoltan opens his score. We open ours and perch them in front of us like sun reflectors. He lowers his head for a moment, as if praying to the muse. Then, raising his right hand, his baton gives the downbeat while that left hand of his is already flat palming them down in volume. That first dramatic chord is followed by a patch of string harmonics. The glassy sound is unearthly, but there are also the sounds of rustling programs and somebody out there in the audience has a hacking cough. The bane of Boston is the winter cold. You can take that to mean the temperature and the disease. Our first entry breaks the glaze and we are off. Meet you all again at the double bar. The applause at the end is not enthusiastic. I feel bad for Alphonse Minor as he takes his bow out there amid his fellow sufferers. His hands are loose by his sides, his suit rumpled. Without his briefcase, he doesn't know how to stand. He bows at us, not at the majority of the audience. he has turned his back on their opinion. Zoltan signals the orchestra to stand, etc., etc.
Out on the street in the bitter night air, I hear my name called by a female voice. I turn around halfway to see Mara running up, almost unrecognizable in her Winter gear.
"Hey Cal, congrats. You all sound fabulous."
"Thanks, babe. I don't think I've seen you in your parka ever. What's been going on? Since the walking season ended, you've been scarce."
"Well, I haven't been seeing you around much either. I assumed you were busy with all your other women."
"Oh. Yes, they just won't leave me alone."
"Seriously, we've been seriously busy. I've got a concert coming up. I'm in the big piece. I do wish you'd come."
"Absolutely! All my dear ones are in it, including you!"
"It's true! Rodney, Xenia, that whole crowd. They look great."
"Great."
"Well. here's my stop. I'll se ya..."
She disappears back down the steps into the bowels of the Dance Division. He walks on to the Boylston Street T and beats it out for Litman's dorm. There's a sexcapade and a nosebleed right up ahead. Back and forth we go, over the same piece of time. Around and around the wheel of past, present, future. It's like a carnival ride that doubles as a time machine. What if everything important happens in the same week? Is the rest of life just filler? Well, it's not quite that compressed. There was a Fall in which we walked and spent a night experimenting. Then came the Winter of our branching out and learning to sing and dance. There will be a Spring in which we'll inch closer to our falling apart for good. There will be another chapter that must be blinked through, like the valediction of the foolish. Add it all up and there's no truth in it; it's a series of disconnected tales, half remembered and none of it accurate. All that really remains is the memory of pain and the fact that it is survived, it does dissipate. To wincingly recall the absolute joy before it ran aground, to remember the triumph of some moment of brilliance before it turned to dust, to remember civilization as it was before it fell into barbarianism, this is the enterprise of this fiction, this memoir.
