SONATINA

‘SONATINA’ 

by Jim Johnston

“Dominick Rosetti presented his composition, Sonatina no. 6 for two accordions, bassoon, and untuned banjo at P.S.122 last weekend as part of the ‘Young Composers Series’ before a small audience of new music cognoscenti. Less likely to be recognized as ‘music’ by the average listener, his piece is an awkwardly arranged collage of disagreeable sounds that lurch and meander along until, gratefully, they come to an abrupt stop. You enter Mr. Rosetti’s sound world with trepidation, since, from the opening bars of his sonatina, sounds are barked and twanged by the various instruments, like an ominous warning, inciting (at least in this listener) an urge to flee. His melodies are like a nail in the skull—impossible to ignore and painful to consider. Mr. Rosetti possesses the unique ability to parse the meaning of time into infinitesimally excruciating gradations. The audience (this reviewer included) wriggled and squirmed in physical discomfort throughout the performance, frequently checking watches. What appeared to be a tepid standing ovation greeted the completion of this work, as most listeners rose to escape the hall.  

For anyone in the mood for a unique form of musical self-abuse, Sonatina no. 6 will be played again next Saturday at 7:30 pm at the 92^nd Street Y. The composer will be present after the performance to discuss his work.”

--Howard Kaplan in ‘The Midnight Blogger,” December 12, 2017

Dominick was confused at first and had to read the piece three times before its poison entered his system. The blog entry included a small photo of the composer taken in a moment of intense animation at the end of the sonatina, which made him look a bit mad. He paced back and forth along the worn wooden floors of his loft and then got into the freight elevator, which he rode up and down several times. Then he quickly strode the length of 18^th Street from Fifth Avenue to Broadway before returning to the elevator for a few more ups and downs.

 “It was supposed to be about springtime, you idiot!” he yelled out loud, thinking of the time he had spent at the artists’ colony in Montauk the previous year. Although he generally preferred to experience nature on the Discovery Channel, the dunes and marshlands of Montauk had inspired him to write his sonatina, which he considered his best work so far.

He scanned the room, noticing the garbage piled up by the kitchen, the springs popping out of the bottom of the sofa, the rust stained walls where a pipe had burst last winter. The place was a mess, like his head at the moment. “Why did I think my music would mean anything to anybody? I’m just fooling myself,” he thought, as he swept the pile of grant applications from his desk to the floor and was swallowed up whole, into a whirlpool of self-doubt.

For all of his 32 years, Dominick had rarely shed a tear. His father Carlo used to warn him, in his thick Italian accent, “My boy don’t cry!” His mother Antonia snapped the corner of her apron against his cheeks if he began to whine. The nuns at St. Helena’s only had to slap a ruler against their palms to clear Dominick’s face of all emotion. 

But after reading the review a fourth time, he knelt on the floor, bent over, and wept, great sobs heaving in his belly, but bringing little relief. The shame he felt for his tears only added to his misery.

That week Dominick wrote no music, slept badly, and suffered from severe constipation. The ensemble that played his work met twice for rehearsals, but Dominick could hardly bear to listen to his own music; he heard only mechanical sounds, detached of all meaning. He feared his muse had fled, and that he would never write another note.

 “If I ever meet that Howard Kaplan, I’m going to grab him by the hair and shove his shit-filled head onto the sidewalk and grind his face into the concrete until his nose is pulverized!” Dominick mused, as he lay wide-awake in the wee hours of the morning producing bile. Relieved a bit by his fantasy, he managed to compose a brief piano etude, full of clanging, dissonant chords, before the sun rose.

On the night of the next concert, Dominick made himself look good, as usual, in spite of his inner turmoil. With his head freshly shaved, he thought he appeared sexy and artistic in his black Calvin Klein jeans and white t-shirt, which showed off his well-earned muscles. The worn brown leather jacket thrown across one shoulder gave him the casual, devil-may-care Patti Smith feel he was striving for; the single gold earring provided a touch of gender-fuck that he thought enhanced his sexual allure. Dominick made sure his presentation was worked out to the last detail, while aiming for a spontaneous and casual look.

Coming out of the 96^th street subway, Dominick imagined walking down a gangplank blindfolded, recalling the humiliation he’d felt from Howard Kaplan’s review. So he was surprised when he saw hundreds of people waiting outside to enter the hall. This was not the usual group of tweed-wearing music teachers and bifocaled reviewers that Dominick knew from his previous concerts. Almost everyone here was dressed in black, with lots of capes, pointy hats and long-tailed coats. It looked like a convention of vampires. Heavy chains and handcuffs adorned black leather jackets, spiky heels supported tall shiny boots, and thick slabs of ebony mascara underscored bloodshot eyes. 

“Hey, Rosetti!” cried out his friend Dyana, shaking her mop of frizzy red hair as she saw Dominick approaching. “Look what the Internet did for you! Bad news sure travels fast these days!” A buzz arose from the crowd and people started pointing their fingers at him, moving closer, gazing at him with awe.

An audience! Coming to hear my music! he thought, beaming. He noticed how young they all were, how frightening in their attire. But they were here for his music, and at $10 a ticket, he was already fantasizing about the new Bose speakers he could buy with the proceeds.

The hall was filled to capacity and the audience demanded an encore after the final rondo, in which Dominick played a banjo solo, the flabby strings recreating (so he imagined) the sounds of forest insects mating in the night. Several people in the crowd pounded their heads with their fists in time to the music.

Dominick received the tumultuous ovation with feigned humility, and then sat down for the question-and-answer session. The auditorium remained full, a sea of jumpy, nervous energy.

The questions were like intellectual ambrosia to Dominick. His comments ranged from his inner creative anima, to the propulsive energy of early baroque fugues and the complexities of Busoni’s Fantasia Contrappuntistica, to the relationship between Charles Ives and John Cage, and how Alaleone had devised the term dodecaphonia. He felt the top of his bald head shine as his mind skipped from one musical reference to another, challenging his audience to confound him. It was a triumphant moment for the young composer.

“Your music, like, really brings the universal pain of existence to life—or maybe it’s death, you know what I mean?” one young man with spiky red hair and a bone through his nose stood up and said. The crowd nodded in agreement. 

“It’s like a purgatory of primal punishment,” one very thin young woman in a black t-shirt full of holes described the second movement. He didn’t have the heart to tell her he’d been trying to express the sound of dogwood trees blooming.

In the flurry of handshakes and business cards that followed, someone leaned over and said, “Look! That’s Howard Kaplan, the writer, over there.” Dominick looked up and saw a small, thin, nervous-looking man, standing alone, holding a notebook.  

A flash of silver bile arose in Dominick’s belly when he heard the name, but it was gone as quickly as it had arrived. “He looks so insignificant!” thought Dominick as he sized Kaplan up, “but kind of cute, in a nerdy way.” Mentally sketching ideas for a new composition on themes of lust and revenge, Dominick made his way to where Kaplan was standing.

The pleated blue serge pants, carefully ironed, the stiff white shirt with vintage gold cuff links, and a Dior bow tie gave Kaplan a dapper, but somewhat fragile look. He was nicely put together, but there was little to hold it in place. Dominick could hardly imagine such a timid looking thing writing those vicious words about him. Kaplan did not shave his head as Dominick did, so the band of thin brownish hair, which hung down over his collar, gave the impression of an older man, although Dominick had learned by googling the writer that he was five years younger than himself. 

Moving closer, Dominick extended his hand. “Hello Mr. Kaplan, I am Dominick Rosetti, the composer of tonight’s music—and last week’s music as well at P.S.122, if you remember,” he said with an extra firm handshake and his most gleaming smile.

Dominick had never seen a blush appear so quickly or so deeply. He dismissed a flicker of compassion as he saw an opportunity with his frightened prey. Dominick moved closer, pushing his shoulders back a little so that the broad expanse of his chest was practically in Kaplan’s face. Dominick looked straight into his eyes and licked his lips quickly.

“It’s how I make a living,” Kaplan said with an edgy giggle, stepping back slightly and looking down.

“And a killing on occasion, I can assure you,” Dominick said blithely. Then, whispering close to Howard’s ear, he added, “I confess that you deeply hurt my feelings.”

In Howard’s furtive glances Dominick could read embarrassment, atonement, and eager sexual curiosity—three themes on which to build his fugue. He imagined a sextet for the final movement.

 “But, as anyone who knows me can tell you, I am thick skinned—here, feel,” Dominick said, taking Howard’s hand and placing it on his flexed bicep. The shock and thrill in Howard’s eyes urged Dominick on.

“I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, Mr. Rosetti. Sometimes I get carried away while I’m writing,” Howard responded, yanking his hand back and pressing it to his cheek for a second.

“Yes, I know. I looked at some of your other writings--pretty nasty stuff. You’re a Very Naughty Boy,” Dominick said, tweaking Howard’s nose. “And please, call me Dominick.”

“Well, we were always taught that, um, bad news makes more interesting reading than good news…NYU…graduate school.” 

“Is that so? And I was taught that if you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all—Sister Mary Agnes, fourth grade at St. Helena’s.”

Howard Kaplan appeared to cringe slightly at the mention of the nun. “I actually liked your piece better tonight…and certainly the audience did,” he said, trying to ingratiate himself, moving from one foot to another as he caught the appealing smell of Dominick’s after-shave.

“Well, maybe you and I should go out for a drink somewhere quiet, just the two of us, and I’ll explain my entire creative process to you,” said Dominick, placing his open palm on Kaplan’s chest as he turned to accept a kiss on the cheek from an admirer. He could feel Howard’s heart beating fast.

“I won’t bite—not hard anyway.” Dominick said, softening his tone as he touched Howard gently on the shoulder. “Really, I was grateful for the insight into my music your article gave me. We artists live in a bit of a vacuum, you know. And I’ve always appreciated strong emotion…no matter how crudely it might be expressed.” He pinched Howard’s cheek hard, and winked.

Over drinks, Dominick developed the themes of his seduction. “I think it’s time for composers to end the tyranny of the dominant seventh, don’t you agree?” Dominick quizzed Howard. “For me the internal balance of sonic interconnectivity is the key to subduing the listener’s expectation of the traditional sequence of recapitulation and cadence.” Dominick felt like a conductor waving his baton, with Howard, the only musician in his orchestra pit, frantically turning the pages of a complicated score that lay just beyond his limit of comprehension. 

By midnight Dominick had gotten Howard a little drunk, and had taken him back to the loft, where he fucked him into a state of semi-consciousness. He enjoyed the passive pink body, which clearly was not used to such vivid attentions. Next to Howard’s slender and vulnerable limbs, Dominick felt bigger and stronger and hairier. He felt like writing music.

Dominick peered down at Howard as if he were a piece of blank manuscript paper. “I have the introduction and the main theme leading to the first crescendo,” he thought. “And now this calm, post-coital lull. I need to develop the theme, add a few twists, some contrasting chords…and of course, the coda,” he thought, imagining a pounding piano cadenza that threatened to break the instrument. 

“Why don’t you make us some coffee?” Dominick asked Howard, as they lay stretched out on the bed after sex. “You’ll find everything you need on the kitchen counter. Oh, and there are cleaning supplies underneath.”

Placing the tray on the bed, Howard offered Dominick the cup with both hands, tilting his head slightly to one side with a questioning, doglike look.

“This tastes like dishwater! Make it again and use more coffee. I like it strong,” he said, slapping Howard’s butt as he scurried back to the kitchen.

Six months later, after Howard had moved most of his furniture into the loft, Dominick’s place looked like a spread from Architectural Digest. Howard made sure that dinner was waiting on the table every night, and managed to conjure delicious hors d’oeuvres and unusual cocktails for the writers and agents who attended the weekly soirees to hear Dominick’s latest work. He made sure all the ashtrays were emptied and the glasses were filled. He’d sit on the floor by Dominick’s feet, swaying gently to the sound of his master’s banjo, looking up now and then, wide-eyed with tender admiration.

“I’m working on the latest review, honey. Listen to this.” Howard read aloud as he looked up from his computer keyboard, eagerly smiling at Dominick. “Rosetti’s new piano trio is a sickening assault on the senses that makes one yearn to run home, regurgitate, take a long, hot shower and a double dose of Xanax. My ears will never be the same.”  

“Good…very good, Howie, very good indeed,” mumbled Dominick, with a pencil in his mouth. Without looking up from his score, he added, “There’ll be standing room only for my next concert if you keep that up, my pet.”