Aria to Death

by Nupur Tustin

  “That I considered no one else,” Haydn admitted ruefully, glad Maria Anna was not present to hear of his shortsightedness. “When I learned Wilhelm Dietrich had a son he had repudiated, I felt a strange pity for the young man, whoever he was.”

  “I doubt that fact alone accounts for his evil nature,” Papa Keller said wisely.

  “Nor can it excuse it.” Luigi’s voice was hard. “I am glad there was no trial. Those scoundrels deserved none.”

  “And what of Goretti?” Haydn enquired. “What do Their Majesties intend to do with him.”

  “He will be cleaning the streets every morning and afternoon with the other prisoners of the city,” the Prince commented dryly. “For a month. It is a punishment the Emperor is quite fond of meting out. But for their part in the thefts around the city, he would have dispensed it to the Dichtlers as well.

  “But that reminds me.”

  He dug into his ample pockets and brought out a small leather pouch.

  “A small token of my appreciation, Haydn,” he said as he handed the bulging pouch to his Kapellmeister. “I never thought we should be rid of that infernal woman.”

  He reached within his pockets again. “The occasion demands even greater generosity, in fact.”

  He pulled out two more bulging pouches, handing one to Luigi and the other to Papa Keller, whose eyes grew round with astonishment.

  Haydn was about to enquire after the fate that awaited the Dichtlers when the Prince spoke again.

  “I know not what His Majesty intends to do with that couple after they have completed their term of imprisonment, but suffice it to say there is no likelihood of their ever infesting us with their presence again.”

  The Prince rose. “I trust Master Johann will have hired two new singers by the end of the day,” he said, staring down at Haydn.

  “I imagine that is not entirely impossible.” Haydn hastened to his feet.

  “Excellent! Then we may prepare to return to Eisenstadt within the next day or two. The city makes my skin crawl,” he muttered as he left the room.

  It was a sentiment Haydn discovered himself ready to agree with. After the horrendous events of the past few days, Eisenstadt, quiet and still as a pond on a windless day, beckoned to him.

  He was even ready to remove to Eszterháza and the dreadful prospect of consuming paprika-spiced stews.

  The End

  Dear Reader,

  I’m delighted you chose to read Aria to Death. If you’ve enjoyed it, I hope you’ll also consider writing a short review on the retail sites below. Voicing your thoughts enables other readers to determine whether or not this book is for them. And a word from you can help authors like myself find readers who’ll enjoy our novels.

  With thanks and gratitude,

  Nupur

  PS: Don’t forget to turn the page to get details on your bonus Haydn Mystery, “Whiff of Murder.”

  Choose Your Retail Site or Goodreads

  YOUR BONUS STORY: WHIFF OF MURDER

  Haydn is glad to return to the quiet backwaters of Eisenstadt in Royal Hungary. Better still, the dreaded trip to Eszterháza has to be postponed. The opera house at His Serene Highness’s former hunting lodge is not complete. But things don’t remain quiet for too long. Before long the baker’s wife goes missing, and when Haydn finds a bloodstained mattress in her bedchamber, he wonders if she is the victim. Or the absconding murderess.

  Get another taste of murder and Haydn’s sleuthing skills with this complimentary story, “Whiff of Murder.”

  Download Your Free Copy at:

  Taste of Murder

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

  Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) was an Italian composer widely renowned, even in his own time, for his operas and theatrical works. We’re less likely to remember that he also wrote and published several volumes of madrigals—that uniquely Renaissance genre of secular song written for four or five voices.

  Like Joseph Haydn (1732-1809), the protagonist of my mysteries, Monteverdi was a prolific composer, a man recognized to be at the vanguard of musical development. If Haydn is regarded as the father of such modern forms as the string quartet and the symphony, Monteverdi was hailed even in his own time as the master of opera.

  Working in a period of musical transition, Monteverdi represents not just a transition from Renaissance to Baroque music, but a development away from modal harmony toward tonal harmony. Later composers like Haydn would have been familiar with the modal system through church music and, in Haydn’s case, through his study of Johann Joseph Fux’s text on counterpoint, Gradus ad Parnassum.

  Fux’s exercises—still in use today—assume a familiarity with basic modal harmony, which is sufficiently different from the tonal harmony familiar to us all as to seem almost like Greek. The differences are far too complex to elaborate upon here. Suffice it to say the Renaissance music is as different from later music as that itself is different from twentieth-century atonal or chromatic works.

  But tonal harmony was not fully developed in Monteverdi’s time, and when criticized for breaking the rules of modal harmony, all Monteverdi could do was to assert that there was a musical sense behind his harmony. That he wasn’t breaking the rules at random. In the introduction to his Fifth Book of Madrigals, he promises to articulate a theory of the new system, but he never got around to it.

  What inspired Aria to Death?

  The plot of Aria to Death was inspired by two tidbits I learned when I first started researching the Haydn Mysteries. First, in 1613, Monteverdi was the victim of a curious attack. On the road from Mantua, where he had until then worked at the Duke of Mantua’s court, to Venice, where he would assume the position of Kapellmeister at St. Mark’s Basilica, his carriage was waylaid by bandits, who proceeded to rob from the party at gunpoint.

  All that was stolen was a new serge coat Monteverdi had bought for the journey, but the accompanying courier’s strange behavior led the composer to suspect he was in some way involved.

  To a mystery writer, a deliberately staged robbery needed to have a much greater motive than the theft of a serge coat. The second Monteverdi fact helped me here.

  Musicologists have long puzzled over the loss of seven of the ten operas Monteverdi wrote, and it seemed not implausible to speculate that the theft of his works—so radically different that they deeply offended men like the secular monk Giovanni Maria Artusi—might have been the motive.

  And who better to have orchestrated the attack and theft than Artusi himself? Artusi, of course, had died in August of the year of the robbery, but, nevertheless, this seemed like too excellent a connection to ignore.

  The Haydn-Monteverdi Connections

  And what of Haydn? How does he managed to get embroiled in a theft that took place over a hundred years ago? The connections—when I found them—between Haydn and Monteverdi, Vienna and Mantua, were so startling as to take my breath away.

  Monteverdi’s patron at the Mantuan court, Vincenzo Gonzaga, was the father of Eleonora, who married the Habsburg Emperor Ferdinand II. She was his second wife, and while they had no children, she was instrumental in influencing the artistic and musical currents at the Habsburg Court.

  There are several letters from Monteverdi to both the Emperor and the Empress, seeking a position in Vienna. Monteverdi even dedicated a volume of madrigals to the Habsburgs. His desire for a position at the Viennese court never came to fruition, but it’s tempting to think that the composer may have sent along the scores for some of his operatic works to the royal couple.

  Years later, the scores for Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno D’Ulisses, one of three operas to have survived, were discovered in the Habsburg Library. When her husband sacked Mantua, Eleonora made a herculean effort to save the music and the musicians at her father’s court.

  Later, she arranged for her niece, also an Eleonora, to marry her stepson, Emperor Ferdinand III. The younger Eleonora was the Emperor’s third wife and, therefore, stepmother to Emperor Leopold, the Empress Maria
Theresa’s grandfather.

  Both Eleonoras were devout women and founded convents in Vienna. One of these happened to be St. Nikolai, the convent that Haydn’s first love, Therese Keller, entered. Readers familiar with my blog (ntustin.com/blog) will know that Haydn went on to marry Therese’s sister, Maria Anna—not a match made in heaven, although my characterization of them suggests there was some fondness between the two despite the surface acrimony of their daily interactions.

  Authenticating Musical Works

  For the sake of simplicity, I have assumed that Haydn was as familiar with Monteverdi, his life and his letters, as the modern reader. That the Habsburg library, the collection of his own patron, Prince Nikolaus, and the convent of St. Nikolai would provide him with the letters and documents he needed to authenticate the great master’s operas.

  Monteverdi was a copious correspondent, and the survival of his letters have ensured that his music lives on even when the actual scores are unavailable.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  On the subject of music authentication, I am indebted to Beethoven scholar Jeffrey Kallberg, Associate Dean for Arts and Letters at the UPenn School of Arts and Sciences, and Monteverdi scholar Tim Carter, David G. Frey Distinguished Professor at the UNC Department of Music.

  Rachel Bindman at the Venice-Abbot Kinney Memorial Branch Library and Solveigh Rumpf-Dorner of the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek provided invaluable information on funeral rites and death in Austria.

  Craig Koslofsky, Professor of History at the University of Illinois, was generous in sharing his expertise on the differences between Lutheran and Catholic burial practices in Europe.

  And, as always, I’m ever grateful to my husband, Matt, for providing me with the resources I need for every writing project.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A former journalist, Nupur Tustin relies upon a Ph.D. in Communication and an M.A. in English to orchestrate fictional mayhem. The Haydn mysteries are a result of her life-long passion for classical music and its history. Childhood piano lessons and a 1903 Weber Upright share equal blame for her original compositions, available on ntustin.musicaneo.com.

  Her writing includes work for Reuters and CNBC, short stories and freelance articles, and research published in peer-reviewed academic journals. She lives in Southern California with her husband, three rambunctious children, and a pit bull.

  For details on the Haydn series and monthly blog posts on the great composer, visit the official Haydn Mystery web site: NTUSTIN.COM.

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