Vol. 120: Prince Harry’s excellent adventure

From my archive: When Harry met Curtis

I’m not on vacation. I wish I were. But I’m recovering from a slight stroke. In the meantime, here is one of my old columns that appeared originally in Broad Street Review in 2012. Back soon, I hope.

You probably heard that Prince Harry got in trouble last week when he took a three-day post-Olympics break from his job as heir to the British throne. When you live in a fishbowl, as most princes do, you need to let off steam once in a while. That's why Harry headed for the Curtis Institute, the world's most exclusive music school, where the cardinal rule is: "What happens at Curtis stays at Curtis."

The trouble started when Prince Harry invited two Curtis students up to his room to tune his instrument. Once inside, Harry whipped out his repertoire and asked the students what they thought of it.

To his dismay, the students just laughed. At a world-class music school like Curtis, they explained, they see longer repertoires than his every day of the week.

The humiliated Harry, responding in kind, told one of the students that she was fingering his flute all wrong. She replied that she was more accustomed to a bassoon.

One thing led to another, and after a few more drinks the students got into an argument about the relative merits of chromatic and diatonic scales. Harry insisted it's possible to swing both ways. When they looked at him strangely, he snapped, "What's the big deal? I'm just trying to score a little sonatina here."

I mean, the guy was in way over his head.

Pregnancy test

Before you knew it, Harry was trying to perform arpeggios with both students at the same time. When the students resisted, Harry told them that a woman can't get pregnant from an arpeggio if she doesn't want to. This is the sort of ridiculous musical fantasy that you usually hear only at Republican conventions.

Up to this point, as far as the Curtis students were concerned, this was just another day at the office. I mean, hey— it's Curtis! Stuff happens! You want peace and quiet, go to Juilliard!

But the shit really hit the fan when, after a few more beers, Prince Harry declared that Rimsky-Korsakov was only a minor composer, not a major one. That set off the Institute's automated taste-detector alarm system, and next thing you know, his room was swarming with security guards.

Hidden cameras

We know all this because both Curtis students were armed with voice-activated cell phones, and the entire discussion was soon transcribed and posted on Dan Coren's classical music website, Music To My Ears. From there, the juiciest excerpts— especially the debate about chromatic vs. diatonic scales— went viral.

But seriously— you knew this column was a joke, right? Prince Harry didn't spend his three-day break at Curtis— he spent it in Las Vegas, playing "strip billiards" with a couple of bimbos who thoughtfully retained their cell-phone cameras while they removed their clothes (and his).

You see, the royal family may have its share of embarrassing relatives, but ultimately blood will tell. I ask you: What descendant of Queen Victoria would ever be caught dead in a place like Curtis?

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com