A Short Story in Four Movements
by Ryan N. Wolf
I. Allegretto
There it is. Right there. My right hand slips into the right pocket of my tan corduroy jacket. Did you hear it? It doesn’t work. Okay, I guess it’s wrong to say It doesn’t work, because it does work, but it could sound better. So much better. It’s the end of the piece, and the end needs to be epic. And it doesn’t sound epic. It just sounds okay.
When I won the junior-level composition award for the annual Middlebury Music Festival, everyone congratulated me—as if that was really the accomplishment. But it’s not. The accomplishment would be for this piece to blow up, to go viral, to be noticed by someone other than the festival orchestra comprised of college music majors. And for it to be noticed by professional musicians and conductors, CEOs of major orchestras, and publishing company reps, it will need to be epic.
The piece ends, and the conductor looks over at me, like he’s waiting for me to say something or do anything. I have to be careful here, because I suck at this. One time, when a youth orchestra was playing one of my pieces, the trumpet section stood up and walked out—all because I said I’d rather them not sound like a herd of constipated cows. I was referring to the fact that they weren’t all using the same brand of straight mute, but they conveniently ignored that part.
My grandfather says that there is a little man inside all of us who keeps us from saying things that would be hurtful to others, and we have to listen to this little man.
I think my little man quit and fled the country.
To the left of the conductor is the concert master—a tall, long-legged violin player with red hair and freckles and green eyes. I certainly do not want to compare her playing to a constipated cow. She smiles at me, her eyes sparkle as though they have come alive momentarily, and I must remind myself to breathe. Breathe, dammit. Breathe.
I regain my composure, smile, and tell the conductor it sounds great, and I thank the musicians who have come from all the great music schools in the country for their efforts. My hand slips back into my jacket pocket, and I feel better. Not great. But better.
When the musicians have dispersed, I approach the conductor and ask about making changes. His face winces like he’s just bitten into a particularly sour lemon. That probably wouldn’t be a great idea, he informs me. But it’s not epic, I say. It has to be epic. It’s great, it’s wonderful, no one will believe a person so young wrote this, he gushes. Blah, blah, blah. None of that matters. It has to be epic.
He relents some, tells me that if I’m going to make changes, they must be small. Note changes only, probably. Nothing that would require any major rehearsal work. The performance is tomorrow, after all.
II. Largo
My parents noticed I had perfect pitch when I was about two. My dad is a band director, my mom a choir director, so there was always music in the house growing up. Once I knew the notes had names, I could identify any note and/or chord by sound. By age three, I could memorize music instantly and sing it back perfectly.
And thus began my perfectly wonderful career as a Wunderkind composer, right? Ha. I wish.
My parents were flabbergasted the first time I came home from school after having been in a fight—even more so that it was during sixth grade music class. This simpleton couldn’t match pitch to save his life, and all I did was make him aware of this fact, lest he decide a career in music was for him. These confrontations continued on into high school—alerting the diva soprano in show choir that her G’s were painfully sharp, informing the concertmaster of the orchestra that his solo phrasing during the Dvorak piece was wrong, and showing the marching band’s drumline what their part was supposed to sound like by playing it for them by myself on the drumset.
My grandfather told me, when I was about fifteen, that some people are people-people, and some people are not. I was not. Am not. People are complicated. They don’t always say what they mean. Sometimes they don’t mean to, but sometimes they do. They act differently day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, second to second. And it confused me. Confuses me. I take refuge in music because music isn’t like that. A C4 always sounds like a C4, a major chord always a major chord. A great piece of orchestral music will always sound the same, no matter what orchestra plays it.
We look back on the lives of the legendary composers and only remember the highlights: first symphonies and second symphonies and fifth symphonies and overtures and operas and suites and incidental music. But we forget (perhaps ignore) the tragedy and torment these geniuses endured in their lives. None of them had perfectly wonderful careers. They suffered. Life was a struggle for them, and they found respite in their music, because music has a purity that everything else in life lacks.
But then, that’s not really true, is it? The more I study music, the more I learn that nothing is equal. Some conductors have different interpretations. Some take everything too fast. Some too slow. Certain brass sections of symphony orchestras imitate a choir of angels welcoming a common man into sainthood. Some sound like a gaggle of inebriated pirates. A C4 and a major chord will sound different depending on what they are surrounded by. Context is key.
I graduated from high school three months ago. In less than a month, I’m off to one of the best music schools in the country. And now that I’ve left my public school behind me, with all its confrontations and arguments and fights and confusion, I think I want more. I think I want music in my life, but I don’t want it to be my life. I want to connect. I want to see what it’s like to have friends. Or just a friend. Small steps, right?
What I discovered is that making friends, like making music, is a skill. To be more specific, a skill I do not have. And I wonder, if I could give up a bit of my music-making skill for a little bit of a friend-making skill, would I?
III. Scherzo—Allegro agitato
okay bring it back to the basics tonality tonal chords dominant chords sub-dominant chords do-re-mi-re do and so on but what if I did something different like twelve-tone serialism or just flat out atonality I’ve tried these and couldn’t make them work of course no one ever really made them work although perhaps some might disagree nevertheless what can I do here maybe some non-chord tones or there could be room for a Neapolitan chord but that’s been done before it’s all been done before hence the problem I want to do something fresh and new forget the rules the rules just box me in there’s no freedom in a box but the rules are there for a reason tonality tonality tonality people like patterns on patterns doors with right angles and rooms with right angles no triangles never a triangle and atonality does not work because there’s no pattern no predictability no way of identifying beauty or ugliness or terror or jollity and this is what made people like Beethoven such a genius they could work with in the confines of a system and yet still make music people had never heard maybe we reached our peak in the twentieth century maybe there is no farther to go but there has to be because that couldn’t be the end but then we had polymelodic music and silent music and Musique Concréte but those didn’t really work but but but but but but but but but but but but but they did work in a way people hated it but hate is a response and that’s the whole reason we do this to invoke a response and so in that way atonality works so should I use it I should use it right but is that what I want to do I want people to hate my music???
I don’t know what I want.
IV. Allegro moderato
The music stops, and the conductor gestures to me where I am sitting in the front row, and this is the part I hate. I’ve been told it would be dismissive and insulting and rude if I don’t, so I stand and turn to the crowd of several hundred camp attendees and classical music fans who have just heard my world premiere. The lights blind and the heat suffocates, and I wonder what my face looks like, if I look mad or uncomfortable or depressed or insane, because I feel all those things at once.
The audience applauds; the musicians tap their feet against the stage floor, and the conductor shakes my hand like I am the King of England. Because I know that people don’t always mean what they say, I don’t believe any of this. The world premiere of my piece with the junior festival orchestra is a total failure. Because I don’t know what people want, nor do I know what I want.
Except for this one thing. If there were ever a moment that this could work, it would be now. She’s approaching me—her black concert dress showing off the creamy white skin of her shoulders and upper chest. Her long red hair is like undulating fire. Someone is talking to me right now but I can’t hear them—the sight of her blocks out all of my other senses. With her violin tucked carefully under her arm, the concertmaster approaches me, and it takes everything to not leap into the orchestra pit headfirst. Or soil myself.
She says hi.
Tells me her name.
Says that she loved the piece, and that it was an honor to have played its premiere.
She says she hopes I remember all of them when I’m famous.
She says I’m very talented.
She says the same exact things that everyone else has said.
Before she can go on, before I can chicken out, before something can happen that will stop me dead in my tracks from fulfilling today’s dream, I ask her,
“Will you be my friend?”
She smiles; there’s an imperceptible sparkle in her green eyes, and maybe it’s my general disbelief in everyone on the whole planet, but I believe she is about say something that isn’t actually true.
She tells me that, of course, we can be friends.
She tells me that we’re already friends.
We’ve made music together.
She smiles and hugs me and her perfume makes me dizzy.
I should be happy, because in a way, this is what I’ve been dreaming about for the last week.
But I’m not.
She doesn’t give me her phone number or Instagram username. She doesn’t tell me where she’s from or where she goes to school. How can we be friends if I know nothing about her, if it will be impossible for me to reach out to her after this week is over?
I slide my hand into my jacket pocket.
She asks me if I’m okay.
I tell her I’m great.
If everyone else can say what they don’t mean, so can I.
After what feels like a million billion trillion years, the noise in the hall dies away. People are leaving, the air cools, and I can sense my impending escape. I’m tired. Tired of talking, standing, and smiling. The conductor has already gone, a few of the musicians are still hanging around. Tonight is the final night of the camp—tomorrow, everyone will depart to return to their regular lives, most back to music school.
I should be wondering about the effect my piece has had on the audience, if anyone out there loved it, posted on social media about it. Is this piece going to get noticed? Will there suddenly be a demand for my music? These are the questions that should be on my mind.
But they’re not.
Everyone around me is carrying something—instruments in cases, music in folders, bags and purses—and I feel strange being empty handed. Just as my hand slides in my pocket, I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn to see someone standing there. He looks to be about my age and height, glasses, longer hair parted down the middle. The principal bassoon from tonight’s performance.
“Hi,” he says.
“Hello.”
“I really enjoyed your piece.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah, I can tell you’re trying to do something different.”
“I am.”
“Honestly, the whole piece just kept getting more interesting. Until the end.”
I study him judiciously, ask, “What do you mean?”
He shrugs indifferently. “I dunno. Kind of hard to explain. But it just seemed like…something was missing there. It could have been more…I’m not sure of the word.”
I take my hand out of my pocket.
“Can I ask you a question?” he asks.
“Sure,” I say.
“What do you have in your pocket? I watched you during rehearsals, and you kept putting your hand in and out of your jacket pocket. I kept waiting for you to take something out, like some ChapStick or something, but you never did.”
I sigh. I don’t want to tell him. He’ll think I’m weird. I mean, I am weird, but if I’m going to have a friend, shouldn’t I be honest with him? How can two people be friends if they keep secrets from each other?
I reach into my pocket one last time and pull out a golden-colored gem, an amber with a tiny mosquito trapped inside.
“Whoa,” he awes, taking the amber from my offering hand. “Is this real?”
“Yeah,” I say. “I got it last summer on an archaeological dig in Costa Rica. I’m not totally sure, but I think I might be able to recreate an extinct species with it.”
His eyes narrow into slits behind his glasses, and for a few seconds he simply stares at me suspiciously until I burst into laughter, covering my mouth with my hand.
“I’m just kidding. I made a joke. It’s not real. My grandfather bought it for me in a gift shop in Universal Studios.”
His face breaks into a smile, and thankfully he laughs at the first joke I’ve ever made in my life.
“This is going to sound stupid,” I go on, “but I always keep it with me because it reminds me of him, and if I ever get, like, nervous or anxious, I like to remind myself that he’s, you know, always there.”
A wave of nausea rushes over me, and I am stricken by disbelief at how I have shared something so personal with a total stranger. Right now, in his head he’s thinking, This guy’s a freak. A weirdo. He should be locked up in the booby hatch. If there was any chance of us being friends, it’s gone now—
He pulls something out of his own pocket and shows it to me, a switchblade-style car key with a blue and white logo on one side. Depressing the silver button, the key flips out with a click.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“They key to a 2003 Volkswagen Passat,” he says quietly, as though someone may hear. “It was my mom’s. She’s—she died. A few years ago.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
He half smiles. “Thanks. She was sick. And before she left, she promised me she’d always be with me.”
“And the key makes you remember.”
He nods in affirmation.
Remembering something my grandfather taught me, I put the amber back in my pocket and stretch my hand towards him.
“My name’s Paul,” I say.
He takes my hand and gives it a shake.
“I’m Richard.”
“Nice to meet you, Richard.”
“Nice to meet you, too, Paul.”