Grignotti and the "Buggeroni" BDGDB Motive

Though the stuff of legends, the text itself is, sadly, lost. Portions remain, however, and may be viewed under our discussion of Crab Canon. But read on -- we have provide the history of the text below -- which we trust you will find to be more interesting than the rather dry and pedantic original essay.

Extrapolation

Dapper Clementine’s senior thesis, ‘‘Grignotti and the “Buggeroni” BDGDB Motive’’ (1965) was, on face value, a fairly straightforward analysis of the Bach-ian influence evidenced in Paolo Grignotti’s “Buggeroni” (1789). The chief thrust of the piece was a reading of the B-D-G-D-B sequence as a thinly veiled reference to the ‘‘B’’iberoni, ‘‘D’’iamanta, ‘‘G’’rignotti love triangle.

The thing is, at the time the thesis was composed, “Buggeroni” did not exist. Dapper, that now infamous Framer, had little experience with forgeries and counterfeits at this young stage in life. It was all really just a whim, started by harmless daydreaming. Dapper, bored during a sleepy lecture one afternoon, was absently considering Grignotti’s peculiar life, from his strange disappearance to his curious musical messages. (Grignotti’s disappearance was, and is, of course, the subject of much conspiracy theory, especially given his sexual proclivities, his presumed ties to La Ligue du Masque Cancéreux and his rumored re-appearances.)

Mulling over the idea that Grignotti was, perhaps, the architect of his own disappearance, Dapper began to wonder if Grignotti would not have left some sort of clue in his music. Grignotti is, after all, even more well-known than Bach for embedding his compositions with furtive messages: his scores scribbled in a kind of private short-hand and his themes embedded with secretive directives to La Ligue. Why, Dapper wondered, would Grignotti, at the very height of his musical career, choose to disappear? Dapper's thoughts drifted towards Grignotti’s wife, Diamanta, and his close collaborator, Pietri Biberoni.

Slowly, the idea began to take shape: Biberoni and Diamanta – lovers; a jealous Grignotti, infecting his wife with syphilis, engineering his own disappearance; the whole plot revealed in a series of notes: BDGDB, the first letters of the three lovers intertwined, a la Bach’s BACH motive (that is, the notes B-A-C-H, where H is German for B natural).

Dapper toyed around with these thoughts for a few months, and then one day, perhaps inspired by some Borges short story, he sat down and wrote his senior thesis, inventing the idea of “Buggeroni” to fill in as the piece containing the BDGDB motive. 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 purchase records, alter a few tattered catalogues of early European recordings, and massage a few old patron records.

His professors, befuddled that they’d never heard of the piece, were, perhaps, too embarrassed to admit their ignorance in the face of so many references to the work. They gave Dapper high marks on his paper -- but they couldn’t understand why they were unable to locate a recording or a score of the composition, and they launched 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.

He became quickly enamored of the whole game and took it, perhaps, much further than necessary; he soon found himself sleeping with a young caretaker of the U.S. Congressional stacks -- simply to gain unparalleled access to new credulous records, fresh for alteration.

And then, suddenly, he was caught. But not by his professors – no – his efforts had caught the attention of bigger, scarier fry: the infamous 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.

Desiderata

Dapper later published numerous scholarly works which, as a whole, present a rather unsettling fascination with the sexually bizarre.