“Oh, Bach, Sebastian Bach, dear lady!” cried Edmund Pfühl, Herr Edmund
Pfühl, the organist of St. Mary’s, as he strode up and down the salon
with great activity, while Gerda, smiling, her head on her hand, sat at
the piano; and Hanno listened from a big chair, his hands clasped round
his knees. “Certainly, as you say, it was he through whom the victory
was achieved by harmony over counterpoint. He invented modern harmony,
assuredly. But how? Need I tell you how? By progressive development
of the contrapuntal style--you know it as well as I do. Harmony? Ah,
no! By no means. Counterpoint, my dear lady, counterpoint! Whither, I
ask you, would experiments in harmony have led? While I have breath to
speak, I will warn you against mere experiments in harmony!”
His zeal as he spoke was great, and he gave it free rein, for he
felt at home in the house. Every Wednesday afternoon there appeared
on the threshold his bulky, square, high-shouldered figure, in a
coffee-coloured coat, whereof the skirts hung down over his knees.
While awaiting his partner, he would open lovingly the Bechstein
grand piano, arrange the violin parts on the stand, and then prelude
a little, softly and artistically, with his head sunk, in high
contentment, on one shoulder.
An astonishing growth of hair, a wilderness of tight little curls,
red-brown mixed with grey, made his head look big and heavy, though it
was poised easily upon a long neck with an extremely large Adam’s apple
that showed above his low collar. The straight, bunchy moustaches, of
the same colour as the hair, were more prominent than the small snub
nose. His eyes were brown and bright, with puffs of flesh beneath
them; when he played they looked as though their gaze passed through
whatever was in their way and rested on the other side. His face was
not striking, but it had at least the stamp of a strong and lively
intelligence. His eyelids were usually half drooped, and he had a way
of relaxing his lower jaw without opening his mouth, which gave him a
flabby, resigned expression like that sometimes seen on the face of a
sleeping person.
The softness of his outward seeming, however, contrasted strongly with
the actual strength and self-respect of his character. Edmund Pfühl
was an organist of no small repute, whose reputation for contrapuntal
learning was not confined within the walls of his native town. His
little book on Church Music was recommended for private study in
several conservatories, and his fugues and chorals were played now and
then where an organ sounded to the glory of God. These compositions,
as well as the voluntaries he played on Sundays at Saint Mary’s, were
flawless, impeccable, full of the relentless, severe logicality of the
_Strenge Satz_. Such beauty as they had was not of this earth, and
made no appeal to the ordinary layman’s human feeling. What spoke in
them, what gloriously triumphed in them, was a technique amounting to
an ascetic religion, a technique elevated to a lofty sacrament, to an
absolute end in itself. Edmund Pfühl had small use for the pleasant and
the agreeable, and spoke of melody, it must be confessed, in slighting
terms. But he was no dry pedant, notwithstanding. He would utter the
name of Palestrina in the most dogmatic, awe-inspiring tone. But even
while he made his instrument give out a succession of archaistic
virtuosities, his face would be all aglow with feeling, with rapt
enthusiasm, and his gaze would rest upon the distance as though he saw
there the ultimate logicality of all events, issuing in reality. This
was the musician’s look; vague and vacant precisely because it abode
in the kingdom of a purer, profounder, more absolute logic than that
which shapes our verbal conceptions and thoughts.
His hands were large and soft, apparently boneless, and covered with
freckles. His voice, when he greeted Gerda Buddenbrook, was low and
hollow, as though a bite were stuck in his throat: “Good morning,
honoured lady!”
He rose a little from his seat, bowed, and respectfully took the hand
she offered, while with his own left he struck the fifths on the piano,
so firmly and clear that she seized her Stradivarius and began to tune
the strings with practised ear.
“The G minor concerto of Bach, Herr Pfühl. The whole adagio still goes
badly, I think.”
And the organist began to play. But hardly were the first chords
struck, when it invariably happened that the corridor door would open
gently, and without a sound little Johann would steal across the carpet
to an easy-chair, where he would sit, his hands clasped round his
knees, motionless, and listen to the music and the conversation.
“Well, Hanno, so you want a little taste of music, do you?” said Gerda
in a pause, and looked at her son with her shadowy eyes, in which the
music had kindled a soft radiance.
Then he would stand up and put out his hand to Herr Pfühl with a
silent bow, and Herr Pfühl would stroke with gentle affection the soft
light-brown hair that hung gracefully about brow and temples.
“Listen, now, my child,” he would say, with mild impressiveness; and
the boy would look at the Adam’s apple that went up and down as the
organist spoke, and then go back to his place with his quick, light
steps, as though he could hardly wait for the music to begin again.
They played a movement of Haydn, some pages of Mozart, a sonata of
Beethoven. Then, while Gerda was picking out some music, with her
violin under her arm, a surprising thing happened: Herr Pfühl, Edmund
Pfühl, organist at St. Mary’s, glided over from his easy interlude
into music of an extraordinary style; while a sort of shame-faced
enjoyment showed upon his absent countenance. A burgeoning and
blooming, a weaving and singing rose beneath his fingers; then, softly
and dreamily at first, but ever clearer and clearer, there emerged
in artistic counterpoint the ancestral, grandiose, magnificent march
motif--a mounting to a climax, a complication, a transition; and at the
resolution of the dominant the violin chimed in, fortissimo. It was the
overture to _Die Meistersinger_.
Gerda Buddenbrook was an impassioned Wagnerite. But Herr Pfühl was an
equally impassioned opponent--so much so that in the beginning she had
despaired of winning him over.
On the day when she first laid some piano arrangements from _Tristan_
on the music-rack, he played some twenty-five beats and then sprung
up from the music-stool to stride up and down the room with disgust
painted upon his face.
“I cannot play that, my dear lady! I am your most devoted servant--but
I cannot. That is not music--believe me! I have always flattered myself
I knew something about music--but this is chaos! This is demagogy,
blasphemy, insanity, madness! It is a perfumed-fog, shot through with
lightning! It is the end of all honesty in art. I will not play it!”
And with the words he had thrown himself again on the stool, and with
his Adam’s apple working furiously up and down, with coughs and sighs,
had accomplished another twenty-five beats. But then he shut the piano
and cried out:
“Oh, fie, fie! No, this is going too far. Forgive me, dear lady, if I
speak frankly what I feel. You have honoured me for years, and paid me
for my services; and I am a man of modest means. But I must lay down
my office, I assure you, if you drive me to it by asking me to play
these atrocities! Look, the child sits there listening--would you then
utterly corrupt his soul?”
But let him gesture as furiously as he would, she brought him
over--slowly, by easy stages, by persistent playing and persuasion.
“Pfühl,” she would say, “be reasonable, take the thing calmly. You are
put off by his original use of harmony. Beethoven seems to you so pure,
clear, and natural, by contrast. But remember how Beethoven himself
affronted his contemporaries, who were brought up in the old way. And
Bach--why, good Heavens, you know how he was reproached for his want of
melody and clearness! You talk about honesty--but what do you mean by
honesty in art? Is it not the antithesis of hedonism? And, if so, then
that is what you have here. Just as much as in Bach. I tell you, Pfühl,
this music is less foreign to your inner self than you think!”
“It is all juggling and sophistry--begging your pardon,” he grumbled.
But she was right, after all: the music was not so impossible as he
thought at first. He never, it is true, quite reconciled himself to
_Tristan_, though he eventually carried out Gerda’s wish and made a
very clever arrangement of the Liebestod for violin and piano. He was
first won over by certain parts of _Die Meistersinger_; and slowly a
love for this new art began to stir within him. He would not confess
it--he was himself aghast at the fact, and would pettishly deny it when
the subject was mentioned. But after the old masters had had their due,
Gerda no longer needed to urge him to respond to a more complex demand
upon his virtuosity; with an expression of shame-faced pleasure, he
would glide into the weaving harmonies of the _Leit-motiv_. After the
music, however, there would be a long explanation of the relation of
this style of music to that of the _Strenge Satz_; and one day Herr
Pfühl admitted that, while not personally interested in the theme, he
saw himself obliged to add a chapter to his book on Church Music, the
subject of which would be the application of the old key-system to the
church- and folk-music of Richard Wagner.
Hanno sat quite still, his small hands clasped round his knees, his
mouth, as usual, a little twisted as his tongue felt out the hole in a
back tooth. He watched his mother and Herr Pfühl with large quiet eyes;
and thus, so early, he became aware of music as an extraordinarily
serious, important, and profound thing in life. He understood only now
and then what they were saying, and the music itself was mostly far
above his childish understanding. Yet he came again, and sat absorbed
for hours--a feat which surely faith, love, and reverence alone enabled
him to perform.
When only seven, he began to repeat with one hand on the piano certain
combinations of sound that made an impression on him. His mother
watched him smiling, improved his chords, and showed him how certain
tones would be necessary to carry one chord over into another. And his
ear confirmed what she told him.
After Gerda Buddenbrook had watched her son a little, she decided that
he must have piano lessons.
“I hardly think,” she told Herr Pfühl, “that he is suited for solo
work; and on the whole I am glad, for it has its bad side apart from
the dependence of the soloist upon his accompanist, which can be very
serious too;--if I did not have you, for instance!--there is always
the danger of yielding to more or less complete virtuosity. You see,
I know whereof I speak. I tell you frankly that, for the soloist, a
high degree of ability is only the first step. The concentration on
the tone and phrasing of the treble, which reduces the whole polyphony
to something vague and indefinite in the consciousness, must surely
spoil the feeling for harmony--unless the person is more than usually
gifted--and the memory as well, which is most difficult to correct
later on. I love my violin, and I have accomplished a good deal with
it; but to tell the truth, I place the piano higher. What I mean is
this: familiarity with the piano, as a means of summarizing the richest
and most varied structures, as an incomparable instrument for musical
reproduction, means for me a clearer, more intimate and comprehensive
intercourse with music. Listen, Pfühl. I would like to have you take
him, if you will be so good. I know there are two or three people here
in the town who give lessons--women, I think. But they are simply
piano-teachers. You know what I mean. I feel that it matters so little
whether one is trained upon an instrument, and so much whether one
knows something about music. I depend upon you. And you will see, you
will succeed with him. He has the Buddenbrook hand. The Buddenbrooks
can all strike the ninths and tenths--only they have never set any
store by it,” she concluded, laughing. And Herr Pfühl declared himself
ready to undertake the lessons.
From now on, he came on Mondays as well as Wednesdays, and gave little
Hanno lessons, while Gerda sat beside them. He went at it in an unusual
way, for he felt that he owed more to his pupil’s dumb and passionate
zeal than merely to employ it in playing the piano a little. The first
elementary difficulties were hardly got over when he began to theorize,
in a simple way, with graphic illustrations, and to give his pupil the
foundations of the theory of harmony. And Hanno understood. For it was
all only a confirmation of what he had always known.
As far as possible, Herr Pfühl took into consideration the eager
ambition of the child. He spent much thought upon the problem, how best
to lighten the material load that weighed down the wings of his fancy.
He did not demand too much finger dexterity or practice of scales. What
he had in mind, and soon achieved, was a clear and lively grasp of the
key-system on Hanno’s part, an inward, comprehensive understanding
of its relationships, out of which would come, at no distant day,
the quick eye for possible combinations, the intuitive mastery over
the piano, which would lead to improvisation and composition. He
appreciated with a touching delicacy of feeling the spiritual needs
of this young pupil, who had already heard so much, and directed it
toward the acquisition of a serious style. He would not disillusionize
the deep solemnity of his mood by making him practise commonplaces.
He gave him chorals to play, and pointed out the laws controlling the
development of one chord into another.
Gerda, sitting with her embroidery or her book, just beyond the
portières, followed the course of the lessons.
“You outstrip all my expectations,” she told Herr Pfühl, later on. “But
are you not going too fast? Aren’t you getting too far ahead? Your
method seems to me eminently creative--he has already begun to try
to improvise a little. But if the method is beyond him, if he hasn’t
enough gift, he will learn absolutely nothing.”
“He has enough gift,” Herr Pfühl said, and nodded. “Sometimes I look
into his eyes, and see so much lying there--but he holds his mouth
tight shut. In later life, when his mouth will probably be shut even
tighter, he must have some kind of outlet--a way of speaking--”
She looked at him--at this square-built musician with the red-brown
hair, the pouches under the eyes, the bushy moustaches, and the
inordinate Adam’s apple--and then she put out her hand and said: “Thank
you, Pfühl. You mean well by him. And who knows, yet, how much you are
doing for him?”
Hanno’s feeling for his teacher was one of boundless gratitude and
devotion. At school he sat heavy and hopeless, unable, despite
strenuous coaching, to understand his tables. But he grasped without
effort all that Herr Pfühl told him, and made it his own--if he could
make more his own that which he had already owned before. Edmund Pfühl,
like a stout angel in a tail-coat, took him in his arms every Monday
afternoon and transported him above all his daily misery, into the
mild, sweet, grave, consoling kingdom of sound.
The lessons sometimes took place at Herr Pfühl’s own house, a roomy
old gabled dwelling full of cool passages and crannies, in which the
organist lived alone with an elderly housekeeper. Sometimes, too,
little Buddenbrook was allowed to sit up with the organist at the
Sunday service in St. Mary’s--which was quite a different matter from
stopping below with the other people, in the nave. High above the
congregation, high above Pastor Pringsheim in his pulpit, the two sat
alone, in the midst of a mighty tempest of rolling sound, which at once
set them free from the earth and dominated them by its own power; and
Hanno was sometimes blissfully permitted to help his master control the
stops.
When the choral was finished, Herr Pfühl would slowly lift his fingers
from the keyboard, so that only the bass and the fundamental would
still be heard, in lingering solemnity; and after a meaningful pause,
the well-modulated voice of Pastor Pringsheim would rise up from under
the sounding-board in the pulpit. Then it happened not infrequently
that Herr Pfühl would, quite simply, begin to make fun of the preacher:
his artificial enunciation, his long, exaggerated vowels, his sighs,
his crude transitions from sanctity to gloom. Hanno would laugh too,
softly but with heart-felt glee; for those two up there were both of
the opinion--which neither of them expressed--that the sermon was silly
twaddle, and that the real service consisted in that which the Pastor
and his congregation regarded merely as a devotional accessory: namely,
the music.
Herr Pfühl, in fact, had a constant grievance in the small
understanding there was for his accomplishments down there among
the Senators, Consuls, citizens, and their families. And thus, he
liked to have his small pupil by him, to whom he could point out the
extraordinary difficulties of the passages he had just played. He
performed marvels of technique. He had composed a melody which was just
the same read forward or backward, and based upon it a fugue which
was to be played “crab-fashion.” But after performing this wonder:
“Nobody knows the difference,” he said, and folded his hands in his
lap with a dreary look, shaking his head hopelessly. While Pastor
Pringsheim was delivering his sermon, he whispered to Hanno: “That was
a crab-fashion imitation, Johann. You don’t know what that is yet. It
is the imitation of a theme composed backward instead of forward--a
very, very difficult thing. Later on, I will show you what an imitation
in the _Strenge Satz_ involves. As for the ‘crab,’ I would never ask
you to try that. It isn’t necessary. But do not believe those who tell
you that such things are trifles, without any musical value. You will
find the crab in musicians of all ages. But exercises like that are the
scorn of the mediocre and the superficial musician. Humility, Hanno,
_humility_--is the feeling one should have. Don’t forget it.”
On his eighth birthday, April 15th, 1869, Hanno played before the
assembled family a fantasy of his own composition. It was a simple
affair, a motif entirely of his own invention, which he had slightly
developed. When he showed it to Herr Pfühl, the organist, of course,
had some criticism to make.
“What sort of theatrical ending is that, Johann? It doesn’t go with
the rest of it. In the beginning it is all pretty good; but why do you
suddenly fall from B major into the six-four chord on the fourth note
with a minor third? These are tricks; and you tremolo here, too--where
did you pick that up? I know, of course: you have been listening when I
played certain things for your mother. Change the end, child: then it
will be quite a clean little piece of work.”
But it appeared that Hanno laid the greatest stress precisely on this
minor chord and this finale; and his mother was so very pleased with
it that it remained as it was. She took her violin and played the
upper part, and varied it with runs in demi-semi-quavers. That sounded
gorgeous: Hanno kissed her out of sheer happiness, and they played it
together to the family on the 15th of April.
The Frau Consul, Frau Permaneder, Christian, Clothilde, Herr and Frau
Consul Kröger, Herr and Frau Director Weinschenk, the Broad Street
Buddenbrooks, and Therese Weichbrodt were all bidden to dinner at four
o’clock, with the Senator and his wife, in honour of Hanno’s birthday;
and now they sat in the salon and looked at the child, perched on the
music-stool in his sailor suit, and at the elegant, foreign appearance
his mother made as she played a wonderful cantilena on the G string,
and then, with profound virtuosity, developed a stream of purling,
foaming cadences. The silver on the end of her bow gleamed in the
gas-light.
Hanno was pale with excitement, and had hardly eaten any dinner. But
now he forgot all else in his absorbed devotion to his task, which
would, alas, be all over in ten minutes! The little melody he had
invented was more harmonic than rhythmic in its structure; there
was an extraordinary contrast between the simple primitive material
which the child had at his command, and the impressive, impassioned,
almost over-refined method with which that material was employed. He
brought out each leading note with a forward inclination of the little
head; he sat far forward on the music-stool, and strove by the use of
both pedals to give each new harmony an emotional value. In truth,
when Hanno concentrated upon an effect, the result was likely to be
emotional rather than merely sentimental. He gave every simple harmonic
device a special and mysterious significance by means of retardation
and accentuation; his surprising skill in effects was displayed in
each chord, each new harmony, by a suddenly introduced pianissimo. And
he sat with lifted eyebrows, swaying back and forth with the whole
upper part of his body. Then came the finale, Hanno’s beloved finale,
which crowned the elevated simplicity of the whole piece. Soft and
clear as a bell sounded the E minor chord, tremolo pianissimo, amid
the purling, flowing notes of the violin. It swelled, it broadened, it
slowly, slowly rose: suddenly, in the forte, he introduced the discord
C sharp, which led back to the original key, and the Stradivarius
ornamented it with its welling and singing. He dwelt on the dissonance
until it became fortissimo. But he denied himself and his audience the
resolution; he kept it back. What would it be, this resolution, this
enchanting, satisfying absorption into the B major chord? A joy beyond
compare, a gratification of overpowering sweetness! Peace! Bliss! The
kingdom of Heaven: only not yet--not yet! A moment more of striving,
hesitation, suspense, that must become well-nigh intolerable in order
to heighten the ultimate moment of joy.--Once more--a last, a final
tasting of this striving and yearning, this craving of the entire
being, this last forcing of the will to deny oneself the fulfilment
and the conclusion, in the knowledge that joy, when it comes, lasts
only for the moment. The whole upper part of Hanno’s little body
straightened, his eyes grew larger, his closed lips trembled, he
breathed short, spasmodic breaths through his nose. At last, at last,
joy would no longer be denied. It came, it poured over him; he resisted
no more. His muscles relaxed, his head sank weakly on his shoulder, his
eyes closed, and a pathetic, almost an anguished smile of speechless
rapture hovered about his mouth; while his tremolo, among the rippling
and rustling runs from the violin, to which he now added runs in the
bass, glided over into B major, swelled up suddenly into forte, and
after one brief, resounding burst, broke off.
It was impossible that all the effect which this had upon Hanno should
pass over into his audience. Frau Permaneder, for instance, had
not the slightest idea what it was all about. But she had seen the
child’s smile, the rhythm of his body, the beloved little head swaying
enraptured from side to side--and the sight had penetrated to the
depths of her easily moved nature.
“How the child can play! Oh, how he can play!” she cried, hurrying to
him half-weeping and folding him in her arms. “Gerda, Tom, he will be
a Meyerbeer, a Mozart, a--” As no third name of equal significance
occurred to her, she confined herself to showering kisses on her
nephew, who sat there, still quite exhausted, with an absent look in
his eyes.
“That’s enough, Tony,” the Senator said softly. “Please don’t put such
ideas into the child’s head.”