The Unknown Masterpiece

by Honoré de Balzac

  There was a pause, and then Gambara resumed: “The first act shows Mohammed living as a sort of middle-man in the house of Khadijah, a rich widow to whom his uncle introduced him; he is in love and ambitious; driven from Mecca, he flees to Medina, and dates his era from that flight (the Hegira). The second act shows Mohammed as a prophet founding a warrior religion. Act three presents Mohammed turning away from all experience, having exhausted life, and concealing the secret of his death in order to become a God, the last effort of human pride. Now you will be able to judge my method of expressing by sound a great subject which poetry renders only imperfectly in words.”

  Gambara sat down at his piano with a meditative expression, and his wife brought him the huge album of his score, which he never opened.

  “The whole opera,” he observed, “is built on a bass line as on a rich terrain. Hence Mohammed must have a majestic bass voice, and his first wife must be a contralto. Khadijah was no longer young—she was twenty. Now listen, here’s the overture! It begins (in C-minor, andante, three-four time). Do you hear the sadness of an ambitious man whom love cannot satisfy? Through his laments, by a transition to a related key (E-flat, allegro, four-four time), we hear the cries of the impassioned epileptic, his ravings, as well as several warrior motifs, for the omnipotent saber of the caliphs begins to flash before his eyes. The many beauties of his one wife afford that same feeling of love’s plurality we find so striking in Don Giovanni. Hearing these motifs, you get a glimpse of Mohammed’s paradise, don’t you? But here (A-flat major, six-eight time) there is a cantabile to delight even the most unmusical soul: Khadijah has understood Mohammed! She informs the people of the prophet’s conferences with the Angel Gabriel (maestoso sostenuto, in F-minor). The magistrates and priests, who feel this newcomer has attacked them, just as Socrates and Christ attacked dying or worn-out governments and religions, pursue Mohammed and drive him out of Mecca (stretto, in C-major). Then comes my lovely dominant (in G, four-four time): Arabia hears her prophet, the horsemen arrive (G-major, E-flat, B-flat, G-minor, all in four-four time). The human avalanche swells! The false prophet has begun to practice on a tribe what he will impose on the world (G, G). He promises the Arabs universal dominion, and he is believed because he is inspired. The crescendo begins (with the same dominant). We hear several fanfares (in C-major), brasses worked into the harmony which will express the initial victories. Medina is conquered by the prophet, who marches on Mecca (an explosion in C-major). The orchestra’s powers spread like wildfire, each instrument speaks, we hear torrents of harmony. Suddenly the tutti is interrupted by a graceful theme (minor thirds). Do you hear the last cantilena of devotion? The woman who has sustained the great man dies, concealing her despair from him—she dies observing the triumph of a man for whom love has become too vast to limit itself to one woman, and she adores him enough to sacrifice herself to the greatness which extinguishes her! A conflagration of love! And here the desert invades the entire world (C-major again). The orchestra’s full forces return in a terrible fifth of the fundamental bass which dies away—Mohammed is weary, he has exhausted all things! And this is the man who sought to die as God? Arabia worships him and prays, and we return to my first theme of melancholy at the very beginning (C-minor). Don’t you hear in this music,” Gambara asked, lifting his hands from the keys and turning around toward the count, “this vivid, jostling, strange, melancholy, and always grand music, the expression of the life of an epileptic frenzied by pleasure, unable to read or write, making his very defects the stepping-stones to his greatness, turning his every fault and failure into triumph? Don’t you sense in this overture—a mere sample of the entire opera—some notion of the prophet’s seduction of an eager and amorous race?”

  Initially calm and severe, the maestro’s face, gazing at which Andrea had tried to divine the ideas the chaotic amalgamation of notes kept him from understanding, had gradually become animated, finally assuming an impassioned expression which overwhelmed Marianna and Giardini as well. Powerfully affected by the passages in which she recognized her own situation, Marianna could not conceal her agitation from Andrea. Gambara wiped his brow and glanced so fiercely at the ceiling that his gaze seemed to pierce it and rise into the heavens.

  “You’ve seen the peristyle.” he said. “Now we’ll enter the palace. The opera begins. First act. Mohammed, alone downstage, sings an aria (in F-natural, four-four time) interrupted by a chorus of camel drivers gathered around a well at the back of the stage (they sing in counterpoint, twelve-eight time). What majestic grief! It touches even the most brainless ladies in the audience, even if they have no hearts. Is it not the very melody of repressed genius?”

  To Andrea’s great amazement, for Marianna was accustomed to it, Gambara contracted his throat so violently that only choking sounds emerged, rather like those made by a growling watchdog. The froth that whitened the composer’s lips made Andrea shudder.

  “His wife enters (A-minor). A magnificent duet! In this piece, I show how Mohammed has will, and his wife intelligence. Khadijah announces that she is about to dedicate herself to a project which will deprive her of her young husband’s love. Mohammed seeks to conquer the world; his wife has divined his purpose and seconded it by persuading the people of Mecca that her husband’s attacks of epilepsy are the effect of his conversation with angels. Chorus of Mohammed’s first disciples who come to promise him their support (C-sharp minor, sotto voce). Mohammed exits to converse with the Angel Gabriel (recitative, in F-major). His wife encourages the choir. (Aria with choral accompaniment—sudden outbursts of voices support Khadijah’s grand and majestic song in A-major.) Abdullah, the father of Ayesha, the only maiden whom Mohammed has found to be a virgin, and whose name the prophet for this reason changed to Abu-Beker (father of the virgin), comes downstage with Ayesha (singing phrases which dominate the rest of the voices and sustain Khadijah’s aria in counterpoint to it). Omar, the father of Hafsah, another maiden whom Mohammed is to possess, follows Abu-Beker’s example and steps forward with his daughter to form a quintet. The virgin Ayesha is a first soprano, Hafsah the second; Abu-Beker is a bass, Omar a baritone. Mohammed reenters, inspired. He sings his first bravura aria, which begins the finale (E-major); he promises world dominion to his first Believers. The prophet catches sight of the two maidens, and by a suave transition (from B-major to G-major) he makes love to them in amorous phrases. Ali, Mohammed’s cousin, and Khalid, his greatest general, both tenors, enter and announce that persecution of Mohammed and his followers has begun: magistrates, soldiers, and nobles have banished the prophet (recitative). Mohammed invokes the Angel Gabriel (in C), whom he declares to be at his side, and points to a flight of doves. The chorus of Believers responds in accents of devotion on a modulation (in B-major). Soldiers, magistrates, and nobles enter (march tempo, four-four time, in B-major). Struggle between the two choruses (stretto, in E-major). Mohammed (in a series of descending diminished sevenths) yields to the storm and makes his escape. The dark and savage color of this finale is mitigated by the themes of the three women who prophesy his triumph to Mohammed and whose phrases are developed in the third act, in the scene during which Mohammed relishes the joys of his greatness.”

  Tears came to Gambara’s eyes, and after a moment he exclaimed: “Second act! The new religion is now instituted. The Arabs guard the tent of their prophet who consults God (chorus in A-minor). Mohammed enters (prayer in F). What brilliant and majestic harmony underlies this chant, in which I may have extended the limits of melody. For didn’t I have to express the marvels of this great human impulse which created music, architecture, poetry, customs, and manners all of its own? Hearing this composition, you stroll beneath the arcades of the Generalife and through the carved halls of the Alhambra! The fioriture of the melody depict the delicious Moorish architecture and the poetry of this gallant and warlike religion which would combat the warlike and gallant chivalry of the Christians. The brass wakens in the orchestra and heralds the first triumphs (by a broken caden
ce). The Arabs revere the prophet (E-flat major). The arrival of Khalid, Amru, and Ali—tempo di marcia. The armies of the Believers have taken cities and conquered the three Arabias! Now comes a stately recitative in which Mohammed rewards his generals, giving them his wives. Here,” said Gambara in a contemptuous voice, “occurs one of those ignominious ballets which interrupt the noblest musical tragedies! But Mohammed (B-minor) redeems the opera by his great prophecy, which in poor Monsieur Voltaire’s version begins with this line:

  ‘Arabia’s day has dawned at last...’

  “The prophecy is interrupted by a chorus of victorious Arabs (twelve-eight time, allegretto). Trumpets and brasses accompany the various tribes which now enter. A general festivity in which all the voices take up the melody, one after the other, and in which Mohammed proclaims polygamy. Amid this rejoicing, the woman who has served Mohammed so loyally is given a magnificent melody (B-major): ‘And I,’ she sings, ‘am I to be loved no longer?’ ‘We must part, for you are a woman, and I am a prophet: I may have slaves, but no longer an equal!’ Listen to this duet (G-sharp minor). What torments! The woman realizes the greatness to which her own hands have raised him, and loves Mohammed enough to sacrifice herself to his glory; she worships him as a God, without criticism and without complaint. Poor creature, the first dupe and the first victim! What a theme for the finale (B-major), this grief of hers, depicted in dark colors against the background of the chorus’s acclamations and the accents of Mohammed abandoning his wife as a useless instrument but acknowledging he will never forget her! What triumphant explosions, what cascades of joyous song uttered by the two young voices (first and second soprano) of Ayesha and Hafsah, supported by Ali and his wife, by Omar and Abu-Beker! Mourn! Rejoice! Triumphs and tears! There’s life for you.”

  Marianna could not restrain her sobs. Andrea was so moved that his eyes filled with tears. The Neapolitan cook, shaken by the magnetism of the ideas expressed by the spasms in Gambara’s voice, joined in this show of emotion. The musician turned around, glanced at this group, and smiled. “At last you understand me!” he cried.

  Never had a general parading in triumph to the Capitol, amid the purple streamers of glory and the acclamations of an entire people, shown such an expression as he felt the crown pressed upon his forehead. The composer’s face shone like that of a holy martyr. No one corrected his misapprehension. A dreadful smile passed over Marianna’s lips, and the count was horrified by the naïveté of Gambara’s madness.

  “Third act!” exclaimed the delighted composer, seating himself again at the piano. “Andantino solo: Mohammed despairs in his seraglio, surrounded by women. Quartet of houris (A-major). What festivities! What songs of happy nightingales! Modulations (F-sharp minor). The theme is heard (first in the dominant E, then transposed to A-major). The pleasures of the senses are brought together and articulated in order to produce a contrast with the somber first-act finale. After the dances, Mohammed rises and sings a grand bravura aria (F-minor), lamenting the unique and devoted love of his first wife and acknowledging himself defeated by polygamy. Never has a musician had such a theme. The orchestra and the chorus of women express the joys of the houris, while Mohammed returns to the melancholy with which the opera began...Where is Beethoven?” cried Gambara. “Where is the one spirit who could understand this mighty return of the opera upon itself? Who else could realize how everything rests upon the bass line? Yet that is how Beethoven constructed his C-Minor Symphony. But his heroic movement is purely instrumental, whereas mine is supported by a sextet of the loveliest human voices and by a chorus of Believers keeping vigil at the gates of the sacred dwelling. Here I have all the riches of melody and of harmony as well, an orchestra and human voices, too! Listen to the expression of all human existence, rich and poor alike! Struggle and triumph and satiation! Ali enters, the Koran is victorious everywhere (duet in D-minor). Mohammed confides in his two fathers-in-law: he is weary of everything, seeks to abdicate and to die in obscurity, leaving others to consolidate his work. A magnificent sextet (in C-flat major). Mohammed makes his farewells (solo in F-natural). His fathers-in-law, appointed his vicars (caliphs), summon the people. A grand triumphal march. Prayer of the Arabs kneeling before the sacred dwelling (casbah) above which the doves ascend (same key). The prayer intoned by sixty voices, and dominated by women (in B-flat), crowns this gigantic composition in which the life of men and nations is expressed. You have heard every emotion, human and divine.”

  Andrea gazed at Gambara in amazement. If at first he had been shocked by the horrible irony of this man expressing the sentiments of Mohammed’s wife without recognizing them in Marianna, the husband’s madness was now eclipsed by the composer’s, for there was no hint of a poetic or musical idea in the deafening cacophony which assailed Andrea’s ears: the principles of harmony, the most elementary rules of composition were totally alien to this formless creation. Instead of the ingeniously wrought music Gambara had described, his fingers were producing a series of fifths, sevenths, and octaves, of major thirds and progressions of fourths without sixths in the bass—a jumble of discordant sounds flung out at random as though combined to rend the least delicate ear. It is difficult to express this bizarre performance, for new words would be required in order to give a sense of this impossible music. Painfully affected by the composer’s madness, Andrea blushed and glanced furtively at Marianna who, pale and with lowered eyes, could not hold back her tears. Amid his racket of notes, Gambara had occasionally uttered exclamations which revealed his soul’s enchantment: he swooned with pleasure, smiling at his piano, then frowning with rage, stuck out his tongue in the fashion of the “god possessed,” apparently intoxicated with the poetry which filled his head and which he had vainly sought to translate into music. The harrowing discords emerging from his fingers had evidently echoed in his ears as celestial harmonies. Indeed, the inspired gaze of his blue eyes open on another world, the rosy glow suffusing his cheeks, and especially the heavenly serenity which ecstasy cast on his proud and noble features would have convinced a deaf man he was in the presence of an improvisation by some great artist. An illusion all the more natural in that the execution of this meaningless music required marvelous skill in order to master fingering Gambara must have labored over for many years. Nor were his hands alone thus occupied; the complication of the pedals kept his whole body in a state of perpetual agitation. Sweat streamed down his face as he worked at swelling a crescendo with all the insufficient means the wretched instrument afforded him: he stamped, snorted, shouted; his fingers equaled in rapidity the forked tongue of a serpent; and finally, at the piano’s last gasp, he flung himself backward, letting his head fall on the back of the chair.

  “Per Bacco! I am dumbfounded,” exclaimed the count as he left the room. “A child dancing on the keys would have made better music.”

  “Certainly chance alone couldn’t avoid the harmony of any two notes together the way this lunatic has managed for the last hour,” Giardini asserted.

  “How can it be,” Andrea wondered aloud, “that Marianna’s splendid features haven’t altered under the continual assault of such horrible discords? Surely they will make her ugly.”

  “It is from that danger, signor conte, that we must rescue her,” cried Giardini.

  “Yes,” Andrea agreed. “I’ve been thinking just that. But to make sure my plans have some basis in fact, I must test my suspicions by an experiment. I’ll return tomorrow to examine the instruments he has invented. So tomorrow night we’ll have a late supper—I’ll send the wine and the necessary delicacies.”

  The chef bowed. Andrea spent the following day arranging the apartment he had chosen for the composer’s destitute household. In the evening, he came and found, according to his instructions, the wines and cakes served with a certain delicacy by Marianna and the chef; Gambara triumphantly demonstrated the series of little drums covered with grains of sand or rice, by which he made his observations as to the different natures of the sounds produced by his ins
truments.

  “Do you see,” he explained, “by what simple means I manage to prove a major proposition? Acoustic science reveals to me certain actions analogous to sound on all the objects which sound affects. Every harmony originates from a common center and sustains intimate relations with every other; or rather, harmony, which like light, is a unitary phenomenon and can be decomposed by our arts as a ray of light is refracted by a prism.”

  Then he demonstrated the instruments constructed according to his laws, explaining the changes he was introducing into their framework. Lastly he announced, with a certain solemnity, that he would crown this preliminary session, suitable at best for satisfying visual curiosity, by performing on an instrument which could replace a whole orchestra, and which he called the Panharmonicon.

  “If it’s that thing in the cage which the whole neighborhood complains about when you’re working on it,” Giardini remarked, “you won’t play for us long—the police will be here as soon as you begin. Have you thought of that?”

  “If this poor fool remains,” Gambara whispered to the count, “it will be impossible for me to perform.”

  The count sent the chef away by promising him a reward if he would stay outside and keep the police or the neighbors from interfering. The chef, who had not overlooked himself in serving wine to Gambara, readily agreed. Without being drunk, the composer had reached that stage where every intellectual power was overexcited, where the walls of a room become luminous, where garrets have no roofs, and the soul cavorts in the world of spirits. With some difficulty Marianna divested of its wrappings an instrument about the size of a grand piano, but with a second keyboard above the first. This strange mechanism was also furnished with stops for several kinds of wind instruments and the sharp angles of several metal tubes.