Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  ‘Ilaria was here,’ the man reads aloud, as though reading a cryptic message of which he was the intended recipient.

  ‘Or not, as the case may be,’ says Gideon, to no discernible effect.

  ‘She is a friend of those boys,’ says the composer, in a drone of accentless English. ‘She is missing from her home.’

  ‘I know,’ says Gideon. ‘Everybody knows.’

  The man looks at him again. It is clear that he has never heard of Ilaria before; it also seems possible that he doesn’t know who Gideon is, though it’s possible that he knows but isn’t letting on. Carlo once had a pair of German students come into the garage in a disintegrating campervan; they’d driven from Berlin to Città di Castello to talk to some Italian composer who lived there, then had decided to visit the Danish composer in Radicóndoli. He wouldn’t let him in; they could see him in his pool, barely fifty feet from the gate, but he wouldn’t give them a minute of his time. He swims for an hour each day, even in the dead of winter, Gideon has heard. A cold fish of a man. And Luisa saw him at the market once, in Piazza del Mercato, and she said you could feel the freezing air around him.

  ‘Do you like this building?’ asks the cold fish, out of idle interest.

  ‘I do,’ says Gideon.

  The man examines the façade for a few seconds, giving it a chance to reveal some mitigating qualities, then pronounces: ‘I cannot care for it. Fake medievalism. Horrible.’

  Gideon smiles, as you would at a manifestation of immature dogmatism.

  ‘Nice dog,’ says the composer. He crouches to cup Trim’s jaw in a hand; stroking the animal’s head, he looks into its eyes with the intent of a dog-show judge. ‘Fine dog,’ he says, with a congratulatory nod, then he walks off.

  8.3

  Albert Guldager was born in Copenhagen on June 18th, 1956. His father was an architect and proficient amateur pianist; his mother, a researcher with a pharmaceuticals company, played clarinet to a high standard. Albert was the youngest of four children, all of whom had musical talent. Albert, however, was exceptional: by the age of seven he was writing pieces for his parents to play, and at the age of seventeen he entered the Royal Danish Academy of Music, to study violin, piano and composition. He was marked as an outstanding student, and in 1975 won an award for his Sonatina for Piano.

  The influence of Messiaen was conspicuous in the Sonatina and in his other student compositions. Soon after graduating, however, he immersed himself in the music of Bach and other masters of the eighteenth century, and subsequently produced a number of neo-Baroque canons and fugues of immense complexity. He played one of these fugues as an encore, after a piano recital of music by Bach, Brahms and Bartók in Odense, in July 1978; though the concert was well received, this was to be Guldager’s first and last public appearance as an instrumentalist. In an interview in 1998, he would admit that he was still haunted by dreams in which he was once again sitting in the dressing room of the hall in Odense, paralysed by stage fright.

  A few months after the Odense recital he married Annelise Thomsen, a cellist. He continued to write: mostly piano pieces, in which, though strict counterpoint was still employed, a distinctive voice of his own was now emerging. His official opus 1, Piano Study 1, was written during this happy phase of Guldager’s life, a phase that came to an abrupt end on March 4th, 1981. That afternoon, walking through the district of Copenhagen in which he and Annelise were living, he passed a block of apartments on which builders were at work, on scaffolding. As he was waiting to cross the road, the scaffolding began to tremble. There was a cry from above; in the next instant, a man struck the road. ‘For a minute, this man was still alive, at my feet,’ Guldager recalled. ‘His blood was on my clothes. It was the most terrible thing, and it changed my life. It was like a vision. For a while it made me lose my mind.’

  For a long time he could not write and could not bear to touch an instrument. When at last he did return to playing, he would play chords on the piano – the same chords, repeatedly, for hours at a time. He acquired a tam-tam, a magnificent instrument which produced a sound that took almost three minutes to decay; some days he would do nothing but listen to the voice of the tam-tam. ‘I left music – or music left me – for two years,’ says Guldager. ‘I lived in sound. I rediscovered its power, its innocence. I learned that a single sound is not a single sound. A single note, played on the piano, is not a point: it is an explosion. That is what I learned.’

  His neighbours complained of the monotonous noise that came from the Guldagers’ apartment. Albert and Annelise moved to the countryside, where he continued to explore ‘the very heart of music’. Not long after they had left Copenhagen, the Guldagers separated. He had become interested in non-Western music, and now he travelled to India, where he remained for six months. Upon returning to Denmark, he decided that he needed to uproot himself from his homeland, to start again from scratch. In the spring of 1984 he moved to Paris, where he found himself writing with unprecedented energy. The Three Night Pieces for Piano, published and premiered in 1985, brought him to the attention of the musical public of Paris. Other small-scale piano pieces followed quickly, all of them characterised by slow tempi and kaleidoscopic changes in the timbre and dynamics of repeated chords. He lived – as he continues to live – frugally. For a while he taught piano and violin, privately, to a small group of young students, but though he enjoyed teaching, and all that Paris had to offer a musician, Guldager came to feel that, as he put it: ‘My place is on the periphery.’ So in 1987 he moved to the village of Radicóndoli, in Tuscany. ‘Italy is the land of Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Puccini. It is a country of melody, and I am not a man of melody. I do not fit, and that is what I need,’ he told his interviewer.

  In the backwater of Radicóndoli he became more productive then ever. He continued to write for piano – a series of études, begun in 1989, now comprises nineteen pieces, ranging in length from forty seconds to ten minutes – but the great majority of his work since his departure from Paris has been for strings and other chamber ensembles, often with percussion. The scale of Guldager’s work also changed with his move to Italy: after the first of the études, the next three works that he completed were his ‘triptych’ of three pieces for chamber orchestra, the shortest of which, the Second Piece for Small Orchestra, is forty minutes long, while the longest, Third Piece for Small Orchestra, lasts more than an hour. The latter is perhaps the best known of all his works to date, having been recorded no fewer than three times, and is typical of his orchestral writing in the 1990s: rising above piano only once in its entire duration, the Third Piece for Small Orchestra is almost devoid of melodic and rhythmic incident, proceeding instead through a succession of microtonal shadings and inflections of timbre, with several intervals of complete or near silence, building to a subdued climax before ebbing away. The use of quarter tones is at times redolent of Middle Eastern modes, and the metallic mutes on some of the strings create buzzing overtones that are similar to those of the sitar. These non-European elements are also typical of his output at that time. His 1994 song-cycle, Four Hölderlin Poems – which was written immediately after his marriage to the American contralto Claudia Magris, and brought him awards from France and Germany – owes something to Guldager’s discovery of the great Egyptian singer Uum Kulthum. He speaks of hearing a tape of a three-song two-hour concert by Uum Kulthum as one of the pivotal moments of his life.

  The five string quartets of 1998–2000 – which resemble the Pieces for Small Orchestra in their use of glissandi, innovative timbres and episodes of silence – were followed by four string duos: one for cello and viola, one for two violins, one for two cellos, and one for two violas. This sequence of compositions marks another evolutionary shift in Guldager’s oeuvre. A movement towards brevity is notable. The first quartet was an expansive work of more than an hour’s duration, but each of the succeeding quartets was briefer than its predecessor: Quartet Number Five is a single-movement that lasts a little over fifteen minutes in per
formance. None of the duos is significantly longer than the last quartet, and the same is true of Guldager’s subsequent works, which have also been characterised by textures that are more austere than those of the pieces written in the 1990s. The music has become more compressed, its utterances more fleeting and provisional. The role of silence has become more prominent than ever, and whereas the pieces for chamber orchestra all pivoted on a central episode (however muted), these later compositions ebb and flow without creating any sense of destination or centre. They are, as a critic of the Süddeutsche Zeitung expressed it, ‘like excerpts from an infinite music. They lead you nowhere: they start and they end, as does life. What they offer, if you are prepared to listen acutely, is an experience of enriched time.’ Many of these later pieces are imbued with what the same critic described as ‘a precarious serenity’.

  Acclaimed, especially in France and Germany, as one of the most significant composers at work today, Albert Guldager has published more than fifty works. The piece composed for the Festa di San Zeno in Castelluccio – scored for flute, saxophone, bassoon, violin, cello and tam-tam – is his opus 63.

  8.4

  Gideon is seated before his self-portrait, mixing a whorl of carmine on a palette, with the mirror set aside. He slumps on the stool as if he’s been sitting there for hours; his eyes are directed towards the canvas, but seem to be seeing nothing; his hand moves in circles like a slow rotor.

  ‘Buongiorno,’ Robert announces from the top step.

  ‘And good day to you, Roberto,’ answers Gideon, continuing to stir.

  ‘Claire rang an hour back,’ says Robert; Gideon nods. ‘They’re letting her out this morning. She’ll call when I can fetch her.’

  ‘OK,’ says Gideon, as if all he’d heard was a request for permission to leave.

  ‘She can’t make the flight now.’

  ‘Of course,’ says Gideon. He inserts the tip of a brush into the paint and applies a dab to the picture; he draws his head back to examine the mark he has made, and a scowl appears. ‘Does she want to stay for the festival?’

  ‘We haven’t discussed it. But I think she should.’

  Another speck of colour goes onto the canvas; this one is more satisfactory, it would appear. ‘If you don’t mind having a lodger,’ he says.

  ‘Fine with me.’

  His face is close to the surface now, as he makes a quick succession of strokes, none longer than a couple of millimetres; a rose is taking shape.

  ‘I’ll suggest it,’ says Robert.

  Having executed another half-dozen strokes, Gideon examines this portion of the picture, squinting as if to peer through the keyhole of a jewellery box. ‘Saw that Danish character this morning,’ he remarks, as Robert is opening the door of his room. ‘The composer. Grim individual. Can imagine him in a black gown. With a scythe.’

  ‘So I’ve heard. Teresa—’

  ‘Someone has scrawled Ilaria’s name on the theatre,’ Gideon goes on.

  ‘I saw,’ says Robert.

  ‘What do you make of it?’

  ‘Someone’s idea of a joke.’

  ‘Her idea of a joke?’ Gideon asks, as if he’d be disappointed in her if it turned out to be so.

  ‘Unlikely,’ Robert answers.

  At last Gideon looks at him; immediately he seems to be persuaded that it is indeed unlikely. ‘It’ll be that Cabrera boy,’ he says. ‘He was there when I went past. Admiring his handiwork, I’ll bet.’

  ‘Not impossible,’ Robert agrees; seeing that Gideon has nothing more to say about it, for now, he goes into his room. When he comes out, half an hour later, Gideon is standing at one of the tables, leafing through a sketchbook.

  ‘Who was this?’ he asks, turning the book to show the face of an African man. ‘There’s no date on it.’

  Robert comes over to the table to look at the face. ‘He’s the guy who was selling sunglasses in Siena. On Via di Pantaneto. From Senegal. About six foot six. Abdoulaye – was that his name?’

  ‘Christ, I can’t remember a damned thing about him.’

  ‘He had a big piece of cardboard with the sunglasses poking through it. So he could fold it and run when the police appeared.’

  Gideon rubs his forehead hopelessly. ‘Completely gone. No recollection whatsoever.’ For a full minute he stares at the face of the Senegalese street vendor, defeated. ‘Good job I have you,’ he says, ‘so I can outsource my memory. Mine is going, I tell you.’ He turns the pages, smiling like a simpleton in vacant-minded pleasure at what he sees there. A few minutes later, still browsing, while Robert washes a brush at the sink, he asks: ‘But tell me: did you sleep with her?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you sleep with her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ilaria.’

  ‘No, I didn’t.’

  ‘OK. But what—’

  ‘For God’s sake, Gideon. I did not have sexual relations of any variety with Ilaria, as you know.’

  Eyes screwed tight, pretending to inspect a drawing, Gideon murmurs an apology.

  Back in his room, Robert recalls walking along the Corso with Ilaria. ‘You find me attractive,’ she stated, and he replied that yes, she was attractive. ‘You would like to take me to bed,’ she said, disregarding the people around them, as if she thought that by conducting herself as though she were talking about the weather, no one would overhear.

  ‘No,’ he replied.

  ‘You are not telling the truth,’ she told him; her face was stern, as unsexual as it was possible to be; she might have been right. ‘Well, we could,’ she said, as they passed the Cabrera shop and she waved at the glass, behind which Giovanni might have been watching.

  ‘That would be a bad idea,’ said Robert.

  ‘But it could be fun,’ she answered, with a moment of concentration about the eyes, as if calculating the odds of enjoyment.

  ‘It would be a bad idea,’ he repeated.

  To which she answered brightly: ‘OK’. And that was their only discussion of the subject. His phone rings.

  ‘I’m off to the hospital,’ he informs Gideon.

  ‘OK,’ Gideon whispers, putting the brush onto the canvas as if suturing a blood vessel in an open chest.

  8.5

  Self-Portrait, Castelluccio, 2010

  Oil-tempera on canvas; 85cm x 85cm

  Begun 2010; unfinished

  Collection of Robert Bancourt

  At the 1972 degree show at the Camberwell School of Art, Gideon Westfall exhibited five paintings, one of which was a self-portrait, showing the young artist seated on a bench, against a shabby white wall, under neon lights, arms crossed, facing the viewer squareon. His expression suggested a certain guardedness, and that he would rather not be sitting on this bench, being looked at. The self-portrait was intended, he later said, as the distillation of three years of disillusion. Its technical accomplishment was acknowledged by his tutors, but with little enthusiasm: it was well done, said one, but it lacked ‘relevance’. A professor admitted to feeling a deep disappointment when he looked at Gideon Westfall’s paintings: there was artistry here, but no art. The self-portrait was sold, to a doctor from Greenwich, on the first day of the exhibition. This was his first significant sale. Prior to the degree show, he had sold just one work: a still life, in pastels, of fossils and geological samples, bought by his art teacher at school for £2.

  Self-portraits comprise a substantial portion of Gideon Westfall’s output. Discounting the Camberwell picture, seven self-portraits in oil were completed in the 1970s and 1980s, of which three were sold and four destroyed by the artist, and the frequency with which he returned to this subject increased markedly following the death of his mother in 1991. After moving to Italy, two years later, he observed an annual period of intensive self-study: each year, on August 1st, his birthday, he began a new self-portrait. Some were abandoned and some discarded, but no fewer than thirteen self-portraits were completed in Castelluccio.

  In addition to the twenty-one ex
tant self-portraits, Westfall appears in several of his other works. He is sitting at an outside table in Caffè del Corso (2007), for example, and his face is reflected in the window in his Portrait of Carlo Pacetti (2005). He also appears in one of his most controversial pictures, Epicurus in Hell (1977), a ‘philosophical fantasia’, as he termed it, derived from the tenth canto of Dante’s Inferno.

  In Dante’s poem the heretical followers of Epicurus – who believed that the soul was mortal, like the body – are encountered in the sixth circle of Hell, but Epicurus himself is not described. Westfall, however, shows the philosopher seated on the edge of a tombstone, in a valley of maroon soil and rocks, under a purple-black sky, addressing a figure – Dante, we must assume – of whom we see only a foot and a portion of cloak. Care-worn rather than in agony, Epicurus has the demeanour of a man who knows that he has won his argument and that his interlocutor – though he could never admit it – knows it too; behind Epicurus, each seated on his own tomb, his followers – one with the artist’s face – look on with pained admiration. Westfall has given Epicurus the features of Martin Calloway, in tribute to his mentor’s insistence on the primacy of the evidence of our senses, and his disdain for fame and luxury. The picture was included in The New Classicism show, where it was disparaged by one critic as a subterranean seminar in Athenian fancy dress; another called it the most ludicrous painting I have seen this year. It was sold, on the second day of the exhibition, to a businessman from Saudi Arabia.

  The 2010 self-portrait, which is unique in Westfall’s output in taking the form of a tondo, is unfinished; it was on an easel in his studio at the time of his death. The artist looks at us from the far side of a table which is strewn with drawings, books, pencils, brushes and other paraphernalia of his profession. One hand grasps the edge of the table; the other is pressed onto a large sheet of paper, on which a Roman ruin has been sketched. He is stooping over the table, and seems preoccupied, as if our arrival has momentarily distracted him from his work. Rose petals are scattered over an open book: an allusion to the rose petals in Lorenzo Lotto’s Portrait of a Young Man (Venice, Accademia). The Lotto painting is freighted with other elusive symbols (letters, a hunting horn, a lizard, a ring), and the Westfall painting likewise has details that invite and confound interpretation. Light enters the scene from behind, where, through an open window, we see a tall stone tower – a taller and broader version of the Torre del Saraceno – that has a tree growing from its roof; the tree is a laurel, and the laurel, of course, was the tree into which Daphne was transformed, whereupon it became the sacred tree of Apollo, the god of light, of truth and prophecy, of medicine, of music, poetry and the arts. The window opens into a narrow street, on the opposite side of which, perched on a gutter, there is an owl, which is facing the room but has its eyes closed. In ancient Greece the owl was associated with Athena, goddess of wisdom and the arts. Is it significant, then, that the owl in this picture has been placed at a remove from the artist, and is perhaps asleep? In Rome the goddess of wisdom was given the name Minerva, whose emblem was the ever-vigilant owl, but the bird was also regarded as a harbinger of death: the cry of an owl was often taken as a warning of imminent demise, and to see an owl in daylight was a bad omen. The owl in Westfall’s last self-portrait is seen in daylight.