Vienna Blood

23

HERMANN ASCHENBRANDT SAT IN a wicker chair next to the piano, listening intently. The prospective pupil had written to Aschenbrandt after he had heard the composer's D minor String Quintet (“The Invincible”) performed at the Tonkunstlerverein. The letter had been full of enthusiastic praise, and the young man had expressed a keen desire to begin composition lessons as soon as possible. Aschenbrandt agreed to an initial meeting, but now that his admirer was seated next to him at the piano, Aschenbrandt was not altogether sure that Herr Behn's musical instincts and his own were similar after all. It had been a very misleading letter.

The young man was halfway through his Fantasia in B-flat Major. The piece had begun with an improvisatory first movement, vaguely reminiscent of Chopin. But then it had evolved-through some tortured key changes-into a torpid, directionless adagio. The melody meandered over a muddy bass, and its fussy turns and grace notes suggested the east: not the East of the Arabs or the Chinese but the more local east of Hungary, Galicia, and Transylvania. Aschenbrandt was finding it slightly irritating, like a mosquito complaining in his ear.

“Yes, yes…,” he said impatiently, pushing back a fine strand of white-blond hair. “I understand. Perhaps we could now hear the final movement?”

Behn's fingers slowed and he took his hands off the keyboard.

“Oh, there is an interesting modulatory passage-in just a few bars.” He began to turn the sheets of manuscript nervously.

“Herr Behn,” said Aschenbrandt tartly. “The last movement, if you would.”

“Yes,” said the young man. “I'm sorry. Of course.”

Behn found the appropriate page and began playing. Again, the music sounded like Chopin. However, Aschenbrandt could not help noticing how the melody persistently struggled to escape from its harmonic ground. It pitched and tumbled around the very edges of tonality-like the undisciplined and frantic scrapings of a gypsy fiddler! Aschenbrandt made a closer study of Behn's physiognomy.

Behn was a small, thin man, with sloping shoulders. His complexion was definitely swarthy, and those eyebrows… the way they almost touched in the middle. Yes, it was all beginning to make sense.

Aschenbrandt listened for a few more minutes and found that he could no longer tolerate the dissonances. He clapped his hands together.

“Thank you-thank you, Herr Behn!”

The young man stopped playing and, assuming that Aschenbrandt wanted to hear more examples of his work, lifted another score from the pile that he had deposited on the piano.

“Three romantic songs?” he said, his voice rising with expectancy.

Aschenbrandt smiled coldly, and let the clenched fist of his right hand land gently in the cupped palm of his left. Behn realized that his suggestion had not been warmly received and silently replaced the manuscript.

“Tell me, Herr Behn,” said Aschenbrandt slowly. “Which composers do you admire?”

“Well… apart from yourself, Maestro Aschenbrandt, I very much enjoy the music of Karl Prohaska. I heard his Fourth String Quartet last year, performed by the Fitners. I thought it was an excellent piece-so accomplished. And Woss-I adore his symphonic poem Sakuntala.”

“But, Herr Behn, these are not, by any stretch of the imagination, significant composers.”

Behn paused for a moment, adjusted his spectacles, and said, “Goldmark, Alexander Zemlinsky, and Director Mahler, of course. His second symphony is surely a masterpiece.”

Yes, the position was becoming increasingly clear.

“I am afraid, Herr Behn, that I must disagree with you on both counts. None of these gentlemen are composers of significance, and I can assure you that the director's second symphony is no masterpiece. If you think so, you are very much mistaken.”

“Oh…,” said Behn.

“It is not a symphony but an incoherent, poorly structured ragbag of ideas linked by an infantile program. As Wagner wisely pointed out, Beethoven took the symphony to its absolute eminence. Only the most stupid-or immodest-individual would seek to advance the symphony beyond Beethoven!”

“I see,” said Behn, tugging nervously at his cuffs.

“Herr Behn,” Aschenbrandt continued, “I must be frank with you. I am not overly impressed by your work. You are a competent musician, and some of your harmonic progressions show ingenuity, but you do not possess that indefinable quality, that vital spark, that gift, which distinguishes the true composer, the true artist, from the tunesmith, the dilettante.”

“But…” Behn's cheeks flushed. “Maestro Aschenbrandt, surely, under your tutelage, I could-”

“No,” Aschenbrandt interrupted coldly. “I cannot accept you as a pupil.” Behn raised his foliate eyebrows. “Please understand, Herr Behn, I would be doing you a great disservice if I encouraged you to pursue a career in music that was destined to fail. You are at present studying law, and if you apply yourself diligently, I am sure you can look forward to a lucrative career in the Justizpalast. Let music be your pastime, your pleasure…”

“But music is my life.” Behn raised his hands helplessly. “I want to compose.”

“I am sorry, Herr Behn. I cannot accept you as a pupil.”

Behn shook his head and, gathering his scores together, slipped them into his leather briefcase.

Aschenbrandt stood, picked up a small handbell, and rang it loudly.

“Elga will show you to the door.”

A few moments later a serving woman appeared.

“Good-bye, Herr Aschenbrandt. I am-you will understand- very disappointed. But I am also of the opinion that men of talent must be true to their calling. I respect your honesty.”

“Indeed,” said Aschenbrandt.

The rejected pupil walked to the door.

“Herr Behn,” Aschenbrandt called out.

The student stopped and looked back into the room.

“You could always try Zemlinsky…”

Behn nodded and left the room.

Aschenbrandt wiped the piano stool with his handkerchief, sat down, and began to play the opening chords of a new baritone ariaVictory shall be ours. It was to be the main set piece in the first act of Carnuntum. When Aschenbrandt lowered his hands, a charm bracelet appeared from beneath the sleeve of his jacket. Among the small objects attached to the silver chain was an effigy of a man in a kaftan suspended from a gibbet. It represented a hanging Jew.