‘Let’s hear some of your charges, Ise!’ he commanded, almost sprinting to the stool, his long hair shaking down each side of his face. ‘Your friend first: Fräulein Siebold.’
‘Oooo-err!’ crooned the gathering, pitch rising and falling, a playful accusation that something was already afoot. Agathe handed Brahms some music. He saw with pleasure it was a song by Schumann, ‘The Walnut Tree’.
‘You choose well, fräulein,’ he said quietly, glancing at Clara.
Agathe stood in the bow of the piano, facing Brahms, hands clasped loosely above her abdomen. He began to play, the right-hand refrain arching up in the very first bar, starting a delicious call-and-answer with the voice.
The immediate complicity between singer and pianist was apparent to everyone; a hush fell over the room. Agathe was enraptured, looking at Johannes with astonishment while he read the notes of the rippling piano part with ease, swaying slightly with the music’s lilt, closing his eyes to savour each vocal entry.
Her voice softened into the whisper described in the text, the blossoms of the tree telling a girl their prediction of marriage as she falls into sleep, Schumann’s short phrases taking the voice into the low register, the whole disappearing into a dream.
When Johannes finished, he finally locked eyes with Agathe for as long as the afterglow of the music lasted. What need did he have now to ask very much about her, he thought, since she’d described herself so completely with her singing? I’m going to write songs for that Amati voice. I might even run my fingers through that hair.
The assembly popped the bubble with a breathy exhalation and then burst into applause. Brahms glanced at Clara’s conflicted face. Her mind was in ferment: a single song of her late husband’s had cracked the special bond with the young genius Robert had adored, and whom she adored still. All because of a pretty voice.
She stood up. ‘My apologies, everyone,’ she stammered. ‘Will you excuse me? I must see to the children.’ A swish of her black dress and she left the room.
Julius looked on with concern. ‘Pine – could you …?’ he said, nodding in the direction of the creaking footsteps on the stairs.
‘Of course, Ise. I’ll be back soon, everyone.’ She left in pursuit of their guest.
Clapping his hands, Grimm said, ‘Now, Johannes. Who’s next?’
Brahms stood, looking again at Agathe. ‘No one else for now,’ he said. ‘Let’s have some choruses, yes? A cappella.’
For the first time in his life that he could recall, Johannes felt his own age. He’d been a serious old man ever since childhood, he realised, lost in his books and dreams. His youth had died two years before while he watched the pathetic spectacle of the deranged Schumann sucking drops of wine from Clara’s finger during his last days on earth.
Now, in the summer of his twenty-sixth year, Brahms allowed Life to seduce him with the peace and green of the forests, the warmth of summer air, the laughter of others, the sense of a beginning, and above all, a young woman he wanted. He wrote songs for her when he knew he should have been polishing up the first movement of the concerto that was supposed to announce his genius to the world the following January. The ‘dutiful’ Johannes whispered this in his ear at night while he imagined peeling the dress from Agathe’s ripe body.
Well, dutiful Johannes could be damned for a precious few weeks. Instead, he would play games. The more childish, the better.
‘Hide-and-seek, everyone?’ asked Agathe’s friend Bertha one afternoon. ‘There’s an allotment nearby where anyone can disappear.’
Clara wanted to come too.
‘Don’t you think she’s a bit … old for this?’ said Bertha’s boyfriend, Heinrich. ‘What I mean is – black’s a bit of a giveaway.’
Johannes stayed loyal. ‘If she’s too old for this, so are we. Strictly speaking, the cut-off date for infantile pursuits is when one stops being an infant.’
‘Hey, I’m only saying …’ said Heinrich. He wasn’t going to argue with the season’s golden boy.
Someone noticed a flash of black near an asparagus bed. ‘I see you!’ he yelled.
Clara hoisted her dress and began the sprint for home through the paths between the plantings. It was the first time Johannes had ever heard her giggle.
The ground was uneven. She tripped over a large tree root at the allotment exit and fell to the ground in a cascade of fabric.
The others stood aghast. It was fine for them to take a tumble; somehow anyone even slightly older having the same accident looked embarrassingly infirm. Brahms was the first to reach her. She was fine, but he insisted on taking her back to the Grimms’ house while the others continued their game.
‘I just didn’t know it was there, Johannes,’ she said, recovering her breath. There was something so poignant in her voice that a tear sprang to his eye. Pity widened the emerging gap between them.
‘Think nothing of it, my dear, dear one. Silly game.’
That evening was a special one in Julius’s parlour. Johannes had written some songs and duets, and Agathe would sing them.
‘What are we to hear?’ Pine asked the pair. Brahms stood formally behind the keyboard.
‘Friends – this is a setting of a poem from last century by Hölty. It’s called – “The Kiss”.’
‘I wonder what gave him that idea,’ somebody whispered. A ripple of giggles spread through the gathering. The song told of flirtation, hand-holding and lips meeting for the first time. It was over in little more than a minute.
Bertha looked at Heinrich during the applause.
‘Very sombre, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You’d think he’d sound happier.’
‘Doesn’t sound to me like they’ve kissed at all,’ he replied.
Brahms stood again. ‘The next one is a poem by Uhland: “Parting and Separation”.’
Julius turned to his wife. ‘I’m not sure I know where this is going,’ he said.
The song was shorter than the first. When they had finished, Agathe looked at Johannes with undisguised affection. She was glowing.
‘They look so happy together,’ Pine said. She looked back at Clara, who was staring at the floor, and nudged her husband. ‘This must be terrible for Clara, Julius. Can we change the mood?’
Grimm jumped up. ‘Thank you both for those two premieres,’ he said. ‘Johannes, what about a party piece? One of those Hungarian encores that are making you famous?’
Brahms nodded with an approving smirk. ‘The ersatz gypsy music, you mean? What a fortuitous suggestion, Ise. They’re mostly arrangements of old tunes, but lately I’ve been tinkering with a completely original one in the gypsy style. Shall I?’
He swivelled back to the keyboard. ‘I’d like to dedicate this rendition to the spirit of Amati. Imagine the great Joachim here with us, singing this on his violin.’
Brahms more than made up for Joachim’s absence, managing both the fiddle tune and the striding accompaniment, his hands ranging deftly around the keys. The song was full of yearning, pulling at the hearts of everyone.
Agathe looked at the young face transfixed by the slow-burning passion in the music. She discerned a note of regret in its melodies, remembering what Grimm had said when he first suggested she and Brahms meet: ‘Johannes has every reason to be happy about what will come to him, dear girl. But that’s not an indulgence he usually grants himself. We will have to show him how to be happy.’
SEPTEMBER
Summer raced towards its close.
The revellers had walked through a nearby forest late one afternoon to watch the twilight fall through a canopy of leaves showing the first tints of autumn, and began to make their way back to the Grimms’ for an early-evening drink.
Agathe tugged at Brahms’s arm. ‘Johannes, we can take our time,’ she said.
They fell back as the others pushed ahead.
‘It’s very comfortable like this,’ he said, relishing the slight pressure of her breast against him as they drew close against the chill. ‘I could
imagine it being even more comfortable.’
‘Me too,’ she said. For all their closeness over the past months, conversation had been strangely decorous, as if Johannes was always checking himself from saying what he wanted – or perhaps, trying to decide what he did want. As soon as the subject turned to music he became so animated, looking so beautiful with his face lit up, it was all she could do not to invite him to kiss her as hard as she would like, to let her hands explore him. He remained an obstinate mystery to her, apart from what she could divine from his songs. Everything he had written for her that summer spoke of love. With Johannes, the music did the talking.
She noticed some bushes by the path.
‘Come with me, Johannes,’ she whispered urgently, pulling him behind the shrubbery, hiding them from view.
He looked nervous. Not nervous enough to try to leave.
‘Johannes,’ she said, her face close, her breath warm on his cheeks, ‘you’ll be gone soon to prepare for the next phase of your life. Your concerto will be heard by the elite crowd in Leipzig. It’ll be a success, I know. What you’ve played to me is gigantic and wonderful.’
He felt aroused as she snuggled against him.
‘I have just one question,’ she continued. ‘Is that all there will be in the next phase of your life?’
The summer was always going to come to this moment, he realised: the moment when lust would have to be dealt with. Johannes wasn’t happy with lust’s encroachment into his friendships with women. He always went to prostitutes when he needed relief. Sure, you need relief at times, he said to himself, you’re young. The problem was that he couldn’t imagine sleeping with someone he loved; it was the conclusion he’d come to with Clara. And since he wasn’t even sure if he could love at all, it was better to assign carnality to the same category of needs as food and drink, so that love had nothing to do with it. You don’t love the loaf of bread before you cut it up.
He knew he’d been cursed by the things he’d seen as a child, playing piano in some of those hideous places on the Hamburg docks, watching with horror the things men did to women, loathing the way women gave themselves away like that. He’d never been able to exalt love in the manner of the poets; if he tried, he would only make a fool of himself.
Flushed with wine one night he’d said to Joachim, ‘Jussuf, I can’t love an unmarried girl.’
‘That’s a problem,’ Joachim had said. ‘What about a married one?’
‘Married? What sort of person do you think I am? That’s out of the question.’ Even if she’s married to me, I suspect.
There was no need to explain this to Agathe right now. She was a good Catholic and had sufficient strength of will not to compromise herself. That, no doubt, was why she asked him the question. He had asked himself the same. What next?
She couldn’t stop her face pressing nearer in the dusk, closing her lips over his, not releasing, feeling the heat rising in his cheeks, his tongue in her mouth …
‘Oh. Oh. I’m s-s-sorry.’
It was Clara.
‘I-I wondered what had happened when I couldn’t find you in the group, Johannes, and then I heard your voices. And, and – please excuse me.’ She stepped away and walked quickly in the direction of the house.
‘Go after her, Johannes!’ Agathe said. Grimm had told her something of the complex history with Clara.
‘Tomorrow,’ he said. Can’t you see that any attempt at consolation would be even more humiliating for her?
He called at the Grimms’ late the next morning, steeled for a heart-to-heart.
‘You’re too late, Johannes,’ Julius said. ‘Clara’s gone.’
‘I’ll wait until she returns, Ise. How long do you think she’ll be?’
‘You don’t understand, Johannes. Clara has taken the children and left Göttingen. Her holiday is over.’
LEIPZIG, 27 JANUARY 1859
Flexing his fingers, Brahms scanned the faces of the audience in the Gewandhaus while the orchestra tuned up.
The most important day of his life so far, and Clara hadn’t come.
It wasn’t surprising. Much as he and Agathe had wanted to keep their engagement a secret, word was bound to get out. Julius and Pine had probably guessed when they saw the rings on her and Johannes’s fingers. And it was Julius’s suggestion.
‘People are talking, Johannes, especially after that final episode with Clara, and Göttingen’s a small place. Gathe’s a wonderful girl, but she’ll be humiliated around town if you don’t do the right thing by her with all that’s happened. You clearly adore each other. Why don’t you take the plunge? It’s what we all expect.’
Why not, indeed? Johannes had missed Agathe terribly during those few months in Detmold while he prepared for the concerto’s performances. He’d written her songs and letters. He’d dreamed of that dark hair spread across a bedsheet, the curves of her plush body finally available to him on the night of their wedding. He’d even tried his hand at writing a bridal song, but the result was so dull he suppressed it. Instead, he composed a funeral song. That had come out much better.
He decided Agathe was the one to banish his demons once and for all, that Julius’s advice should be heeded. Earlier that month, he’d returned to Göttingen for the first time since the previous summer.
‘Agathe, we were going to make a quartet from your trio with Ise and Gur. Did we succeed?’ he said.
She lifted her face from the cluster of welts she was making on his neck.
‘Darling Johannes, even three was a crowd.’
Brahms thought he might explode with desire, but the die was cast: he would avoid visiting his favourite whores and wait for satisfaction until his marriage. The heaviness was not only in his heart when he travelled to Hanover for the concerto’s first public outing.
It hadn’t gone well. The public expected some highwire brilliance and joie de vivre from Germany’s most stunning musical prospect since Beethoven. But Brahms disappointed them. He’d struggled mightily to get that first movement on paper, and the struggle was there to hear in the explosive opening, engulfing the audience straight away, picking up where the dramatic end of the first movement of Beethoven’s Ninth left off, right down to the same key signature. After the prolonged cataclysm, it was hard for the remainder of the concerto to pick up the pieces. The reception was confused. It felt trite to congratulate soldiers for having fought a war.
But that was Hanover. Leipzig was an entirely different matter. This was the performance that counted.
The piano was rolled into place in front of the orchestra, the tuning completed.
‘You may proceed, maestro,’ said the stage manager.
Johannes walked onstage to tepid applause. He knew that neither the orchestra nor the conductor, Rietz, liked his piece. Had they told others? Naturally.
He bowed and made one last attempt to find those familiar dark-blue eyes in the front row.
They weren’t there.
The timpanist pounded the concerto into life, its D minor tonality veering off-course almost immediately. He saw some of the older audience members jerk their heads back, recoiling at the violence.
The first movement’s assault lasted for nearly twenty-five minutes, a minute for every year of his life. It felt like the story of his life. He was centre-stage, playing his own tumultuous history, baring every corner of his soul.
It was the custom to applaud between movements. He expected a hail of bravos for his honesty after such a convulsive confession. The movement thundered out the final bars, and the composer lifted his arms from the keyboard in a grand gesture as the conductor sliced off the last chord.
Nothing, apart from the clearing of a few throats.
Rietz looked at Brahms as if to say: You see? They agree with me. This really is shit.
When the second movement began with orchestra alone, Brahms wished more than ever for Clara’s presence. This part of the concerto was her portrait, the expression of feelings for her he’d never been able
to put properly into words. She was still the person whose praise and advice meant the most to him. Pure, virginal Clara – that is how he would always regard her.
The silence of the audience at the movement’s end, punctuated by shuffling and whispering, signalled the end of the battle. The finale that followed was dwarfed by all that had gone before; its grasp at swagger in the theme rang hollow, the switch to major tonality at the end not the victory lap he’d hoped for. He was relieved when it was over. It had been a gruelling three-quarters of an hour. Nobody wrote concertos that long. Surely this crowd would recognise the magnitude of what they’d just heard?
There was a pause while the last note echoed down the hall.
Very slowly, three pairs of hands clapped in the very back row. A slow clap of derision. The rest of the audience hissed like snakes. Brahms bowed stiffly and walked off the platform, the hisses continuing until he was out of sight. He didn’t return for a second bow.
Watching the grisly spectacle, the music critic for the Leipzig Signale newspaper turned to his wife and said, ‘It’s always unpleasant to see a new work being taken to its grave.’
Back in his room, Brahms removed his hat, dress coat and gloves and threw them on the bed. A table near the window bore the heavy manuscript of the Piano Concerto No 1.
He looked at those familiar pages. Nearly five years’ work leading up to that night, and with more to come – if the concerto was to survive at all.
If he could be bothered.
Then again, shouldn’t he be feeling worse than this? After such opprobrium, being fed to the lion of an ignorant public? Johannes would have been justified in taking up residence at the nearest bar to drown his sorrows. Instead, he’d been almost whistling as he climbed the stairs just now.
Symphony of Seduction Page 18