The Dancing-Master’s Music by William Trevor, 2004
The magic trick:
Delivering the expected epiphany but using it in a surprising way
We’ve got a week of greatness in store for you here in SSMTville. Yes, indeed, you guessed it – likely using the headline atop this story as an excellent clue. It’s another William Trevor Week.
“The Dancing-Master’s Music” is an excellent starting point, classically Trevor in the way it finds universal truths in the seemingly mundane.
Brigid works at a big, fancy house in a time long ago. Her life is the picture of limited. When the dancing master arrives, it’s the first time she’s ever seen a piano.
Anyway, the appearance of dancing master at the house, the announcement of the concert, and – you know – the title of the story (!!!) all give the reader the impression that Brigid will experience an epiphany of sorts during this visit.
But that would just be a little too simple for Mr. Trevor.
So too though would be any notion of setting up the obvious epiphany and then completely pulling the rug out.
The epiphany does happen. Kind of.
The dancing-master’s concert is a day Brigid remembers for a long time. But the story doesn’t make that point in the way you’d expect. It doesn’t use the epiphany as a neat, tidy way of wrapping up the story.
The story continues after the concert, extending its scope for years and years. Decades even. Soon, the story is no longer about just that concert, or just Brigid, or the house.
This is where the mundane becomes universal.
And that’s quite a trick on Trevor’s part.
The selection:
On that Thursday evening, although Brigid didn’t see the Master or Mrs. Everard, or the girls, or Miss Turpin or Miss Roche, she saw the drawing-room. At the end of a row, next to the Widow Kinawe, she took her place on one of the round-bottomed chairs that had been arranged at Mr. Chrome’s instruction, and looked about her. A fire blazed at either end of the long, shadowy room and, hanging against scarlet wallpaper, there were gilt-framed portraits, five on one wall, four on another. There were lamps on the mantelpiece and on tables, a marble figure in a corner, the chairs and the sofa the family sat on all empty now. A grand piano had pride of place.
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