by Gerald Elias
To Ed, king of the single entendre: The one-liners are for you.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
String quartets are widely regarded by classical musicians as representing the pinnacle of artistic achievement. Composers from Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert through Bartók and Shostakovich saved and savored their most personal statements about life, death, and the hereafter through the format of the quartet.
Each instrument of the string quartet—two violins, viola, and cello—provides a significant yet distinct voice in the four-way conversation. In its most basic construction, the role of the first violin is to sing the melody. The second violin sometimes joins in an octave or third or sixth lower, but more often it teams up with the viola to fill out the harmony, create secondary contrapuntal lines, and generate rhythmic drive. The cello’s lower tones establish the harmonic and rhythmic foundation upon which the whole edifice is balanced and supported. Composers of great quartets, however, create endless variations on this template: giving the melodic line to the viola, or having the cello play in its highest register, way above even the first violin, or creating remarkable textures in which every instrument is on an equal and seemingly independent footing. Perhaps it is the intricate interaction among these voices, which need to be perfectly tuned, balanced, and rhythmically integrated with microscopic precision for every split second of the music, that raises the genre beyond the level of entertainment to one of philosophy.
Equal to the sublime beauty of the string quartet is the profound challenge it presents to the four musicians. It takes years of painstaking practice for the members of a quartet to fully mesh, to discover a unified voice. Often, that unity that is the mark of a great quartet is, in fact, never achieved. Because each musician of the ensemble feels the pull of the music so strongly, he or she inevitably has convictions as deeply rooted as a religious flagellant about the way the music should sound, from the sweep of an entire phrase down to the finest detail. When we realize that the tonal quality of every single note on a string instrument is affected by considerations such as bow pressure, bow speed, the distance of the bow from the bridge, the location on the bow where the note is played, the speed and width of the vibrato, and the relation of the pitch to the instrument’s open strings, we can begin to understand the challenge of four musicians agreeing not only on these technical details but also on the musical intent of the composer.
Playing in a professional string quartet is, on the one hand, a quasi-religious, rapturous experience, with moments of sublime, transcendent revelation when a musician feels directly connected to a higher power. On the other hand, the intensity of the experience is akin to an emotional pressure cooker, making the antics of a circus high-wire act seem like child’s play. When the stars are aligned, the pressure release valve is the music itself, and the result can be profound and life altering. Too often, though, the release is volcanic, with emotional magma slowly seeking weaknesses in hairline cracks and fissures in the subsurface of the quartet’s psyche, finally erupting in explosive fashion. Many ensembles burn out after a few years, often with long-standing bitter resentments, sometimes worse. Even the greatest string quartets rarely remain unscathed. There are famous stories of members engaging in fistfights over seemingly insignificant musical details, the result of pent-up stress and hostility. I was told by the violist of a renowned quartet (long after he left it, and with some amusement) that on one occasion he grabbed the first violinist’s valuable French bow and threw it out the window of a Caribbean hotel where they were on tour. It landed on the beach somewhere and was buried in the sand and washed out to sea, never to be seen again.
Perhaps the saddest case of inflamed passion erupting from the boiling cauldron of the string quartet is that of the Audubon Quartet. For years a highly respected ensemble, over time it became so rife with musical and personal internal conflict that it almost completely self-destructed, and each musician paid a tragic price. In 2005, after three of the players, including founding cellist Tom Shaw, fired the first violinist, David Ehrlich, Ehrlich sued for a hefty sum and won a Pyrrhic victory. The other three lost homes and beloved instruments when the judge, for the most part, ruled against them. Ehrlich, however, reportedly spent a large part of his compensation to pay his astronomical legal fees.
There is a certain irony in this story of a personal nature. Tom Shaw and I met at the Sarasota Music Festival in 1973, played chamber music together, and became friends. I admired not only his fine cello playing but also his magnificent Russian wolfhound. In the late 1970s I actually auditioned for the Audubon Quartet position ultimately won by Ehrlich, whom I have never met. However, I’m gratified to see that after the disaster of 2005, the Audubon managed to regroup and all the musicians appear to have found a way forward with their art and their careers.
“Death and the Maiden,” the greatest string quartet by Franz Schubert and one of the monumental works of the entire quartet repertoire, is the setting I’ve chosen for my story. The music depicts the struggle between life and death. It asks: Should one resist death? Should one bow gracefully to the inevitable? There is a saying that “music soothes the savage breast,” but ironically it is also true that music, especially the string quartet, has the power to provoke even the most passive soul.
DEATH AND THE MAIDEN
Der Tod und das Mädchen
(Poem by Matthias Claudius; Music by Franz Schubert)
Das Mädchen:
Vorüber! Ach, vorüber!
Geh, wilder Knochenmann!
Ich bin noch jung, geh Lieber!
Und rühre mich nicht an.
Der Tod:
Gib deine Hand, du schön und zart Gebild!
Bin Freund, und komme nicht, zu strafen.
Sei gutes Muts! Ich bin nicht wild,
Sollst sanft in meinen Armen schlafen!
Maiden:
Away from here! Oh, away from here!
Go away, cruel figure of death!
I am still young, so leave!
And do not touch me.
Death:
Give me your hand, you beautiful and tender image!
I am a friend and do not come to harm you.
Be in good spirits! I am not evil,
You should sleep gently in my arms!
CONTENTS
Title Page
Dedication
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Acknowledgments
Also by Gerald Elias
Copyright
PROLOGUE
Kortovsky gave himself a final once-over in the elevator mirror before he reached the hotel lobby. He tugged gently at his shirt cuffs until they extended one inch from the sleeves of his jacket, subtly exposing his gold cuff links, adjusted the knot of his tie so that it was centered and fully concealed the top button of his shirt, and quickly ran a comb through his hair.
He had been in the shower when the call fr
om the desk came that there was someone waiting to see him in the bar—no, there was no name—but fortunately the ring on the phone was loud enough to wake the dead. As he dressed, he reflected on who the lucky individual might be that had issued the invitation. At the concert earlier that night, the quartet had returned to the stage eight times for bows, and on each occasion he had made direct eye contact with a different young lady from among the adoring throng, as was his customary practice. It was contestant number five, not the youngest but definitely the sexiest—short, dark hair; glasses, no less; a very nice figure from what he could tell from her suggestive royal blue dress—who had returned his gaze the most provocatively. Though it could have been any of the other seven, he guessed it was number five waiting for him at the bar. In fact, he had selected a tie to match her dress, just in case. Kortovsky brought his hands to his nose and inhaled, making sure he had adequately sanitized them. Not politic to raise the hackles of a new love interest by having the scent of another woman on his fingertips. He looked in the mirror one final time, trying not to be smug, but conceded himself a smile.
The elevator door slid open. The cavernous, pillared lobby was quiet and almost deserted. Kortovsky headed for the desk to hand the oversized pre-Columbian room key, which formed an unsightly bulge in every pocket he had tried hiding it, to the receptionist, in the midst of a phone call. While waiting for her to finish, he changed his mind. He wasn’t planning on going out of the hotel, and if, as he suspected, he would soon be returning to his room with a guest, he didn’t want to risk any delay or potential awkwardness by asking for the key while a young lady in a blue dress waited expectantly on his arm.
So he removed the key from his jacket pocket and placed it in the back pocket of his slacks where, though it wouldn’t be comfortable, at least it wouldn’t be seen, smiled at the receptionist—who might be attractive herself in something other than her unfortunate utilitarian rust-brown hotel uniform—and gave her a friendly hand signal indicating that he didn’t require her assistance. He made sure her eyes met his before turning away. No harm in keeping one’s options open. She smiled back and continued her phone conversation as he walked across the lobby.
Kortovsky peered into the dimly lit bar. There were still a couple of dozen customers, all engaged in quiet conversation, some sitting at the bar itself, others at small round tables scattered in a seemingly random pattern around the room. He adjusted his tie one more time. Two in one night, Kortovsky thought to himself, an appetizing prospect that involuntarily caused him to raise his eyebrows in anticipation. He scolded himself—don’t count your chickens. Pride before the fall, and all that. But! A few drinks, a little light conversation, and then … well, we’ll see. He entered the bar and though at first he didn’t see number five or any of the other seven in the dim light, he did see a vaguely familiar figure in the corner.
ONE
SATURDAY
Hearing the tepid applause as the maestro du jour sauntered onto the Tanglewood stage, Jacobus relegated the lawsuit to the back of his mind.
He was among the sparse, haggard crowd that braved the damp chill to hear the Boston Symphony’s next-to-last outdoor concert of the summer season, a Saturday night performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a piece of music that he often turned to for life-affirming reassurance in moments of personal despair. More than a work of uncompromising genius, it was the most compelling clarion call to universal brotherhood in all of music. But as he sat shivering under the relentless frozen mist that lashed through the open-sided Tanglewood Shed, the overwhelming restless energy of the first movement served only to make him feel insignificant by comparison. Insignificant and mortally fragile, like a leaf in autumn. Unlike the millions of tourists who came to New England, Jacobus, blind, was unable to revel in the stunning brilliance of the impending fall foliage. The mental visualization of red, orange, and yellow, long lost to his mind’s eye, was replaced by the decaying smell of moldering leaves, thickening day by day in layers under his slowing footstep, a harbinger of an eternal winter. He was a leaf, one of the thousands of leaves on one maple among thousands of maples, his vitality slowly but inexorably sapping, tenuously fixed to its mooring until even the most inconsequential puff of air would separate him from his station and blow him, brown and lifeless, to the frozen ground, to be covered by the snow.
Jacobus put his hands in his pockets. The violinists’ fingertips must be stinging like hell in this cold, he thought—as the driving intensity of the music built to the defiant recapitulation of the first movement—especially the ones who had developed deep grooves from years of pressing the strings too hard. Jacobus laughed as he recalled one cold August night, back when he was still in the orchestra: Sal Maggiolo, who was from the Amalfi coast, had played with gloves on, the fingertips of the left glove cut off so he could still feel the strings. It was the most obscenity-laced Haydn symphony Jacobus had ever played.
But it wasn’t just the cold that was making this performance listless and unconvincing. The conductor was run-of-the-mill at best, adding to Jacobus’s discomfort. Someone had mentioned to the blind Jacobus who it was—some young Englishman, the latest to claim the banner of the newest in-term: the “historically informed” performance, as if Toscanini didn’t know his music history. Jacobus had heard of this guy, though he’d never listened to his recordings, so he had come to tonight’s concert curious about what he was going to hear. It became increasingly clear, at least to his own discerning ears if not to the philistines in the audience, that the conductor was one of the sort that revels in browbeating the musicians over every detail—“Beethoven wrote a dot above the E-flat, you dolts!”—without having an overall conception of the music. He may have done some homework about the performance style of Beethoven’s time—more likely he just listened to some CDs from his own crowd—but used that always debatable information to disguise the absence of true musical insight. The result was a mishmash of insipid, disconnected wisps of phrases with little sense of continuity or purpose. “Beethoven Lite,” his friend Nathaniel called it. As the musicians circled the wagons to counteract the directionless conducting and tried to play as best they could, the conductor would no doubt engage in greater and greater histrionics in order to elicit the kind of response he thought he deserved. This would arouse the resentment, if not the ire, of the musicians who, believing the maestro was trying to show them up, would then become more obdurate. And on and on it would go. Jacobus pitied all those in the audience who had the gift of sight, because they would shortly be bearing witness to what he easily predicted would be a musical revolt by the orchestra.
Jacobus had long ago come to the conclusion that great conductors and lousy conductors had much more in common than great conductors and good conductors. A good conductor has enough sense to basically let the orchestra play on its own, guiding it along a path without imposing his will upon it. Both the great conductor and the lousy conductor try to control all the details. The difference is that the great conductor knows how to do it; the lousy one thinks he knows.
As the tide of Jacobus’s interest in the music ebbed, it was replenished by the knotty issue of the lawsuit in which his former student, Yumi Shinagawa, was now enmeshed.
For five years, Yumi had been the second violinist of the world-renowned New Magini String Quartet, a source of secret pride for Jacobus. What dismayed him was that even though the quartet still played magnificently, it had essentially become dysfunctional. None of the members spoke to each other outside rehearsals, and when they were at work there was constant tension.
And then there was the lawsuit. The former second violinist, Crispin Short, whom Yumi had replaced in the New Magini String Quartet, had ongoing litigation against them, claiming that he had been illegally fired, had been deprived of his livelihood, and had had his reputation publicly smeared, making it impossible for him to make a living.
The kind of public airing of dirty laundry that occurred between Short and the quartet was almost unprec
edented in the classical music world, and while it might have made for juicy reading, it had forced colleagues and media throughout the profession to choose sides. Right now, they seemed to be lining up behind Short. Akin to omertà, the Mafia’s fanatic dedication to the code of silence, in-house backbiting among musicians might be vicious, but that’s how it almost always stayed, in-house. The beehive network of artistic and professional relationships, so complex, so constantly changing, and so based on lofty but easily bruised egos, was usually enough to keep even the worst musicians insulated from public attack by colleagues.
Maestro Swen Anskerbasker might be universally regarded among orchestral musicians as a conducting hack who can’t count to four without looking at his fingers, but you never know if he’ll invite you to play the Brahms Concerto with his orchestra. Reginald Biffin might be too old and senile to remember that he plays the violin even when he’s holding it, but if he’s a friend of the local recording contractor, then he’s magically transformed into a revered colleague with a world of experience. Larry Martino, chair of the string department, might have sexually assaulted his student, but then next month, just before your tenure hearing, you might have to play string quartets with him.
And don’t forget the great, the esteemed, the infamous Feodor Malinkovsky! thought Jacobus. That most revered violin pedagogue of the twentieth century. Pedagogue? Pedophile! Everyone in musical circles knew it, but even after he was deported back to Russia and disappeared in the darkness of a Stalinist purge, still the circles wouldn’t say it aloud. And for Jacobus, the memory lingered on, etched indelibly in his being. As a pre-adolescent contestant in the prestigious 1931 Grimsley International Violin Competition, Malinkovsky, the head judge, had privately offered him a prize in exchange for …
Like a passenger in a car about to hit a telephone pole, Jacobus gripped the arms of his seat as the orchestra almost fell apart during the always mischievous tempo change into the Scherzo, but he relaxed again, at least for the moment, when there was a brief rapprochement at the beginning of the third movement, Adagio molto e cantabile. Unpredictably flooded with memories of his brief tenure with the Boston Symphony long ago, cut short by the devastating onset of his sudden blindness on the very day he won the concertmaster audition, Jacobus momentarily forgot the cold. If not for that freak medical chance, he thought, if not for that I might still be playing there on stage instead of dying of pneumonia out here.