Buggerino
From Plastic Tub
Revision as of 17:49, 26 Nov 2005
By now, only a few cave-dwellers and home-schooled children are unfamiliar with the intricate hoax created by Dapper Clementine. This enterprising grad student created a scandal with his senior thesis [[Grignotti and the "Buggeroni" BDGDB Motive]], the point of which was to prove that the B-D-G-D-B sequence of Paolo Grignotti's "Buggeroni" (1789) was a reference to the ‘‘B’’iberoni, ‘‘D’’iamanta, ‘‘G’’rignotti love triangle.
Dapper toyed around with these thoughts for a few months before sitting down to write, inventing “Buggeroni” out of whole cloth to illustrate his belief that Grignotti often left clues in his work regarding his tumultuous private affairs. Rather pleased with the result, he became determined to submit this essay as his senior thesis. Knowing that his advisors would be well aware that there was no “Buggeroni”, he worked quickly to establish the back story. Taking advantage of his position in the music-library, it was a fairly simple matter to change some old records, alter a few old catalogues.
His professors, befuddled that they’d never heard of the piece and ashamed that they couldn’t understand why they were unable to locate a recording or a score of the composition, were at first dubious and a rather serious quest. Dapper managed to stay one step ahead of them, embedding more and more references to the “Buggeroni”, visiting area libraries with forged periodical citations, crafting new indices in card catalogues, and, eventually, slipping critical appraisals of “Buggeroni” into various periodicals and newspapers of yore. The meticulous work he applied to this series of forgeries is legendary and far too complex to detail here. That a young student could have fooled so many experts struck many as unbelievable, but the fact that it is all true is a testament to the wicked genius of this merry young counterfeiter.
And then, suddenly, he was caught. But not by his professors, although many were on the verge of declaring that Clementine was a fraud. No; his efforts had drawn the attention of a more infamous sort: the Framers. Rather the opposite of upset, they were impressed. They made him an offer he couldn’t refuse, and young Dapper found himself employed. The rest is, as they say, history.
There remains, however, one curious thread, deeply entangled in this tale, but loose, nonetheless: at some point, a recording of “Buggerino” emerged. Spectacularly rendered, it is Grinottian through and through. Its origins, its author, and its source: all unknown -- a mystery unto even Dapper, that master of frame-jobs.
Even the casual observer will note an interesting discrepancy. Dapper was said to have invented a piece called "Buggeroni." The recording which has surfaced, however, is called "Buggerino." The jacket of the album, plus the announcement of the piece by the conductor confirm that this is not a typographical error. The piece, by all rights is indeed "Buggerino."
What then, are we to make of this recording. A recent spate of controversial literature upends a decades worth of accepted facts. This new research, especially with documents retrieved from impregnable repositories.
