The Chris Sartinsky Memoirs: Chapter Seven: A Summer in Vienna

In the seventh grade, I joined the band and picked up the alto saxophone. I found music a wonderful release from the stresses of middle school life and would often lock myself in my room, playing for hours from the time I got home from school until the time I had to go to sleep. As will happen whenever someone practices as much as I did, I became pretty good. I joined the concert band, but the director quickly recognized some talent in me and promoted me to the symphonic band with the higher level players.

The rigor of symphonic band was very different from the easy-going concert band. It seemed that the stress that I had sought to escape with music had continued following me and was now poisoning my new favorite hobby. Symphonic band worked on a kind of tier system, where the section was divided into parts and, within those parts, chairs. The solos and whatever glory was involved in a middle school band went to those in the first chair of the first section. Despite my reluctance, I found myself swept up in the cutthroat competition.

I started at the bottom of the ladder, as the third chair in the second alto saxophone section. At first, I was content to just be a part of such a celebrated ensemble, but this feeling did not last for long. The players in front of me were ruthless. They insulted each other and, quickly, me. Being the new kid in the section, the four of them quickly found a common target in me. They mocked my technique—my articulation, mainly. At first, I found their taunts easy to ignore as the saxophone was just a hobby for me, not a lifestyle as it seemed to be for them. But their taunts began getting on my nerves.

One could move up a chair by challenging the person in front of him to a one-on-one audition to be judged by the conductor. Such challenges were infrequent, but they were always fiercely competitive. They also took up an entire class period, so they were popular with the rest of the band who would become spectators. Before I had arrived in March, the saxophone section had existed in a kind of unstable equilibrium, with no changes in structure or even any challenges since the beginning of the school year. But my presence somehow changed all this. My initial refusal to be affected by their mocking made them turn against each other for some reason. There were three challenges in two weeks, one of them resulting in a change in seat. Then, I decided to throw my hat in the ring.

I challenged the kid in front of me, a fellow who was also named Chris. Our competition consisted of playing scales selected at random by our conductor and a sight-reading of a piece that would be new to both of us. I embarrassed him. When we finished, a hush fell over the band room as the outcome was instantly obvious to everyone. When the conductor announced me as the winner, Chris ripped his mouthpiece off his saxophone and flung it across the room in frustration and walked out.

This monumental defeat plunged the saxophone section into bedlam. For weeks, there was a new challenge every day. Sometimes I was the challenger, sometimes I was the challenged, sometimes I was just a spectator. I won some and I lost some. Much of the system became trying to exploit your opponent’s weakness on a bad day; one kid named Matt broke up with his girlfriend and was challenged every day for a week until he dropped from second chair to the very bottom. It was not uncommon for a person to inhabit two or three different chairs in a single week. Since these challenges took the entire period, we got very little practice as a band. When our concert arrived in late May, we were awful. But I was first chair, and that’s what was important.

On the night of the concert after the show was finished, I was waiting in the parking lot for my parents to come pick me up. It was late and it was dark and the school had mostly emptied out. Suddenly, before I knew what was happening, I was hit across the shoulders with a pipe. I was soon being stomped by four people—the rest of the saxophone section. They beat me viciously for a few minutes before they left. Lying on the sidewalk clinging to consciousness, I vowed to myself that I would do whatever was necessary to lock up that first chair for my entire eighth grade year.

That summer, I convinced my parents to send me to an expensive and highly regarded conservatory in Vienna. I did not speak the language, but this only helped me as I was forced to focus all my waking energy on the saxophone. I joined a junior orchestra and tackled more and more difficult pieces as the summer wore on. By July, I was able to play any piece almost flawlessly the very first time it was put in front of me.

My training essentially complete, I spent the last month and a half of my time in Vienna enjoying the city. I learned every street like the back of my hand and to this day I have an undying passion for the old Austrian capital. I hope to retire there someday on the crooked streets that I grew to know and love that summer. I would just wonder around aimlessly for hours, taking in every sight and somehow finding my way back to the conservatory by dinnertime as if directed by some unperceived force. I would eat in cafés, watch people in sunny parks and speak to tourists I found who spoke English about any old thing. Vienna was truly a reawakening for me. I had never been able to converse with others or live so fully back in Connecticut. I never wanted to leave.

My love for the place only grew when I met a local girl named Johanna. She had long, bright blonde hair which is what I remember about her more than anything. We had a strange courtship that lasted only three weeks before I had to return to the United States. I have vivid memories of waking up early in the morning so I could get to her house for a light breakfast and spending the whole day with her. It was a true summer romance; every day shared the same lazy, lovely feel and we would do essentially the same thing every day. We shared breakfast at her house, walked the streets for a few hours before having lunch in a sunny park somewhere and then returning to the conservatory where we talked for a while before I insisted on walking her home and wouldn’t get back to bed until it was time to go to sleep. It was strange when I left. It was undoubtedly sad, but the whole relationship had this feeling of inevitability about it. We knew it would happen and we were mature enough and not caught up in our feelings enough to keep ourselves contained.

I never stopped thinking about her, which isn’t necessarily unusual for me, but is worth noting, I suppose. After college I went back to Vienna to look for her, but never found her. The people who know lived in her old apartment told me that they had heard rumors that Johanna was prostituting herself across Europe, but I did not believe them, and we may have just misunderstood each other. They also called me an orange little boy, so I don’t think they had a perfect grasp of English.