I almost ran down the long hall to the outer doors and out into the courtyard. I walked through the chilly night air and wanted to laugh, to scream, to cry, to beat my fists against a wall. I should have been up there. I should be the one receiving the accolades. I sat in the tram taking me home, raging over that lost opportunity.
Yet through it all a voice inside kept saying it was my fault. I was the one who had refused to rein in my heart. I was responsible. No matter where I turned or how I raged, I kept coming back to face the fact that I was the one who had not done as Professor Schmitz had ordered. And I hated that truth most of all.
****
My grandparents’ cottage on Lake Como was set at the end of a cobblestone path, dusty in dry weather and treacherous when wet. The path meandered between the grounds of two large villas, bordered on both sides by high stone walls almost invisible under their burdens of flowering vines. Beyond them the path curved around the mountainside that marked the border of our village. From that point there was a view straight down three hundred meters to the deep blue waters of the lake, and straight across to the Alps rising from the lake’s other side.
We arrived at the cottage five weeks after the recital. The train ride down was long and very tiring. We spoke no more than a dozen words the entire trip. My grandmother sat and dozed or stared out the window of our compartment. I sat with a book in my lap and pretended to read.
The cottage was stuffy and dark when we arrived. It was also very bare, as much of the furniture and fittings were in the Dusseldorf apartment. We opened all the shutters and flung back the covers from the remaining furniture. We swept away a year’s worth of accumulated dust. My grandmother worked quietly and steadily beside me, refusing to listen when I begged her to sit down and rest. I worked very hard those first few days, and as I worked I marveled at how much smaller the cottage seemed. My cubbyhole under the ceiling was so cramped that I could not move around without bending at the waist. Had I grown so much, or had I just forgotten how small it truly was?
My grandfather’s presence was everywhere. The house reeked of his black pipe tobacco and echoed with the sound of his voice. I sat in his chair, closed my eyes, and was transported back to earlier days. Once again I was sitting in front of the fire and pumping the bellows of my miniature accordion. Once again I listened to his stories, played the guitar for him, felt surrounded by his silent gentle strength.
The days soon settled into a comfortable, relaxing, healing routine. Most mornings my grandmother was content to rise late and spend long hours sitting in her tiny garden with her face turned toward the sun. She was busy drawing in strength, storing it away somewhere deep inside.
For me the days were filled with exploring the new and remembering the old. Most mornings I rose with the sun and walked to my grandfather’s favorite cafe for a breakfast of fresh-baked rolls and capuccino. Afterward I would take the boat-bus to Como. I walked for hours through its winding streets, or relaxed in a cafe at the lakeside, content simply to sit and watch the endless theater of Italian street life.
Afternoons I practiced. Professor Schmitz and his icy discipline were forgotten with the other shadows of that distant world. The music took on wings I thought were clipped and gone forever.
If I got back from Como in time, I accompanied my grandmother to evening Mass. I stood outside the high church doors and watched dusk settle over the ancient village. I was content to stand and wait for my grandmother and watch the children play along cobblestone streets, or stroll among the old men gathered in the dusty piazza, or buy ice cream from the street vendors and listen to the excited chatter of the flirting teenagers. Once in a while I entered the church with my grandmother and sat in the cool darkness, enjoying the murmured reverberations which echoed back from the high ceilings. I did not take Communion. I did not go to Confession. I did not pray. There was only a cold hollowness within me that must have shown in my eyes when my grandmother asked me about these things, because she sighed and shook her head and turned back to her own prayers. But the soothing peace was still there for me when she prayed. I enjoyed these shared moments of calm, and did not resist when she asked me to join her inside.
The only time my grandmother and I spoke about our return was the first week in August. At dinner she asked me when school was to begin.
I hesitated, then asked, “Here or in Dusseldorf?”
My grandmother stood slowly and turned to the stove. “I think I will have a cup of tea. Would you like some?”
I said I would.
Her back to me, she continued. “I have spent much time thinking of our return, figlio mio. Many long hours I have sat in my garden and wished we could remain here all year.”
“We can.”
She faced me and shook her head. “No, we cannot.”
“But why?”
“Giovanni, Giovanni,” she sighed, her eyes somber. She walked back to the table and sat down. “Stop and think for a moment, figlio mio. Put your wishes aside and look at reality. I am old. I have been ill and close to death. Do you see? We must be where there are others to help care for you if ever something were to happen.”
“But I can—”
“No you cannot,” she said, not raising her voice. “Don’t talk nonsense. We will go back to Dusseldorf and you will return to your studies.” She laid her hands flat on the table. “Finish.”
I remained silent. It seemed very clear to me at that moment, as though I had been given some superior vision that could pierce the veils of time and space, that I was called back to Germany. There was something else that needed doing, something which I had to prove. I thought of the recital and did not object further.
* * *
On the last Saturday in August, my grandmother and I returned to Dusseldorf. The following Monday I went back to school. Four days later, I faced my first lesson with Professor Schmitz.
He sat bent over papers, thin as ever. He looked up from his work, inspected me for a moment through the smoke of his eternal cigarette, then motioned me into the practice room. The same dignitaries shook his hand in the same pictures along the walls. It felt as though it had only been a week since my last lesson. I opened my case and tuned my guitar.
Professor Schmitz entered the room, crushed his cigarette out on the ashtray by the window, opened the over-stuffed filing cabinet, selected a score, came over, and placed it on the music stand. He sat down beside me and began to go over the nuances of the piece. We worked like that for three-quarters of an hour, with him explaining and me occasionally playing a passage at his command.
As I was putting away my guitar he rose, started for the door, then stopped and turned around. In his deep monotone he said, “I hope you found time to practice this summer.”
“Every day,” I said quietly.
He nodded, as though a minor business was now out of the way. “Until next week, then.”
Friday morning between classes I went by Fraulein Rohr’s classroom. I waited until the last of her students had left, then walked in.
“Gianni!” Tucking stray strands of blond hair back into place, she gave me her special smile as she walked over. “How good to see you. Did you have a nice summer?”
“Yes,” I said, and rushed on, determined not to lose my nerve. “Do you still want me to play for your classes?”
The suddenness of my question put her at a loss for words. She reached toward my forehead, but with a nervous gesture changed her mind and dropped her hand back to her side. “You certainly have grown this summer, Gianni. I will have to be careful to treat you as a young man. Yes, of course I want you to play for us.”
I nodded, swallowed, asked, “When?”
She regarded me curiously. “Are you sure you want to, Gianni? No one is forcing you, I hope.”
I shook my head. “I need the practice playing in front of people.”
Fraulein Rohr thought a moment. “Well, I will have to arrange the times with your teachers. We have a staff meeting on Wednesday
, so I can see them all at one time.”
“All right.” I was committed. I handed her a sheet of paper. “This is a list of my classes.”
“My, you certainly have thought this out.” She took the paper and looked it over. “After all this time. It’s a little hard to believe you are going to play for us, Gianni.”
I nodded and wiped the palms of my hands down the legs of my pants. It was hard for me, too.
“How is your grandmother?”
“Fine,” I said. “We spent the summer in Como.”
“How lovely.” She gave me another smile. “I am certainly looking forward to this, Gianni. And I will see if Herr Scherer might like to come hear you as well.” She glanced at the wall clock. “You had best run on to your next class. I will speak with you next week.”
The following Wednesday Fraulein Rohr was waiting for me when I stopped by her classroom. She seemed very subdued. She asked if I would mind waiting a little longer before playing for her classes.
She looked down at her hands. “I decided to speak with the principal first. He would have to give permission for you to miss classes and play for my students.” She looked up and said quietly, “He decided to call your music professor.”
“I understand,” I said. She did not have to say anything more.
“Your professor thinks you should perhaps wait a little longer. I told the principal that I disagreed, Gianni, and I do. I think it is nonsense. But the principal feels we should follow the wishes of your professor.” She looked at me for a long moment, asked, “Is everything all right between you and your professor, Gianni?”
“Fine.” What could she do?
“Well, I will not let the principal forget this matter, I promise you that.” She patted my shoulder. “I am sure this will all work out very quickly, Gianni. I cannot tell you how much I am looking forward to hearing you play.”
At my next lesson Professor Schmitz said he had received a call from the principal of my school.
“Yes,” I said.
“He tells me you wish to play for the students. Is that true?”
I nodded my head.
“So you feel you are qualified now to give performances in public, is that it? Does your teacher have no say in the matter?”
“I need to get used to playing in front of people.” I took a deep breath. “Before spring.”
“I see,” Professor Schmitz said slowly. He looked at me for a long time before giving an abrupt nod. “Very well. We have wasted enough time on this nonsense. Pay attention, boy, and I will explain this next passage.”
I sat and listened to his droning monotone. The words began to melt and blur together. I grew increasingly angry. I kept my face calm and my eyes on the music, but the only voice I could hear clearly was the one inside my head. Wasting time? It is wasting time to conquer fear? I sat and watched his bony fingers trace the unseen notes, and over and over inside my head I asked him how preparation for my life’s work could be called a waste of time.
* * *
The beginning of October arrived, and still I had not heard from Fraulein Rohr. I had stepped up my practice periods to three, sometimes four hours a day. My fingertips and hand muscles and wrists hurt so badly in the beginning that the pain kept me awake at night. But the pain soon eased, and I had begun to see my abilities climb to a new level. I had never played better.
Yet nothing seemed to satisfy Professor Schmitz. I avoided major battles only by remaining totally silent. If he asked me a question, I answered as briefly as I could. If I added the slightest bit of flow, the minutest pause that was not written into the score, he began clapping his hands sharply to the beat and humming out the score’s timing in his deep voice. At those times I felt trapped within his rigid walls of discipline, and my carefully guarded emotions threatened to boil over. I walked out of those lessons so furious I could barely see where I was going.
I hated him in those moments. I hated him and his bony discolored fingers and the stench from his cigarettes and his deep, dead voice and his flat, emotionless eyes. I hated his discipline and I hated his constant disapproval. I sat on the tram going home from those lessons and stared blindly out the window, feeling the hatred well up like some alien power within me.
Slowly, slowly, I retreated from the brink. In those moments when the anger threatened to overpower me, I saw myself entering a cold endless sleep where my music had no place. What would happen to my life if the hatred consumed me and the music died forever? I remembered the recital that previous spring, how I had sat at the back of the audience, desperately hungry to be up there on the stage. It would not happen again, I repeated over and over on those tram rides home. This spring’s recital would be the door through which I would pass to my dream of becoming a professional guitarist. I sat in the tram and felt my anger slowly fade into a hardened determination.
The following Saturday morning I sat in the kitchen with my father and grandmother and looked into my father’s eyes. I felt a chill of fear race down my spine. Is that what happened to him? Did some chained coldness kill the spirit within? I saw nothing but empty hopelessness, and I vowed never to let this happen to me.
* * *
The first week in November, after a particularly difficult session with Professor Schmitz, I went to the city library and checked out a book the librarian referred me to—Copland’s What To Listen For In Music. As I held it in my hands and walked to the tram stop that cold winter afternoon, I wondered what it would be like to have such a name that I could teach others about music, write books that others might want to read, help them to feel in their heart as I did, share the joys that I felt.
After dinner that night I sat in the living room while my grandmother quietly prepared for bed. Her cough was back, and by dinnertime her energy began to fade. As soon as the table was cleared she usually went to bed. I sat and listened as she whispered her brief evening prayers, then wished her a good night.
I opened the book and began to read. I was soon engrossed; I could almost picture the man from the way he wrote—quiet, gentle, careful to choose the most precise words that would explain exactly what he intended.
And he clearly loved his music. I felt a bonding with this man as I read:
Nineteenth century composers, primarily interested in extending the harmonic language of music, allowed their sense of rhythm to become dulled by an overdose of regularly recurring down-beats. Even the greatest of them are open to this accusation. That probably is the origin for the conception of rhythm entertained by the ordinary music teacher of the past generation, who taught that the first beat of every metrical unit is always the strong one.[3]
Not just in the last generation, I thought bleakly. I wished I had the nerve to show that passage to Professor Schmitz, but I knew I never would. I turned to the next chapter and read:
The first essential, then, is to differentiate composers, trying to hear each separately in terms of what he wishes to communicate.[4]
Not for Professor Schmitz. His lessons dealt with the mechanics of a piece only. Not once had he ever discussed the composer’s period or life or what he might be trying to say. I turned a few more pages and read:
What we hear produces wider extremes of tension and release, a more vivid optimism, a grayer pessimism, climaxes of abandonment and explosive hysteria.[5]
I began flipping through the book, trying to find some passage that placed discipline and mechanics above the music’s emotional content. If there was such a passage, I could not find it. I read:
Society and culture and education and a thousand other things form the listener, and the music must appeal to what he is in order to be successful.[6]
Did Professor Schmitz allow any interpretation of the music in order to suit today’s listener? Where was the emotion? Where was the attempt to understand what the composer was trying to say? Where? I turned the pages and read further:
Always remember that a theme is, after all, only a succession of notes. Merely by changing
the dynamic, that is, by playing it loudly and bravely or softly and timidly, one can transform the emotional feeling of the very same succession of notes. By a change of harmony a new poignancy may be given the theme; or by a different rhythmic treatment the same notes may result in a war dance instead of a lullaby. Every composer keeps in mind the possible metamorphosis of his succession of notes.[7]
All that week I read the book and asked myself questions. Thursday afternoon I returned to Professor Schmitz’s office and prepared for my lesson, trembling at the thought of what I was planning to do.
As soon as he entered and sat down, I started. I spoke quietly, respectfully, trying to keep my voice steady. I did not wish to trouble my teacher, I said. I did not wish to argue. I wanted to learn and be as good a student as I could. But I felt that part of my study should be trying to learn what the composer was trying to communicate. I felt that attention should also be given to the music’s emotional content. I spoke for what seemed a very long time. When I stopped the room was very still. I sat and returned Professor Schmitz’s gaze and listened to the beating of my heart.
Professor Schmitz took off his glasses and slowly, methodically cleaned them with his pocket handkerchief. “Listen to me, boy. You are good, very good. But you have no comprehension of who you are or what a gift you possess. Your talent is raw, untamed. It is the reason why I accepted you as a student, and why so often I wish I had not.”
He put his glasses back on, reached in his shirt pocket, fingered out a cigarette, lit it. His voice droned on. “You aren’t doing exercises here, boy. This is not simple schoolwork. You are playing the work of the masters, the high priests of this instrument we mortals call a guitar. To them, and to those who know their music for what it is, this music is considered sacred. In fact, many of them were indeed holy men. This work was an offering which they presented to God. Do you understand me? No, how could a fifteen-year-old boy understand this?
The Maestro Page 13
