To Beethoven via South Korea

I read recently that nineteenth-century violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim had said, “The Germans have four violin concertos. The greatest, most uncompromising is Beethoven's. The one by Brahms vies with it in seriousness. The richest, the most seductive, was written by Max Bruch. But the most inward, the heart's jewel, is Mendelssohn's.

I know them, but curiously hardly ever hear them. Why? Well, one of the paradoxes of classical music is that when a piece gets played often enough, it gains “warhorse” status, and people then tend to shun it. Think I’m wrong? When was the last time you heard Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony?

Of the four concerti, Beethoven’s is the oldest and—some would argue—the best. It’s also fiendishly difficult: the violin has to go into the stratosphere and still be utterly lyrical. It’s therefore almost unbelievable that Beethoven gave the part to the violinist Franz Clement so late that Clement was sight-reading (that is, playing it for the first time) at the first performance. That may have been why Clement chose to play a little ditty for one string with his violin held upside down between the first and second movements. In fairness, breaking up movements was a fairly common practice at the time; earlier generations were less fussy in those days.

At any rate, the debut was not a great success, and the concerto went essentially un-played for a couple of decades, when it was revived by a twelve-year old Joachim with Mendelssohn conducting.

It’s a typical concerto—nothing revolutionary here. OK—it’s a little weird to have those four somber timpani notes starting the whole thing, but other than that, it’s fairly traditional. It starts out with the orchestra playing the tutti, which introduces the principal themes, as well as giving the soloist time to fully feel his dry mouth, sweaty hands, and churning stomach. Then we get the soloist coming in, and playing a miniature cadenza—a solo passage which is or should feel improvised and which, generally, is highly virtuosic. There’s nothing virtuosic here, it’s mainly meant to tease—when is the violinist gonna get down to business and play us some tunes?

He or she does for about twenty minutes—Beethoven takes his sweet time wrapping this thing up. And the first movement ends with a true, fiery cadenza. The second movement is Beethoven at his most lyric, and the third movement—which is connected to the second, a typical Beethoven trick—is almost fatally a rondo.

A good blogger would look it up, and give you the formula for the damn thing—it goes something like aabbaaccaaddaa and then—at last—the end. So the first problem is that you’re gonna hear the aa six zillion times. The second problem is that the tunes chosen by the composer tend to be mildly irritating at the start, so by the end? You’ll be gagging.

And Beethoven, with all his skill, comes very close to not pulling it off. He has, however, to his aid an incredible violinist, Kyung-wha Chung. Chung has quite a story—her mother was a singer, and two of her siblings are professional musicians as well. So she grew up playing with her cellist sister and pianist brother, and was famous in South Korea, their home. From there, it was off to Julliard, where she had two major challenges—Juilliard was filled with child prodigies as good as she, and her teacher, the famous and feared Ivan Galamian, didn’t think much of female violinists. He thought she’d make an orchestra violinist, not a soloist.

The life of a conservatory student took its toll on Chung. Although she was fiendishly disciplined, she grew depressed: other people were dating, having fun, dancing in clubs. She was practicing every waking moment; despondent, she considered giving up the violin.

The family reacted by having an emergency meeting. They decided: Chung would enter the prestigious Edgar Leventritt Violin Competition. If she didn’t win, she could give up. If she won, she’d go on. She told Galamian, who adored her, but feared she would be lost to marriage.

He was also teaching a kid named Pinchas Zuckerman, who had the chromosome that Chung lacked. So, she didn’t get much support. Oh, except for her mother, who sold the family home to buy a Stradivarius for the event.

She didn’t win—she did something better. She tied with Zuckerman, the first time that any two people had been declared winners; some years, no one wins the thing if the judges don’t feel there’s anybody up to snuff.

Zuckerman’s career took off; hers languished. And then, she got a break—Zuckerman’s wife was giving birth, and Chung was asked to step in. She prepared the Tchaikovsky concerto, the orchestra played the Mendelssohn, instead. Right, so she could do that—they prep you for stuff like that in Juilliard. She played it perfectly, and the London Symphony Orchestra, which thought she was a lightweight, was impressed.

In the clip below, she’s at the peak of her career, and playing with a wonderful orchestra, the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam, with Klauss Tennstedt as conductor. The orchestra has this wonderful, rich sound; Chung goes from fiery virtuosity to almost unbearable tenderness. It’s a knockout.

Beethoven Quartet no. 15, 3d movement

It’s a curious thing how no one—at least I think—can write sensibly about the effect of hearing music psychologically and emotionally.

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.

Who?

‘It was,’ I thought, ‘living in a state of fear.’

That amused me, so I played with it. Was it a fly-over state? If so, were there people who simply don’t fly over it—who never know fear? Do some people come—maybe to go to the University of Fear—and then go off somewhere else?

Don’t know. What I do know is that yesterday, I visited it. And what a subtle place it was: things appearing that I’d not seen, sizes of objects changing around, interactions skewing slightly.

I came home and wrote about it, and felt a little better. I sent it to Taí, who politely said it was disjointed. I worked hard—doing a post, then rewriting a section of Iguanas. The Zanas were giving me problems—what to do with them? 

The trouble was I wanted to put in more pictures of them than I had of other friends—just as dear, just as devoted. And Franny wouldn’t have liked that. Well, I solved it, but it took me two hours.

Let me state it simply—my abstract from the thesis of UF:

I feared I was losing my mind again, and that I would become a chronic nutcase, always moving in and out of insanity.

And it did look to be the case. Even the things that could be explained were inexplicable. The post I had written, that disjointed thing? Somehow, it had been sent without the ending. 

Speaking of deletions, I did something in a document, and poof—it was gone. I panic and call Taí, who tells there is an “undo” button I click. 

And how many times have I clicked the “undo” button in my life?

My finding in the thesis: my fear was making everything worse.

Well, I’m going out on a limb today, and let the gods be tempted.

I graduated.

And have just done—actually for the first time in my life—commencement.

The first step came at the supermarket, where I stood with my good recyclable bag. The nice cashier, with whom I always speak Spanish, sees my bag, looks away, and then puts an item in a plastic bag.

“I’m crazy,” he says.

In English.

“No, you’re not,” I say.

I don’t have to explain, do I?

Half an hour later, the sun is setting, and illuminates a quite dead bougainvillea. Rather, it irradiates it, and it is now gold. 

I mean real gold. 

Think wedding bands.

And I do not think this is crazy. I know other people do. I know that I can live in their world.

I just have another passport.

Or diploma?

I smile and play Sudoku. And I decide to cheat—which is possible, electronically. The Sudoku is on my iPad, and any wrong number is immediately rejected. The device makes a disgusted sound, and the wrong is counted against you. It adds a new dimension to the game. Oh, you get a score, too.

Well, that’s useful, because I have been testing my mind. Can I still think? Is the logical component still there?

First cheat—and the number sits placidly on the screen. Second cheat—the same. I cheat four times, and yes…

‘Ah, the Puerto Rican God,’ I think. ‘She’s not subtle….’

Nor was she today, at commencement.

Starting my walk, I realize: I’m tired of chamber music, and am definitely not into lieder. I play the only symphony on my iPod.

Beethoven’s Fifth.

And as much as people sniff at it, I love it. More, it has come into my life always at crucial moments. 

So we’re off, Beethoven and I, and we’re walking by the sea. And the Puerto Rican God has provided quite a nice setting. The sky is dark, there is a storm at sea, the waves are high.

Contrasting nicely with the tenderness of the work. Because it is tender. Wistful. Wondering…

And it begins to rain and I am getting wet and I return home.

And the third movement is ending, and I think of the story, probably untrue, of the little boy.

He’s hearing that moment at a concert, and turns to an old man and says “I’m afraid.” The old man takes his hand.

And then the fourth movement crashes in and I step from the area of partial visibility of the sea to open visibility and…

(I can barely go on…)

There is an enormous wave assaulting the stone wall of the fortress that guards the city. And I say…

“STOP IT!”

To the Puerto Rican God.

I walk home, the music joyful until at last I am yards from the entrance to the city. I glance to my right, and see a sturdy wooden door. ‘I’ve not touched the door,’ I think (my homage to Franny)—and dismiss the idea as ridiculous. But I do, anyway.

And somebody gives me the diploma.

Who?