Think of it—we sit in a crowded concert hall, as the crashing last chords of Beethoven’s Fifth blast off into infinity (until the next time around). How to describe that elation?
Or we sit—as I once did—in a dark room in a large empty apartment and hear the slow “Amen” of one of the Monteverdi Vespers for theBlessed Virgin of 1610. I was suspended between faith and despair, and knew that somehow a question of life and going on was occurring. The tears flowed down my cheeks, I fought to stop the sound and the pain, and could not.
But who can write about it?
OK, I’m not all that well read. I should probably do some research. Tolstoy, I know, wrote a long short story based one theKreutzer Sonata—right, know the sonata, don’t know the short story. And others have tried, some of which I have read. And it always comes across flat, or forced, or sometimes just artificial.
Or worse, inflated.
And the better the music, the worse the writing tends to be….
So I should back away from making a larger fool of myself than I normally do. Because the piece that has haunted me, this last 6 weeks, has been one of the greatest of them all: Beethoven’s quartet number 15, third movement.
In German, it’s known as Heiliger Dankgesang, the words Beethoven inscribed on the manuscript. A holy hymn of thanksgiving, that would be, and Beethoven had every reason to be giving thanks—he had been severely ill, and feared that he was dying.
He recovered, and wrote perhaps the most haunting composition of his life.
It starts agonizingly slow—moving as if under water. Or perhaps floating—there’s an ethereal quality of suspension and immersion in some other dimension. And it’s modal—which means that it uses the one of the scales of Gregorian chant. And then, it breaks into a joyful, almost manic second section. Here it’s classical, ordered, as ornamented as a Versailles drawing room. “Strength regained,” writes Beethoven at this point in the manuscript, and indeed, there is all of the joy that attends recovery from a near fatal illness.
And then the slow section returns, though slightly altered.
The light breaks through again, as the second joyful section is repeated.
And then comes the final—fifth—section, again slow as the first and third had been, again very similar thematically and harmonically. But now Beethoven introduces the theme that has been hiding in the prior two slow sections. And it’s here that words fail.
Not just for me. Apparently T. S. Eliot was obsessed as well. Some think that the Heiliger Dankgesang may have been the inspiration for the Four Quartets. At any rate, he wrote to Stephen Spender, “I find it quite inexhaustible to study. There is a sort of heavenly or at least more than human gaiety about some of his later things which one imagines might come to oneself as the fruit of reconciliation and relief after immense suffering; I should like to get something of that into verse before I die.” (Thanks, Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/String_Quartet_No._15_(Beethoven)
Well, not having read the Four Quartets, I’ve no idea whether Eliot did. I can only tell you my own experience, as real as Winterreise was for me. A party had been announced on the third of May—the second anniversary of Franny’s death. Being a guest myself, I was spared the problem of who should be invited or not. It was a Morning Glory affair—put together by the people who had cared so lovingly for Franny for the two years or so when we could not.
So—back to the Acres, to the house that had seen her last days, as well as so many others. Eric kindly put off planting a garden and joined me there—the two of us, greatly more united than before, would face this together.
It takes some fortification, of course, to go into any house in which a parent has died—somehow, the Acres presented even more of a challenge. This was also the house where so many parties had been given, so many friends joyfully received and talked to, so many stories had been told. And Franny had been something of a party animal herself—unlike Jack, who liked smaller affair.
So Eric hit on the possibly questionable idea of buying the largest vat of bourbon ever to hit the market—it would easily have filled a Victorian hipbath….
Well, we were equal to that task….
And it may have been a good thing. For as always, Franny hit us, first thing on entering the house.
Silence—as prevailing and lingering as the wood smoke from the Norwegian smoke had been.
Well, silence is something we don’t do well—either in Puerto Rico or in the Newhouse family. We cast around for rescue.
Fortunately, the Zanas—as ever—proposed coming out a few days before the party and bringing us food and diversion. This was quickly agreed to.
And they brought the stories—of Jack sitting down to eat his Chinese food, closing his eyes, savoring, and saying, “hmmmmm….” The talk turned a bit metaphysical.
“You know,” said Bess, “it’s a curious thing—I always associate my mother with deer. And once, when my sister and I had been talking about her, after she died, I went to the window and told my sister ‘wouldn’t it be wild if I opened the curtain and there was a deer?’”
Don’t have to tell you, do I?
There wasn’t one deer…
Just fourteen or so. All grazing gently, moving without care or concern.
You can imagine Bess and her sister….
“Might not have worked in New York City,” I was about to say, when…
…we were jolted out of our seats by the smoke alarm. I tell you the explicable because it leads so well to the inexplicable. No one was smoking—of course!—no one was cooking. There was no fire of any kind, and no smoke in the house.
And those babies are LOUD! So I grabbed the thing from atop the beam supporting the roof—Norwegian American height does come in handy, despite banging my head on every Frank Lloyd Wright entrance I’ve visited (he made all his entrances just an inch of two above his own head, the arrogant bastard)—and took it outside, where a strong breeze was blowing.
Clearly, someone had her finger (note possessive adjective) on the “test” button. The alarm wouldn’t stop.
Not at all sure that it would work, I removed the battery. And you-know-who took her finger off the button….
A silence even greater than the night of our arrival fell.
So she was there, all right. Well, why not? It is her house.
Though about to be sold.
But it may be that she was ready, at last, to go on. When the night of the party arrived, the weather finally turned warm—it had been a week of cold, sullen, spiteful rain. But at last it was warm—warm enough for the shorts I had blithely packed. Relief!
At 1:40 in the afternoon—two years to the minute from her death, Eric and I listened by ourselves to the Beethoven.
This is called emotional preparation.
Within seconds, each one of us was weeping silently, shaking or rocking in our individual chairs. At the end—after 17 minutes of the most wrenching music Beethoven could produce—we stood and hugged.
Yes, a bear hug.
One of Eric’s specials—now gratefully received.
And then the hosts arrived, all 16 of them. Their party was to start. We two guests welcomed them at the door, and let them go to it.
Of course they brought the food—and what food it was! They brought poetry as well, and what poetry it was! And the evening grew dim—the classic Wisconsin sunset that I had known, two years ago, had been revived.
It seems that no Newhouse can NOT have the last word, the last story.
I moved to the speakers I had bought. And played the Heiliger Dankgesang. If she had spent eleven days fasting to her death, some of her dearest friends could spend 17 minutes reliving it.
And we did. The light fell—softly, gently—and at last the violist announced her noble theme. The others joined. It became unbearable, as Beethoven took the theme, expanded it, came to a climax, retreated, rethought, reworked, reconciled, and then….
…rejoiced.
“That was amazing,” said Eric, after the last guest had left. “Wonder what an outsider would have thought of this event….”
And then, the porch light went out.
