The form of the examination was unusual. After some haggling it was agreed that it could not take place in the School of Music, and that the examiners must journey to Stratford to do their work. They were to examine the candidate orally in the morning, in the upstairs crush-bar of the theatre, and after luncheon they were to see a performance of the opera. It made a long day for them, said Dean Wintersen. He said nothing about what sort of day it made for Schnak.
There were to be three dress rehearsals before the first night of the production, which was scheduled for a Saturday. It was on the Wednesday, therefore, that a special small bus left the Music School in Toronto at a quarter to eight in the morning, with seven academics aboard.
“I must say I find this exceedingly irregular,” said Professor Andreas Pfeiffer, who was the External Examiner, a great panjandrum of musicology imported for the occasion from an important school of music in Pennsylvania.
“You mean seeing a performance of the opera?” said Dean Wintersen, who had entertained Pfeiffer at dinner the night before and had already had enough of him.
“Of that I say nothing,” said Professor Pfeiffer. “I mean this business of being haled across the countryside at an early hour. Last night I slept very poorly, thinking about what lay ahead. It is difficult to compose oneself under such circumstances.”
“You must admit the circumstances are unusual,” said the Dean, lighting his first cigarette of the day.
“Perhaps too unusual,” said Pfeiffer. “May I politely request you not to smoke? Very disagreeable in an enclosed vehicle.”
The Dean threw his cigarette out of the window.
“Ah, ah! You didn’t douse it!” said Professor Adelaide O’Sullivan. “That is how forest fires are started. Can we stop? I’ll get out and stamp on it.”
This was done, and Professor O’Sullivan, having dodged and darted a hundred yards to the rear, amid heavy traffic, found the cigarette, which had gone out of itself on the city street, and which she trampled to bits, as a matter of principle. This put the journey off to a start marked by underground feeling. Professor George Cooper, a stout Englishman, had already gone to sleep, but Professor John Diddear was covertly pro-Dean, as he himself liked to smoke during examinations, as a way of passing the time, and he knew that it would be impossible with Pfeiffer and O’Sullivan so strongly against it. Professor Francesco Berger, who was the examiner from the university’s own department of music, and a man of peace, tried to improve the atmosphere by telling a joke, but as he was not a man with much narrative sense, he spoiled it, and made matters worse. Professor Penelope Raven, who was the seventh of the group, laughed too loudly, all alone, at the non-climax, and was stared into silence by Pfeiffer.
It took the bus a little under two hours to reach Stratford, and the driver had to put up with a good deal of cautionary exclamation from Professor Pfeiffer, who was a nervous passenger.
But at last the examiners found themselves in the crush-bar of the theatre, accommodated with a large table, and lots of pencils and pads, and several jugs of coffee. Professor Pfeiffer, who never drank coffee, was given a bottle of Perrier by Gwen Larking, the Stage Manager, who had appointed herself beadle of the occasion; she left an awed gofer on the spot, to fetch, carry, and do the bidding of the academics.
The protocol of an oral examination for a doctorate in music is not extreme, but it can be severe. Schnak, who was hanging about, dressed in a skirt at Gunillas bidding, shook hands with all of the examiners, and shaking hands was not a courtesy that came easily to her. Gunilla introduced her to Professor Pfeiffer, who made it clear that this was an honour for Schnak; he put out his hand, which she barely touched. It was like ceremonially forgiving the headsman, before he does his work.
Then Wintersen asked Schnak to go downstairs and wait until she was called; she marched off, in the charge of the jailer-gofer, who looked as solemn as eighteen can. Dr. Gunilla, the director of the thesis project, was present as an examiner, and also in the character, familiar in courts-martial, of Prisoner’s Friend. She was greeted with cordiality by the Canadians, but Professor Pfeiffer, who had his own opinions about the Doctor’s international reputation, managed to put a chill on her reception.
The Dean, who was an old hand at such affairs, groaned in spirit. He had been warned that Pfeiffer was a bastard but his reputation as a musicologist was great, and so he must be endured.
The Dean, by virtue of his office, was the chairman of the examination, and he began according to Hoyle, by asking the examiners if they were all acquainted. They were, and in some cases too well. He drew their attention to three copies of the full score of Arthur which lay on the table for ready reference.
The Dean next called upon Professor Andreas Pfeiffer, as external examiner-in-chief, to place his report before the committee.
Professor Pfeiffer did so, taking just under an hour. It was a fine late August day outside, but by the time Pfeiffer had unpacked his budget of doubt and distaste it was February in the examination room. Professor Berger, who was a genial man and liked Schnak, managed, as internal examiner-in-chief, in twenty minutes to shove the calendar back to approximately late December, but a post-Christmas gloom was still to be felt.
The other examiners, called upon to say their say, were brief. Not more than ten minutes was taken by Penny Raven, who managed to establish that she had evolved a libretto for the opera, with some unspecified outside help from a literary man.
“I hear nothing of Planché,” said Professor Pfeiffer. Both Penny and Gunilla looked at him with deadly menace, but he was impervious to any outside influence.
Now, the processions, the parades of the picadors, the recognition of the President, the preening by the matador, and all the ceremonial of the ring having been performed, it was time to bring in the bull. Dean Wintersen nodded to the gofer (by this time a thorough Shakespearean jailer), and Schnak was brought back to the table, wilted with almost two hours of solitary anxiety. She was seated next to the Dean, and asked to explain her choice of the thesis project, and her method of work in realizing it. Which she did, very badly.
Professor Pfeiffer was first let loose upon her. He was a matador of immense skill, and for thirty-five minutes he nagged and harassed the wretched Schnak, who had no verbal ease, no rhetoric of any kind, and made long, unpromising pauses before most of her answers.
Professor Pfeiffer showed disappointment. The bull had no style, no pride of the ring, seemed really unworthy of a matador of his repute.
But as the torture proceeded, Schnak took refuge more and more often in a single answer: “I did it like that because it came to me like that,” she said. And although Professor Pfeiffer greeted this with doubtful looks, and once or twice with disdainful snorts, one or two of the other examiners, notably Cooper and Diddear, smiled and nodded, for they were themselves, in a modest way, composers.
Now and again Dr. Dahl-Soot interposed. But Pfeiffer shut her up, saying, “I must not allow myself to think that the candidate’s supervisor carried undue weight in the actual work of composition; that would be wholly inadmissible.” Dr. Gunilla, fuming, but tactful, remained silent after that.
When at last, by repeatedly looking at his watch, the Dean made it clear that Professor Pfeiffer must close his interrogation, Dr. Francesco Berger took over, and was so genial, so anxious to put Schnak at her ease, suggested so often that he approved of what had been done, that he almost upset the applecart. His Colleagues wished Berger would not overdo it. When their time came to ask questions, they were brief and merciful.