Antonietta, page 29
APPLAUSE, the sound of which continues as:
79. In the bathroom, June and Vera have heard Spenser’s introduction. We can see that June is grateful that he has at least had the tact not to mention what will follow. She tucks Antonietta under her arm, and she and Vera go out.
More good-natured welcoming APPLAUSE.
80. Beside the piano. June—her face is crimson—nods to Vera; she is ready to start.
Vera’s face is seen; in contrast to June’s, it is as white as a page of sheet music as she nods a response to June. She looks down at the keyboard.
The MUSIC begins. In the first few bars,
the knowing listener hears a delicate tremor in Antonietta’s voice, different from, superimposed on, June’s vibrato. This is a report, one can guess, of a quivering of her nerves; perhaps she is angry at the position Spenser has put her and Vera in. Before long, however, we sense that her musicianship has begun to take control; the tone smooths out.
As the duo continues, the camera turns away, from time to time, to look at faces in the audience. Spenser is enthralled; there is a touching simplicity, even a kind of purity, in his frankly visual enjoyment of the performance; the music flies far over his head like a jet stream only remotely affecting his internal weather. We see in his gaze, however, how much he has come to like those two for what they really are. On Flora Lombard’s face there is a look of cynical amusement; she knows what has brought people into this room. Coverly Patterson obviously hates the foreign music so much that he can’t even look at the performers, and one can guess that he thinks the lottery drum seriously untraditional at a New England chamber music recital. Bolen has cheeks of wood. On quite a few faces it is hard to differentiate between the responses to what is seen and heard and what is expected to follow. It is clear, though, that for the moment some in the audience are borne off by the music into thoughts that have little to do with what is on the table off to the left. Perhaps—besides being stirred by the bizarre power of the music and the real beauty of the players—they are moved by the way the violinist and the pianist seem, as they play on, less and less aware of anything but what Hindemith is telling them.
BLURRED CUT TO:
81. The final movement of the sonata, a fast-moving scherzo, which is almost a kind of dance. We see that by this time a sea change has set in. Hindemith’s news for the performers no longer matters much, for all have begun to listen instead to what the violin itself has to say. As the scherzo spins on, we see the faces in the audience turn more and more often to their left. Spenser, lured by Antonietta into the secret places of his own nature, looks keyed up to a new level of joy over his munificence. Flora opens and closes the big pocketbook in her lap, as if to make sure it has plenty of room for possibilities. Coverly Patterson, glancing leftward now and again, seems grudgingly ready to allow a minor revision in the lore of New England musical salons. Bolen, probably without knowing he is doing it, pats his left inside breast pocket, where he’s wired, and then the right breast pocket, where his wallet is. Antonietta urges big dreams. Many in the audience have begun shamelessly making eyes at Lady Luck. One can readily see that some are contingently considering choices—whether a Jaguar wouldn’t fit better on the Vineyard than a Daimler, for instance—while others, more estate-minded, are reviewing prospects in the wheat, silver, and uranium futures markets. Soon every eye in the house is riveted on the table off to the left.
The music tumbles to its conclusion. Wild APPLAUSE breaks out. The Antonietta Strad has done its destined work. Everyone is clapping in honor of the beautiful money.
82. Spenser stands and goes to the table. He is clapping for his musicians. As he turns to the audience, the camera CLOSES on his face, on which the violin has brought out a rapturous look of prosperity and self-satisfaction. We see, shining in his eyes—at last!—a conviction that on the staves on that imaginary membrane in his mind there is written music at least as coherent, wise, and of this world as anything an impoverished kid like Hindemith could write.
SPENSER
Could we have two volunteers, to come up here and make certain that this drawing will be absolutely fair and square?
At once, with alacrity, before anyone else can stir, the two men in business suits rise and step quickly up the center aisle. The camera follows them from behind, so that the viewer cannot see their faces. Clearly visible, however, is a look of surprise blooming on Spenser’s face; the recently heard melody suddenly seems to be leaking out of his soul. When the men are close to the table behind which Spenser stands, the one holding the briefcase puts a foot up on the edge of a chair, balances the briefcase on his upraised thigh, opens it, and takes some papers out, which he hands to the other man. The camera moves around to take in the two men.
MORANO [offering the papers:]
I have been instructed to serve you with these, sir. You have the right to remain silent. Any statement you make can and will be used against you in court. You have the right to be represented by an attorney. [The viewer sees Morano trying to keep from smirking as he delivers the obligatory final Miranda statement of Spenser Ham’s rights:] If you are indigent and cannot afford a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you.
The audience, which obviously thinks that Spenser has staged this as part of his show, breaks out laughing and clapping. During Morano’s mumbling, however, Curn has moved around behind Spenser. He looks down as he opens the jaws of a pair of handcuffs.
Morano picks up the money on the table, and the two men, each taking one of Spenser’s arms, march the arrestee down the aisle and out of the room.
83. The camera swings and looks at the audience. There is a kind of explosion of the communal spirit as the guests realize that there will be no drawing. The money has vanished. Swollen hopes are on the rocks. All that Antonietta had roused in these guests is suddenly released in a flame of outrage. The room vibrates with frustrated avarice. There is a mass growl. People are on their feet. Many valuable things in this house are surely going to be smashed.
But suddenly we see that June has taken Antonietta under her chin again. The camera zooms in for a sudden close look—what does this mean?—at the Cupid on the tailpiece. And we hear, clear and decisive above the uproar:
This is the first bold declaration by the violin of the Schoenberg theme music of the program. June has Antonietta speak, to begin with, sharply. Vera accompanies, forte, playing a piano reduction of the orchestral score of the concerto. The cheated audience is still on its feet, and at first the music is interrupted by angry shouts. Now we see June play with exultation. Antonietta counts out the composer’s tonal digits, which are arranged with systematized care. There is a strict discipline in the sounds that ring out from the violin now, and with remarkable speed, within a few measures, the hubbub subsides. Flora Lombard in the front row, shaking her head in bewilderment, sits down. Others settle down near her. Soon the entire audience is seated again.
Now there comes another subtle change in the timbre of the music from the violin. Gradually the afternoon air softens. We become aware of the brightness of the light pouring in the windows. Fury slinks out of the room. There soon seems to be a tug at everyone’s senses of something that feels like yearning. The camera turns to the audience. The faces—so soon!—are beginning to show that these listeners are drifting off into summertime daydreams, fantasies about pleasures of kinds that money just can’t buy. Who would have imagined that anything by Arnold Schoenberg could be erotic? But look! People are giving each other melting glances. Some couples are actually reaching out to hold hands….
One more recital number in the long life of Antonietta, an encore, is proving to be an overpowering success….
84. Helicopter shot. The Hat Hut fills the screen. We see three men emerge arm in arm from the front door and hurry out over the brim. They walk briskly down a few yards of the driveway and get into a black limousine, which slowly pulls away.
As the Schoenberg theme swells into full orchestral clamor, the camera view pulls up and out, up and away, in reciprocal symmetry with the opening shot of the program, until, finally, we see exactly what we saw at the very beginning: an azure sky with cotton clouds, the serene promontory, and a stretch of the silver-blue sea riffled with numberless wavelets.
FADE OUT AUDIO
BLACK OUT video
*1 Opus 36.
*2 Opus 31, No. 2.
*3 Eloquent takeoff music. Berg wrote this piece in honor of death—as a heartfelt requiem for eighteen-year-old Manon, daughter of Gustave Mahler’s widow Alma and the architect Walter Gropius. This second section of the concerto depicts her actual throes. Right after composing this music, Berg was stung by an insect, the sting became infected, and he himself died of blood poisoning. Have a nice flight!
*4 Composed in 1939. No opus number. When Hindemith’s opus numbers reached 50, in 1930, he decided that a linear chronological counting of his pieces, which kept being debuted in public very much out of their compositional order, made no sense. And 50 seemed to him a nice round number on which to stop.
*5 Opus 47, Schoenberg’s last instrumental work.
*6 Opus 7.
Finale
Spenser Ham thought at first that he was being arrested on a charge of sponsoring illegal gambling, or something of the sort. It took only a quick glance at the papers in his hands to disabuse him of that idea. He was taken to the Dukes County jail in Edgartown.
It happened that the notorious redhead, whose name was Bill Stroop, had been remanded to the Dukes County jurisdiction for trial because his theft of Antonietta had been committed on the Vineyard, and for one night he and Spenser Ham were, so to speak, brothers in their toils. They were in separate cells, however, so they were deprived of a conversation in which both of them, for quite different reasons, doubtless would have used colorful language.
The morning after his arrest, Ham was released on his own recognizance by Judge Philip Bronson, pending his arraignment in Federal Court in Boston. June Speckman and Vera Flamm had left the island. One of the first things Spenser Ham did after he reached home was to write two checks for ten thousand dollars. All of his bank accounts, however, had already been seized by the government.
He showed up for his Boston arraignment with his attorney, Blaine Sopher, of the New York firm of Will, Burnham & Sopher. Ham was charged with seven felony counts, the most serious of which stemmed from various instances of his insider trading, and from some impressive income tax evasion. Sopher was later able to arrange a plea bargain for him, under which he avoided trial by acknowledging guilt on three relatively minor counts. He was eventually sentenced to two years in prison, and he was fined fifty million dollars—which Wall Streeters seemed to consider a humdrum punishment for a humdrum offense.
Spenser Ham’s inside source, Bolen, whose cooperation with the investigators had helped bring indictments against four other men besides Ham, was sentenced to only three months in prison and was fined a pittance of two hundred thousand dollars.
* * *
—
Thanks to the fact that Beverly Robbins, a member of the Board of the Boston Symphony, was in the audience at Spenser Ham’s recital, the violinist June Speckman was invited to audition for the orchestra. Spenser Ham had asked Blaine Sopher to try to pry loose enough money to cover his checks to the musicians, and it was also at Ham’s request that June was allowed to play Antonietta for her audition. The decision on whether she will be hired is due soon. If she is in fact hired, Vera Flamm hopes to move to Boston with her and find work as a teacher of music theory and piano in one of the many colleges in the area. Sopher did succeed recently in clearing the ten-thousand-dollar checks. June, who stubbornly said she wouldn’t take money for an occasion devoted to money, endorsed her check over to Vera. The resultant twenty thousand is paying for radiation treatments for Vera’s mother.
Spenser Ham’s lawyers arranged to have Antonietta put up for auction by Parke-Bernet in New York. I am happy to say that I, the author of this book, am now the proud owner of the instrument whose biography I have been at such pains to record. I was able to make this purchase (the price was $440,000) with the funds advanced to me for this book by my publisher.
And I promise, dear reader, that that whopper is the very last lie I will ever tell (in this book, anyway).
NOTE
I want to thank Linda Ciacchi, who at the time of this writing is a doctoral candidate at the Yale Music School, a Prize Teaching Fellow in Yale College, and a first violinist with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, for her perceptive help in scouting out from Yale University’s network of libraries, for me, a large number of informative works, among which I should mention a few in particular. It goes without saying that none of the many books and monographs and magazine articles that I perused for background can be held responsible for the liberties I have taken.
Among numerous works on the history and construction of violins I should take special note of George Hart’s The Violin, its Famous Makers and their Imitators (1875); Edward Heron-Allen’s Violin Making as it was and is (1884); and Joseph Wechsberg’s delightful book The Glory of the Violin (1972). The most authoritative of several works on Stradivari’s craftsmanship (very little is known about his life) is that by W. Henry, Arthur F., and Alfred E. Hill (1902), of the London family of luthiers, restorers, and dealers. Among sources of instruction on the subject of violin acoustics, I had the benefit of writings by Carleen M. Hutchins and Isaac Vigdorchik. Mozart’s letters have been edited by Hans Mersmann and translated by M. M. Bozman (1928), and far more completely by Emily Anderson (1938), and I revisited books on Mozart and his music by W. J. Turner (1938), Alfred Einstein (1945), and Erich Schenk (1959). I had the help of Berlioz’s memoirs, translated by Rachel and Eleanor Holmes (1932), and biographies of him by W. J. Turner (1934), Jacques Barzun (1949), and D. Kern Holoman (1989). Besides Stravinsky’s autobiography (1936) and selected letters (1982–85), I am grateful to C. F. Ramuz’s Souvenirs sur Igor Strawinsky (1946); to a study of Stravinsky and his compositions by Eric Walter White (1966); to four of the several works on Stravinsky written by Robert Craft with the active help of the composer (1959, 1960, 1962, 1966); and to Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents, assembled by Craft and Vera Stravinsky (1978). And I think I must have left the Key West library’s massive New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians in shreds.
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John Hersey, Antonietta
