A Greater Music (14 page)

“I never knew you hated films. I mean, you never said anything. If you'd have let me know beforehand then I would have suggested we do something else. I mean, it's fine, anyway. But I've never known anyone with such an aversion to the movies. Why do you hate it so much? Can you explain a bit more?”

“I . . . I don't like all that ‘over-accessibility,' you know, things that are deliberately designed to have the broadest possible appeal.”

“But making a face and getting into a bad mood just because a film didn't quite agree with you? I really don't mean to criticize, but that's not a very healthy attitude, is it? It doesn't seem very, ah, open-minded. Don't take this the wrong way. It's not that I think you're actually like that, just that your attitude can make it seem . . . oh, you look pale. And you're sweating!”

When I read Shostakovich's memoirs, the part where he describes his childhood stayed with me for a long time. In the introduction he clarifies that, already, these memories of the life he lived are no longer strictly “his,” having also been claimed by others. He talks about individuals being reflected in memories and the world at large, and how he himself will live on in this way, through other people's memories, other people's worlds. “Looking back,” he says, “I see nothing but ruins, only mountains of corpses.” But what made the biggest impression on him wasn't an incident from his childhood, but one in which a talented young film director set a live cow on fire. The director was convinced that this scene, of a cow caught in a conflagration, was absolutely crucial for the film. Eventually, when no one was willing to volunteer, the director decided that he would splash oil over the cow and set it alight
himself. He then proceeded to film the crazed beast rampaging about as it burned to death. The director in question was Andrei Tarkovsky. Shostakovich wasn't present at this scene, he only heard the story second-hand, yet even that, he said, was enough to make him feel like he'd been a direct witness to the poor beast's suffering. From his youth, he said, his experience of this world as a place where great numbers of people die utterly senseless deaths had given rise to a phobia regarding the latent tendency toward violence that must exist in such a reality. Consider that cow, he said, burned alive for the sake of art; can such brutal means be justified by the sublimity of the end, by the “genius” of the one who effects them? If so, where does the limit lie? What can compensate for that agony? Is it really possible to hate art, even when that art requires a victim? When suffering is depicted as still more beautiful and genuine for having been deliberately inflicted, can we call that art? Or does the domain of art lie outside that of human experience, human intellect, so that art itself is judged as possessing the strength to transcend universal moral laws? For a long time, Shostakovich's description of that incident with the cow made me doubt the validity of visual art—more concretely, of cinematic art, which functions by effecting a certain emotional response dependent on the apparent “authenticity” of highly manufactured images.

Sumi studied me apprehensively. I had my hands resting on top of the coffee table; she reached out and covered them with hers. I was surprised, even a little flustered. Sumi wasn't the type for public displays of affection. Her hands were surprisingly warm, her fingers long and slender, her palms soft. Though relatively young, she was mature and levelheaded. She wasn't particularly fond of things like books or music, which to her were passive objects of consumption, but was perfectly able to hold her own
in a conversation on literary or musical subjects. She was always immaculately turned out, too; yet while outwardly she was all studied elegance, inwardly she was kind and unpretentious. Her interests were varied and seemingly endless: Greenpeace, animal conservation, pacifism, veganism (she wouldn't even add milk to her coffee), Tibetan Buddhism, playing the balalaika, Siberia, the abolition of capital punishment, support groups for lesbian mothers. Sumi's parents, one Swiss and one Korean, had raised her with a deep understanding of each of their respective cultures, and the advantages of this wide cultural grounding could be seen in all manner of instances. Take the film we'd seen that day, which Sumi had been far better able to tolerate, understand, and even enjoy than had I, a full-blooded Korean. There were some who found her combination of prudence and intelligence, all wrapped up in stylish elegance, extremely alluring. But that day at the theater, standing by the coffee table in the lobby and discussing our responses, I slowly became aware that the specific object of my displeasure was none other than Sumi herself. Not because she'd been the one to choose that film, and not because any specific thing she'd said or done had upset me. According to her, she'd found the film every bit as meaningless as I had, though she'd at least managed to get some level of enjoyment from it. It seemed unfair to criticize her. She'd only acted in accordance with her nature, which was to always look for the positives in every situation, to accept her everyday environment for what it was. Sumi was adept at swimming with the current, at getting what she needed from whatever was given her to work with. Objective observation revealed that none of her attributes were inherent. Whether it was her intellect or her sense of style, Sumi absorbed as much as possible from those around her, figuring out and then putting into practice the
things she learned at school, in a meeting, in whatever company she was in. Outwardly, she seemed healthy, firm, and fair. But that was only outwardly. She tended to be indifferent toward anything that, for whatever reason, wasn't illuminated by the glare of mass-media attention, or didn't give the observer an immediate visual kick. You mightn't have known it from the uniform goodwill she displayed toward even these less glamorous causes, but inside they left her cold. The real issue, perhaps, was that everything Sumi knew or believed, she'd learned from the media. She could only ever get excited about a given cause if it came packaged with an air of tragedy or altruism. Her passion for such things was as much a part of her style as her precisely planned outfits, the product of Sumi's letting herself be led by her least refined self. She was always full of explanations and excuses, citing so-called ‘just causes' and ‘humanist conscience,' which couldn't help but seem over the top, as though she was seeking to elevate her interests with the gloss of high seriousness. She had no qualms whatsoever about sullying the term “revolution” by associating it with some of the most pointless junk churned out by the twenty-first century, on the contrary, she got a real kick out of it. She comprised her own world, single and self-contained, just as a person huddling rapt in front of their television set seems to be opening themselves up to the world on its screen, while in reality remaining completely isolated. Sumi herself, in other words, was akin to this audiovisual transmitter of isolation, the dark underbelly of the image world, that destructive force going by the name of public fraternity. She made a clear distinction between things that appealed to her and those that didn't, elevating the former by granting them use of the name “just cause.” Her ostensible fight was against the various forms of irrational violence in the world, but of course her main incentive was to appeal to the general majority, making herself
into someone who would capture the hearts of these innumerable strangers, or at least imitating such a person, acquiring for herself that power, both material and immaterial, to command others' emotions, which is such a valuable commodity within society. Sumi's many “causes” had no value for her when taken on their own, only as instances of a certain model or type which exists as an abstract grouping, like Hello Kitty merchandise. As soon as all of this became clear to me, my feelings toward her rapidly cooled. That day at the movies, Sumi ceased, for me, to be a distinct individual, her features blurring as she melted back in to the crowd. Admittedly, this caused me a brief pang of guilt, but nothing more serious than that. Sumi was innocent, pure as a lamb, but when all was said and done she was just another one of the crowd. In aligning themselves with the tastes and inclinations of the masses, the many facets of her appeal, whose precise function was to capture people's attention, lost any appeal they might have had for me. I couldn't stand the masses any more, couldn't stand the theaters which housed them or the films which sought to please them, and couldn't stand Sumi, for whom all of these things weren't sickening but somehow, incomprehensibly, a source of enjoyment. Sumi isn't one of a kind. The masses are made up of innumerable Sumis. And so, if I can't stand Sumi as a non-specific noun, what this really amounts to is that I can't stand any of you. And neither did I hide this feeling.

The second desire was to see M. I was well aware that she probably wasn't M any more, that this M wasn't the M I'd once loved, but still I searched for her, I missed her. Perhaps, I thought, she might appear in some other form. To my shame, I have to confess that I once mistook Sumi for M. Sumi's fresh scent, exuding an air of health; the intimacy in her gaze when our eyes first met and she, instead of looking away, came forward to examine me more closely;
the way her back curved down from those beautiful high shoulders, I'd always liked women who managed to look healthy as a mare despite having tall, elegant frames. Affable Sumi, who could converse easily on all manner of topics, yet remained stubbornly closed to debate when it came to her personal tastes, really had deserved the nickname “my beautiful
mischling
.” Later, though, I realized that this wasn't enough for me to confuse Sumi with M. M was never going to charm someone at a first meeting, whatever beauty and virtues she possessed weren't the kind to be easily recognizable. If they had been, she wouldn't have been M. M wasn't someone whose entire being could be summed up in a snappy slogan or TV debate. Rather, she was like a book without any pictures. In other words, the kind of person who, unless you brought your whole soul to bear in reading them, would remain forever unknowable. I couldn't come to terms with the fact that I would never see M again in this life, that I'd lost that opportunity forever. The pain of her absence never lessened. If it had, there would have been nothing driving me out into the streets, compelling me to scan those countless faces for a glimpse of familiarity, to walk up to total strangers and address them, listening intently to catch every inflection of their reply. Without the hope of finding M again, would I ever have gotten to know Sumi? For a long time I was obsessed by the thought that M was there, somewhere, the thought of her eyes as we'd said our final farewell, the thought that they might captivate me once again. Surely, I thought, it was just a matter of knowing where to look. Only it seemed, in the end, I never did.

11)
The sequence of past, present, and that time we call the future, exists in this successive form only as it appears to the eye. Such a sequence has no real existence in our mental
world. The only thing that truly communicates real, intimate existence to us is the fact that, strictly speaking, the present does not exist. Time becomes a stale model of itself, mutually penetrating and acting. It is plural and multi-level. This is the point of departure for all my thoughts on music.

Bernd Alois Zimmerman's final composition was a religious one; in
Requiem for a Young Poet
of 1969, he quotes from the book of Ecclesiastes: “Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun.” This quotation claims to transcribe the words of Solomon; the passage from which it is taken is filled with pessimism regarding the mortal world. “Again I looked and saw all the oppression that was taking place under the sun. I saw the tears of the oppressed—and they have no comforter; power was on the side of their oppressors—and they have no comforter. And I declared that the dead, who had already died, are happier than the living, who are still alive. But better than both is the one who has never been born, who has not seen the evil that is done under the sun.” The piece begins with a solemn, weighty voice, followed by two vocalists, a bass solo, and then the orchestra. As well as the passage from Ecclesiastes, some lines from Dostoevsky's
The Brothers Karamazov
are also quoted. Until I attended “A Night of Russian Literature and Music” at a music school, I'd never heard of Bernd Alois Zimmerman. And even if I had, it would have been as just one more name to add to the list of twentieth-century composers whose works I hadn't heard or were still not widely known, yet were quite skilled or at least said to be, like Wolfgang Rihm, Franz Schreker, John Cage, Pierre Boulez, or Yun Isang.

Going to the concert hall where the music is actually performed, brought to life in front of you, is a unique and mysterious experience, one that sets your pulse fluttering. At the same time, though, it's also
an uneasy one, accompanied beforehand by chest-tightening anxiety, your nerves strained to the breaking point as you hesitate over whether to attend the recital. All recitals, without exception, can be classified as one of two types: popular, well-known musicians, performing in a large venue; or unknowns whose talent is still up for debate. With the former, there's a higher likelihood of encountering music in its perfected form, but you have to be willing to risk those countless annoyances that are a feature of any crowd, and which could severely impair your enjoyment of the performance: endless coughing; vigorous, impatient rustling sounds; loud whispers from the audience; the inevitable ring of a mobile phone; nervous fidgeting; and then, of course, there's the packed cafeteria, the difficulty of booking in advance, the fear you can never quite shake that, when the pianist's fingers linger on a certain chord, somehow managing to draw out the notes' reverberations for so long it seems like magic, and you unwittingly hold your breath so as not to break the spell, that splendid, incomparable perfection might suddenly be destroyed by an explosive noise from the audience. Your already-keen hearing becomes even more acute, and you end up concocting scenarios in which, quite apart from any audience interruptions, the music itself can't be heard properly even from the best seats in the venue, and you start fretting over the concert hall's layout and acoustics, wondering whether the seat you've chosen is really at the ideal angle to the stage or whether you ought to try a different one, whether the piano or P. A. system will be up to scratch or whether there'll be unwanted vibrations, and you start to regard the performer with a critical gaze, finding fault with this and that, making comparisons, ranking this performance against others you've attended, assessing in which aspect this performer appears preeminent and in which another is superior, an endless stream of almost hostile criticisms serving solely for the
critic to parade their own taste, and, finally, stooping so far that you even start making arrogant, snobbish pronouncements regarding the architecture and acoustics. In reality, these desperate efforts to get the best out of a performance paradoxically end up making music's suitors—whose amateur hearts love timidly and secretly—fear to set foot in the concert hall. Of course, if you're lucky then you'll leave the performance suffused with private joy at the beauty of the music, a feeling entirely unsullied by any other considerations. But with celebrated performers, those media darlings who can boast of countless prizes and glittering careers, there's always a greater likelihood of being dissatisfied, either with the performance itself or with all those various attendant factors. This said, it's still possible to come across performers who feel that their fame brings with it a certain responsibility, who've learned to live with that fame so that it doesn't detract from their art, and it's one of the greatest joys there is when you do. And it wasn't just the performers I got to know through attending recitals; they also afforded me the opportunity to re-encounter certain modern composers who, up until then, I'd never really understood and therefore hadn't been able to appreciate properly. This is the main reason that I continue going to concerts, in spite of the manifold awkwardness involved. Otherwise, I would never have had the marvelous experience of encountering the music of Liszt and Chopin anew, which I'd listened to now and then from quite a young age, but always without interest. Likewise with Béla Bartók and Bernd Alois Zimmerman. But there's a different, simpler joy in attending smaller, simpler recitals. For one, you can arrive at the venue quite naturally, a solitary individual out for a walk, rather than feeling that you've been pulled there by that tensile strength which moves a huge crowd. These performances don't always satisfy those who have a finely tuned ear for music, and you're unlikely to encounter new
musicians in a new way. But there's more than enough value to be found in a Bach concert one evening, the interior of the church strafed with the late autumn light; a cello recital held in the reception area of a concert hall rather than one of its main auditoria; a piano quintet; a piece by a music school graduate, based around two violins and a computer, which is extremely experimental and completely does away with melody; aspiring young musicians; people who have a clear idea of what they love; the fortuitous pleasure of stumbling across a string quartet whom you'd previously heard in much grander settings, with their stylish interpretation of Shostakovich. Such occasions put you in a comfortable, indulgently receptive state of mind, like an evening walk over a carpet of fallen leaves, freeing you from considerations of fame and sharp tongues, giving you space to reflect on yourself and the world, to forget the complications and insecurities caused by the critic who lurks in the mind's dark places. “A Night of Russian Literature and Music” was no different. The venue was a crowded building on a wealthy residential street; I'd missed the city circle bus as I didn't have a copy of the timetable, so I'd had to walk from the subway station, quite a long way, and this was after ten at night. But I wasn't the least bit afraid, although I was alone. I heard dogs barking now and then, but I never saw another person. Whenever I turned a corner or came to a small crossroads I would unfold my map under the faint glow from the street lights and find the name of the street I was on, those still, nocturnal streets, smothered in silence, against which my footsteps or the crunch of leaves was startlingly loud, as I wandered around looking for the white signboards on which the house numbers were written. And it was Bernd Alois Zimmerman that my journey brought me to. It was past midnight when I made my way back, and of course there was no-one else about, the night was cold, the woods by the side of the road were black and
the wind scraped past my ears, but I walked along half in a daze, alive to nothing but the music I'd just heard. When those who have given everything they had to and in service of music sense the approach of death, when death cannot but become their theme and they themselves cannot but confess its omnipotence, and death becomes the summation of life; the first time I recognized music created in such a moment was when I heard Shostakovich's final sonata. It was only later that I read about his contradictory life, the life of someone who, though renowned and successful, a celebrity among the privileged classes of the former USSR, had at the same time been a puppet, a lonely individual insulted and ridiculed at the whim of the masses. That same day, I listened again to Zimmerman's last two compositions. Though the quotations were taken from a religious text, their significance wasn't limited to the sphere of religion. I suspected that Zimmerman wasn't religious in the usual sense of the word, rather that for him it was all the same whether he was quoting religious texts, Bach's cantata or the Grand Inquisitor's speech. Because, after all, his final work was a way of announcing his imminent departure from this world. Five days after “Again I looked and saw . . .” was completed, Bernd Alois Zimmerman committed suicide. We're told that he suffered from severe depression.