In Friday's blog post, I dumped a lot of negative comments about my ninth grade choir teacher, Ms. F. The article ran so long, I had to continue it into today. But this is not going to be as negative. For today, there will be something somewhat sad, something very positive and will end with something that gave me perspective about her.
As I mentioned in the previous post, Ms. F appeared to be biased toward the girls and tended to cut down on the esteem of the boys. Most of the boys in the choir noticed this. I had always assumed that all the girls loved Ms. F because of this, but I found I later that I was wrong.
Ms. F was organizing the Spring Concert that would be a joint effort between the junior high and high school choirs. She had all these musical numbers and medleys planned out. I actually attended a few rehearsals that took place in the evening. However, I was aware that things were not progressing they way they should for a production on the scale of her vision. We weren't 100% certain of what was supposed to happen or when it was supposed to happen and we never seemed to get enough rehearsal on the medley numbers, one of which included the boys singing songs by the Village People. (Oh, we were so naive!)
I mentioned in the previous post that Ms. F had directed the high school choir's production of "Oliver!" I thought it was a very good production by Artesia High School standards. So, I was suprised by how disorganized the Spring Concert appeared to be.
Ms. F had set aside a Saturday in which all the choir students were supposed to come to the high school auditorium and help set things up for the concert. We were also going to rehearse all the numbers and figure out what order they were supposed to be. We were told to be at the auditorium at 9am.
I don't think I have mentioned that I have an obession with being prompt. This came from the dedication of my parents, who knew the importance of being on time (because they were teachers). I was never late for school, except for those times I had to go see the orthodontist. On those occasions, I would start having little panic attacks when I knew there was no way that I was going to make it to school on time.
It happened that the Saturday we were going to work at the audtiorium, my parents and brother were out of town for some reason. My parents allowed me to stay at home by myself all weekend. I had stayed up Friday night watching TV until about 1am. When I woke up, it was 9:10am. I was late! I started freaking out and put on my clothes. I ran outside, jumped on my motorcycle and drove over to the auditorium as fast as I could. I was expecting to get there and have Ms. F yell at me for being late because everyone else showed up on time.
When I got to the auditorium parking lot about 9:20am, there was only one car there. I saw Ms. F sitting outside the back door with her head down into her knees. I realized that no one else had showed up and she had probably been crying. I don't know if this was a co-ordinated effort among the choir students from both the high school and the junior high. It wouldn't have surprised me if none of the boys had shown up, but I was taken aback that the girls had decided not to come even though they had been the beneficiaries of Ms. F's accolades.
Ms. F decided to go along with her plans to start setting things up and asked me to go with her to a few locations. We had to get these benches for the Village People gym number. We had to put two benches in her car. If you've seen the episode from the fourth season of "Arrested Development" in which Gob is driving a limo with a giant cross in it, that's how her car looked with the benches sticking out of the windows.
We didn't talk much that day. We just ran a few errands and took stuff into the auditorium. We probably did stuff for about three hours before she said I could go home. Back at school on Monday, I told some of the other boys that I was the only one who showed up. The only reason I'm not certain if the "strike" was co-ordinated was that no one responded to my story with something like, "Oh, we all decided not to show up. Didn't you know?" Ms. F came into the classroom and announced that we were not going to do the Spring Concert. No one seemed disappointed. I was just kind of mad that I had to waste three hours of my Saturday helping her set stuff up when she was probably already aware at that time that she was going to cancel it.
I should point out she did not scold the other students for not showing up. However, I don't know if she did the same for the high school students earlier that morning.
The big positive thing about Ms. F is that during the short time that she was in Artesia, she met someone and fell in love. He asked her to marry him and they planned the ceremony for that summer. Because her fiance was the son of a man who lived across the street from our apartments and my Dad knew him, we were invited to the wedding.
I have to admit, it was the BEST wedding I've ever been to. (Yes, even better than mine.) They held it outdoors in the mountains. The sun was bright and shiny and made everything sparkle. The ceremony was filled with music throughout. The groom even sang a number with two of his attendents before the wedding got underway. There was so much music that we actually expected the bride and groom to sing a duet after they had exchanged vows. (Ms. F actually did not sing anything herself.) And the food was amazing.
(A side note: Remember that girl Tad from the previous post, who had gotten to play the title role in "Oliver!" and got to audition for All-State? She sang at her own wedding. I wasn't invited, but I read about it in the paper afterward.)
Ms. F did not return to teach the next year. She probably decided that since she had found a husband and her students despised her so much that it wasn't worth all the heartache to try to continue teaching music. (In fact, I even believe when she had her head in her knees at the auditorium, that was the moment she decided not to return to teaching the next year.)
And as for the item for which I had gained perspective: At the beginning of the school year, Ms. F had sorted us all out by vocal range. Soprano I, Soprano II, Alto I, Alto II, Tenor, Baritone and Bass. However, there was an additional section I had never heard of. She put some of the boys into what she called the "Cambiata" section. She explained it as being a range between Tenor and Baritone. I didn't question it and for years, I thought that the section that should be Tenor II was called Cambiata. Since I only ever participated in the choir in college and didn't take any actual music classes, I remained ignorant of the meaning of the word.
However, after I had graduated from college, I bought a synthesizer. Mom bought me a subscription to "Sheet Music" magazine. One of the premiums that came with the subscription was a music dictionary. I thought about the Cambiata section in junior high. I looked up the word. The dictionary said it meant "a note without tone. A toneless note." I WAS ENRAGED! This meant she thought the boys she put in this section couldn't sing! It reminded me of an episode of "Newhart" in which Bob said he was put in a special section of his school choir called the "Monotones." I thought this was Ms. F's way of doing the same thing. And I should add that she had no such special section for the girls.
Even though Ms. F continued to live in Artesia, the only other time I saw her again was when I was 16 years old and took part in a piano recital. I never saw her again when I was an adult returning home from time to time. If I had seen her, I probably would have managed to work the whole "Cambiata" issue into the conversation.
As it turned out, I would never get that opportunity. About five years ago, on the day after her 54th birthday, she collapsed at a banquet and died.
I'm actually glad that I never got to confront her about the "Cambiata" label. A couple of days before writing this post, I did some research on Google. When I typed in "Cambiata," the auto-fill offered "Cambiata Voice." I clicked on that and found that a Cambiata Voice is one that is in the process of changing, as when a boy enters adolescence. I realized that I had been wrong about my anger for 27 years. Ms. F wasn't being cruel. She was accurately labeling the voices, although she was a bit deceitful in saying it was the section between Tenor and Baritone.
After she died, the services were held at the high school auditorium and my mother attended. She told me they played a recording of her singing. I found it ironic that she did not sing at her wedding, but did sing at her funeral.
No comments:
Post a Comment