Seiobo There Below (35 page)

pleasantness
?! — the
charm
of this undoubtedly amazing showman?! — this truly dazzling
entertainment artist
?! — at which point one or two members of the audience tried to indicate an uncertain “no” with their heads, who they?! — never would they think of any such thing, never would it even have occurred to them, they could cautiously indicate this with their heads, the lecturer was already seized by zeal and went on saying no, it was not his obligation, and particularly not here, within the context of a lecture such as this — to pronounce his opinions and analyze those who came after this Monteverdi, this Purcell, this Bach in the Classical era, it was generally speaking not his task to slander them — although he could slander the Classical era, or launch into an attack, although he could attack the Romantics and so on; his task here instead, he opined, was to praise that which can be praised, and the music of the Baroque unconditionally fell into this category; precisely, only
it
belonged in this category; because only this was praiseworthy, to which it was now important for him to add, he said, that he, first and foremost, wished to share his perceptions concerning the
vocal
music of the Baroque; he did not, in every one of his lectures, speak only of that, but today yes, perhaps because at the center of the anecdote he had selected in this lecture, there was a vocal piece, the aria that Caldara wrote for a certain mezzo-soprano, perhaps this was the point where he might betray that although he did not always speak about the vocal music of the Baroque, when he
did
speak of it, as today, he did so with the greatest pleasure, because there was something in the human voice that he loved more than anything else, if a melody sounded upon this, the human voice; and if he had to choose between this one or that one, if he heard a melody on a certain instrument, he would instead in an instant choose the human voice, there was something in it, the human voice, in the cultivated human voice, the expression of which for him was such a powerful enchantment, irreplaceable by any kind of amazing instrument, whether the harpsichord, violin, viola, oboe, horn, church organ, or even all of them put together; nothing, but nothing could attain the same level as the cultivated human voice, and if they were pausing here, then he would have to make the personal remark that within this genre, it was the cultivated female voice that made the greatest impression on him, a dramatic soprano, a dark alto, always had, so to speak, a power within, difficult to explain; in any event this was the situation, so that heaven for him was when that organ, that harpsichord, those violins, violas, oboes, horns, and so on sounded forth at once together, raising above themselves that certain cultivated female alto voice, well, when they were all together like this he was filled with unspeakable happiness, at such times he felt something like the Old Believers of the Orthodox Church when they kiss the icon of the Virgin Mary and the Infant, or like a Japanese Zen monk in the kyūdō jo as he releases the arrow from his bow toward the target, really and truly, he was not exaggerating, not thinking figuratively: never did he feel the direct closeness of the presence of God from any other sort of art form, he had never gotten it, never found it in any other kind of music, not in the music that came before nor in the music that came after, only, only from the Baroque; picture to yourselves now the fantastically variegated musical world in Europe of that time: the essence of music resounded in a hundred ways, and from our perspective, it resounded simultaneously, because the essence of music is the Baroque; and now he enumerated who and when, pronouncing the names one after the other: Reincken, Porpora, Fux, then Charpentier, Paisiello, Böhm and Schütz, then Buxtehude, Conti, and the greatest ones, Vivaldi, then Handel, then Purcell, then Gesualdo, then Johann Sebastian Bach?! — but just imagine alongside them, the endless rank and file of musical lackeys, truly in the hundreds, perhaps in the thousands, who lived and sustained the Baroque with their works, from the English court to the villas of the Italian princes, from the chateaux of France to the castles of Hungary, because this was the case, the music of the Baroque filled those approximately one hundred and fifty years granted to it, you can hear one continuously resounding work of musical art — wondrous intonations, wondrous harmonies, wondrous compositions and melodies — if I think back on it, he said, if I picture myself back in the time of the Baroque, and I hear the first few bars of the Matthäus-Passion as the orchestra becomes audible, I am choked with tears, and I can understand, I truly understand how even one composer of a later era, who, at a performance of the Matthäus-Passion, could not bear to hold back his tears and lived for days in painful ecstasy, yes, I can understand, for I, too, have lived through that each time, if for example I hear an undisturbed performance of The Indian Queen, or the great Messiah; undisturbed, I say, said the lecturer, and the wording here is no coincidence, because I suffer dreadfully, unspeakably, if one of those Karl Richter-types, one of those coarse dilettantes sticks his ugly snout into the Baroque, because these people destroy everything that is the Baroque, because they understand so little that they debase all that is the Baroque, it is horrible when they wreck the artwork that serves as their prey, but what is even more horrible is
how
they wreck it, here words fail me, because they play Bach as if they were playing Beethoven, which in the end is the real scandal, characters like this should be cast out from the orchestral world of Baroque performance, or they should simply be locked up in prison, that would be the most fitting, because then on principle they wouldn’t be able to get at any sort of music, let alone to scourge the Baroque with their filthy hands and insensate souls; the performance, in a word, must be undisturbed, there is no doubt that the spirit of the Baroque is present only in the case of an undisturbed performance; then it appears, then it resounds, and then it subdues one, breaks one’s heart to bits, knocks one to the ground, and what this means is that a mistake may not be made in the choice of conductor, so that — if we take into consideration the circumstances of today — then the coarse Harnoncourt NO, and Christie YES, the airy Bartoli NO, but Kirkby YES; then the enfeebled Magdalena Kožená NO, but Dawn Upshaw YES, the so-called Barock Kammerorchester of Zugdorf NO, but Les Arts Florissants YES; in a word, with a faultless selection we can attain a level where the Baroque begins to resound, insomuch as today the Baroque can even make itself heard, because even this is not so self-evident, for just think about it, if you listen to the Scherza Infida from Handel’s Ariodante, with David Daniels, under the direction of Sir Roger Norrington recorded at EMI’s Abbey Road studio, or not even that, let’s drop it, it isn’t obvious enough — because it is actually too much so — but let us assume instead if you were to go to a performance of Ariodante, where the Baroque makes its appearance, without its own world — as there is no more world of the Baroque, because in the chaos and disintegration of that dreadful eighteenth century, as has already been mentioned, it went to rack and ruin — there one sits in the audience and before one is, let’s say, the Ariodante with Lorraine Hunt, in the Stadthalle in Freiburg, but in vain is Lorraine Hunt the right one, in vain is the Barockorchester of Freiburg the right one, neither Handel nor the Ariodante is there, only the memory of them, for the Baroque isn’t there, the entire world has already become anti-Baroque, the theater is anti-Baroque, the curtains are anti-Baroque, the stage, the theater-boxes, the audience, Freiburg itself is anti-Baroque with its innumerable reeking beers and with all those innumerable reeking tourists, and all of Europe is anti-Baroque, there is not a single nook in all of Europe where this anti-Baroqueness is not palpable, only, the annihilation of something that doesn’t even exist anymore just goes on and on, for the so-called Baroque musical performances keep on coming, one after the other, and they do not call forth but instead demolish the essence of the Baroque written down in the scores, scarcely has it begun when the whole thing is already ruined, so that a person truly needs an enormous ability to read into things, unbelievable imagination, inhuman endurance, unparalleled patience, and I almost forgot, said the lecturer, that beyond all of this he needs an incredible amount of luck, in order to catch an occasion now and then where with all these gifts the Baroque might touch him once in a while; yet this concentration, this patience, this persistence is worth it, if at such a performance of Baroque music — as for example with Lorraine Hunt in the Stadthalle in Freiburg — a person may glimpse within himself at least the shadow, for nothing more is possible, of the essence of the Baroque; then that person will be taking part in such an experience, in such an encounter so as to grant one true strength, if I may say — the lecturer appeared to reflect for a moment — true strength to live, because then afterward life without the Baroque shall not be as torturous, after one or two encounters with the shadow of the essence of the Baroque, brought about through enormous luck — thanks to the inhuman strivings of Lorraine Hunt and the Freiburg Barockorchester — one staggers out of the theater, pinches his nose shut against the sticky reek of beer and tourists, he can be certain that the godly sphere at least existed, he may rest assured — with profound and sincere thanks to Lorraine Hunt and the Freiburg Barockorchester — that the Baroque did exist at least at one time as a living reality, written down for us and performed, but at the same time, it is a reality so frail that it proves too easy to perform, and we perform it at the first possible opportunity, as soon as we possibly can, and perpetually, we have played the whole thing as if the stakes were those in a poker game, and we can regard it as our greatest fortune if — this time too, with gratitude and thanks to Lorraine Hunt and the Freiburg Barockorchester! — we can stagger out of a concert hall and wander through the reek of beer and tourists with, however, the shadow of the Baroque in our hearts, about which I simply cannot repeat enough times that in it, in the Baroque, music made by humans attained its pinnacle, and if at the beginning I promised that I was not just going to keep lecturing to the air, not just keep gabbing on and on, but actually confirm that this is true, then now the time has come for me to do so, for you have heard enough now of the details, I’ve touched upon this and touched upon that, but the real confirmation awaits, for which of course you should not wait, said the guest, once again tugging at the suspender-clip on the left side to see if it was still holding, as just now he had felt that side to be a little uncertain, you should not wait, he repeated, for some kind of complicated heaven-and-earth-shattering demonstration of musical elements, I shall, if you permit me, pass over that and instead attempt to make my thoughts more concise, which then shall contain this confirmation, namely, it shall call your attention to what occurs in the very first moments of the sounding forth of a given work; I ask you then very kindly, please, to close your eyes, to allow yourselves to enter the spirit as, let us say, you hear the first measures of the Matthäus-Passion, the first thirty-two measure, when the two orchestras — as you know, there are two orchestras, two choirs, two sides, entering into a dark, swirling, tragedy, pain, finality — the first thirty-two measures, I ask you, the lecturer asked his public, raising both of his hands as if placing a benediction upon them, he held his head high, closed his eyes, and he waited, but in vain, because when he checked to see if they were doing what he had asked of them, just squinting between his eyelids so they wouldn’t notice, he looked at them and saw that in the meantime his listeners, comprised of eight persons, had become utterly exhausted, no longer even preoccupied with his suspenders, nothing interested them any longer and because of that they had refused his request, at least that is what he thought, that they had refused it, they simply were not paying attention, as for a long time now they had become incapable of any such thing, that is to say to act like people who were watching what was accumulating here, so that they failed to close their eyes, and because of that, they only did so when the guest speaker, halting his flow of speech for a moment, cast such a wild look at them that it immediately occurred to them what he wanted them to do, and everyone quickly closed their eyes; there sat the eight members of the audience and they had absolutely no idea as to why, but they waited with closed eyes to see what was coming next; after a long silence — because the lecturer also needed a bit of time to find his way back to his train of thought — he spoke anew and everyone was relieved, for the speaker picked up exactly where he had left off just a moment ago, asking: do you hear? do you hear this dark strength? this terrifying beauty? this threatening spiral, as the separate melodies whirling above each other strike across the entire orchestra like the tumultuous waves of the sea?! yes — he raised his voice — like the inconceivable, the fathomless, the mysterious sea with its waves striking upward, the whole is here, the beginning, it is evident immediately, a perfect, intricate, dazzling harmony, an intensity of musical resonance never reached until then and never again afterward, whoever hears it does not need any sort of proof whatsoever that this is music of the highest order, because the music itself is the proof, whoever hears it will hear the harmony of the voices as never before brought together in such richness, will hear in this harmony the enigmatic free beauty of the leading part, and so the heart speaks — the speaker struck his heart with his right hand — the so-called proof; the heart speaks it, for this is something never felt anywhere else, not before the Matthäus-Passion nor after the Matthäus-Passion, and you should understand this to mean, of course, not before the Baroque, nor after the Baroque, but if you wish, he said, and he raised his voice a little again, it can also be expressed like this: that in no other instance can we speak of such a virtuosic knowledge of the art of musical composition, of the virtuosity of this rainbow-spectrum-like versatility, of such an extraordinary virtuosic unity of musical language, of such clear melodic contours, of such an unparalleled art of counterpoint as the fulfillment of musical conciseness learned from Vivaldi, of the web woven in such an unrivaled fashion of the inner parts, and generally speaking of such refinement of the harmonies, not deduced from any predecessor, as in the case of Bach; just as we can never even speak of a finished work by him, only of a kind of continuously swelling music, to be amended, enriched, edited, built, ameliorated over and over again, a music that only indicates the way to perfection but is not identical with it, so that when it is a question of Bach — and so it shall be until the end of this lecture, he said — for if the essence of music is the Baroque, then the essence of the Baroque is Bach, in him there is embodied in one all that is present, in dispersed fashion, in Vivaldi, Zelenka, Rameau, Schütz, Handel, Purcell, but also present partially in Campara, Cimarosa, Albinoni, Porpora, Böhm, Reincken, but altogether and as a whole, only and exclusively present in the singular genius of the Baroque, and thus of music, and in its entirety, Johann Sebastian Bach — it is inconceivable how all that Johann Sebastian Bach represents could have come about, inexplicable, if we hear these first measures from the Matthäus-Passion, as the chorus resounds with its broad tempestuous strength, sweeping all away as it rises, as it becomes ever more intricate, ever more richly woven, namely as the miracle — this Johann Sebastian Bach right before our eyes, in every single work and so in this case the Matthäus-Passion — resounds as well, is born and again is born, because we hear, we must believe, and that is what is so unbelievable, but we hear it, yes? we hear the heavenly weight of these voices falling in infinite density, falling below from there above, like snow, and there we are there in this landscape and we are amazed, and we have no words, and our hearts ache from the wondrous beauty of it all, for the Baroque is the artwork of pain, for deep down in the Baroque there is deep pain, more precisely, in every single chord of every single musical work created by the Baroque, every single aria, every single recitativo, every chorale and madrigal, every fugue and canon and motet and in every single voice of the violins, the violas, the bassoons and the cellos, the oboes and the horns, this pain is there, and it is there too if on the surface a kind of triumph, serenity, sublimity, joy, or praise is being offered, each individual voice speaks of pain, of that pain that separates him, Johann Sebastian Bach, from perfection, from God, from the divine, and that separates us from him; namely, the Baroque is the art form of death, the art form that tells us that we must die; and how must we die: it must be in that very moment when the Baroque resounds in music, because we should have ended there, at the pinnacle, and not have allowed everything to happen just as it might, and then to lie, to blurt out these morbid lies and learn how to enthuse over such music as this Mozart or that Beethoven or over whatever it was all those ever more modest talents, those ever more commonplace figures, were able to conjure up out of their hats, to give our enthusiastic acclaim to the composition of The Magic Flute, or to that dreadful Fifth or Ninth, or to be amazed that the horrific Faust can be heard, that tawdry Fantastique, not even to mention the most repulsive of all, this imperial criminal named Wagner and his zealous supporters, let’s not even mention it, because if I even just think about it — the lecturer shook his head, giving expression to his disbelief — it is not shame that overcomes me, not the consciousness of degradation, but rather a dark desire for murder, because this sick megalomaniac of unprecedented incompetence impoverished music exactly in that land where the Baroque and the great figure of the Baroque, Bach, was active; a dark desire, if I think about it, he repeated, and he looked at his audience, and it was obvious that for quite a while now he had not been engaged with them, and hadn’t looked at them because, it seemed, he was appalled by this public: the public, that is to say, that just sat slumped in the room, completely drained, not daring to escape, their hopes that at one point there might be a normal end to this lecture long since extinguished, and moreover these eight people — six old ladies and two old men — had reached such a state of sheer exhaustion and renunciation, like those who have given up, who no longer even propound, no longer even conjecture any kind of possible ending, they just awaited what must come, because after that would come hope as well — and this was inscribed upon their faces — the hope that the moment would arrive when everyone in the village Cultural Center would receive the signal that their guest, this guest from the capital city, was finished with his lecture about music; and when a good ten minutes later, which, to put it mildly, was as if two hours had gone by, that moment ensued, no one budged, because no one could believe it, for hope, being useless, awakens only slowly, yet what could have given them cause for hope is already here, if only in the last ten minutes they had paid closer attention: for the lecturer is, just now, threatening to return to an analysis of the individual works, namely, now it would be the time to evoke, choosing rapidly but a little haphazardly from the most sublime of the