The Operatic Anomaly

So far as anybody knew, but of course this was long before the advent of social media, they had never met , although their lives did overlap, but both the eminent composer Marcel Evans (1860-1935) and the computing pioneer Robert Ridgeway (1900-1951) had lived in the modest little midlands town of Woodington. It was quite a poser, if you thought about it. The town was pleasant enough, but even those who lived their nowadays had to admit that there was nothing that spectacular about it apart from its two famous residents by choice. It had no magnificent castles, no inspirational cathedral, and – well, apart from Messrs Evans and Ridgeway, no claim to fame, although blue plaques had been dutifully erected by their former residences. But there was one lasting effect – the little town, although it did not have a university of such (although the former Eastshires Polytechnic, now a university, was only some ten miles away on its sprawling concrete campus) was considered a centre of excellence and research for both music and computing, and had postgraduate study facilities for both. It was still held in high regard, although it had not yet produced anyone else who attained global fame in either.

Until now, that is. Because a brilliant post-doctoral team at the Ridgeway Institute of Advanced Computer Studies had created an App that was like nothing anyone had seen before. Well, perhaps heard might be more appropriate phrase. Of course there had been thousands of apps related to music before, and they had done marvellous things, but this one was able to, within minutes, create an opera in the style of any great composer with only limited input from the user. There were those at the Marcel Evans Conservatoire who had very mixed feelings about this. By now even the more venerable of the professors had accepted, with varying degrees of joy, the fact that the digital world now had a role to play in music. They even had a digital workshop. But this was another matter. “Truly great music needs humans,” said Elizabeth Stockwell, violin professor shaking her head.

All the same, they were still quite willing for their students to be used as guinea pigs for the apps – issued with strict instructions about only using them within certain parameters and never trying to pass off work wholly done by the computer as wholly their own.

One of those included in the trials was a young woman called Theresa Underwood. Nobody wanted to be unkind, or at least most people didn’t, but it was not wholly unnatural to wonder quite how Theresa had made it to the Conservatoire. Oh, it wasn’t that she was unmusical or anything like that. She had a perfectly pleasant mezzo soprano voice, and could play the piano perfectly competently. But so far her efforts at composing had, at best been described as “works in progress” though not much in the way of progress seemed to be made, despite her earnest efforts. The truth of the matter was that Theresa herself was half convinced there had been some kind of fluke or mistake, and that she ought to face reality and take up teacher training. She was patient, most of the time, and would probably make quite a good music teacher.

In the end, though some had bewailed the unoriginality of it, there had been a certain inevitability about the app bearing at least the “working title” of the Appera. Theresa had no especially strong feelings about technology one way or the other. She was old enough to be a digital native, and couldn’t remember or, really, conceive, life without it, but she was never first in the queue for something new or weird.

The first day she had possession of her Appera, she had an unexpected free afternoon as her piano lesson had been cancelled, due to Professor Henry Leonards being unwell. She hoped he soon felt better. She liked him. He was patient with her, and yet he had also been honest enough not to say “Now don’t be silly,” when she had raised the possibility of being a music teacher with him.

I suppose I had better try to do something with our new toys, she thought. She decided that (and she gave a silent hollow laugh at the impossibility of it) she would work on an opera in the style of Puccini and give it a working title of Adeline. That was just a girl’s name, so it gave her plenty of leeway. Theoretically she knew how to orchestrate, or at least she had taken the classes, but she always found it a protracted and tedious procedure. Well, not that the former mattered, of course, as various professors were wont to say, good music was often a long time in the making. But she doubted she would ever find any joy in it. It was just downright difficult and in her case, the end results were not worth the efforts. Still, she did love Puccini. And that was precisely why she would have much preferred spending her free afternoon listening to his music than making some futile and ludicrous attempts to emulate it.

But perhaps there’s a part of us all that never quite outgrows the appeal of playing with a new toy, and she did have to admit that it was a help, at least in practical matters. She was quite surprised that when she had to break off for such a prosaic thing as relieving herself, and discovered that she had been at work for an hour and a half. On her return from the bathroom she thought, I may as well hear the worst. It goes without saying that the Appera had a playback facility, and though it might not rival the sound of a soaring symphony orchestra, it was not tinny, and of relatively good quality.

This actually isn’t terrible, thought Theresa, and her emotions were in something of a turmoil. Though no great musician herself, she did have a good ear, and she knew that Adeline was considerably better than “not terrible”. The device certainly deserved to win something! A few days later, the trial group were “invited” to premiere their works. And Theresa knew that the looks she was getting weren’t the looks she usually got when her compositions were played, but was by no means sure they were preferable. Some were admiring. But others were frankly cynical or even suspicious. The trouble was, she couldn’t entirely blame them.

“Very good, Theresa,” Professor Peter Maltby said. “You certainly seem to have mastered the app very quickly.”

Nobody said anything to her face. But she was perfectly well aware that she was meant to hear it when a couple of other members of the group had a conversation along these lines:

“Does she really think we’re stupid? That app certainly is brilliant, you could almost think it really was Puccini, but I doubt Theresa had much to do with it.”

“To put it mildly. I wouldn’t have credited her with having that much skill on the technology side, either.”

“Maybe she has a boyfriend at the Institute. Or a girlfriend, for that matter. You know how she keeps herself to herself on her private life. But in that anaemic way of hers, she’s quite pretty, I suppose.”

It wasn’t the first time Theresa had heard that adjective applied to her. She wasn’t physically anaemic at all. But she knew what they meant, and she also knew that she didn’t have a boyfriend or a girlfriend who had helped her with the technology side.

“Do you think we should tell the Profs?”

“No, nobody wants to be a tale-bearer, no matter how old you are, and they’ll realise it perfectly well for themselves.”

Their voices trailed away into the distance at that point, and perhaps it was as well.

Back in her flat, she found herself talking to the app. “Well, you may think you’re doing me a good turn, but you’re not. You’re making people think I’m a cheat and a fraud and not keeping to the rules of the trial, and I honestly can’t blame them. It looks like you’ve got stuck on the highest setting or whatever, and I’m going to see to it myself – well, of course I mean I’m going to take it in hand myself!”

She phoned the relevant department at the Ridgeway Institute, but was told, “Oh, I’m sorry, all the people who worked on the Appera are away at a conference this weekend. Contact us again on Monday, please.”

“I will,” she said. “Thank you.” Though she’d have preferred to have it attended to and the whole thing fixed that very day, she was mightily relieved that she was taken seriously and hadn’t been frostily told that the Appera couldn’t possibly malfunction and it must be some mistake on her part.

That weight to some extent off her mind, she decided she might as well have a bit of fun and give the mighty machine (okay, it wasn’t really a machine, but she liked a bit of alliteration) a real challenge. It was to compose an operatic work called Der Ritter aus dem fernem Land – “The Knight from the Distant Country” and to be in the style of Richard Wagner. Within a couple of days, and before she was due to have her Appera looked at, she was listening to soaring, majestic Wagnerian music. It was positively frightening! “Yes, wonderful stuff,” she told the app. “But this is where it ends. That music is for my ears only,” (for she had even taken the precaution of putting on headphones) “You’ve had your joke at my expense, and I hope people soon forget that business with Adelina. I’ve taken things into my own hands now.”

But before long she discovered this was not the case. It appeared that the people she had overheard had been quite correct. The Profs did smell a rat. Oh, it was all done very politely and tactfully. The students in the trial group were told that over at the institute, they thought there might be a flaw in the mechanism, and they were checking out all the apps, just in case.

That’s that, then, she thought. If I say something now it will look even worse. Will that nice secretary remember I phoned and stick up for me? But she saw even her teaching career going out of the window.

She was as resigned as she could be when her mobile phone rang and she was told it was Professor Cicely Anderson from the Institute. “Could we have a bit of a word with you, please, Ms Underwood? At the Conservatoire – this evening, if it’s convenient.”

She agreed. There was no point to doing otherwise. It may be okay, she tried to convince herself.

Professor Anderson, whom she only knew by sight, was in the study of the Chair of Composition, Lionel Hardy.

“Sit down, Theresa,” the latter said – not unkindly, she thought. “I’ll be honest – we don’t now quite what to make of this. We’ve listened to your most recent composition, too – I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not” Theresa assured her, although she did.

“Well, here’s the thing,” said Professor Anderson. “We’ve discovered that in your case the app is faulty.”

Tell me something I don’t know, thought Theresa, gloomily.

“In fact, my dear, that’s frankly an understatement. It wasn’t functioning at all – only the playback facility was really working. Most remiss on our part.”

“But – that means –“ Theresa stuttered. “Oh, dear God ……”

“I think you may want to reconsider that plan you had about maybe transferring to a teacher training course,” Professor Hardy said.

And there was something akin to awe in his voice.