by L. L. Holt
The room grew very quiet. Then he rose slowly, and walked over to the cellist’s chair, roughly snatching the cello part from Steibelt’s Quintet, scrunching it in his hand. Then he smoothed it out, held it up, like a sleight-of-hand artist, for the audience to see, and turned it upside down. He smashed it against the piano music stand, sat down on the bench with a thud, and proceeded to pound the theme upside down and backwards in a mocking tone, and then improvised the most astonishing set of variations, at every conceivable tempo, register, and mood, from this scrap of mangled music, until the audience rose before he was done and screamed and shouted in complete surrender.
Before Luis had even finished playing, Steibelt stormed out of the room in a fury, left the house, and indeed left Vienna never to return. And so it was that Luis was once again the conquering hero. With that display, Luis completed his life as a competitive pianist, and there would be no more duels. He was the undisputed King of the Piano, and challengers would no longer come knocking at his door.
After perhaps the busiest month in his life to date, there was no down time for Luis. In May, Punto and he traveled to nearby Hungary for a short tour, after the first recital, the two got into a heated argument at dinner about articulation, and before long, Punto was rising to his feet and shouting, and Luis was breaking china, and the inn-owner was beside himself. Punto threw down his napkin and stomped out of the inn, leaving Luis to angrily throw some extra coins on the table to cover the damages and to storm back to his room.
While Punto went on to other cities alone, Luis stayed in Pest for nearly three months, making connections, networking, playing short recitals, writing in his sketchbooks. It was here, in the quiet on the outskirts of the beautiful small city, that he decided to add some organization to his own life, not simply to ride the currents of demand as he had done this year, but to put the kind of structure he had built in the First Symphony into his own existence. For a letter had been forwarded to him from Amenda which put an end to one cherished dream and would require him to pursue other paths to personal happiness.
Chapter 16
Luis took the letter to a window seat. This part of the room was flooded with late afternoon light, especially luminous in this foreign land, so flat and open and devoid of tall buildings. He unfolded the letter, smoothed it out on his lap, and read:
“My Beethoven.
“I still approach you with the same sincere love and respect that the value of your heart and of your talent irresistibly demand of me and eternally will demand of me.
“You might ask how I could withhold, at least this reassurance, from you for so long? Dear one, o! rather ask: how could I only leave you?
“…See, beloved! that is how I think of my relationship with you. Only this conviction can explain to me the beginning and continuance of our ties. These statements might seem too flattering and enthusiastic to you; I am not able to express these things more strongly and distinctly. However, you must not be wrong about this: You are no ordinary human being! Whoever knows you as I do and only loves you in a common way, I do not consider him worthy of the divine feeling of love.
“However, where will I find my longing, now? Here in rough Latvia…wherever one knows me, there also lives Beethoven's name. Some play your piano pieces with pleasure, particularly Mylich's sister. (She and the old father) now want to hear nothing but of Beethoven. It is my sweetest musical enjoyment, when she plays for me. Then I often forget myself and, with your heavenly harmonies, believe to hear my Beethoven, himself. Then the fiery feelings awaken in me, with which your company inspired me, in the liveliest manner; then I feel as if I have to get away from here, to you, to the source of my most tender and liveliest feelings. Oh, why did my fate ask so much sacrifice of me!
“However, my fate is, perhaps, already sealed, I might be tied down here, forever,” Amenda lamented. “A beautiful, young, talented girl from Geneva who is being raised in the same noble house in which I spent several happy years, has captured your Amenda…my heart had to warm up here, too, and totally submit,” he wrote, clearly with resignation rather than happiness, “to the subject…I only live two miles away from this girl.”
Ah, thought Luis, an unavoidable obligation!
“I am more conscientious in fulfilling my duties than I was in Vienna…O! now I regret all hours that I spent too little in your company; and the memory of that which I experienced, of your friendship, of your art—my dearest, this (memory) shall still be the most pleasant (of all my memories) in the hour of my death.
“O my Beethoven! never forget a friend who, although perhaps separated from you, forever, will do everything to become more worthy of your love. You still fill my entire heart…Wherever you are, beloved! my longing is following you. With the loss of my well-being, I want to pay for yours. Only tell where and how you live to your, eternally, Karl A.
Luis smoothed the paper gently, and his glance fell outside, on the fir trees and oaks, the patches of blue sky. He rested his head against the window, and tears of sadness and longing welled in his eyes. Clearly, Amenda was now a prisoner of responsibility: he must stay with his family, he must fulfill his vocation, he must marry—soon there would be reports of children. Their grand plan to live together—two idealistic musicians with no other ties, to travel perhaps to Italy or Poland, to live out their lives together as one—this plan was gone forever.
Perhaps they could stay in touch by post, virtual friends. Luis shook his head to himself—a sad alternative. More work, that always seemed the solution. He had his brothers to watch over; that would be his responsibility. And perhaps one of the fair maidens he tutored on the keyboard would consent to be a bride, especially nice if she brought a father’s fortune with her. If not, no matter. “You are no ordinary man,” wrote Amenda. Luis knew this. Perhaps it was his fate to be married to his art.
But something else changed in Luis’s heart in these last days in Pest. He had been listening to the sounds of nature: birds, insects, wind. It might have been the lay of the land, but he could swear they were muted, not vivid as he last remembered them in his nature walks outside of Vienna.
Muted, and yet his illnesses had been at bay for some time. The pianos here were out of tune; they didn’t have the strong resonance of the Viennese models. He would compare his memory of them with his own instruments when he returned home. He could not wait. He could not leave to get home fast enough.
Chapter 17
The Prince’s own barber had worked on Luis’s hair in preparation for the portrait session. “I never saw hair like this in my life!” exclaimed the barber. “I need a saw, not scissors.” Luis paid him no heed. People were always complaining about or commenting on his unruly hair. Being a royal barber, the tradesman politely reserved any further comments, but later told stories to his colleagues about the most difficult mane he had ever tamed.
Luis, on the other hand, was uncharacteristically silent and introspective on his return from Hungary. How he hated having his portrait painted, and yet, that was par for the course with any successful author or composer. Publishers clamored for fresh images of their best sellers, which were engraved and often appeared along with scores or bound volumes.
Luis would be dressed impeccably and have to sit still for hours over several days. Well, it wasn’t an entire loss of time. There seemed to be an endless stream of high-born ladies to flirt with. And the adoring Josephine attended his recitals whenever she could. His refined appearance would certainly win points with the ladies. But when Luis looked spiffy, you could be sure he was not composing.
And indeed he had much on his mind, which led him to pay Dr. Frank a visit in his office, rather than indulge in the house visits so common for those associated with the aristocracy. It was some time after the portrait had been completed that he met the doctor, who was director of the General Hospital. Dr. Frank was no stranger to Luis. The doctor’s son, also a physician, had married Christina Gerhardi, one of Luis’s most enthusiastic supporters in his earl
y years in Vienna. Dr. Frank was a highly esteemed medical scholar as well as practitioner and administrator.
A lean man with an angular, sad face, Dr. Frank frowned and ran his hand over his thin hair. He then laid out his instruments neatly and examined the composer, whom he had visited before on other health matters. He referred to past notes about the buzzing in his patient’s ears and his inability to detect high notes. The problem always cropped up when Luis had his frequent attacks of gastritis.
“You need to rest more, young man,” the stern-looking physician said in his most imperious voice. “You are wearing yourself out. This business with your ears is nothing serious, but bears watching.” He wrote some notes on a card and handed it to Luis. “Twice a day, warm oil in each ear. Stuff the passages with cotton. And the spas would be beneficial. Didn’t you take advantage of the baths in Hungary? No? Too bad! See that you go back, or better yet, to Karlsbad, some of the better mineral springs.” Well, mused Luis, I’ll be there in 1812, but that is probably too late.
Luis was not convinced that Dr. Frank knew the seriousness of his problem, but it was a start, and the doctor was one of the most highly esteemed in Vienna. In the meantime, ignoring the medical advice, he returned to a busy world of composing, making final edits to the six quartets, more variations, and continuing to play brilliantly in the city’s most fashionable salons. Composing was such hard work. Why couldn’t music flow out of him as it did for Mozart? He was like a sculptor creating human forms from clay, hacking away at old material and then having to transpose parts from other works, sometimes turning a modeled foot into a hand, or a nose into an elbow. His sketchbook was filled with ink splatters, smudges, and ripped pages, a musical environment as disordered as his living quarters.
Luis thought often about Amenda, now settling down into domestic routine, and wished that fate, in the most idealized sense, for himself. The pretty girls of the aristocracy may have purred at his attention, but not one seriously considered him marriage material.
In January, while intently working on his Second Symphony, Luis accepted a commission to compose a ballet for The Creatures of Prometheus, a gaudy stage production, which nonetheless had a noble theme about the hero who sacrifices himself to bring great Art to humanity. It was exactly what he needed to establish himself as a versatile composer in tune with popular taste. The symphony was shelved for the time being, and Luis worked furiously on the ballet which was premiered in March, the ink still wet on the pages.
During this period, a new student appeared on the third floor of Greinersches Haus at 241 Tiefer Graben. One of Luis’s great admirers and advocates, a musician named Krumpholz, introduced 10-year-old prodigy Carl Czerny to Luis. Luis had been many times to the Czerny home for musical get-togethers featuring musicians such as his old rival, Abbé Gelinek. A lad of average height and built, with a high broad forehead and wavy brown hair, Carl was not unknown to Luis. He had heard that the boy had even played a difficult Mozart concerto in public the year before and had been composing since the age of seven. Luis learned that the boy was very fond of new music and had begged his father to meet and study with the young master. Luis was flattered.
Krumpholz, the doting father Wenzel Czerny, and young Carl climbed the endless stairs up to Luis’s flat, stopping several times for the elderly Krumpholz to catch his breath. Luis’s current servant, a slovenly and downright dirty-looking man of middle age, led them into the master’s messy music room, a chaos of scattered papers, articles of clothing, leftover food, with bare walls and only one rickety chair beside the excellent Walker piano. But the room was not bare of human company. A number of colleagues, including the violinist Schuppenzigh and brother Carl, awaited the child, whose heart beat faster at every step as he approached the forbidding nest. Soon, he was there, and Luis entered the room.
“(He) was dressed in a dark gray jacket and trousers of long dark goat’s hair, which reminded me of the description of Robinson Crusoe I had just been reading,” Czerny recalled years later. “Jet-black hair stood upright on his head. A beard, unshaven for several days, made his dark face even blacker…He had cotton wool, which seemed to have been dipped in some yellow fluid in both ears. His hands were covered with hair, and the fingers were very broad, especially at the tips.”
This was a far cry from the matinee idol good looks of just a few years earlier. Luis nodded to his other guests, and looked fondly on the small boy. “What do you have to play?” he asked. Luis was short of stature, but must have seemed like a combination of Goliath and Methuselah to the youngster.
Carl said he would play the Mozart C Major concerto, which he did, and very well. With growing interest, Luis stood beside him to the left, and hunched over, his knee on the far end of the piano bench, as he played the accompaniment with his left hand, streaking the keys with a bit of ear oil left on his fingertips.
“Good work, boy,” said Luis at last, then turning to the father. “I’ll take him, he has talent. Send him here once a week.” For sure, the lessons were less frequent than those given to the comely daughters of countesses, but they would be rigorous explorations of the pianist’s art. And a good job he did of it, as Czerny later was to become the most renowned piano pedagogue in the German-speaking states and teacher of the incomparable Franz Liszt.
But still, Luis’s friends and colleagues had no idea of the hearing loss that was failing to respond to treatment. Although satisfied with Frank as a general physician, Luis sought out specialists, as well as the physician Vering, who might be able to help his rapidly deteriorating hearing. On their advice, he took cold baths in the winter, warm baths in the Danube, herbal teas and ointments and pills, but nothing helped. The buzzing and humming grew louder until he clapped his hands over his ears and screamed.
Concurrently, he suffered from colic and diarrhea, not to mention the unbearable stress of pretense: always pretending he had no difficulties other than too much on his mind, always covering up the reason for his increasingly bad temper and dark moods, and ultimately, avoiding company altogether, a very difficult path for a celebrated pianist and much sought-after composer who moved in the highest circles of society.
By this time, though he hid it well, Luis had lost nearly 50 percent of his hearing.
Throughout the spring and following the triumph of his ballet, Luis continued a pathway that blended treatment with denial. On the one hand, he continued to see Dr. Frank regularly, to visit the baths in nearby towns, and to try any herbal treatment recommended by medicine or folklore. On the other hand, after a move to another part of the city, he threw himself into his work and evaded observations and questions by his Viennese friends, such as the good-natured Baron Zmeskall, with whom the composer exchanged outrageous puns and wordplay.
As summer approached, it brought with it one happy occasion for Luis: his good friend Stephan von Breuning, brother to Chris, Eleanor, and the late Lorenz, arrived in Vienna to join the civil service, and the move appeared permanent. The presence of an old Bonn friend, especially from the von Breuning clan, cheered him immensely. The serious, long-faced Stephan was not at all like his ebullient youngest brother, now deceased, but he was a true believer in Luis as a person and a creative genius, and was a limitless font of news from the old town, now suffering from the effects of war.
“You have no idea,” Stephan lamented. “Nothing is the same.”
But Luis wouldn’t hear of it. “Napoleon has the right idea!” he insisted at their daily coffee klatsch. “The time has come for men and women to claim the freedom which is their birthright.” Stephan would be quick to point out that no one benefited more from the conservative patronage system that Luis himself, but he would pooh-pooh the notion and insist that liberty was on the march. Just look at the former British Colonies, the Bastille! And how many innocent lives paid that price, Stephan reminded him. But their banter kept Luis’s mind off of his own fears, and he was able to disguise his frequent requests that comments be repeated by using the excuse of absent
mindedness. At least so he thought. Stephan was a sharp observer of human behavior, and it did not take him long to see that something serious was wrong with his childhood friend.
Another of his childhood companions, Wegeler, had stayed in Vienna only a short while and returned to Bonn as a physician and teacher. Once back in the small city, Wegeler found himself increasingly present at the von Breuning home, spending many hours with the mistress of the house and in the company of young Eleanor, who had grown into handsome spinsterhood. In fact, the physician, now approaching middle age himself, began to look upon this childhood friend in an entirely new light. Why hadn’t this handsome, well-to-do, eligible woman married by now? What, or whom, was she waiting for?
It was at the von Breunings that Wegeler opened his mail on the last day in June. He opened Luis’s letter while sitting in the parlor, flooded with sunlight, where they had so often discussed music and ideas with their dear friends and enlightened guests. It was indeed a long narrative, beginning with fond remembrances and pleasantries, but soon getting to the stark and horrible truth that he had not yet shared with another person:
“I am leading a wretched life. For two years, I have avoided all company, since it is not possible for me to say to people, ‘I am deaf.’ If I had been working in another field, it would still be better, but in my work, this is a terrible situation. Moreover, my enemies, whose number is not small, what would they say to this?
“In order to give you an idea of this peculiar deafness, I tell you that in the theater, I have to lean quite close to the orchestra in order to understand the actors. I do not hear the high notes of instruments and voices, and if I am a bit further away, I cannot hear anything…