“All my timidity vanished in an instant. I threw myself in the path of the town piper, I begged, I implored, and in my fit of terror I promised him nine minuets with double trios for the town ball. I managed to mollify his injured pride. He returned to the conductor’s stand, the other musicians stepped forward, and soon the orchestra was reassembled with only the organist missing. He was slowly ambling across the market square; no waving, no calling out to him drew him back. Teresina surveyed the scene with stubborn laughter; as irate as Lauretta had been before, she was now lighthearted. She overpraised my efforts, she asked if I could play the piano, and before I knew what I was doing I sat down before the score in the organist’s place. I had never before accompanied a singer, or conducted an orchestra. Teresina sat down beside me at the piano and gave me each tempo, Lauretta cheered me on with a heartening bravo, the orchestra played along, everything sounded better and better. Everything became clear in the second rehearsal, and the effect of the two sisters’ singing in concert was indescribable.

  “Many festivities were planned for the prince’s return to court, and the sisters were called upon to sing in the theater and concert hall; they decided to linger in our little town until such time as their presence elsewhere was absolutely necessary, and so they gave a few additional concerts. The public’s admiration grew into a kind of madness. Only old Ms. Meibel took a pinch of tobacco from the pug-shaped porcelain jar and maintained that such shrieking was no proper singing. My organist never showed his face again, and I didn’t miss him either. I was the most jubilant person on earth! All day long I sat beside the sisters, accompanied them, and wrote out the partitur each was to sing for their concert in the capital city. Lauretta was my ideal, her bad moods, her terrible irascible impetuosity – her virtuoso torment at the piano – all this I patiently endured! For it was she, she alone, who revealed to me what real music was. I started studying Italian and tried my hand at canzonettas. How ecstatic I was when Lauretta sang my compositions and even praised them! Oftentimes it seemed to me as if I had not even contemplated or conceived how it should sound, but it was only in Lauretta’s rendition that the meaning emerged. I never warmed up to Teresina; she seldom sang, did not appear to pay me much mind, and it sometimes seemed to me as if she were laughing at me behind my back.

  “It finally came time for their departure. Only then did I fathom what Lauretta had become for me and the impossibility of separating from her. Often when she became smorfiosa,[*4] she caressed me, even if in an altogether innocuous manner, but my blood began to boil, and it was only the curious coldness with which she confronted me that kept me from taking her in my arms, inflamed with the fury of love. I had a middling tenor voice which, while I had never trained it, I now quickly whipped into shape. I often sang with Lauretta those innumerable tender Italian duettini. As her departure drew near, we sang just such a duet – ‘senza di te ben mio, vivere non poss’io.‘[*5] Who on earth could endure such an emotional strain without springing to action? I threw myself at Lauretta’s feet— I was at my wit’s end! She raised me upright: ‘But my dear friend! Dare we part?’— I pricked up my ears. She suggested I come to the capital with her and Teresina, seeing as I would one day have to leave that backwater if I wished to devote myself entirely to music.

  “Just imagine someone who, having fallen into the blackest, most bottomless abyss, despairs of life, but at the very same instant he believes he has received the blow that tears him apart he finds himself seated in a bright and splendid rose arbor with hundreds of brilliant lights flickering about and a voice crying, ‘Dearly beloved, you’re still alive for now!’

  “That’s how I felt. To go along with them to the capital, that was my solemn resolve! I won’t bore you with the details of how I began to insist to my uncle how I simply had to go to the capital city, which wasn’t really all that far. He finally gave in, even promised to come along. What a glitch in my plans! I could not very well reveal my intention of traveling with the two Italian ladies. A bad cold that laid my uncle low finally saved the day. I rode off in the postal coach, but only to the next town, where I stopped to await the arrival of my goddess. A well-larded travel bag allowed me to make thorough preparations. Romantically inclined, I wanted to accompany the ladies on horseback like a protective paladin; I managed to procure a horse which, though not particularly stately, was, according to the man who sold it to me, a patient and dependable mount, and rode out at the agreed upon time to meet the singers. Soon the small, two-seated rig came slowly rambling along. One seat was occupied by the two sisters, and in the rear seat sat their chambermaid, the small, stout Gianna, a brown-haired Neapolitan. The carriage was otherwise heaped high with all manner of packing cases, boxes, and baskets from which traveling ladies can never be parted. Two little pugs perched on Gianna’s lap and barked at me as I cheerfully greeted my eagerly awaited companions. Everything proceeded as planned; we had already arrived at the last station stop when my horse had the bright idea to want to return home. Guided by the presence of mind that in such instances severe measures would not be particularly effective, I tried, albeit to no avail, to employ gentler means, but my stubborn mount proved unmoved by my attempts at friendly persuasion. I wanted to go forward, he backward – all that I managed by painstaking means was that he rode around in circles instead. Teresa leaned out of the carriage and laughed heartily, while Lauretta, holding her face in her two hands, cried out at the top of her lungs, as if I were in mortal danger. Emboldened by desperation, I dug both spurs into the horse’s ribs, but was in the selfsame instant hurled head over heels and landed on the ground. The horse stopped dead in his tracks and regarded me scornfully with his long, outstretched neck. Since I did not manage to rise, the coachman sped to my rescue, Lauretta leapt out, weeping and shrieking, and Teresina kept on laughing. I had sprained my ankle and so was not able to remount the horse. How was I to proceed? The horse was tied to the carriage, and I was obliged to crawl in. Just imagine two relatively robust damsels, a fat chambermaid, two pugs, and a good dozen packing cases, boxes, and baskets, and me packed in on top of it all in a small two-seated rig— just imagine Lauretta’s yammering at the uncomfortable seating arrangement— the howling of the pugs— the jabbering of the Neapolitan maid— Teresina’s sulking— the unspeakable pain in my ankle, and you will fathom the pretty state I was in. Teresina, as she insisted, could stand it no more. We stopped, and with one leap she was out of the carriage. She untied my horse, sat herself squarely across the saddle and trotted and pranced on ahead of us. I must admit that she comported herself in splendid fashion. Her innate elegance and grace were even more in evidence on horseback. She had the guitar handed to her, and with the reins strung around her arm, sang proud Spanish romanzas, accompanying herself with sonorous strummed chords. Her light silk gown fluttered in the wind, the sunlight playing in shimmering reflections on the pleats, and the white feathers of her hat waved in time like nodding spirits cooing along. Her entire appearance was romantic to a tee, so much so that I could not take my eyes off Teresina, notwithstanding Lauretta, who saw her sister as a complete lunatic, and must surely have taken umbrage at her cockiness. But everything turned out well, the horse became compliant, or else the songstress was preferable to the paladin as a rider – to make a long story short, only once we’d reached the gates of the capital did Teresina crawl back into the buggy.

  “If you had seen me then, reveling in all kinds of music – at the piano studiously practicing arias, duets and what have you – you would have been able to tell from my completely changed presence that I was infused with a wondrous spirit. Having shed all small-town timidity, I sat like a maestro before my score at the piano, directing the dramatic singing of my dear donna. My entire being – all my thinking – was done in sweet melodies. Unconcerned with contrapuntal musical confections, I wrote all manner of canzonettas and arias that Lauretta sang, albeit only in the privacy of her room. Why did she never want to sing any of my compositions in concert? – I just didn’t get it. Teresina sometimes seemed to me to embody the very epitome of the rash romantic artist perched on her proud horse, stroking her lyre – I unintentionally wrote some serious highfalutin songs for her! – Still, it is true that Lauretta toyed with the notes like a capricious fairy queen. There was nothing she attempted that she didn’t manage to pull off. Teresina couldn’t produce a musical roulade – an appoggiatura maybe, a mordent at best, but her long drawn-out notes shimmered against a dark backdrop, and wondrous spirits came alive, peering with dark eyes deep into the heart’s domain. I don’t know how I could have been closed off to such a surge of musical feeling for so long.

  “The time came for the sisters’ benefit concert; Lauretta and I presented a long scene from an opera by Anfossi. She sang and I sat by, as usual, accompanying her on the piano. About to sing the last fermata, Lauretta summoned all her artistry. Nightingale twitters swelled and receded— notes held— then bright, ruffled roulades, followed by a burst of solfeggio! Truth to tell, this time it almost seemed to last too long. I felt a soft breath; Teresina stood behind me. At the same time Lauretta started toward a surging harmonic trill, which would then fall back into tempo. Satan interceded, making me bang out the chord with both hands, and the orchestra followed at precisely the same moment that Lauretta produced her trill, the highpoint of her performance, intended to stun the audience. Piercing me with a livid look, she tore the score into pieces, flung them at my head so that the strips of paper fluttered around me, and ran in a frenzy through the orchestra into the adjoining room. As soon as the tutti came to a close, I ran after her. She wept, she raged. ‘Out of my sight, you lout!’ she shrieked at me. ‘Vile devil, you brought my undoing— ruined my reputation, stained my honor— tarnished my trill— out of my sight, you cursed son of hell!’ She leapt at me, but I escaped through the door. For the remainder of the concert, while someone else directed, Teresina and the kapellmeister managed to mollify the seething singer sufficiently so that she decided to appear again; but I was not permitted to return to the piano. In the last duet sung by the sisters, Lauretta really managed to bring off the surging harmonic trill, and was greeted with a thunderous ovation which put her in a wonderful mood. In the meantime, I could not get over the awful treatment I had suffered from Lauretta in the presence of so many strangers, and had firmly resolved to return to my native town the next morning.

  “I had just packed my things when Teresina entered my room. Acknowledging my intent, she cried out in amazement, ‘You want to leave us?’ I explained that, after having suffered such humiliation from Lauretta, I could no longer remain in her presence. ‘So it’s the mad doings of a bedlamite, who already sincerely regrets her actions, that drives you away?’ said Teresina. ‘But where can you live out your art any better than in our company? With your sober response you alone can keep Lauretta from going off on another fit of hysteria. You’re too acquiescent, too sweet, too gentle. You hold Lauretta’s art in too high esteem. Her voice isn’t half bad and she does have a great range, it’s true, but all those over-exuberant flourishes, those immeasurably long held notes, those endless trills – what else are they but dazzling leaps to be admired like the daredevil high-wire sprints of a tightrope walker? Can such an audacious stunt stir our souls and move our hearts? I really can’t abide the harmonic trill that you spoiled, it makes me feel uneasy and hurts my ears. And then that sudden rise of pitch, is that not a forced strain on the natural voice that only stirs us when it stays true to itself? I prefer the middle and the deep tones. A clearly sung note that touches us deeply, a true portamento di voce means more to me than anything else. No unnecessary embellishment, a firmly held note – a certain musical expression that encompasses soul and mood – that is real singing, and that’s how I sing. If you don’t care for Lauretta any longer, then think of Teresina, who holds you in her heart, since in your own unique fashion you will become my maestro and compositore. Please don’t take it badly! All of your dainty canzonettas and arias can’t hold a candle to the real thing!’ Teresina sang with her sonorous rich voice a simple church canzone I had arranged some days ago. Never did I imagine that it could sound like that. The notes struck my ears with a wondrous force, tears of joy and delight welled up in my eyes, and I reached for Teresina’s hand and pressed it a thousand times to my lips, swearing never to part from her.

  “With a bitter, jealous rage, Lauretta observed my burgeoning relations with Teresina, all the while still needing me, for despite her artistry she was unable to rehearse anything new without assistance; she was bad at reading music and had trouble keeping time. Teresina read everything directly from the score, in addition to which her sense of timing was impeccable. Never did Lauretta’s willfulness and her impetuosity manifest themselves more stridently than when practicing with a pianist. The accompaniment was always off— she treated it as a necessary evil— best not to hear the piano at all, keep it pianissimo— the pianist must always acquiesce— every cadence sounded different, just as she happened to construe it at that moment. But now I opposed her with firm determination, I countered her clumsiness, I proved to her that accompaniment without zest was unthinkable, that truly carrying a melody was markedly different from tactless fumbling. Teresina faithfully backed me up. I composed only church music and wrote all solos for a deep voice. Teresina likewise lorded it over me, but I put up with it, for she had a greater mastery, and (so I believed) a better grasp of German gravitas than Lauretta.

  “We traveled through southern Germany. In a small town we met an Italian tenor who wanted to go from Milan to Berlin. My ladies were enchanted by their compatriot; he never spent a moment away from them, he took a particular liking to Teresina, and to my considerable chagrin I now played second fiddle to him. One time, just as I was about to enter their room with a musical score under my arm, I overheard a lively conversation between my ladies and the tenor. My name was mentioned – I hesitated and pricked up my ears. I was now so conversant in Italian that I didn’t miss a word. Lauretta spoke of the tragic incident at the concert, when I cut off her trill through my untimely striking of the piano keys.

  “ ‘Asino Tedesco,’[*6] cried the tenor; I felt like storming in and tossing the theatrical windbag out the window – but I held back.

  “Lauretta continued that she had immediately wanted to get rid of me, but that, moved by my beseeching pleas, she decided out of pity to tolerate my presence and let me stick around, since I wanted to learn the art of bel canto from her. It was no small surprise to hear Teresina confirm this. ‘He’s a good child,’ she added, ‘now he’s in love with me and writes everything for alto. He does have a middling talent, but he’s got to work his way out of his typically German stiffness and stodginess. I hope to mold him into a compositore who can write a couple of competent pieces for me, since so little is written for alto voice, then I’ll send him packing. He’s a perfect bore with all his lovey-doveyness and pining, and he tries my patience with his tiresome and perfectly pitiful compositions.’

  “ ‘At least I’m rid of him now,’ Lauretta interjected, ‘you know how that pitiful fellow harassed me with his arias and duets, don’t you Teresina?’ Now Lauretta launched into a duet that I had composed and that she had praised to high heaven in the past. Teresina took up the second voice, and together they made mincemeat of my music. The tenor laughed so hard that the room resounded with his merriment – an icy chill ran down my spine – I made up my mind then and there. Silently I slipped away from the door and back into my room, whose window faced the side street.

  “The post office was located across the street, and at that very moment the postal stagecoach to Bamberg pulled in, ready for boarding and to be loaded with mail. The passengers already stood lined up at the departure gate, but I still had an hour before the scheduled departure. I hastily packed my things, generously paid the entire bill for lodgings, and rushed off to the postal station. As I rode in the carriage across the wide street, I spotted my ladies with the tenor still standing at the window, leaning out at the blast of the post horn. I sat back in my seat and contemplated with pleasure the effect of the bitter note I left for them back at the inn.”

  With great gusto, Theodor slurped down the dregs of the glowing Aleatico Blanco that Eduard had served him, promptly popping open a new bottle, and skillfully draining off the droplet of oil at the neck. “I would never have suspected Teresina of such duplicity and perfidy. I can’t get the pretty picture out of my mind of her seated on that horse that pranced about as she sang Spanish romanzas. That for me was the pinnacle of her artistry,” Theodor reflected. “I can still remember the vivid impression that scene made on me. I forgot all my misery; Teresina truly seemed like a higher being. Such moments mark us and suddenly and forevermore epitomize some heretofore unformulated notion that time can never erase. When, on rare occasions, I managed to pull off a jaunty romanza, at the moment of composition that picture of Teresina in the saddle immediately emerged from memory and leapt to mind.”

  “Still,” said Eduard, “let us not forget the artful Lauretta, and all your grievances aside, let us drink to the two sisters’ health.”

 

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