The Brooklyn Rail

By dramatizing the high-voltage, yet tender, minds of three legendary musicians, Boman Desai has written a When We Cease to Understand the World for nineteenth-Century classical music. Desai knows his subject well and integrates music into character—or is it character into music? Those readers well-versed in Romantic symphonic music might see analogues in the speech of characters, maybe in their imagined gaits through Central European towns, but certainly in how Brahms metabolizes the vicissitudes of life and translates them into the electrical storm that becomes his Fourth Symphony. When a musician like Richard Strauss opines that Brahms‘s Fourth reminds him of “a funeral procession moving in silence across moonlit heights,“ we as readers know exactly why.

* 

I AM JOHANNES BRAHMS 

(DÜSSELDORF, 1 OCTOBER, 1853)

Forty years earlier he might have passed for Clara’s son, so youthful did he look, thirteen at twenty, face smooth like a baby’s, voice high like a boy’s, straight blond hair to his shoulders like a girl’s, but a widow’s peak had been evident even then. Following a visit to the house of Liszt, the Villa Altenberg in Weimar, Brahms had approached the Schumann residence on Bilkerstrasse in Düsseldorf, a symmetrical brick building, two stories tall, white-walled, red-roofed. Six six-paned windows lined the upper storeys. The entrance, across a narrow pavement from the cobbled street, was wide. An arched wooden door flanked by columns, two windows on either side, led into the courtyard.

It was a modest establishment, no villa crowning a hilltop, Düsseldorfers were no aristocrats, and no cigar-smoking, French-speaking Russian princess drifted through the courtyard as had Liszt’s inamorata through the rooms of the Altenburg, but Brahms had left the house of Liszt without ceremony, disgracing himself by falling asleep while the great Liszt played his B minor Sonata after doing him the great honor of playing his Scherzo in E flat minor, sight-reading his unreadable manuscript flawlessly—but he had not liked Liszt’s music. No sooner did he present an idea than he demolished it with rhetoric, no sooner did he present a melody than he submerged it in stylizations. Had he stayed, Brahms would have had to lie, but Liszt’s pianism was without peer—exemplary, revelatory—and that, if nothing else, not the obsequious audience, not the courtesy he owed his grand host, not the tour he had just concluded, should have kept him awake. He had rung Schumann’s doorbell the day before at noon, but Schumann had been taking his daily constitutional and his twelve-year-old daughter, Marie, dark haired, round faced, serious as a librarian, had answered the door, inviting him to return an hour earlier the next day. He had arrived at ten, heartbeats multiplying within heartbeats, afraid to lose his chance again as he had with Liszt, and paced the street until the clock tower in the town square struck eleven. Destiny lay within, the make or break of his fortune, and he stepped finally to the door, passed through the foyer, through the courtyard, and rang Schumann’s doorbell again.

A hulking heavy-faced man opened the door, his body seeming to spill out of his robe, lips puckered as if he were whistling, feet in felt slippers. His hair, falling in waves over his ears, was fair, but darker than Brahms’s. Heavy-lidded eyes, peering through spectacles, were blue, but darker again than Brahms’s. “Yes?”

Brahms removed his hat. “Herr Doktor Schumann?”

“Yes?”

“I am Johannes Brahms. Here is my card.”

Schumann stared at the card before accepting it, stared next at his visitor, absorbing the short gray alpaca summer coat, dusty black shoes, hat in hand, shapeless with age, discolored by the sun, the smooth girlish face, straight blond hair falling to his shoulders.

Brahms stared back, unnerved by the silence. Stuck in Hamburg, playing piano in the homes of elites, he had met Eduard Reményi, a Hungarian refugee from the wars, making his way through the country as a violinist, who had taken Brahms with him on a tour, first to meet Joseph Joachim in Hanover, the Paganini of his generation, and Reményi’s friend from old days, in the hope of an introduction to Liszt in Weimar, all of which had been accomplished—but, when Brahms had left Weimar, Reményi had stayed, and Joachim had encouraged Brahms to visit Schumann. Brahms dug his nails into his hat. “I am a friend of Joseph Joachim.”

Schumann shook his head as if waking himself from a trance and pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. “Of course. Forgive me. He has written to me about you.” He unpuckered his mouth to speak, but remained barely audible. His expression did not change, but he held the door wider, stepping aside to let Brahms in. “The sitting-room is ahead of you.”

Brahms walked through a hallway past a staircase into a sitting-room, potted plants on the sills and hanging from the ceiling, portraits on the walls, books alongside, a piano the centerpiece, sheet music everywhere. Most of all, he was relieved that the house was a home, not a showcase, no jeweled sabers on the walls, no oriental tapestries, no gold medallions, antithesis of the Altenburg. He was also relieved that he would not be playing to a sea of sycophants.

“Joachim would like me to hear your compositions. Would you like to play for me now?”

Brahms jumped. Schumann stood right behind him, with no change of expression. Had he not spoken he might have seemed unaware of Brahms. “Ja, I am ready.” He sat at the piano. Schumann stood behind him, one hand grasped an elbow, the other pressed his puckered lips.

He began with the same piece he had auditioned for Joachim, his Sonata in C major, raising his hands to a great height before dropping them to the keyboard, hammering mighty multifingered fortissimo chords—but he had played barely eight measures before Schumann stopped him with a hand on his head. “Wait a minute.”

Brahms stopped, turning a questioning look at Schumann over his shoulder. Schumann was smiling, ruffling his hair, caressing his ear with his thumb. “My wife must hear this.”

Lumbering from the room, dragging his slippers, appearing to have the bones of a jellyfish, Schumann shouted up a stairway as if he were unaware what volume might be required. “Clara! Come at once!”

***

YOU ARE OF THE ELECT

(DÜSSELDORF / 2 OCTOBER, 1853)

Brahms lodged in Düsseldorf in a boardinghouse in the Altstadt along-side the Rhine, frequented by laborers, fishermen, and dockworkers. Going to bed that night (his room tiny, dark, and dingy), he imagined Clara (he called her Clara), unbraiding her hair, the creak of the bed as she lay down, dark hair spread like a fan on the white pillow, nightdress flaring providing a glimpse of white thigh, one arm by her side, a hand on her belly, his own hand caressing the exposed inner thigh parting the nightdress, bending to kiss and lick and knead the soft flesh with his lips, sniff her womanly scent—but she was not the woman, she could not be, you did not do that with a lady, a woman of genuine accomplishment, an extraordinary artist, a married woman, mother of six—and certainly not with the wife of Robert Schumann, no less kind himself, of even greater gifts and accomplishments than his wife.

They had invited him back the next day, but after an early breakfast he set off for a walk through the city. He knew of the French influence, that Düsseldorfers were the greatest dandies in Germany, caring more about their appearance than other Germans. The city was lovelier than most he had visited, resplendent with long broad straight streets, solid brick houses, well-heeled inhabitants, and he wished to plan where he might go next while admiring the city.

He walked through the Altstadt and back along the Königsallee lined with cafes, pastry shops, chestnut trees, a canal down the middle bearing ducks and swans, careful not to cross Bilker Strasse even by accident. He couldn’t go back to Hamburg empty-handed, nor could he go back to Joachim after he had made so little of the introductions to Liszt and Schumann, but he had learned to make his own way, he could be the

itinerant musician, Johannes Kreisler Jr., until he had harvested a greater crop of compositions, but the argument ran hollow. He was satisfied with the current crop, particularly with the new sonata which had been percolating in his head during his wanderings through the Rhineland that summer, which percolated through his head even as he walked—but he knew he couldn’t go back to the Schumanns and knew not where else to go.

By late afternoon he was no closer to a decision, but returned to the boardinghouse knowing only that he had to leave, the farther from Düsseldorf the better. A fisherman repaired his boat, a dog pissed against a bench, a boy turned cartwheels. “Herr Brahms?”

He turned. “Frau Schumann!”

“Oh, Herr Brahms! Thank the good God I have found you.”

She wore a dark blue walking dress, darker at the rim with mud, and a bright red bonnet. Her face was white, searching his own for clues, but could hardly have been whiter than his own. The fleabitten boardinghouse stood behind her, a smell of fish hung in the air, a dog barked.

“I have searched all day for you, Herr Brahms. You would not believe the places I have visited—every inn, every hotel, every boarding house, every tavern, restaurant, snack bar, wine cellar, in the Altstadt. I asked everyone, everywhere, about you.”

He raised eyebrows, imagining how close he must have been to discovery all morning, but despite her labor there was no displeasure in her face. Her eyes, her smile, were as bright as a lover’s as she took both his hands in hers. He thought she might embrace him, so relieved did she seem, so happy to see him.

“I was so afraid, when you did not come, that we had offended you—that I had offended you. That would have been unforgivable, indeed. I am so glad to have found you at last. My husband would have been upset had I not. You are a tonic for him—and for me, too. You have made us both so very happy. We cannot thank you enough.”

Brahms imagined all eyes upon them and his hands squirmed in hers.

She let go as if she had read his mind and took a step back. “Look, I have muddied my dress, my shoes”—she lifted her dress so he could see the mud on her black walking pumps—“but I do not mind now that I have found you.”

Her cheeks turned pink, her smile showed strain, as if she feared what he thought. He could only mumble. “You did not offend.”

“I beg your pardon.”

He spoke more loudly, eyes on the ground. “You did not offend. You could not offend.”

“I am so glad to hear it. Will you come with me, then, back to our home for dinner? My husband will be so happy to see you again.”

Brahms remained mute.

“Is something the matter? Will you not come?” “I beg your pardon, Frau Schumann…”

“Yes? What is it?”

He shook his head, mumbling again. “I do not belong.”

Clara looked around, lowering her voice. “On the contrary, Herr Brahms, it is here that you do not belong. These are common people. You are of the elect.”

Brahms did not know how to answer without offending her, but she offended him without knowing it. He spoke with new confidence. “They may be common, Frau Schumann, but they are like me. I am no more of the elect than they.”

Clara saw she had misunderstood him and searched his face again for clues, but still he looked at the ground. She spoke softly. “But there is no one quite like you, Herr Brahms. You misunderstand me. What I mean is that we share a passport, you and I and my husband—and so many of our friends, as musicians, as you will see if you will only give them a chance—even better, we are musicians with similar sympathies, we are in perfect harmony.”

Brahms shook his head again. “Na, I do not belong.”

She saw finally how it was. He wore the same alpaca jacket, the dusty black walking shoes. She saw the grime in his face and knew what to say. “You are right, Herr Brahms, to value yourself so highly—but you will have difficulty finding peers anywhere. You will always have to settle for less—but this I can guarantee. Nowhere will you find others who will better value your gifts, who will value you better, than my husband and I.”

He smiled at last. “Na, it is not like that, nothing like that. I value myself, but not like that.”

“Then come with me. No explanation is necessary. We wish only for you to be among us.”