Requiem in Vienna: A Viennese Mystery (Viennese Mysteries)

by Jones, J. Sydney

  “Yes,” Kraus allowed. “That surely set the musical establishment against him. Hanslick and his minions. They called his music wild and incomprehensible.”

  By whom he meant Eduard Hanslick, doyen of Vienna’s music critics and a staunch enemy of the music of Wagner and any other proponent of the new music.

  “ ‘Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.’ I believe that is a fair recitation of Hanslick’s central thesis,” Kraus said, pleased with himself. “Thus, Romanticism with its emphasis on feelings was his sworn enemy. Wagner’s dramatics and use of music to further such drama fell afoul of the critic’s theories. But Wagner got back at Hanslick, you know, with the buffoonish and pedantic critic Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Wagner had wanted to call the character Hans Lick, but his lawyers changed his mind for him. Of course, Wagner was not the only target of Hanslick’s barbs. Bruckner, who supported Wagner, and who committed the great sin of deviating from the classical mode also became anathema. Hanslick went so far as to block performances of Bruckner’s music and to use all his influence to keep that simple country organist even from teaching. But in that respect, Hanslick was not totally successful. Though Hanslick managed to prevent him from being appointed a professor at the University of Vienna, Bruckner did teach organ and counterpoint at the conservatory. I believe your friend Mahler was a student and early devotee, as was Hugo Wolf, another special target for Hanslick’s critical venom.”

  Werthen made the sudden connection: Hanslick had been the man in the top hat obstructing his view at Strauss’s funeral, the one who accused him of picking his pocket.

  “I believe we had an informal meeting once,” Werthen blurted out, and then explained the odd circumstances of that meeting.

  “Watch yourself, or you will end up skewered in his column one fine day,” Kraus said. “Though he is in semiretirement, he still casts the odd poison dart from time to time. Strange he was at Strauss’s funeral at all. He had no love for the man’s music.”

  Gross had sat quietly through this seeming aside, but now interrupted.

  “Was there a cause of death mentioned?”

  “No, nothing of that sort. Though, as I said, Bruckner had been ill the final years of his life. An odd sort of man. Dressed abominably, like a schoolmaster from the country. Which in fact his father was. All Bruckner really cared about was his music. Playing the organ and composing. Quite helpless in the ways of the big city. There is the very charming story of Bruckner once pressing a tip into the palm of Hans Richter after that man successfully conducted his Fourth Symphony.”

  “And Brahms?” Gross prompted.

  “That was a bit more straightforward. He died of liver cancer, the same complaint that took his father. That was in April, I believe, two years ago. And if you ask me about his will, there you will have a story of human deceit, concupiscence, and greed. In short, Herr Brahms died without a will and that set everyone from his landlady to his music publisher to distant German cousins snarling at one another over the quite substantial wealth the man left. The matter is still working its way through the courts. But then, Advokat Werthen, I assume you would be only too aware of the case. Like something out of Dickens.”

  “To be sure,” Werthen said, happy that he had nothing to do with it, for the proceedings were sure to go on for another decade and suck dry the bank accounts of the litigants. “Brahms will certainly make his way into textbook lore as a prime example for writing one’s will in a timely fashion.”

  “Brahms, of course, was on the other side of the divide in the War of the Romantics,” Gross said.

  Kraus nodded his head emphatically. “He and Hanslick were a pair. Brahms even let him see his compositions before they were performed. Together they conspired to create the musical culture of Vienna. They sat on prize committees, passing judgment on the works of young conservatory musicians. There was one poor unfortunate . . . I forget his name now, but it will come to me. One student, at any rate, said to have real musical genius. Brahms declared that the youth’s composition, a symphony, had simply not been written by him. Too good to be the work of a simple conservatory student. It destroyed the student’s career. He was taken off a train not long after, delirious and babbling on about Brahms having set a bomb on the train. He later died in an asylum.”

  Kraus broke off, looking upward to a swath of spiderwebbing hanging from the ceiling like a tattered pennon, seemingly attempting to retrieve the missing name.

  “Do you mean a fellow named Rott?” Werthen offered, for Berthe had informed him of that young man mentioned by Emma Adler.

  “That’s the very one,” Kraus said. “Hans Rott. How clever of you, Advokat.”

  Werthen nodded at this, somewhat surprised at the mention of the young musician in these two different contexts.

  “At any rate,” Kraus continued, “Brahms was not simply or solely a stuffed shirt. He was a great friend of Strauss, did you know that?”

  Both Werthen and Gross allowed that they did not.

  “Yes, despite Hanslick’s contempt for Strauss’s music, Brahms was a real devotee. He even wrote an inscription on Adele Strauss’s fan. Under the opening notes of the Blue Danube he noted, ‘Alas, not by Brahms.’ He had a sense of playfulness. There was all that business about musical coding.”

  Kraus looked to them for a sign of recognition, but again Werthen and Gross were quite in the dark as to his references.

  “I refer, in the first instance, to the piece he wrote with Schumann, the F–A–E Sonata, dedicated to a violinist whose motto was Frei aber einsam, free but alone. They used the musical notes of F, A, and E to play with that theme. Brahms later modified that to F–A–F, frei aber froh, free but happy. He also included sweet references to the ladies in his life in such codes. Clara Schumann, for example, with musical themes using C and an E-flat standing for S. The same for Adele Strauss, so they say. The A–E-flat combination is everywhere in his later music.”

  “Are you saying that Brahms and Frau Strauss were—”

  “Hardly,” Kraus said. “Actually, I quite believe great composers to be like eunuchs or Catholic priests. Married to a higher art or god. Even with Clara Schumann, who was, after all, widowed, Brahms conducted to all accounts a sexless affair. But he was true to her to the very end, one of the chief mourners at her funeral. Which came, by the way, less than a year before Brahms’s own death.”

  Kraus smiled at them, as much amused at his uncanny ability of recall as at Werthen’s and Gross’s interest in his tales.

  “And speaking of Clara Schumann, there is one more interesting bit about Brahms. She was his one true confidante. Max Kalbeck himself told me this story.”

  Meaning, Werthen registered, the well-known music critic and longtime friend of Brahms who was busy writing a monumental life of the composer.

  “Kalbeck told me of a private communication sent to Frau Schumann regarding Hanslick’s magnum opus, The Beautiful in Music. To Hanslick’s face, Brahms was all praise, but to Clara Schumann he confessed he found the work so stupid that he had to give up reading it and only hoped Hanslick would not quiz him on it.”

  Another moment of silence as the import of this story settled in.

  “You have certainly given us some things to think about, Herr Kraus.”

  Gross rose from his chair with effort. They had been sitting for some time, and Werthen too could feel a twinge in his right knee as he stood.

  “Thanks, Kraus,” Werthen said with sincerity.

  “Not to mention,” the journalist said, now rising from behind his desk, too. “Gives the gray cells a chance to perform. But, if you ever do get to the bottom of all this, you must promise to inform me.”

  “That we shall do, Herr Kraus,” Gross said, donning his bowler and making his way briskly out of the office.

  At the office on Habsburgergasse, Berthe was just finishing with the afternoon mail. The l
etter from Mahler had been hidden by larger envelopes, or else she would have opened it first. The man’s handwriting was neat and precise, so different from his ruffled physical appearance. She read quickly through it, discovering that the composer had yet more alterations he wanted made to his will and requested that Karl come as soon as possible.

  Not likely, she thought. She would dispatch Tor instead, and this weekend, no sooner. After all, Mahler was not their only client, though he acted as if he were. It was patently obvious to her that Mahler was becoming far too dependent on her husband. She even wondered at the reality of this sudden change for his will. It was more probable that he was using it as an excuse just to get Karl in his orbit again.

  No, this weekend was soon enough. She needed Tor here for the rest of the week to take care of the backlog of other paying clients while Karl was off with Gross chasing ghosts.

  Unkind thought, but true. Figments. Spirits. Fabrications of some deluded mind. That is how she saw the anonymous letter. And meanwhile she had developed, through her conversations with Rosa Mayreder and Emma Adler, a perfectly viable line of investigation.

  Put it on hold, darling, Karl had counseled her at lunch today. Gross and I may be onto something.

  Well, she was not going to put it on hold. She was assuredly not going to become the office mule while her husband and Gross were off having a fine time tilting at windmills. She knew who she needed to talk to next: Natalie Bauer-Lechner. The lady who knew all about Mahler from his conservatory days. But she was with Mahler in Altaussee.

  Perhaps she should go to Mahler instead of Tor. Two birds with one stone.

  Suddenly an acid taste made her wince. No, she thought. Not now. Not here.

  But she had no choice.

  She barely made it to the communal washroom in the hallway before disgorging most of Frau Blatschky’s wonderful lunch.

  My dear child, she thought as she looked at her disheveled hair in the mirror, wiping her mouth with alpine cold water. I hope you will be worth it.

  But then it was as if she could feel the tiny, precious life inside of her, and knew that it would be worth any effort.

  ELEVEN

  Soft rosy light leaked through a crack in the heavy drapes. Werthen had just awoken from a dream of his childhood on the family estate in Lower Austria. He and Stein, the gamekeeper and general factotum for the Werthen estate, were indulging in one of the “Master’s” (Stein’s label for the young Karl Werthen) favorite pastimes: blowing up beaver dams in the brooks that fed the large ponds dotting the estate. Karl’s father, Herr Werthen, loved to watch the birds of passage that would settle on those ponds for a few hours, days, or months. But the beaver dams kept fresh water from feeding and filtering those ponds. If left unattended, the ponds would turn fetid in a matter of weeks. Thus, periodically old Stein would break out the sticks of dynamite he kept stored in the toolshed under lock and key and explode the larger dams. The smaller ones, he would tackle by hand.

  The gamekeeper knew his way around dynamite, knew how to set a charge and detonate it from a distance. In his dream, Werthen watched Stein’s calloused fingers attaching red and blue wires with the efficient dexterity of a fine violinist. Stein, despite his age, eschewed the old-fashioned fuse, which one lit with a safety match; opting instead for a battery-operated detonator. Wonder of wonders, Stein then allowed Werthen to push the plunger on the detonator, setting off an immense roar and a spray of water and broken sticks. And there the dream broke off.

  Werthen felt alert and expectant this morning, filled with a sort of buoyant optimism that he carried around with him like a talisman. It was a sort of puppyish joy that irritated Berthe on the best of days first thing in the morning.

  She was still sleeping, though somewhat fitfully. Uncommon for her not to sleep deeply, but perhaps it was the baby, he thought. He rolled to his side and looked at her as she slept on her back, her hair splayed out on the damask pillow slip. A twitch at her left eye. The steady thrum of blood pulsed in a vein just under her ear. A scatter of freckles played across the bridge of her nose and upper cheeks. Her steady breathing was suddenly broken; she breathed deeply then opened an eye, saw him gazing at her and smiled.

  “Morning, darling,” he said.

  Her response came out a muted “hmmm.”

  “Looks like another beautiful day.”

  Another muttered groan as she rolled on her side, turning away from him.

  He spooned his body around hers, hugging her tightly with his right arm.

  “So cheerful so early,” she whispered.

  “Reason to be.”

  Another noncommittal “hmmm” from her.

  He smelled her hair and felt a smile settle over his entire face.

  “I am sorry about sticking you with all the business,” he said, returning to the conversation they had had at bedtime last night. “Gross is fixated on these new leads and I must admit he has kindled my interest, as well.”

  She rolled over onto her back again, opening one eye at him. “Kindled your interest? There goes the pompous lawyer again.”

  He kissed her cheek. “All right. I’ve got a feeling about this, that it might actually lead to much larger things.”

  “Larger than someone trying to kill the director of the Hofoper?” Both eyes now open. “Karl, not every case involves high-level conspiracies and killings.”

  “Right.”

  “Meaning wrong.” She sighed. “Are you forgetting that Brahms died of cancer?”

  “I am not a doctor, but I intend to consult one. For now let us assume that someone might be able to replicate the symptoms of liver cancer with some poison or drug.”

  Berthe made no reply to this. Instead, she said, “I can’t sleep on my side anymore.”

  “Nausea?”

  “Oh, yes. And heartburn. Why do they call it morning sickness? I get it all day and night.”

  “Poor darling.” He ran a sympathetic hand through her hair but she shrugged it away.

  “I am not a poor anything. But my body has never let me down before.”

  “It’s not letting you down, just preparing for the new life.”

  “By making me so sick I can’t eat? If you subscribe to Mr. Darwin’s principles, then you must admit there is a wrinkle in the evolutionary process that needs to be ironed out.”

  They lay together a few more moments in silence.

  “I am going to proceed with the conservatory leads to Mahler,” she finally said.

  “Yes, do. I think that is a good idea.”

  “I wasn’t asking for permission.”

  When he did not reply, she added, “Sorry. They say you get bad-tempered the first few months. Another evolutionary advance, I suppose.”

  At breakfast they learned that Gross had already risen, eaten—two eggs, a sweet bun, and two cups of coffee, according to a mightily put-upon Frau Blatschky—and was off for his morning stroll.

  “He said he would return by nine,” the cook said as she brought in the Augarten porcelain pot, filling the room with the rich aroma of fresh coffee.

  Berthe waited for Frau Blatschky to close the door behind her before crying out, “Even the smell of it makes me sick.”

  Werthen put his napkin over the pot, attempting to quell the spread of coffee aroma. After a few moments, she was better and they were able to discuss the day’s schedule.

  He and Gross had scheduled an interview with the critic Hanslick. Many roads seemed to lead to him. According to Kraus’s information, the man was a staunch enemy of both Bruckner and Strauss. Could musical dislikes actually lead to murder? Werthen did not know, but his brief encounter with the critic at Strauss’s funeral demonstrated an active temper in the man. But how to link Hanslick to Brahms’s death? After all, they had been intimates.

  Werthen, however, had done his homework yesterday afternoon at the Imperial Library following their meeting with Kraus. He had gone through the past decade of reviews by Hanslick in the Neue Freie Presse and had
discovered that, shortly before Brahms’s death, Hanslick had written a series of reviews of the master’s final clarinet quintets, noting that Brahms had betrayed classical ideals with such emotional music. Add to this the story Kraus had related yesterday of Brahms’s disparaging comments about Hanslick’s book—after all, if Kraus had got wind of the story, why not Hanslick himself—and there might well be sufficient motive to link Hanslick to the deaths of all three composers.

  Neither was Hanslick a champion of Mahler. Surprisingly, given Mahler’s position in the earlier Wagner-Brahms divide, Hanslick had initially welcomed Mahler to Vienna in 1897. His first reviews had even praised the composer-conductor’s devotion to texts, whether they were by Wagner or Mozart. But such enthusiasm soon turned to vitriol; more recent notices, Werthen discovered yesterday, disparaged Mahler’s work at the Hofoper, worrying that the man was ruining centuries of tradition in a headlong and rather ill-advised attempt at modernity.

  Thus, there were many reasons to interview Hanslick, not least of which that he might prove to be their major suspect. Werthen wondered if the man would remember him; after all, Hanslick’s anger at the funeral had got the better of the older man, even with the policeman involved in that altercation. However, if Hanslick did recognize him, it could, as Gross had pointed out, be all to the good, discomfiting the critic and putting him off balance. Their bona fides, as attested to by Prince Montenuovo, made them above reproach for a man of the establishment such as Hanslick. Thus, it would be a confusing situation for the critic to discover that a man whom you had accused of being a common thief turns out to be a top-level emissary for the lord chamberlain.

  “I thought of paying a visit to the offices of the Arbeiter Zeitung,” Berthe in turn explained. “If I get this nausea under control. I have not spoken to Victor Adler in months. He was a personal friend of Mahler’s once.”

  Werthen nodded. “And you still think it is best to make the trip to Altaussee?” he asked.

  She was about to erupt, but took a moment and understood that he was only showing his concern for her, not attempting to control her movements.