The golden pot, p.2
The Golden Pot, page 2
“I grant you the blunder. Nevertheless, every effort is being made nowadays to valorize Gluck’s works.”
“Well, yes!” he responded in brief, smiling ever more bitterly. Suddenly he leapt up, and nothing could stop him. It was as if he’d disappeared in a flash, and for days I sought him out in vain in the Tiergarten.
* * *
—
Some months had passed, when, having tarried in a remote part of the city on one cold and rainy evening, I hastened back to my apartment on Friedrichstraße. On my way, I had to pass the theater; the jarring music of trumpets and kettledrums reminded me that Gluck’s Armide was on the bill, and I was about to go in when near the window, where you could hear almost every note performed by the orchestra, a strange soliloquy caught my attention.
“Here comes the king— they’re playing the march— oh, beat away, keep beating on the kettledrum!— it’s a spirited passage! Yes, yes, they’ll have to play it eleven times today— or else the procession won’t be processional enough.— Hah hah— maestro— hep it up, boys!— Look there, a figurant’s stuck with a shoehorn in his hands.— That’s right, for the twelfth time! and always on the dominant note— oh, you powers that be, it’s never ending! Now he pays his compliment. Armide thanks him respectfully.— Not again?— That’s right, two soldiers are still missing! Now it’s time to strike up the recitativo.— What evil spirit banned me to stay in this spot?”
“The ban has been lifted,” I cried out. “Come with me!”
I seized hold of my madcap character from the Tiergarten – for the deliverer of that soliloquy was none other – grabbed him by the arm and dragged him away with me. He seemed surprised and followed quietly. We had already reached Friedrichstraße when he suddenly stopped dead in his tracks.
“I know you,” he said. “You’re the fellow in the Tiergarten— we talked a lot— I drank wine— got myself all worked up in a sweat— Euphony rang in my ears for two days after that— I had to endure a lot— it’s over now!”
“I’m happy that chance brought us together again. Let us get better acquainted. I live not far from here; why don’t we…”
“I cannot and dare not go visit anyone.”
“No, you won’t get away from me this time; I’ll go where you’re going.”
“Then you’ll have to accompany me for another few hundred steps. But didn’t you want to attend the theater?”
“I wanted to hear Armide, but now—”
“Then you shall hear Armide, presently!”
We walked up Friedrichstraße in silence; he turned down a side street, and raced so quickly down the street that I was hardly able to keep up with him, until finally he came to a halt in front of a rather dilapidated-looking house. He knocked quite a long time before someone opened the door. Staggering around in the dark, we found our way to the staircase and climbed up to a room on the floor above, the door of which my curious companion locked behind us. I heard another door opening; soon after, he burst in with a lit candle in hand, and I was more than a bit surprised at the sight of his oddly arranged room. Old-fashioned overstuffed settees, a wall clock with gilded encasement, and a large, cumbersome mirror gave everything the somber appearance of outmoded elegance. In the middle of the room stood a small piano topped by a large porcelain inkpot, and beside it lay several sheets of lined music paper. A closer inspection of these trappings of composition convinced me, however, that nothing had been written for quite a while; the paper was all yellowed, and a thick spider’s web hung over the inkpot. The man stepped in front of a cupboard in the corner of the room that I hadn’t initially noticed, and as he drew back the curtain I became aware of a row of finely bound books with gilded titles: Orfeo, Armida, Alceste, Iphigenia, etc., in short, an array of Gluck’s masterpieces.
“You own Gluck’s complete works?” I cried out.
He made no reply, but his mouth twisted itself into a contorted smile, and the play of muscles in his sunken cheeks momentarily distorted the face into a nightmarish mask. With his stony, somber look fixed on me, he reached for one of the books – it was Armida – and stepped ceremoniously over to the piano. He propped up the folded music stand, which he appeared to do with pleasure, opened the book, and – how can I describe my surprise! – I saw lined sheets of paper, but with not a note inscribed on them.
He began: “Now I will play you the overture! Please be so kind as to turn the pages, and at the right time!”
I promised to do so, whereupon he played splendidly and masterfully, with full-fingered chords, the majestic Tempo di Marcia with which the overture begins, almost completely faithful to the original; although the allegro was only interlaced with Gluck’s principal ideas. He introduced so many new genial twists and turns that my amazement grew by leaps and bounds. His modulated harmonies were absolutely astounding, without ever sounding grating, and he managed to adorn the essential musical ideas with so many melodic melismas that those ideas seemed to be reinvigorated again and again, ever new and rejuvenated. His face glowed; at times his eyebrows sank and a long-suppressed rage seemed about to burst forth; at other times his eyes welled up with tears of profound wistfulness. Sometimes he sang the theme in a winsome tenor voice as both his hands played artful melismas; he managed in an altogether original manner to make his voice mimic the muffled thump of the kettledrum. I kept diligently turning the page in accordance with his looks. The overture came to an end and he fell back, utterly exhausted, into the settee. He soon bestirred himself again and, while hastily flipping through many empty pages in the book, he muttered:
“All of this, my good Sir, I wrote upon emerging from the realm of dreams. But I disclosed the holy to the unholy and an ice-cold hand gripped my burning heart! My heart did not break, but I was damned to walk among the unholy like the ghost of one departed – bodyless, so that no one would recognize me until the sunflower once again lifts me up unto the eternal. Hah – let us now sing Armide’s scene.
Whereupon he sang the closing scene from Armide with an expression on his face that gripped my heart. Here, too, his take differed in remarkable ways from the original opera; but his altered music fulfilled, as it were, the highest potential of Gluck’s scene. He captured in notes all of the heightened emotion that hate, love, despair, and frenzy can express. His voice sounded like that of a youth, then deeply muffled, it welled up with an all-penetrating force. My whole being trembled— I was beside myself. When he came to an end, I threw myself into his arms and cried out with a strained voice: “What is this? Who are you?”
He stood up and measured me with a grave and penetrating look; but when I wanted to question more, he disappeared with the candle through the door and left me standing in the dark. Almost a quarter of an hour passed; I despaired of seeing him again and, orienting myself with the aid of the music stand, tried to find my way to the door, when suddenly he returned with the candle in hand, dressed in an embroidered gala frock coat, a splendid vest underneath, and a dagger dangling at his side.
I froze; he stepped toward me in a solemn manner, gently took hold of my hand, and said with a strange smile:
“I, Sir, am the Ritter Gluck.”
Skip Notes
* A reference to the witch in Ludovico Ariosto’s (1474–1533) epic poem Orlando Furioso (The Raging Roland).
Kreisleriana
First Series 1810
Where did he come from? Nobody knows! Who were his parents? Unknown! Whose student is he? He’s a good master, that much we can give him since he plays admirably well, and since he’s got common sense and culture to boot, we can make do with him and even let him give music lessons. And he really, truly was a kapellmeister, the diplomatically inclined add, those, that is, in whose presence he once, when he was in a good mood, pulled out an official document completed and signed by the director of the ——r Court Theater which states that the Kapellmeister Johannes Kreisler was released from his position solely because he steadfastly refused to put music to an opera written by the court poet, and also more than once spoke in deprecating terms of the primo uomo, and sought in altogether excessive, albeit incomprehensible, terms to give preference to a young girl, one of his voice students, to sing the role of prima donna. Yet he would nevertheless be allowed to retain the title of Royal ——r Kapellmeister and would moreover be permitted to return to his position, were he to completely abjure certain positions and absurd prejudices – for instance, that true Italian music is gone for good, and the like – and willingly affirm his belief in the excellence of the court poet, who was generally recognized as the second Metastasio.
His friends maintained that nature tried a new recipe when cooking up his character traits, and the experiment had failed. Too little of the phlegmatic had been added to his over-excitable disposition; his imaginative faculty all too often got fired up to a dangerous degree and upset the balance of his equilibrium, a character trait absolutely essential to the artist, enabling him to get along with the world, and to compose works of the sort that the world really needs to a higher degree than they even know.
Be that as it may— enough said. Johannes was driven hither and thither by his phantasms and dreams, as if on a stormy sea, and he seemed to be seeking in vain the safe harbor that would grant him the serenity and good cheer necessary for the artist to create anything. His friends could not bring him to write down a composition and, once he had put something on paper, they were unable to keep him from tearing it up. Sometimes he only composed at night in the most agitated state of mind— he awakened his friend, who lived next door, to wildly play for him all that he had written at lightning speed— he wept tears of joy over the accomplished work— he lauded himself as the most jubilant of souls— but the very next day, the composition went up in flames.
Singing had an almost pernicious effect on him, because his imagination was practically whipped up into a frenzy and his spirit absconded to a realm into which no one could safely follow; nevertheless, he often took delight in playing strange variations in graceful contrapuntal twists and turns and imitations, elaborating on the most artful passages at the piano for hours on end. If he managed to pull this off, it put him in a chipper mood for days, and a certain roguish irony spiced up the conversation he shared with his cozy coterie of friends.
But then all at once, no one knew how or why, he disappeared. Many maintained that they detected traces of madness in him, and he had indeed at times been spotted wearing two hats, one on top of the other, with two rastrums stuck like daggers in his red waistbelt, singing merrily to himself as he hopped out the city gate – although his close friends saw nothing strange in this, since he had always been given to agitated outbursts stirred by some inner turmoil. When all inquiries as to his whereabouts came to naught, and his friends discussed what to do with his small literary estate of sheet music and other writings, Mademoiselle von B. turned up and declared that she alone would safeguard this stash of papers on behalf of her dear master and friend, whom she by no means believed to be lost. The other friends gladly consigned the whole lot to her care, and when short, mostly humorous reflections were found jotted down in pencil script on the reverse side of several pages of sheet paper, sorrowful Johannes’s faithful female student made copies to pass around among his close friends, offering them as the unassuming results of the master’s passing upset.
kapellmeister johannes kreisler’s musical woes
They all went away. I could have predicted it from the whispering, foot shuffling, throat clearing, muttering in all musical keys; it was a veritable bee buzz that distracts from the repertoire and swells to a hum.
Gottlieb installed new lights and set a bottle of white Burgundy on the pianoforte. I can’t play anymore, completely exhausted as I am; it’s the fault of my grand old friend on the music stand, who once again swept me away, like Faust clinging to Mephistopheles’ coattails, lifting my spirits so high that I lost sight of the little people scurrying around below, the prodigious din of their disquiet notwithstanding. It was a currish, uselessly wasted evening! But now I feel lighthearted and good again – did I not pull out my pencil while playing, and with my right hand jot down on page sixty-three of the score several changes of key, while the left hand kept on playing in tempo! I continue my remarks on the back side of the sheet music. Abandoning numbers and notes, like the convalescent who can’t stop elaborating on his recent sufferings, I laboriously record here the hellish torments of today’s tea. Not for my sake alone, but rather for the sake of all those who, guided by the Latin term “Verte“ (I will jot it down once my plaint is completed), may from time to time turn the sheet music around, to derive delight and edification from my copy of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Variations for Piano,” at the end of the thirtieth variation, published by Nägeli in Zürich. Such knowledgeable folk will immediately divine the correlation; they are well aware that the privy councillor Röderlein is a most gracious host and has two daughters whom the smart set raves about, saying that they dance like goddesses, speak French like angels, and play, sing, and draw like the Muses.
Privy Councillor Röderlein is a rich man; at his quarterly gatherings he serves the best wines, the finest dishes, and all is served in a lavish manner.
Whoever fails to have a ball at one of his teas has no style, no spirit, and above all no appreciation for the arts. Art is what it’s all about; aside from tea, punch, wine, ice cream, etc., some piece of music is always presented which the smart set listens to in a very relaxed fashion. This is how it goes: after each guest has had enough time to sip any number of cups of tea, and after punch and ice cream are twice passed around, the servants set up card tables for the older, more established members of society who prefer card games to music, and who, so occupied, refrain from making undue noise, except for the jingle of small change. At this point, the younger guests crowd around Miss Röderlein; a commotion ensues, in which the following words are overheard: “Lovely young lady, please do not deny us the pleasure of your heavenly talent— oh, do sing us something, my dear.”— “Impossible— I’ve come down with a cold— Got it at the last ball— Nothing rehearsed.”— “Oh, please, please— we beg of you,” etc.
In the meantime, Gottlieb has uncovered the piano keyboard and set up the music stand with the well-known book of music. The gracious Frau Mama calls over from the card table: “Chantez donc, mes enfants!“ That is the prompt for me to play my role; I stand beside the piano, and the Röderlein girls are triumphantly led to the instrument. At this point another disagreement ensues; neither girl wants to go first.
“You know, dear Nanette, how awfully hoarse I am.”
“Am I any less so, dear Marie?”
“I sing so badly.”
“Oh, darling, just begin—”
And so on and so forth. It is at this point when I come up with a bright idea. (I do so every time!) Let them begin together with a duet. Said suggestion is greeted with enthusiastic applause, the book of music is leafed through, the painstakingly predesignated page is finally found, and the singing begins: Dolce dell’ anima, etc.
The talents of the Miss Röderleins are indeed not negligible. I’ve been in town for five years, four and a half years of which I’ve been engaged as singing instructor in the Röderlein household. In this short time, Miss Nanette has managed to parrot a melody she heard ten times in the theater, and then practiced at most ten times at the piano, in a manner more or less faithful to the original. Miss Marie can manage after the eighth time, and even if she often sings a fourth note lower than the piano, the difference is readily forgiven, on account of her pretty little face and her ever so slightly rose-hued lips. The duet is followed up with the requisite acclamatory round of applause, whereupon the girls take turns singing ariettas and duettinos, and each time I hammer out the familiar accompaniment as if for the very first time.
Today, as the Röderlein girls are singing, the wife of Finance Counselor Eberstein lets it be known by her throat clearing and singing along: I’ve got a voice too.
To this, Miss Nanette remarks: “But Madame Finance Counselor, you, too, simply must treat us to a taste of your heavenly singing.”
A new hubbub ensues. She, too, has a cold— and doesn’t know any songs by heart! Gottlieb brings two arms full of books of sheet music: pages are turned and turned. First, she wants to sing “Der Hölle Rache,” (Hell’s Vengeance Boils in My Heart), then “Hebe! sieh,” then “Ach ich liebte.” (Ah, I Was in Love). Anxiously, I suggest: “Ein Veilchen auf der Wiese stand” (A Violet in the Meadow Stood). But she prefers a major genre, she wants to show off, so we stick to Constanze. Shout it out, squeal, mew, burble, gurgle, groan, grunt, quaver, warble up a storm! I play up the fortissimo till I’m half-deaf— Oh, Satan, Satan! Which of your hellish demons entered that throat, pinching and wedging and wrenching every note! Four strings have already snapped, a piano hammer is off. My ears are ringing, there’s a roaring in my head, my nerves are shattered. Have all the impure notes of every screeching market crier’s horn crowded together in this throat? It infuriates me— so I drink a glass of Burgundy! My playing is received with wild applause, and someone remarks that Madame Finance Counselor’s rendition and Mozart’s must have fired me up. I respond with a downcast gaze and a foolish grin.
At this point all the hidden talents in the room make themselves known and burst forth willy-nilly. The public must endure all manner of musical excesses: ensembles, finales, choruses to be performed.
“It is common knowledge that the Canon Kratzer sings a heavenly bass,” the man with the short, frizzy Titus cut remarks, adding humbly that he himself is just a second tenor, though indeed the member of several song academies. All is set up in a snap to sing the first chorus from Titus. Which goes splendidly! Standing directly behind me, the Canon thunders out his bass as if accompanied by obligato trumpets and kettle drums in the cathedral; he hits each note perfectly, but in his haste he slows the tempo to almost twice as slow. He does remain true to himself throughout the entire performance, at least insofar as he consistently trails by a half beat. The other singers display a definite penchant for ancient Greek music, which, being devoid of harmony as everyone knows, is presented in unison; they all sing the treble with small variations by approximately a quarter tone produced by random rises and drops of pitch.
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