Dramatic Fragment
A meeting by chance.
(The scene is a narrow cobbled street, with the tables of a cafe nestled
as far out of the open shop as space allows. At one table an earnest, clean
shaven young man is scribbling notes and looking at papers. A somewhat more
heavyset, and somewhat older man with unruly hair and a sheave of
compositional papers trundles up.)
(He looks over the papers and opens his mouth to speak. Stops and then has
the nerve to begin.)
Older Man: (definitely)
"Waldenstein"
Younger Man: (looking up over his glasses, a bit surprised)
"You know it?" I have heard Clara Wieck play it, with such grace and
touch and understanding.
OM:
With certainty, I studied the master's sonata's when I was younger,
in Paris. The experience impressed upon me in every detail the
greatness of them.
YM:
Truly, a pleasure then, please, please sit down. What are you
drinking? I am afraid that Austria has made me come to appreciate
the virtues of dark coffee.
OM:
I drink tea now, I used to take coffee with rum, but that was some
time ago.
YM:
Out of morals?
OM:
Out of poverty, I found that alcohol improved my spirits only
temporarily, while depleting my funds rather permenantly. One learns
a great deal of morality through poverty, provided it is good honest
poverty.
(Gives a light chuckle)
Good German Beer can come rather dearly in poor Parisian cafes.
YM:
You sound as if you spent rather a lot of time in Paris. Your voice
betrays a bit of an accent.
OM:
I have not my adoptive father's acting talent, and so cannot
disguise either my voice or my true intentions. Yes, I stayed
there for sometime, learned much, but came back to German lands, it
seemed essential to drink that deep draught and feel the air. Paris
is crowded, exciting, and the odor of decay hangs about it, a kind of
end of a time. Germans are people of new things, doing new things and
thinking new things. In Paris the opera is French words pasted on top
of Italian Three- Eight scribbles, and the thinking is translated from
other tongues. Only the food is of native origin, and that, I here came
originally from Italy also long ago.
YM:
Then you did not like it.
OM:
It was so closed! Everything was what you could sell, everything
was about cheapness and vulgarity, everything the simple dance and
air! How it ate at one. I needed escape from tromping about Germany,
from a very unhappy marriage. And I ended up feeling more trapped
there than ever.
YM:
You were unhappy? I mean in the marriage, you must excuse me, I have
little experience with such affairs.
OM:
I was ungrateful, but with a wife who gave me much to be ungrateful
about. Always with other men, and I, I was always pleading with her
for the merest kind of affection, for the smallest part of what a
husband deserves and every man needs: the love of a woman. Paris
I found, was much like her, fickle, social, open on the surface, and
closed beneath it. There were only two real musicians in Paris.
YM:
By this you mean?
OM:
Two souls kept hardy by constant exposure to Beethoven, both in spirit
and music:Habeneck whose Conservatoire's performance of the Symphonies
is rending and unsurpassed, and Berlioz, who worships and understands
the Master, but only follows so much as his French blood will allow.
YM:
Berlioz has a reputation for noise and disturbance, quite unlike,
say Mendelssohn's.
OM:
Who lacks all passion. How can one we follow the great spirits of
art without, without ... belief! A musician must be dedicated in all
of his members, in all of his soul to art. It must spring forth from
a deep life need. Not from fashion, not from prettifying impulse.
YM:
"We", I take it that you too, fancy yourself a composer?
OM:
At times I had felt that all music had been lost to me, but I remember
playing for my dying father, and having him ask "Has he, perhaps,
some talent for music?"
(Wiping back a tear)
He died the next day. It is his legacy.
YM:
Then you compose?
OM:
As often as a I dare, though shame nearly drove me from it. Imagine
debasing the ideas of Beethoven, the realm of Mozart, with potpouris
and gallops. But times have bettered themselves, and so, with luck,
have I. That is where I know Waldenstein from: I wrote sonatas on
the master's models when I was younger and still learning.
YM:
Truly! I have often thought of doing such a thing, it must take true
ability to attempt it. A talent perhaps?
OM:
A talent achieves a mark that we can see, but not lightly reach, a
genius aims for the target unseen. Thus I fear that Mendelssohn is
to be pitied: he has begun as a genius and is becoming a talent.
YM:
Then who do you think well of?
OM:
Of composers who have a manly force to them, of a perfection of means.
Berlioz has squandered his abilities, but nonetheless he had much to
squander, I cannot help but say that Robert Schumann's piano pieces
have something daring and forceful, even perfect about them. Perhaps
I might add Marschener to my short list. And of course Meyerbeer
even though he concocts rather than composes.
YM:
This is simply wonderful, I must show you something.
(Takes out a letter)
OM: (looks darkly at the letter)
"I would like to invite you to spend some time in our beloved
Leipzig, I trust you will find the entertainments sufficent, though
not as honored as being a student in the city which first accepted
Mozart. During the time you would have hear, a certain Franz Liszt
will be performing, as well as a certain person of Merit and others
whom you might know."
I recognize the writing, its Robert Schumann isn't it. How did you
make his aquaintance?
YM:
Through his journal. You see, like him I am a law student who covets
a life in music. But I fear that my talent is not for composition.
OM:
One might even say he possess more than talent within his sphere,
but go on.
YM:
I think though, I can turn a phrase. And perhaps educate people
as to the needs of music, to the glories of Missa Solemnis and the
mysteries which make up the sublime in music. To teach people music's
proper place, and not let them lower and debase art to mere decoration.
OM:
Paris needs you! Nay, Paris needs ten thousand of you! I found
nothing there but superficiality or a closed cult. It was strangling.
So much people need to not only be taught, but to believe. Without
need to do, without impulse to move forward there is no life at all.
Too many have sunk into mere fashionable decadence, into taking what
is clear and easy.
YM:
Yes Robert calls them "phillistines"
OM:
I met Robert long ago, I know of his League of David, and have even
written for it now and again, with missives from my days in Paris.
There is a rot that needs to be chopped out, and people elevated,
and the old beliefs have failed people in this.
YM:
Yes, yes, Robert might say that the Laws of Morality are also those
of art.
OM:
I might go farther and say that where morality fails people, it is
the duty of art, pressed forward by need, to elevate them. When a
man realizes that he is not for himself alone, but that his needs
will be met only by giving himself over to others, then, and only
then is he truly human and one with all other people.
YM:
Dangerous talk, there are, well there are people who might take it
the wrong way.
OM:
No, there are people who have taken it the right way, and dislike
it. The people who want, and from that want wish to dominate. Thus
I am here, and not elsewhere.
YM: (Hushed)
And these, sentiments, of yours, do they truly come out in your, music.
OM: (Sadly, a bit deflated after his steam roller)
Not as much as I would like. I have not yet found the form that will
allow it, at times, only at times, I have felt that within my grasp
there was the substance of it, that will mere application of Will,
I could achieve.
But I find that there must be some substance beneath it, and have
come to agree with Feuerbach and Schoppenhaur, ther emust not only
be will, but embodiment as well, there must be, made tangible that
will.
And not just the indvidual will, but the will of the people, as it
comes through in the Ode to Joy, from notions of beauty that transcend
mere decoration and fashion.
YM:
I have studied very hard to be able to take in such things, it seems
that there is much to learn to be able to understand.
OM:
Indeed so, but ever as spur onwards. The Ninth is unsurpassable, it
sets a boundary to the symphonic realm.
YM:
That I can certainly agree with, I cannot imagine a work that would
surpass it.
OM:
Then how can such a work have the need, the belief that Beethoven
poured into it? And by this means transcended all of the limitations?
Not just of the symphony, but of each of its indivual parts, by
extending the adagio, by forcing the scherzo into unheard of orgies
of rhythm. It can only come about through the beauty of song extended
by the deepest need for expression.
YM:
I take it this is what you have against Mendelssohn.
OM:
Yea verily.
YM: (Looks up at clock)
I must be going, here, here is my address, we must discuss this
further.
OM:
A bit of a scrawl, but it is Eduard Hanslick I take it?
YM:
Yes, and yourself.
OM: (A bit slyly)
Wilhelm, Wilhelm Geyer. I will stop by some evening not long from
now, I can show you parts of my newest project.
(They Part)
Stirling S Newberry
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