Christopher Theodor Gottlieb Lemm was born in 1786 in the town of
Chemnitz in Saxony. His parents were poor musicians. His father played
the French horn, his mother the harp; he himself was practising on three
different instruments by the time he was five. At eight years old he was
left an orphan, and from his tenth year he began to earn his bread
by his art. He led a wandering life for many years, and performed
everywhere in restaurants, at fairs, at peasants’ weddings, and at
balls. At last he got into an orchestra, and constantly rising in it, he
obtained the position of director. He was rather a poor performer; but
he understood music thoroughly. At twenty-eight he migrated into Russia,
on the invitation of a great nobleman, who did not care for music
himself, but kept an orchestra for show. Lemm lived with him seven years
in the capacity of orchestra conductor, and left him empty-handed. The
nobleman was ruined, he intended to give him a promissory note, but in
the sequel refused him even that--in short, did not pay him a farthing.
He was advised to go away; but he was unwilling to return home in
poverty from Russia, that great Russia which is a mine of gold for
artists; he decided to remain and try his luck. For twenty years
the poor German had been trying his luck; he had lived in various
gentlemen’s houses, had suffered and put up with much, had faced
privation, had struggled like a fish on the ice; but the idea of
returning to his own country never left him among all the hardships he
endured; it was this dream alone that sustained him. But fate did
not see fit to grant him this last and first happiness: at fifty,
broken-down in health and prematurely aged, he drifted to the town of
O----, and remained there for good, having now lost once for all every
hope of leaving Russia, which he detested. He gained his poor livelihood
somehow by lessons. Lemm’s exterior was not prepossessing. He was short
and bent, with crooked shoulders, and contracted chest, with large flat
feet, and bluish white nails on the gnarled bony fingers of his sinewy
red hands. He had a wrinkled face, sunken cheeks, and compressed lips,
which he was for ever twitching and biting; and this, together with his
habitual taciturnity, produced an impression almost sinister. His grey
hair hung in tufts on his low brow; like smouldering embers, his little
set eyes glowed with dull fire. He moved painfully, at every step
swinging his ungainly body forward. Some of his movements recalled the
clumsy actions of an owl in a cage when it feels that it is being looked
at, but itself can hardly see out of its great yellow eyes timorously
and drowsily blinking. Pitiless, prolonged sorrow had laid its indelible
stamp on the poor musician; it had disfigured and deformed his person,
by no means attractive to begin with. But any one who was able to get
over the first impression would have discerned something good, and
honest, and out of the common in this half-shattered creature. A devoted
admirer of Bach and Handel, a master of his art, gifted with a lively
imagination and that boldness of conception which is only vouchsafed to
the German race, Lemm might, in time--who knows?--have taken rank with
the great composers of his fatherland, had his life been different; but
he was born under an unlucky star! He had written much in his life, and
it had not been granted to him to see one of his compositions produced;
he did not know how to set about things in the right way, to gain favour
in the right place, and to make a push at the right moment. A long, long
time ago, his one friend and admirer, also a German and also poor, had
published two of Lemm’s sonatas at his own expense--the whole edition
remained on the shelves of the music-shops; they disappeared without
a trace, as though they had been thrown into a river by night. At last
Lemm had renounced everything; the years too did their work; his mind
had grown hard and stiff, as his fingers had stiffened. He lived alone
in a little cottage not far from the Kalitin’s house, with an old cook
he had taken out of the poorhouse (he had never married). He took long
walks, and read the Bible and the Protestant version of the Psalms, and
Shakespeare in Schlegel’s translation. He had composed nothing for
a long time; but apparently, Lisa, his best pupil, had been able to
inspire him; he had written for her the cantata to which Panshin had
made allusion. The words of this cantata he had borrowed from his
collection of hymns. He had added a few verses of his own. It was sung
by two choruses--a chorus of the happy and a chorus of the unhappy. The
two were brought into harmony at the end, and sang together, “Merciful
God, have pity on us sinners, and deliver us from all evil thoughts and
earthly hopes.” On the title-page was the inscription, most carefully
written and even illuminated, “Only the righteous are justified. A
religious cantata. Composed and dedicated to Miss Elisaveta Kalitin,
his dear pupil, by her teacher, C. T. G. Lemm.” The words, “Only the
righteous are justified” and “Elisaveta Kalitin,” were encircled by
rays. Below was written: “For you alone, für Sie allein.” This was why
Lemm had grown red, and looked reproachfully at Lisa; he was deeply
wounded when Panshin spoke of his cantata before him.